A new era of customer engagement is taking shape. AI agents are quickly becoming integral to the way businesses serve, support, and sell to customers — able to respond, reason, and take action in ways that go far beyond scripted automation.
Many customer journeys, however, are still built on systems that don’t talk to each other. Customer data lives in one place, channel history in another, and AI agents often operate with only part of the picture. Customers feel the pain when they switch between channels like voice and messaging, get transferred, and have to repeat themselves yet again. It doesn’t matter that they’ve been loyal to a brand for years, every interaction feels like a cold start. That is the conversation gap.
It’s clear that AI isn’t the problem, infrastructure is. Closing the gap requires new building blocks that focus on continuity, so context can carry forward across systems, channels, human agents, and AI agents.
To bridge the gap, at SIGNAL 2026, we are introducing a new conversation layer for the Twilio Platform.
Twilio Conversation Orchestrator, Twilio Conversation Memory, and Twilio Conversation Intelligence are now generally available. Together, they help businesses coordinate interactions, preserve context, and connect human and AI agents so every conversation is more continuous and useful.
In addition to the new Conversations layer, we’re also announcing platform updates that make it easier to build, manage, and scale customer engagement on Twilio — from a reimagined Twilio Console to expanded channels and new voice AI capabilities.
New building blocks for connected conversations
The conversation gap does more than create inconsistent customer experiences. It hurts conversion and retention, increases operational costs, adds integration complexity, and makes agents less productive. The new platform capabilities we’re introducing are designed to fix that by coordinating interactions, maintaining context, and surfacing signals as conversations happen.
Conversation Orchestrator
Conversation Orchestrator helps businesses coordinate interactions across Twilio channels without complex custom logic. Teams can configure it in Console or configure their implementation with the API. It connects interactions into a single thread and manages handoffs between human agents and automated systems.
Conversation Memory
Conversation Memory creates a living, identity-resolved profile by connecting customer data with conversation history and customer traits. That means each interaction starts with the right context. It’s built specifically for LLMs to reduce latency and token usage by surfacing the most relevant details when they matter.
A new Enterprise Knowledge API (now generally available) also allows teams to deliver more relevant experiences and ground interactions in trusted business knowledge such as FAQs, policies, and product documentation.
Conversation Intelligence
Conversation Intelligence provides real-time understanding of live interactions. Using prebuilt and custom LLM-based operators, it can detect changes in sentiment, flag potential escalations, and trigger action during a conversation, not only after it ends.
That gives teams the ability to respond sooner, support agents more effectively, and improve customer outcomes while the conversation is still in progress.
Together, these products help businesses create customer experiences that feel more connected across channels.
Open by design
Twilio remains neutral by design. We start with the premise that you know your business. We aren’t here to prescribe a model, framework, or data strategy. We provide the infrastructure that helps you build customer engagement in the way that works best for your business. You pick the model and agent runtime. You own the data.
That doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch, either. We partnered with Microsoft, AWS, and others to create blueprints that support faster development. We are also introducing an open-source developer toolkit, Twilio Agent Connect (now generally available), that lets your teams connect agents built on any LLM or framework directly to Twilio’s infrastructure.
For developers, this means more flexibility. For businesses, it means less lock-in and the ability to get value from existing investments. For partners, it means more ways to build with Twilio.
A new front door
We are also introducing a reimagined Twilio Console, because as customer engagement grows more complex, managing the infrastructure behind it should feel effortless.
The new Console is a single mission control center that brings your communications, identity, and data into one experience: one login, consistent logs across every surface, an intelligent Console Assistant, transparent billing insights, and streamlined compliance workflows that no longer slow you down.
Over the coming months, we’ll roll out this new Console experience to customers automatically. You can also opt in to gain early access.
More channels, more control, smarter conversations
In addition to these launches, we are announcing several updates that expand customer reach, support enterprise requirements, and make it simpler to build on Twilio.
- Apple Messages for Business (Private beta) and Twilio Email (GA) give teams new ways to reach customers on the channels they already use.
- Data Residency for SMS (EU) (Public beta) enables teams to manage personal data locally to support regional data requirements.
- Conversation Relay enhancements add PCI compliance, HIPAA eligibility, Insights, and support for Deepgram Flux for smarter turn detection — helping AI agents better understand when a person has finished speaking.
- Stripe Projects integration enables developers and AI agents to seamlessly provision Twilio within Stripe Projects in a single, programmable CLI workflow.
Built with our customers
Bringing these new products to life required a close partnership with many beta customers and partners. This helped us understand real-world signals and needs to help make the capabilities robust from the start.
Among dozens of others, Centerfield, Constellation Dealerships, Car Finance 247, and Meera.ai leveraged Twilio to solve their own customer engagement challenges. These teams showed what is possible when businesses carry context forward, act on live conversation signals, and connect AI agents with human teams in the moments that matter.
Car Finance 247, a leading UK online car finance broker, is using Twilio to help recover stalled loan applications. When customers miss a field, need to correct information, or still need to confirm terms and conditions, AI-powered outreach across voice, SMS, and RCS, Conversation Memory tracks the application state. Conversation Orchestrator manages the outreach journey, and Flex helps bring in a human agent as needed. As Reg Rix, Co-Founder and CEO, shared:
“Because the platform remembers where each customer left off, we can pick up right where they stopped, helping them cross the finish line in a way that is modern, responsive, and genuinely helpful.”
Centerfield, a technology company powering AI-driven commerce, helps brands connect with consumers across digital and phone-based journeys. With Twilio, the team is connecting real-time conversation data with customer context to guide agents and AI systems in the moment, standardise what works, and improve performance at scale. As Aniketh Parmar, Chief Technology Officer, said:
“Performance comes down to how well every interaction moves a customer forward. We’re capturing each conversation in real time and applying what we already know about the customer to guide our agents and AI systems in the moment. With the Twilio Platform, including Conversation Orchestrator, Conversation Memory, and Conversation Intelligence, we can see what’s driving conversations so we can standardise what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and continuously improve outcomes at scale.”
Constellation Dealerships is using Twilio’s agent infrastructure to accelerate AI-powered engagement across its dealer network, moving from evaluation to measurable outcomes in days. As Richard Pineault, Director of R&D, shared:
“The value of this partnership is evident—our team progressed from evaluating Twilio’s agent infrastructure to realising measurable outcomes within days. This rapid speed-to-value exemplifies the agility and innovation required to propel the dealership industry into the future.”
Meera.ai is building on Twilio to modernise outbound engagement, replacing repeated manual follow-ups with always-on conversations across voice, SMS, and messaging. Vivek Zaveri, Chief Executive Officer, said:
“Meera.ai has partnered with Twilio since our inception to champion a conversation-first future for commerce. As the industry shifts toward real-time LLM-enabled interactions, Twilio’s Platform and the new Conversations products will help us reach customers in the moment.”
Together, these customers and partners show that the Twilio Platform can help businesses recover stalled journeys, improve live interactions, accelerate time to value, and create more connected experiences across AI agents, human teams, and every customer channel.
The next era of customer engagement starts here
As AI agents own more of customer engagement, businesses need infrastructure that keeps conversations connected across channels, systems, and teams. That means preserving context, coordinating handoffs, and acting on what is happening in real time.
That is what we are building with this next generation of the Twilio Platform: a new layer that connects channels, context, intelligence, and human and AI agents, helping businesses make every digital interaction more connected, more useful, and more amazing.
For 17 years, Twilio has helped builders create better ways for businesses to connect with their customers. In this next era, that connection matters more than ever.
Explore the new Conversations layer, try the products, and let’s build what comes next, together.
Read More from This Article: Infrastructure for the agentic era: A new conversation layer for the Twilio Platform
Source: News