For SMBs, customer experience often comes with an uncomfortable tradeoff. If they can make it fit into the budget, they can invest in the same sophisticated communications tools larger enterprises use – omnichannel engagement, AI-powered analytics, quality management, around-the-clock responsiveness – but doing so often means stitching together multiple vendors, products, and integrations that smaller teams do not have the time or resources to manage well. The alternative is to keep things simple and settle for a basic phone system, even if that leaves them at a disadvantage against larger competitors.
That tension is becoming harder to ignore as customer expectations rise and small businesses face growing pressure to respond faster, maintain context across channels, and do more with leaner teams.
That said, there are communications solutions available that bridge the gap between SMB budgets and enterprise-level CX.
GoTo is one of them, positioning its latest launch specifically as an answer to that problem. The company announced GoTo Connect CX Complete, a new top-tier solution that combines its CX capabilities into a single AI-powered platform. Phone, text, web chat, WhatsApp, and webinars all sit inside the same environment, with AI tools designed to automate routine tasks, surface insights, and support employees during customer interactions.
“SMBs don’t want to assemble and manage a patchwork of tools to deliver great customer experiences,” said Damon Covey, General Manager of UCC at GoTo.
That’s where the various channels embedded into the platform come in. It provides a unified set of tools to engage customers through whatever medium they prefer, with all interactions being connected. The AI piece is the icing on the cake.
“The AI works alongside employees, handling the busywork, surfacing insights, and providing real-time guidance, so people can focus on delivering empathetic, high-quality customer experiences without the enterprise overhead,” Covey added.
The launch comes at a time when demand for AI-enabled support is rising. To be fair, AI-enabled everything is in demand – we are well into the AI era. Specifically, GoTo says 82% of employees want AI customer support tools. The company also estimates employees spend 2.6 hours per day on tasks AI could potentially handle. That’s a third of a standard work day – a more than meaningful percentage.
GoTo’s platform is built around three capabilities that speak directly to common SMB pain points. An AI Receptionist answers and routes calls 24/7, helping businesses avoid missed calls and missed opportunities outside normal business hours, while making sure calls get to the right individuals. AI-powered analytics evaluates every interaction, giving managers broader visibility into team performance, customer sentiment, and service trends. Finally, voice, text, chat, and WhatsApp conversations are all connected in one platform with shared context, so employees can see the full picture of a customer relationship, rather than handling each interaction in isolation.
That shared context is important. One of the most common breakdowns in SMB customer service is the handoff. A customer who called yesterday and follows up today over chat, only to find that the next employee has no idea what happened in the earlier conversation. It happens all the time and, in a market where bad experiences can spread quickly and loyalty is difficult to earn, that kind of friction carries real cost. That cost is churn. Year after year, data shows that it often takes but a single poor experience for customers to leave a brand for a competitor. Keeping interactions connected across channels helps reduce the friction and helps preserve loyalty.
CX Complete also addresses another practical frustration – how customer experience tools are packaged and purchased. Smaller organizations need contact center capabilities without thinking of themselves as contact centers. Having to buy multiple separate SKUs to access features such as AI topic detection, quality management, and automatic dispositions adds both cost and confusion. GoTo is trying to simplify that by packaging those capabilities into a single offering available across the organization, rather than limiting them to a formal support team.
That brings us to a key point. Customer experience in smaller businesses rarely lives inside a dedicated department alone. It happens when a salesperson follows up with a lead, when a technician returns a customer call, when a front-office employee fields a complaint, or when a manager handles an issue directly. In reality, every small business employee is a customer service agent. By extending routing, AI assistance, and real-time guidance beyond a traditional support queue, GoTo is making the case that CX should be treated as a company-wide discipline rather than purely a formal contact center function.
That’s the real argument behind CX Complete. The goal is not simply to add more channels or more AI features, but to give smaller organizations access to more sophisticated customer experience capabilities without forcing them to absorb enterprise-level complexity and cost to get there.
GoTo’s message is that smaller businesses should no longer have to choose between simplicity and sophistication. Enterprise-grade CX is becoming something SMBs can realistically achieve, not just aspire to deliver.
