Businesses must shift from automation to orchestration in customer service, says Tata Communications executive
A Tata Communications executive warns that companies are bolting AI tools onto outdated legacy systems, creating fragmented customer experiences. The fix, he says, is moving from automating single tasks to full orchestration.
Companies are rapidly rolling out AI agents, voice AI, and automation across messaging, voice, and digital channels, but the underlying architecture often can't keep pace. That's according to Gaurav Anand, global head of the Customer Interaction Suite at Tata Communications, who says most enterprises have simply attached conversational AI to legacy systems that were never designed for it.
According to Anand, while many businesses have adopted digital tools, very few operate platforms that are genuinely integrated, scalable, and capable of working together seamlessly. This gap forces human agents to piece together information from disconnected tools just to understand what an AI system has already communicated to a customer.
A missing shared context
Anand explains that the core issue isn't data access, but the lack of a shared, enterprise-wide context layer connecting customer identities, interactions, transactions, policies, and operational systems into one coherent picture. Traditional customer experience architecture was designed for linear, human-driven routing, not for managing real-time data flow between autonomous AI systems, data lakes, and human staff.
He notes that today's operational complexity is no longer about adding more intelligence, but about coordinating the intelligence that already exists across the enterprise, so customers never feel the friction created by internal silos. That requires a shared context layer letting AI systems, applications, and people operate from a common understanding of the customer and the business.
From automation to orchestration
As this coordination challenge grows, Anand says enterprises' strategic focus is shifting from automation toward orchestration. Automation addresses individual tasks, he explains, while orchestration links them into end-to-end outcomes. The next step, he adds, is context-aware orchestration.
