When Mike Begala joined Casio as General Manager for the Americas roughly a year ago, he inherited something familiar to many CX leaders – a business that hadn’t stood still exactly, but hadn’t moved forward either.
His mandate was clear: transform how Casio serves its customers across the US, Canada, and Mexico, spanning phone support, technical assistance, repairs, and e-commerce.
He told us that
“Casio suffered from 20 or more years of just sitting still, I came in, evaluated it from a fresh perspective, and asked – how can we do even better for our customers?”
Starting With the Agent, Not the Technology
Begala’s first move wasn’t to reach for a new platform. It was to look at the people already on the phones.
“I found a gap in the knowledge, information, and tools that would enable an agent to be a better solution for the customer.”
Closing that gap became the foundation of everything that followed.
The bigger strategic shift was cultural. Casio was operating on a transactional model – sell, resolve, move on.
Begala wants to replace that with something more durable: a relationship model where customers, especially long-term Casio collectors who have bought watches for 25 years, are treated as the valuable partners they are.
“You can’t treat a customer who has bought 25 watches the same as someone who bought one yesterday.”
That distinction is now shaping how Casio’s support teams operate.
RingCentral as the Foundation
To support that shift, Casio replaced its legacy hardware infrastructure with RingCentral – moving from fixed on-site phone systems to a cloud platform that can be deployed anywhere. Agents in different cities now operate seamlessly on the same system, with no difference in capability or experience.
Alongside the platform change, Begala prioritised communication and training internally. Teams needed to understand not just what had changed, but why – and where the business was heading over the next three to five years.
AI is now in the mix too, primarily focused on agent quality control.
“We get more data than we ever had before about how agents are performing – insights we simply didn’t have before.”
Three Tips for CX Leaders Deploying AI
With 74% of AI deployments reportedly failing, Bagala’s advice is grounded and direct:
- Do your homework. Study the solutions, understand the technology, and don’t treat it lightly.
- Crawl, walk, then run. Define a clear roadmap. Design it once and do it right – nobody can afford to rebuild five times.
- Engage your people. Bring your team into the decision-making and design process so they have a vested stake in the outcome, not just the technology.
For Casio, the journey is far from over. Other systems still need to catch up to the speed and capability RingCentral has introduced. But the direction is set – and the foundation is solid.
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