Genesys, a customer experience company responsible for supporting 25 billion crucial customer connections each year, recently announced the arrival of its new CEO. Tony Bates, a proven chief executive known for delivering exceptional growth to Microsoft, Skype, and Cisco will be taking the lead at Genesys, effective immediately.
Bates will be replacing Paul Segre, who will continue to offer guidance to Genesys as chairman of the company. According to Segre, his time with Genesys has allowed him to work with the “best team in the industry.” Genesys has successfully disrupted the market with a range of AI and cloud solutions, and at the end of 2018, the company achieved $1.5 billion in revenue.
Segre said that he’s excited to be stepping into his new role as chairman as Genesys continues to evolve and that he’s thrilled to welcome Tony Bates as the new CEO.
Tony Bates: A Proven Industry Exec
Tony Bates is a fantastic choice for Genesys’s leadership team. He has decades of experience helping companies to grow, despite a rapidly changing industry. Over the years, Bates has helped Cisco’s service provider business and enterprise & commercial division to scale to more than $20 billion in annual revenue. When he was CEO of Skype, Bates also expanded that business to a consumer base of over 170 million customers.
After Microsoft purchased Skype, Bates became responsible for their Unified Communications division for a short time, before moving into a VP of Business Development role. Alongside his role at Genesys, Bates will also be managing his appointments on the board of directors for both eBay and VMware too.
According to Bates, the opportunity to lead Genesys at a “pivotal moment” in their development is an honour. Now that Genesys’ cloud business is growing faster than ever (85% year over year), and AI is transforming its customer experience platform, the company is in an exceptional place to outshine the competition. Bates acknowledged Paul and Tom Eggmeier for doing a great job at positioning Genesys as a market leader, particularly in their PureCloud offer – one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses ever.
Taking Advantage of a New Opportunity
For Bates, the opportunity ahead of Genesys is obvious, and he’s excited to be the one responsible for capitalising on it.
Along with their new CEO announcement, Genesys also revealed information that President, Tom Eggemeier will be moving into a new role as partner for the company’s private equity investment team, Permira. The Permira Funds organisation and the Hellman & Friedman group currently have a majority stake in Genesys.
According to the partner and co-head of the Permira technology team, Brian Ruder, Tony at the head of Genesys will ensure that the company is prepared to continue with their record-breaking streak of revenue, profitability and customer success. Ruder noted that he is thrilled to be working with Paul in the future as chairman of Genesys and that the Permira group is excited to welcome Tom to the Permira team too.
Partner for Hellman & Friedman, Tarim Wasim, said in a press release that Tony will bring “years of proven success” at the head of technology companies to Genesys as the business continues to accelerate on their path to ongoing growth. He went on to state that Hellman & Friedman welcome Tony’s energy, leadership, and direction as Genesys continues to ramp up its momentum.
