Customer experience excellence at enterprise scale is no small task. For Roku—a global leader in TV streaming with over 90 million households in the U.S. alone—it’s a fundamental mission. Recently, I had the opportunity to co-host a dynamic webinar with my colleague, Toby Chadwick, and Roku Director of Product Management, Matthew Feinstein, as we explored how the streaming giant has harnessed agentic AI to revolutionize its customer experience with scalable, innovative solutions.
Through a blend of expansive product understanding and cutting-edge AI integration, Roku turned a daunting CX challenge into an opportunity for innovation. Below, I’ve recapped the key takeaways from the webinar to give you an inside look into Roku’s impressive results and what their ongoing transformation means for your CX strategy.
A clear challenge. An even clearer vision.
To set the stage, Roku’s CX challenge wasn’t just about improving service—it was about achieving service excellence at scale without compromising quality. Imagine managing a vast ecosystem of devices, apps, subscriptions, and global customers with increasing demands for convenience and instant solutions.
Matt Feinstein succinctly summarized this reality in the webinar, highlighting the complexity Roku faced and their goal to reduce reliance on traditional, resource-heavy agent support:
Why agentic AI was the solution
Traditional chatbots fell short for Roku, struggling with rigid flows and limited capacity to handle real customer complexity. In the webinar, we described how agentic AI delivers what legacy bots could not: dynamic, goal-oriented conversations that adapt in real time—no matter how customers phrase or change their needs.
First-gen models relied on exhaustive, predefined scripts. In contrast, agentic AI reasons through multi-turn, nuanced interactions outlined by Process Guides—a flexible set of processes, procedures and best practices that enable an agent to naturally adapt to a conversation. Process Guides allow the AI to respond based on full context and connect disparate pieces of information.
This enables Roku to offer always-on, consistent, and highly personalized self-service across channels, while ensuring seamless and informed handoffs to human agents for more scenarios the AI agent isn’t designed to address. The result is a remarkable leap in efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Use cases in action
So far, applying agentic AI at Roku has revolved around two primary use cases that address vastly different customer needs.
1. Device troubleshooting
Technical troubleshooting is one of the most resource-intensive inquiries for any CX team. During the webinar, we showcased how Roku’s AI agent transformed these interactions by dynamically crafting questions to pinpoint and resolve issues like error codes or setup concerns:
Gone are the days of rigid scripts—the AI agent combined context-driven reasoning with resources pulled in real time, drastically simplifying the path to resolution.
2. Account troubleshooting
We also explored account-specific issues, such as billing queries and subscription management:
Roku’s AI agent can securely prompt customers to log in, retrieve personalized account information, and tailor responses to their specific subscriptions. Significantly, when users opted not to log in, the agent smartly pivoted to provide general guidance without any disruptive dead ends—a hallmark of a true agentic experience.
The power behind the technology
The real enabler here was Quiq’s AI Studio and agentic architecture, designed with the flexibility to tackle wide-ranging customer scenarios.
I shared how this platform orchestrates customer input, process guides, and knowledge retrieval into seamless, natural conversations.
Think of it as providing structural scaffolding for AI agents, making them equally responsive and reliable.
Results that speak for themselves
Roku’s commitment to a scalable, AI-powered solution included meticulous A/B testing to ensure measurable results. Matt shared how the AI agent delivered a 48% containment rate—meaning nearly half of inquiries needed no human intervention. Importantly, customers are escalated to human agents only as requested or necessary, resulting in high containment rates for scenarios where the AI agent is equipped to fully resolve the issue.
With this metric, it’s also important to note that in many of Roku’s scenarios, the AI agent collects the right info and escalates the conversation to the right team member, which is not measured in containment.
Matt explains more in the webinar:
The introduction of the AI agent also shifted the mix of customer contacts: chat interactions increased by 33% (from 30% to 43%), while phone contacts dropped by 33% (from 70% to 57%). This transition enables agents to handle multiple chats simultaneously, optimizing resource utilization.
Collectively, these outcomes position Roku to further scale their CX strategy, free up human expertise for meaningful work, and continue delivering exceptional service to millions of customers.
Roku solves the build-or-buy dilemma: Buy to build
Matt also shared how Roku approached the critical “build vs. buy” decision when it came to agentic AI. Rather than choosing strictly one or the other, Roku used a hybrid approach facilitated by Quiq’s flexible ecosystem.
By using Quiq to handle technical maintenance and scalability, Roku retained full control over their CX roadmap and customization, while gaining the ecosystem and resources to support their small team.
Advanced analytics driving smarter CX
A standout feature of Quiq’s AI-powered solution is its analytics capabilities. Matt shared in-depth about how these tools give Roku actionable insights into every customer conversation:
They enable CX teams to identify trends, analyze results (like AI effectiveness and resolution accuracy), and continuously fine-tune the system—all in a user-friendly interface that requires minimal engineering oversight.
Voice AI is next
The possibilities for Roku’s CX future are as exciting as their current achievements. At the end of the webinar, we dove into their next big move: launching a voice AI agent:
This innovation builds on the proven success of their AI agentic, applying the same agentic architecture to phone-based interactions. Voice will allow Roku to tackle an even greater share of customer inquiries from its largest touchpoint—phone calls—while offering seamless, multimodal experiences.
Final insights from Matthew Feinstein
Wrapping up, the Q&A gave Matt an opportunity to share his perspective on the factors driving Roku’s successful transformation. He emphasized how critical it is for any AI solution provider to truly understand the business:
Matt also discussed the importance of CRM integration and their experience working on that with Quiq:
By focusing on alignment, customization, and integrations, Roku has not only optimized its present operations, but is also poised for true, ongoing CX innovation. It was a pleasure to co-host this webinar. A big thank you to Matt and the Roku team for being such incredible partners, and we look forward to the next chapter of their success!