Five9 Day: A Thank You to the People Behind Every Conversation

Each year, Five9 Day gives us a moment to pause and reflect.  

Not because of the number. Because of what it stands for, a chance to stop, look around, and say, thank you. 

I have spent my career in and around contact centers. And one thing I've never stopped believing: when you take care of the people on your front line, everything else follows. The customer feels it. The business feels it. I've watched it play out, over and over again. 

So, on Five9 Day, before anything else, thank you. To every agent, supervisor, operator, and leader who shows up and delivers, day in and day out. You are why this work matters. 

The problem no one talks enough about 

Here's something I hear constantly from leaders: "We've invested in AI. We've added tools. Why isn't it showing up in the experience?" 

And when I dig in, the answer is almost always the same. It's not that the technology isn't there. It's that it isn't showing up in the moment, when an agent is on a live call, navigating three systems, trying to find an answer, while a customer waits. 

AI alone doesn't transform the experience. The system behind the interaction does. 

When agents are working around disconnected tools, searching for context that should already be there, the customer feels every second of that friction. They just can't see where it's coming from. 

That is what I think about when I look at what our customers are building. Not simply better technology, a better experience for the people delivering the experience. 

What it looks like when it works 

Take Omaha Steaks. Every holiday season, they make a remarkable operational leap, scaling their contact center from 200 agents to more than 1,500 in just a few weeks. Seven times the people, seven times the complexity, in the highest-stakes window of the year. 

That’s a lot to ask of people, especially when the platform isn’t built for it. 

Now, with remote capability, AI-powered payment automation, and smarter workforce tools in place, their agents aren't just surviving the holiday rush, they're delivering. Wait times down 70%. Handle time down 20%. Call abandonment cut nearly in half. And $2.4 million in holiday revenue protected. 

Lyndsey Hansen, their Director of Customer Experience, put it well: Five9 helped them "boost performance, reduce employee attrition, and deliver a standout customer experience." That last part, attrition, tells you everything. When agents have the right tools, they stay. And when they stay, everything gets better.  

When the stakes are higher than a service call 

Christian Healthcare Ministries has been helping individuals and families share healthcare costs for over 40 years, nearly $12 billion in expenses shared across their community. Their agents aren't fielding routine inquiries. They're talking to people navigating complex medical claims and difficult healthcare decisions. Every call matters. 

For a long time, their system made that work harder than it needed to be. No intelligent routing, no CTI, a ten-option voice menu so confusing that most callers just pressed "0", flooding the operator queue and driving transfer rates to 48%. 

Think about being on the other end of that as a member. You're dealing with a healthcare situation, maybe an urgent one, and the system keeps sending you to the wrong place. 

Now, 80% of inbound calls are identified intelligently, and transfers have dropped from 48% to 4%. Agents aren't scrambling, they're having the conversations that actually need them. 

Wayne Pierce, their Operations Manager, said it himself: "As a parent, you know your child never gets sick between the hours of 8am and 6pm." With Five9 automation, CHM can now offer services 24/7, so agents focus on the interactions that truly require a human, and members get help when they actually need it. On the outbound side, what used to take 22 days now takes six. Collections have increased 400%. In a healthcare ministry, that means members stay current, coverage stays intact, and people don't lose access to care because a call didn't connect at the right time. 

Turning a crisis into a foundation 

The Dufresne Group's story starts with a moment that would have broken most organizations: a complete telephony outage. Couldn't answer calls. Couldn't support guests. Just silence. 

They'd been planning a platform replacement over 12 to 24 months. That timeline collapsed overnight. Their response? Replace the entire contact center infrastructure in 30 days or less. And they did it. 

But it's not just the speed. Voice, email and chat, unified into one omnichannel experience. AI handling a 70% call deflection rate. Five9 AI Agent Assist putting rich context in front of agents before the conversation even starts. Agent utilization jumped from 50% to 80%. After-call documentation dropped to zero. Guest satisfaction went from 60% to 95%. 

Jessica Klatt, one of their Guest Care Agents, described what it feels like from the front line: real-time prompts, workflow automation, seamless reporting. That's not a technology description. That's an agent who knows her system has her back. 

Norman Alegria, their Director of Guest Care, summed it up best: "Self-service hasn't replaced the human touch, it's enhanced it." That's exactly right. 

What this means for the people doing the work 

Across every one of these stories, one thing is consistent. The technology didn't replace the people. It got out of their way. 

When agents have context before a call begins, they can connect instead of search. When AI shows up in the moment, they act with clarity and confidence. When the system is reliable, customers trust every interaction, not just the lucky ones. 

You can't build great customer experience on a foundation your agents are constantly working around. But when they can rely on it? Happy agents. Happy customers. Every time. 

One more thank you 

Thank you for the trust you place in us. Thank you for pushing us to build tools that actually show up when your people need them. And thank you for reminding us, every day, that what we're building isn't just software, it's the backbone of every conversation your team has to deliver. 

That's what Five9 Day means to me. Happy 5/9. 

We're proud to build The New CX with you. 

If you'd like to see more of these stories, and the real outcomes behind them, we've brought them together in our 2026 Customer Success Book.