What has been your business/work highlight of 2024 so far?

Speaking on a panel at Enterprise Connect 2024 about the future of CX and specifically the role AI will plan in it. It was a great opportunity to engage with my peers and customers, analysts and other vendors on one of the most meaningful topics of our time – how our consumer preferences and the fast-evolving technology that is AI are forever changing our expectations of what’s possible. I think this is such an important topic because, for the last year, it’s been about the hype around AI. 2024 is the year of the “what can I actually do with AI” discussion.

Who is your business hero and why?

Mark Cuban. But not because he’s on Shark Tank, or that he’s a billionaire. He’s my business hero because of 3 things:

1. He’s a human. He hasn’t done everything right, and he generally owns up to what he could have done differently.

2. I appreciate that Mark came from a modest family background and found ways to do the things he wanted to do. He built his empire and wealth with his own hands.

3. He swims upstream on the right things – his recent establishment of Cost Plus Drug Company to drive down prices of generic drugs – to help disrupt and establish a new, better norm.

What’s the biggest business mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?

Early in my career, we were in the midst of a huge project—we were going to automate a process in a data centre (back before there was a “cloud” and everyone had their own data centres). The project was running long, and there was a risk that we’d need more capacity than we had initially planned for. I was hedging and hoped that “we’d come in under budget” since I wanted to make sure it seemed like I’d done the planning correctly. But then instead of getting better, it got worse. And it ended up that the bigger issue about flagging that we’ll be going over on capacity wasn’t that we were going to be needing more, but that the lead time to provision more (ordering servers, etc.) would take 45 days before it was available. So that delayed the whole project by almost 2 months.

What’s the most inspirational book you’ve ever read and why?

Start with Why. Funnily enough, although the book is about how business leaders can effectively lead teams and organisations, there are a lot of lessons in there that apply to everyday life and really communicate better. It has fundamentally changed how I think about communicating in my professional AND personal life.

What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role in 2024?

The fast-changing landscape of expectations. It’s both a challenge but also what’s fun. Modern-age technology evolution has always been driven by consumer demand–they want something new or want something in a new and improved way. This means that as a Contact Center/CX vendor, my team and I need to stay ahead of the curve and help businesses realise how they can best get their customers what they want using our platform and product.

What technology will have the greatest impact on your business this year and why?

AI. But not in the same vein as the “AI will change everything” conversation. Instead, AI will lead to a new type of conversation around business needs and technology. AI won’t be the silver bullet to solve every problem, but it will change the way in which businesses seek to address needs. The question will become, “How do I best apply AI to give customers and my business what they need in a safe, secure and trustworthy way?”