Engineers side by side, from Sydney to Seattle
After validating the architecture in Seattle, the partnership intensified back in Australia. Microsoft dispatched engineers from multiple product groups to Sydney, embedding them on-site with CommBank’s development team. Together, the joint team navigated the uncharted territory of bringing emerging AI services into a live production environment that was simultaneously supporting a contact center environment handling 50,000 phone calls a day.
“We started exploring these solutions when they were in their product infancy, so there were a lot of unknowns,” Round says. “But Microsoft’s AI ambition matched our AI ambition, and it’s been a bit of a voyage of discovery for all of us.”
Being first carried risk and uncertainty.
“SaaS platforms can’t be black boxes when you run millions of customer interactions,” Verma says. “Customers have very low tolerances for failure.”
Commbank’s head of engineering Shashank Verma. Co-engineering between Commbank and Microsoft to create a new contact centre architecture has enabled a single, AI-powered omni-channel platform. Photo by Mark Nolan for Microsoft.
To manage that risk, CommBank worked directly with Microsoft’s engineering teams to establish operational-readiness criteria, deployment safeguards, and automated escalation paths.
Together, these co-engineered capabilities help CommBank to operate a consistent customer service experience across channels while maintaining the governance, reliability and compliance required in a regulated banking environment.
Measurable impact for customers and the frontline
The investment is already paying off.
“We’re seeing a step-change in how effectively customer enquiries are being resolved through our digital and messaging channels,” Round says.
In May 2026, approximately 84.6% of self-service messaging interactions were resolved end-to-end in the messaging channel.
Behind those numbers is a richer experience for both customers and CommBank team members.
“Conversations are automatically summarized to help our frontline specialists get up to speed quickly, and they can leverage an AI agent to help surface answers and policies seamlessly,” said Round.
CommBank’s general manager self service experiences Rachel Round. Photo by Mark Nolan for Microsoft.
Continuing to raise the bar on customer service
With the foundation now in place, CommBank is eyeing the next frontier to extend the platform across the entire bank.
“Conversational experiences from both chat and voice are going to help solve real customer problems in Australia,” Verma suggests. “That’s the next scaling challenge.”
Lindsay’s advice to other organizations pursuing AI transformations is to truly make the technology provider a partner in innovation.
“This is what strong partnership looks like – turning ambition into real, scaled outcomes,” says Lindsay. “The impact is clear: faster, more intuitive, always-on support, and our people are equipped with real-time AI assistance that is helping to transform how they serve our customers.”
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