Recently, I sat down with Cathal McCarthy, Chief Strategy Officer at Kore.ai. With leadership roles at Apple and eBay, and now working with Fortune 100 enterprises across banking, healthcare, and technology, Cathal has a rare vantage point on what actually works—and what doesn’t—when enterprises attempt to scale AI. On Tuesday, October 14, he’ll lead a 2-hour interactive roundtable at the CSS Executive Forum in Raleigh (RTP). Below is a snapshot of our exchange and what you can expect at the roundtable.
On redefining AI agents
Omid: You say, “Agents aren’t tools, they’re employees.” Isn’t that just semantics?
Cathal: Not at all. An AI agent is a digital employee. If you hire someone without a defined role, decision scope, or reporting line, you set them up for failure. The same applies to AI. Once you define purpose, authority, and collaboration, agents stop acting like glorified scripts and start contributing as accountable team members.
Omid: Fair point. Agents deserve a job description. Otherwise, they’ll always be tactical bots, not strategic assets.
On moving beyond pilots
Omid: Enterprises love pilots. But most stay stuck there. Where’s the value once you move beyond tinkering?
Cathal: The value isn’t in isolated wins. It’s in orchestration — making agents the connective tissue across systems and human workflows. I see three high-value zones:
- Process orchestration – coordinating logistics and ops at scale
- Decision intelligence – handling fraud, risk, and high-stakes triage
- Customer journey orchestration – managing CX end-to-end, not in silos
When agents handle orchestration and routine decisions, humans can focus on strategy, creativity, and complex problem-solving. That’s where the multiplier effect and enterprise value come into play.
Omid: I agree, if AI doesn’t orchestrate across silos, it’s just another disconnected pilot.
On overcoming chatbot skepticism
Omid: You hear some executives dismiss new AI because they’ve been burned by bad chatbot rollouts. How do you win them back?
Cathal: By showing we’re no longer in the chatbot era. Agentic AI can reason, plan, and act. To scale, enterprises need to:
- Build governance that scales — ethical guardrails, auditability, risk frameworks
- Create an AI-native culture — roles shifting from task execution to orchestration
- Invest in technical depth — multimodal reasoning, real-time decisioning, cross-platform integration.
Omid: And half the battle is change management. If teams don’t trust the system, even the best technology will fail.
Cathal: Exactly. Trust is the currency of adoption. I’ve seen it with some of our largest clients in the banking and healthcare industries. When employees believe the agent is reliable, they lean on it, and that’s when the ROI curve bends upward. Without that trust, the system becomes shelfware, no matter how advanced it is. The irony is that AI doesn’t just need technical rigor; it needs emotional credibility within the organization. Let's just say employees will embrace good AI!
Omid: Well said. Without trust, even the most sophisticated system risks becoming shelfware. And in AI, shelfware doesn’t just expire — it erodes confidence and sets back adoption across the enterprise.
On RPA vs. Agentic AI
Omid: What is your answer to CIOs who say, “We already have RPA. Isn’t that enough?”
Cathal: RPA works well for straight lines: repeatable, rule-based tasks that never change. However, the moment a workflow requires reasoning, context shifting, or nuance, it breaks. CIOs see it every day when a customer switches languages mid-call or continues a conversation across channels. Agentic AI doesn’t just automate, it orchestrates. It adapts, coordinates, and makes decisions across systems. That’s the leap from tactical efficiency to true enterprise transformation.
Omid: Exactly. RPA automates steps, but doesn’t complete the journey. That’s why so many RPA shops end up with islands of automation — patchwork that speeds up tasks but doesn’t transform outcomes.
Cathal: And that’s where agentic AI changes the game — it’s the connective tissue that turns automation into intelligence.
On credibility and the Kore.ai approach
Omid: The market is crowded. What makes Kore.ai credible?
Cathal: Enterprises don’t want a collection of disconnected tools. They need a platform that works across customer and employee use cases, integrates with any cloud, and adapts to whichever LLMs prove most effective. Flexibility and scalability aren’t optional; they’re requirements. That’s why organizations like Morgan Stanley, Eli Lilly, and Alaska Airlines partner with us. They’re building for the long game.
On the Raleigh roundtable
Omid: You’re leading the interactive roundtable in Raleigh. What do you want to see?
Cathal: Honestly, leaders have moved beyond the stage of “interesting pilots” and now face the harder challenge of scaling: driving adoption, establishing governance, and proving ROI. As a facilitator, my role isn’t to lecture but to listen, share what we’ve seen across our customer base, and draw out the collective knowledge in the room. The richest conversations happen when peers openly share what didn’t work, how they overcame resistance, and how they measure impact. That’s when ideas stop being abstract and turn into practical strategies leaders can take home and put to use.
Omid: And that’s precisely why we at SuccessLab built the CSS Executive Forum. This community is about creating a safe space where senior leaders can compare notes, challenge assumptions, and walk away with insights grounded in reality, not hype.
An Invitation
Cathal and I would love for you to join us at the CSS Executive Forum in Raleigh (RTP). Don’t miss his interactive roundtable, “Activating Agentic AI for Customer Experience Advantage,” where we’ll move beyond theory into scalable applications.
The forum also features visionary keynotes, a powerhouse CCO panel, and a networking dinner — the perfect setting to deepen conversations and turn peer connections into lasting collaborations.
This isn’t just another conference. It’s a curated community of leaders, built for candid dialogue, fresh perspectives, and practical insights you can put to work right away.
🔗 More details and registration here: https://lu.ma/css1014 👈 Seats are limited — secure yours today.
