The AI Contact Center Handbook
A practical field guide to customer experience in the age of agentic AI — chapter by chapter, for teams evaluating AB Support.
Appendix F — CX Math and Operational Models
The four pieces of math a CX leader should be able to sketch on a whiteboard — Erlang C with a worked example, Erlang O concurrency, LLM inference economics with model routing and caching, containment arithmetic, and blended cost per contact.
Appendix E — Vendor Market Guide
The 2026 CCaaS and CPaaS market map, a seven-vendor comparison, a hidden-cost checklist that catches the two-to-three-times multiplier on published pricing, and the reference-check questions worth asking.
Appendix D — Agentic AI Developer Toolkit (MCP)
A working map of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — what it is, curated MCP servers by category for contact center use, three architectural composition patterns, and the checklist for building your own MCP server safely.
Appendix C — Security & Compliance Frameworks
PCI DSS v4.0 in twelve steps, the merchant-level thresholds that decide validation obligations, and a working comparison of GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, TCPA, LGPD, and APPI for any multinational contact center.
Appendix B — Readiness Checklists
Diagnostic tools for the voice AI transformation: a 20-question readiness assessment, a 25-question vendor security screen, a DPIA template, five survey designs, an executive readiness agenda, and the weekly operating rhythm for a live AI program.
Appendix A — Glossary
A single alphabetical A–Z glossary covering the contact center industry, AI, and compliance — every acronym you will hear in a CCaaS bake-off, a QBR, or a security review, defined in one sentence.
The Toolkit — Six Appendices
Six practical reference tools from The AI Contact Center Handbook — glossary, readiness checklists, compliance frameworks, MCP developer toolkit, vendor market guide, and CX math.
Chapter 12 — Strategic Vendor Selection and Implementation
The four vendor camps, the phased rollout playbook, contract terms that actually matter, the shift to outcome-based pricing, and a twelve-month calendar of what goes right and wrong.
Part 5 — Execution
Part 5 of The AI Contact Center Handbook — where the book stops describing the terrain and starts telling you what to do: trust architecture, the changing workforce, and vendor selection.
The AI Contact Center Handbook — A Field Guide to Customer Experience in the Age of Agentic AI
A preview of Sho Shimoda's new book — what agentic AI actually means, why it changes the operating model of customer experience, and what it looks like in production inside Microsoft Teams.