2026 HDI Awards “Best Use of AI” Finalist: How Allstate, SupportLogic, and WBM Technology are Rewriting the Rules of Customer Support

For more than 30 years, Help Desk Institute (HDI) has served as the definitive voice for the enterprise service desk industry. The annual Global Service & Support Awards are widely considered the Oscars of the customer experience world, recognizing individuals, teams and organizations that have achieved the highest standards of excellence in technical support. But this year, when organizations announced their 2026 finalists, there was one category that caught the attention of the entire enterprise software ecosystem. That is the optimal use of AI.

The three finalists vying for the honor (Allstate, SupportLogic, and WBM Technologies LP) represent a fascinating facet of modern enterprise. One is the traditional insurance giants that are undergoing fundamental digital transformation. The other is a 75-year-old pioneer in managed IT services. And third, AI-native platforms that actively dismantle traditional customer relationship management (CRM) architectures.

They demonstrate exactly how artificial intelligence has moved beyond the chatbot hype cycle and into the core operational infrastructure of global businesses. Ahead of the live winner announcement at HDI Service & Support World in Las Vegas this May, we take a deep dive into the three finalists who are redefining the future of services and why the stakes on customer experience are higher than ever.

The multi-trillion dollar bet on customer experience

To understand why the “best use of AI” category is so hotly contested this year, we need to look at the macroeconomic factors that will drive corporate behavior in 2026. Customer experience (CX) is no longer considered a soft metric or a cost center. It is the main battleground for revenue retention.

According to recent data compiled by ClearlyRated, the economic impact of poor customer service is staggering. A 2025 PwC study found that 52% of consumers completely stopped purchasing from a brand after just one negative experience. Additionally, approximately 70% of customers will abandon a brand after just two negative interactions. A hidden danger for companies is “silent churn.” Only 1 in 26 dissatisfied customers actually file a complaint. The rest just walk away with lifetime value.

On the contrary, the benefits that can be gained by doing CX properly are enormous. Customers who rate their experience a perfect score spend 140% more and remain loyal up to 6x longer. Forrester research shows that brands can achieve up to 3.5x revenue growth by aligning customer and brand experiences.

To capture this growth and prevent catastrophic churn, companies are pouring unprecedented capital into artificial intelligence. According to Gartner’s January 2026 forecast, global spending on AI is expected to reach a staggering $2.52 trillion this year, an increase of 44% year over year. John-David Lovelock, special vice president analyst at Gartner, says organizations are now “prioritizing proven outcomes over speculative possibilities.”

This is exactly what the HDI Awards measure: proven results. The three finalists demonstrated that AI can transform the metrics that matter most.

Allstate: Enterprise giant’s ‘transformational growth’

The 95-year-old insurance giant’s selection as a finalist in a global AI award signals a major shift in enterprise adoption. Allstate’s selection as a finalist is a direct result of a multi-year strategy called “transformational growth” driven from the top by CEO Tom Wilson. The goal was not just to modernize, but to fundamentally change the insurance giant’s cost structure and service delivery model.

Allstate isn’t just experimenting with AI. They introduced it on an incredible scale. The company recently introduced a conversational AI system and now handles more than 400,000 customer conversations each month. By intelligently routing and resolving these inquiries, the system achieved an impressive containment rate of 38-40%, freeing up human agents to handle the most complex and empathetic situations.

However, this transformation is much deeper than call routing. In a shocking confession earlier this year, Allstate revealed that nearly all of the communications its representatives send to claimants are now written by generative AI. What’s even more surprising? The company’s CIO publicly noted that these AI-generated emails actually achieved higher customer satisfaction scores than emails written entirely by human managers.

Allstate has proven that legacy companies can successfully reinvent themselves as AI-first organizations by deploying agent AI systems that can reason, solve complex billing problems, and communicate with empathy. The financial results speak for themselves. In the third quarter of 2025, Allstate reported net income of $3.7 billion, up significantly from $1.2 billion in the year-ago period. (Notably, Allstate Technology Support was also named a finalist for the Best Service and Support Organization award, proving that our internal IT operations are just as advanced as our customer-facing tools.)

WBM Technologies LP: Managed Services Innovator

Based in Western Canada, WBM Technologies LP brings 75 years of tradition to the cutting edge of modern IT. With operations in Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and the United States, WBM has built a reputation as a leading provider of results-driven managed IT solutions. The company employs more than 500 IT professionals and serves some of the most progressive organizations across North America.

WBM is no stranger to HDI stages. In 2024, the company won the prestigious Global Best Service and Support Organization Award. We are back again this year as finalists in three categories: Best Change Initiative, Best Service and Support Organization, and Best Use of AI.

Our nomination in the AI ​​category is powered by our patent-pending Enterprise Experience Platform. Rather than treating AI as a standalone tool or an additional chatbot, WBM has integrated artificial intelligence into a seamless, data-driven service model. The platform spans core business areas including modern workplace enablement, end user computing, and 24/7 enterprise service desk.

By combining SOC 2 compliant operations with predictive self-healing support technology, WBM has demonstrated how managed service providers can leverage AI to drive transformative business results for their client communities. They’re not just fixing IT tickets. We use AI to predict and resolve problems before end users even know they exist. This proactive approach is why the company was recently named to CRN’s 2026 Elite 150 Managed Service Providers list.

SupportLogic: The AI-native platform that deconstructs CRM

While Allstate and WBM represent the enterprise and service provider perspective, SupportLogic represents the technology pioneer. Founded by former VMware executive Krishna Raja, SupportLogic doesn’t just improve the support experience. It fundamentally challenges the architecture on which it runs.

For decades, the support industry has relied on ticketing systems and CRMs, which are passive relational databases that require human agents to manually enter metadata, tag cases, and fill out forms. SupportLogic’s argument is that this “system of record” model is dead. Instead, they built a CRM-free architecture that leverages a “system of intelligence,” an ambient AI agent that runs in the background 24/7.

Four engine architecture

SupportLogic’s platform is built on a sophisticated four-engine architecture specifically designed for complex languages ​​in B2B support.

1. Data extraction engine: Integrates unstructured data across existing systems of record (Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, etc.) and normalizes it into a universal format. The key is that existing tools don’t have to be “ripped and replaced” and can be deployed by businesses within 60 days.

2. Signal extraction engine: This engine uses natural language processing (NLP) to read 100% of tickets, audio transcripts, and Slack threads, rather than relying on flawed post-interaction probing. Extract over 140 subtle customer emotional ‘signals’ from jargon-filled conversations.

3. Context Engine: Automatically maintains context memory across different interactions, channels, and contact boundaries, ensuring nothing is lost as cases move between agents or departments.

4. Orchestration Engine: Trigger immediate actions based on AI results using custom alerts, coaching rubrics, and routing rules.

From reactive to predictive

The results of this architecture are amazing. Because AI constantly monitors emotional and behavioral cues, it can predict escalation and churn risks long before a customer complains.

The impact of this platform has been validated by a roster of corporate executives. NICE achieved a 35% reduction in escalation rates and a 4x reduction in monthly case volume using SupportLogic’s Resolve SX capabilities. Certinia saw a 30% reduction in escalations and a 28% reduction in resolution time. Nutanix reduced escalations by 40% while maintaining an NPS score of 90. SupportLogic reports an average 80% reduction in escalation requests and a 53% reduction in average resolution time across its customer base.

Additionally, SupportLogic partnered with Snowflake to build the SupportLogic Data Cloud. This allows businesses to move support data into a secure data lake and use Snowflake Intelligence to query the data in natural language (e.g., “Show me all high-churn-risk accounts that have seen a 20% spike in frustration signals this week.”).

Rajesh Ramesh, Support Manager at UiPath said: “SupportLogic has given us an edge with accurate predictions and enabled us to pivot from a reactive support model to a proactive support model.”

But perhaps the most compelling evidence is that SupportLogic is itself its best customer. The company runs its entire internal support operations on its own platform (“eat your own dog food”) to manage customer interactions, predict escalations, and route cases. SupportLogic serves as a live operational role model for the CRM-less architectures we sell to the market by supporting our enterprise clients with our proprietary ambient AI agents.

Judgment awaits in Vegas.

The HDI Awards will culminate in May, but the broader story is already clear. With $2.5 trillion going into AI this year and trillions more on customer retention, the era of reactive customer support is officially over.

Whether it’s large insurance companies automating claims with unprecedented empathy, IT providers building self-healing service desks, or software platforms replacing traditional CRM with ambient intelligence, the future belongs to companies that can anticipate customer needs. Allstate, WBM Technologies, and SupportLogic have proven that getting the most out of AI isn’t just about answering questions quickly. It’s about understanding your customers so deeply that you don’t even need to ask them in the first place.