From surprise leadership changes to new CX product bundles, here are some extracts from our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
RingCentral CEO Tarek Robbiati Steps Down After Three Months In the Role
RingCentral has announced the departure of Tarek Robbiati, who will leave the CEO role and Board of Directors with immediate effect.
The departure comes by mutual agreement, and RingCentral stressed that the change is unrelated to internal disagreements.
However, it has paved the way for Vlad Shmunis, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of RingCentral, to resume his full-time role as CEO, a spot he handed to Robbiati in September.
Indeed, RingCentral made that original announcement while citing Robbiati’s financial nous, as the former Chief Financial Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Sprint.
As such, the provider’s probable plan was for Robbiati to keep the RingCentral ship running smoothly, freeing up Shumnis to move into a more visionary role.
There, he could dream up the next best enterprise innovations and re-establish his reputation as the “Godfather of UCaaS”.
Yet, despite a seemingly strong earnings update in November – where RingCentral edged closer towards profitability while maintaining double-digit revenue growth – that plan soon bit the dust.
For his part, however, Robbiati bid RingCentral a fond farewell. “I have the utmost respect for the RingCentral team,” he said. “I wish the company and its people the very best. (Read on…).
Salesforce Releases New ‘Unlimited Edition+’ Bundles
Salesforce has introduced ‘Unlimited Edition+’ (UE+) bundles that mix and match Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, Einstein AI, Slack, Tableau, and Industries.
These bundles make it simpler to buy and deploy Salesforce technology, with the CRM leader also noting how the bundles will help organizations scale faster.
Such simplified purchasing comes as customers leverage more of Salesforce’s broad portfolio and embrace its Einstein 1 platform architecture.
Indeed, nine of Salesforce’s top ten deals in Q3 included six or more clouds.
Diving deeper, Bill Patterson, EVP of Corporate Strategy, spoke about the benefits of its new bundles: “Our customers are consistently evaluating and working to simplify their complicated technology portfolio and are looking to us to help them be more productive and efficient.
These new bundles provide the best of Salesforce to help our customers across industries move faster, reduce complexity, and better compete with the latest technology as they navigate this new AI era.
The UE+ bundles come at a time when businesses are looking to leverage AI, but limited access and connectivity are making it a challenge to do so.
Indeed, Salesforce research has shown that while 57 percent of IT leaders believe generative AI is a “game changer”, 60 percent say they are unable to integrate it into their stacks.
Furthermore, stacks are often fragmented with siloed data, resulting in complex and expensive systems, which the UE+ bundles could help to solve. (Read on…).
Genesys Celebrates Several New CCaaS Milestones
Genesys has released a series of statistics that underline the rapid growth of its CCaaS Platform: Genesys Cloud CX.
First, the vendor revealed that the platform generated $1.3BN in annual recurring revenue (ARR) last quarter, a 50 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth.
Interestingly, NICE is the only other market vendor to surpass $1BN in ARR.
Fueling those big numbers is a 30 percent (YoY) uptick in new logo bookings alongside heightened cloud migrations from its legacy base.
In total, 850+ of its former legacy customers have now taken part in a cloud transformation project, taking the number of businesses on the Genesys Cloud to 5,300.
However, a significant factor in this cloud acceleration is likely the decision of Genesys to focus its investment on a single cloud platform in October 2022.
In doing so, the vendor halted research and development (R&D) across its legacy solution and cut out its Multichannel CX offering altogether. (Read on…).
Gartner Predicts Mass Consumer Social Media Exodus by 2025
Gartner research has found that 50 percent of users will either abandon or significantly limit their social media usage by 2025.
Its survey of 263 consumers also revealed that 53 percent of consumers believe social media has “decayed” compared to the previous year and five years ago due to the spread of misinformation, toxic userbases, and the ubiquitous presence of bots.
Emily Weiss, Senior Principal Researcher in the Gartner Marketing Practice, commented on the need for CX teams to pivot their social media strategies: “Social media remains the top investment channel for digital marketing, but consumers are actively trying to limit their use.
“A significant slice says that, compared to a few years ago, they are sharing less of their own lives and content.
As the nature of social media use and the experience of the platforms changes, CMOs must refocus their customer acquisition and loyalty retention strategies in response.
The report offers many more CX insights for 2024 and beyond, uncovering further findings related to AI and generative AI. (Read on…).
