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

Who is your business hero and why?

I’ve had a few over time that have shaped the way I think about business. They’re personal to me, so I’m not going to name them in this forum, but some quotes that have inspired me over the years and have changed my trajectory include:

“Leaders are defined by the behaviours they accept and tolerate.” – which happened very early in my career, circa 2004
“Why are you asking me? Act like this is your business and go after it, and I’ll back your play every time.” – a skip-level leader in a very large corporation.

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

I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes, but all of those have culminated into my worldview and where I am today. Every mistake is a learning opportunity and is only a true mistake if you repeat it twice!

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

I’m a huge fan of Matt Dixon’s “The Effortless Experience”. We were all taught that delighting customers led to loyalty – and in reality, customers just want their problems solved – or even better, to not have problems at all. Even though this book was written in 2013, it’s still incredibly relevant, even with the monumental shifts in customer service technology that have happened since. The strategy touches all parts of a business and can provide meaningful outcomes for those who apply it.

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

The pace of innovation in this space has been faster than anything I’ve witnessed in the 24 years I’ve worked with contact center technology. Keeping up with the innovations, design patterns, and applications of the technology has been a struggle. An even bigger challenge is how I keep my teams up to date on them as well. We’re in a place where if you stop paying attention, you’re instantly behind – and finding ways to filter the noise, and the hype and distil meaningful takeaways for myself and my teams is almost a full-time job.

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

AI. Not just generative AI and large language models but advancements in AI as a whole. From finding patterns in data to reinforcement learning powered by humans, it has fundamentally changed every conversation. The efficiencies possible for agents, supervisors, analysts, programmers, and marketers? I boggle to think about just how far it’s going to take us. I’ve been extremely proud of Local Measure and our efforts to build and bring to general availability real agent and customer-impacting use cases in the first few months of this year.