From Conversation To Resolution: Cresta Launches Deputy Agent

Today, Cresta launched Deputy Agent, a long-running AI agent that helps enterprises automate both the customer conversation and the post-interaction, behind-the-scenes work required to entirely resolve the customer’s issue.

Cresta’s AI operating system already automates much of the pre and in-call work: Conductor helps teams build, test, and deploy AI agents, Agent Assist provides in-conversation guidance and live transcription, and Cresta’s human-like AI agents resolve Tier-1 support requests with ease.

But what happens when customers have more complex support requests that can’t be resolved within a single conversation and single system?

For tasks like handling medical record requests, tracking lost baggage, filing insurance claims, and issuing refunds, the initial interaction is only the starting point: the beginning of a day’s or even weeks-long journey that spans multiple conversations, channels, teams, and systems. Complex interactions require verification, approvals, follow-ups, confirmations…the list goes on.

Behind the scenes, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks. 

These are exactly the kinds of support requests that Cresta’s Deputy Agent is purpose-built to resolve. 

How Cresta Deputy Agent Works

Deputy Agent bridges the gap between the front and back office, and is driven by four key capabilities:

1. Connects conversations to operational workflows: Deputy Agent ties every conversation, whether handled by a human or AI agent, directly to the workflows needed to resolve the customer’s issue completely.Workflows can be initiated during live calls, after handoffs, or when a new request lands in a back-office queue.  
2. Analyzes customer context to determine next steps: Real-time conversation analytics help Deputy Agent determine customer intent, checking it against existing records and company rules. It dynamically adjusts next steps as new decisions, responses, and documents come in. 
3. Keeps humans in control: Businesses can specify what Deputy Agent handles autonomously, what requires human approval, and who specifically can step in. Teams can monitor all active workflows step-by-step, review audit trails, and review flagged integrations between systems. When human intervention is needed, Deputy Agent pulls all relevant case details for review, eliminating the need for manual lookups.  
4. Sees every case through to complete resolution: Deputy Agent keeps working on a request across channels and conversations until the desired outcome is achieved, even if that takes weeks. It gathers customer information, pulls relevant details from connected systems, identifies missing information, and continually monitors and saves task progress so nothing gets lost along the way.

“Customers only see the work that happens during the conversation, but the results that matter to them are achieved behind the scenes. Deputy Agent takes on that work. It picks up where the conversation leaves off and carries each workflow through to completion, while human and AI agents move on to the next customer. For years, AI in customer experience centers has focused on the conversation. Deputy brings that same intelligence to everything that happens outside of it."

Ping Wu

CEO, Cresta

Ping Wu

The CX Impact

Businesses have spent years optimizing customer conversations by chasing shorter call handle times, stronger agent guidance, and higher containment rates. But too often, customer frustration really starts when the conversation ends.

When follow-up work stalls, customers call back for updates and repeat their story to a new agent, damaging the experience and driving up operational costs. Behind the scenes, disconnected back-office teams and agents spend hours chasing documents and re-entering data across systems.

Cresta’s Deputy Agent targets this gap, aiming to resolve the request instead of simply handling individual conversations.

From Containment To Resolution: Analyst Take

With the release of Deputy Agent, Cresta is betting that the next battleground in AI for CX isn’t just about who owns the conversation, but about who owns the resolution. This underscores a broader industry trend: the shift away from measuring success via containment and deflection towards outcomes and resolutions. We see this reflected even in pricing, as per-seat licensing gives way to outcomes-based pricing.

In the agentic era, the reality is that it’s no longer enough for AI to provide interaction summaries and suggested actions. The once shiny and new capabilities of GenAI have become table stakes, even as enterprises continue to fine-tune them in practice. Now, agentic AI connects business systems and takes action inside of them. Especially as the line between front and back offices disappears, vendors are now racing to own the complete customer journey from start to finish.

Cresta’s biggest advantage here is context. In addition to automating and executing, Cresta has access to the kind of real-time conversational intelligence that meaningfully guides back-office workflows.