I supervised a Sierra rollout a while back. Their performance was impressive and the price was great. I suspect both will not be true in time.
Their implementation is rather cumbersome, requiring implementation fees and AI configuration that is rather bespoke to Sierra. Anyone rolling off of Sierra will find there is nothing they can take with them.
In general, I think CX ought to disappear as a vertical in an AI world. If I'm talking to a product AI and need support, why should I switch to another AI to do that? Even if that second AI is invoked by the first as a tool, how much am I gaining?
Interestingly, the first and best implementers of AI support so far have been at companies that roll their own.
There is nothing unique to CX about AI, as far as I can tell. Sierra is still just the same AI infra people are putting in products. Granted, you can make good money positioning yourself this way, but I expect on some time horizon they will need to reposition.
Do they actually have something or is it just a wrapper with tool calling?
This is difficult to determine given how they implement. I would liken them to a professional services organization, where most of the magic is in their implementation for you, and you have to presume their implementation includes a lot of intenral building blocks. It isn't turnkey.