After the smartphone: designing CX for ambient assistants, wearables, and bot-to-bot service.
technology,
CX,
Agentic AI,
AI,
bots,
wearable tech,
digital assistants,
digital customer service,
Published on Mon Mar 09 2026
Updated on Mon Mar 09 2026
4 minute read
I can remember when mobile phones became ubiquitous. In the 80s, there were a few early adopters carrying enormous phones around self-consciously, but in the 90s, phones became small enough to fit in your pocket. Companies from my part of the world - such as Nokia and Ericsson - ruled the cellphone market globally. Now, all those old phones are in museums. What is important to remember, though, is that they were primarily phones. You could play a few simple games on them and text a friend once SMS took off, but the main function of a phone was as a phone.
Now, the smartphone is a fully functional computer. You can edit video, create music, go shopping, listen to audiobooks, and a thousand other activities, as the open app store platform has turned the ‘phone’ into a general-use device. Many people still call it a phone and almost never make any calls. But some companies are now thinking beyond the phone and asking if the functionality that consumers want could be provided from other devices. The Apple Watch Series 11 can monitor just about all your vital signs, including blood pressure, so we may enter an era where healthcare is preemptive rather than reactive. Smart glasses from Meta are becoming surprisingly popular. Google tried this idea with their Glass product a decade ago and failed - perhaps the world is ready for people to be walking around with smart glasses now?
I think it is extremely interesting to see which devices succeed and which fail because there is a complex mix of variables that determines which products work. The price has to be right, the public has to be ready to use the product, and there has to be some utility - a reason to use the product. The New York Times recently assembled a group of technology experts to explore how we might evolve from using the smartphone and they made some interesting suggestions. They did mention the smartwatch and smart glasses as new devices, but they also talked about how consumers will become used to ambient computing. We have had tools like Alexa and Siri for several years, but when we can have open, free-flowing conversations with these devices - like a conversation with ChatGPT - then it becomes more like a companion or assistant. Amazon has even started calling the new Alexa+ system ‘your best digital friend.’ We have already seen that Google Gemini and ChatGPT have changed the way people search for information online. People want complete answers now, not just a link to a webpage. Why not just have a conversation?
Another important predicted change is recording - what some are calling ‘lifecording’. This is where you use a wearable device to record everything you experience - audio or video or both. Companies such as Limitless.ai are already marketing devices like this with a focus on providing users with a perfect memory. Ask your device if there is anything important you need to get done today and it will summarize anything you agreed to do on calls or during conversations.
Read more
Created at Tue Nov 10 2026
4 min read
Scale-up Stories: how to expand your brand while staying true to your core.
You’ve spent years building your business, and you protected it fiercely while it was small. Then product-market truly takes off: orders multiply, but investors push for speed, and the quality and focus that made customers fall in love with your product start to slip. That’s the core challenge every founder we work with at Awesome CX, Transcom's scale-up-tailored offering, faces this paradox: How do you scale without becoming just another product in the market?
Scaling quickly doesn’t have to m
