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From Hype to Production: Voice AI in 2025
Voice AI has crossed into production. Deepgram’s 2025 State of Voice AI Report with Opus Research quantifies how 400 senior leaders - many at $100M+ enterprises - are budgeting, shipping, and measuring results.
Adoption is near-universal (97%), budgets are rising (84%), yet only 21% are very satisfied with legacy agents. And that gap is the opportunity: using human-like agents that handle real tasks, reduce wait times, and lift CSAT.
Get benchmarks to compare your roadmap, the first use cases breaking through (customer service, order capture, task automation), and the capabilities that separate leaders from laggards - latency, accuracy, tooling, and integration. Use the findings to prioritize quick wins now and build a scalable plan for 2026.
Hey there,
Ever wonder why some workplace changes land smoothly while others spark confusion or quiet frustration? This issue looks at what happens when five generations share the same organization, how manager-employee relationships make or break retention, and why frontline teams still feel disconnected even though they make up most of the workforce.
Stick with this one, and you will come away with a clearer sense of what truly moves teams forward together.
📰 Upcoming in this issue
📊 Managing Organizational Change Across Five Generations
💬 How to Improve Manager-Employee Relationships
📱 Deskless, Not Disconnected for Frontline Staff
📈 Trending news
Common Skills Language Aligns HR and Operations
COOs Must Own Change Mechanics With HR as a Guide
Leaders Must Model the Change, Not Just Announce
📊 Managing Organizational Change Across Five Generations
Five generations now share the workplace, and this guide shows how tailored systems, support, and performance processes make change feel fair and workable. It breaks change into practical steps leaders can use to boost adoption without sacrificing equity or psychological safety.
Key Takeaways:
👥 One Workforce, Five Generations: Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z absorb change differently, so communication and rollout cannot be one-size-fits-all.
🧩 Design Systems for Everyone: Intuitive tools, multi-modal training, and accessible interfaces keep new platforms usable for seasoned employees and digital natives alike.
💬 Support Emotional Readiness: Managers acknowledge generational reactions to change, create psychological safety, and use focus groups, mentoring, and pulse checks to surface concerns early.
🧭 Pair Structure with Flexibility: Standard performance systems stay consistent, while tailored coaching, documentation, and cross-generational buddy programs create multiple paths to adopt new ways of working.
💬 How to Improve Manager-Employee Relationships
Gallup finds that over two in five leavers say a better manager could have kept them, so this guide shows how to repair that relationship. It breaks down five practical habits any business can use to turn managers into trusted partners rather than stress multipliers.
Key Takeaways:
📣 Regular Feedback and Check-Ins: Managers solicit and act on employee feedback through ongoing conversations, which build psychological safety, engagement, and shared ownership of improvements.
🤝 Promote True Cooperation: Leaders frame work as shared goals, tailoring communication across in-office and remote staff so collaboration replaces competition and siloed effort.
⚖️ Protect Work-Life Balance: Companies model healthy boundaries, flexible schedules, and real PTO use, reducing burnout and resentment that quietly poison manager-employee relationships.
🎁 Resolve Conflict and Recognize Wins: Managers address disputes calmly, prevent miscommunication, and celebrate individual and team achievements to strengthen trust and long-term loyalty.
📱 Deskless, Not Disconnected for Frontline Staff
Most organizations still leave their deskless 80% using office-centric tools that slow work and push conversations into unmanaged consumer apps. Tango Extend bakes company connectivity into the native mobile dialer, raising engagement, compliance, and productivity for frontline staff.
Key Takeaways:
👥 Deskless Majority Overlooked: 80% of workers are deskless, yet many still rely on office-designed communication tools that leave them disconnected and frustrated.
📉 Frustrating Workarounds: Workvivo research shows 66% of frontline staff dislike their tools and 69% rely on consumer apps like WhatsApp to get work done.
📲 Native Mobile Integration: Tango Extend uses eSIM to add work lines into native dialers, separating work and personal profiles and keeping calls compliant and visible.
🚀 Productivity and Belonging: With strong mobile connectivity, frontline teams make decisions faster, solve problems quickly, and feel their contributions are valued like office staff.
📊 Take This Edition’s Poll:
This or that: which habit will you implement first to boost retention
Why It Matters
Change succeeds when it feels fair, digestible, and grounded in real human needs. Whether it is adapting processes for five generations, rebuilding trust between managers and employees, or finally giving frontline teams tools designed for their reality, the takeaway is simple: people do their best work when they feel seen and supported.
It is a reminder that durable progress always starts with how well we understand the people asked to make the change.
Until next edition,
Chloe Rivers
Editor-in-Chief
COO Intelligence
P.S. Interested in sponsoring a future issue? Just reply to this email and I’ll send packages!