Smart Communications’ Acquisition of Pendula Targets CX in the Age of Agentic AI
The AI conversation has shifted – rapidly. For years, enterprises invested in automation, analytics, and personalization tools to improve customer experience (CX). But, the new wave of Agentic AI is different. These AI systems autonomously plan, execute, and refine multi-step actions to achieve specific goals, operating with far greater initiative and contextual awareness than traditional chatbots or rule-based automation.
CX is one of the most fertile grounds for this evolution. In an age where consumers demand instant, personalized, omnichannel interactions, agentic AI can do what fragmented systems and human teams alone cannot. They can orchestrate every touchpoint, across every channel, adapting in real time toward a clear outcome.
Smart Communications’ acquisition of
Pendula underscores just how central agentic AI is becoming to CX. Pendula is a provider of intelligent orchestration and digital delivery technology. The deal enhances Smart Communications’ Conversation Cloud platform with expanded AI decisioning, orchestration, and channel optimization capabilities. It’s an ideal match for an era where AI agents will soon drive the majority of enterprise-to-customer interactions.
According to Smart Communications’ latest State of Customer Conversations report, only 54% of customers are satisfied with the omnichannel experiences from their financial services, insurance, and healthcare providers (and that figure has been slipping year over year). Customers want “any channel, any time” interactions that are relevant, timely, and fluid, while many organizations still operate with siloed systems and manual follow-ups. This results in incomplete transactions, missed opportunities, and declining trust.
Agentic AI offers a way forward. By connecting systems, applying contextual understanding, and executing actions autonomously, AI agents can bridge the gap between expectation and delivery. But achieving this at scale, especially in regulated industries, requires robust orchestration capabilities, compliance guardrails, and seamless integration with enterprise systems. That’s precisely what the Smart Communications–Pendula combination aims to deliver.
Traditional automation in CX has been about efficiency (e.g., reducing manual work, enabling faster responses, and ensuring consistent messaging). Agentic AI goes further. It’s not about merely executing tasks; it’s about making informed decisions to reach a goal.
Pendula’s Intelligence Suite combines analytics, AI decisioning, and configurable AI agents that operate within organizational workflows and compliance requirements. These agents can identify trends and predict customer needs, dynamically choose the best engagement channel, reroute messages if delivery fails, personalize responses, and escalate to human agents when needed. This is intelligent orchestration and what it creates is a CX environment where every interaction is initiated and carried through to completion with minimal friction.
Financial services, insurance, and healthcare organizations face complex CX challenges due to strict compliance requirements, sensitive data handling, and journeys that often span multiple steps and approvals. Manual processes slow these journeys, while disconnected systems make them error-prone. With the Pendula acquisition, Smart Communications can offer enterprises the ability to increase completion rates for critical interactions, such as policy renewals, loan processing, or patient on-boarding; reduce manual follow-up through AI-driven workflows; maintain security and compliance; and integrate with core platforms like Salesforce, AWS, Snowflake, and Zendesk.
“The acquisition of Pendula is the natural next step in our evolution, solving a key challenge our clients face: orchestrating and completing complex, high-value customer interactions across digital channels, at scale,” said Leigh Segall, CEO, Smart Communications. “It also strengthens the AI capabilities already embedded into the Conversation Cloud – enhancing decisioning, automation, and personalization to help our customers engage more intelligently and drive better outcomes across every touchpoint.”
Market analysts predict explosive growth for AI agents in CX. Gartner forecasts that, by 2029, AI agents will handle 80% of common customer interactions autonomously. Others, including Forrester and Everest Group agree that AI agents will significantly change the CX world.
The drivers are clear:
- Scalability, as AI agents can manage thousands of simultaneous, personalized conversations without quality loss;
- Outcome orientation, as they are designed to achieve specific goals like resolving a claim or securing a renewal; and
- Channel fluidity, enabling seamless movement across devices and platforms without losing context.
Smart Communications’ integration of Pendula’s technology positions it squarely in this growth curve, enabling enterprises to deploy outcome-driven AI agents backed by compliance, security, and proven orchestration.
The shift to agentic AI in CX won’t be optional for long. As patience for fragmented experiences wanes, organizations unable to deliver connected, personalized, frictionless journeys will lose market share. For enterprises in all industries, but particularly in regulated ones, the winning strategy will combine AI intelligence, channel agility, and human oversight. Agentic AI will drive conversations forward, while humans handle exceptions, relationship-building, and high-empathy moments.
Smart Communications’ acquisition of Pendula isn’t just a product expansion—it’s a case study in where CX is headed – AI agents that don’t just converse, but orchestrate, decide, and deliver outcomes across the engagement lifecycle. The agentic era is here, and those who embrace it early will not only meet customer expectations, but redefine them.
Learn more about how agentic AI is improving business processes and operations across industries, including the customer experience space, at AI Agent Event, taking place September 29-30 in Herndon, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C. metro area. The conference program includes speakers from leading companies like Lockheed Martin, AWS, Cisco, and others, who will address key themes and offer success strategies for AI agent adoption.
Edited by
Erik Linask
