Calabrio has confirmed that former CEO Kevin Jones is no longer with the company, with the vendor currently operating under an interim CEO.
Calabrio’s CTO, Joel Martins, has been tasked with the interim role while Calabrio pursues a new full-time CEO.
The news was confirmed to CX Today in the following statement by Calabrio:
Kevin Jones departed Calabrio in February. Joel Martins has been appointed Interim CEO, with the executive team reporting to him. Joel also continues to lead Calabrio’s product and development teams as CTO. The search for a permanent CEO is underway.
Jones’s departure marks the end of a swift 13-month reign as CEO of the contact center software provider, having succeeded Thomas Goodmanson in January of last year.
With uncertainty surrounding the future leadership of the company, how will Calabrio operate under Martins’ temporary stewardship?
Full Steam Ahead
Despite the changes to the c-suite, Calabrio is showing no signs of slowing down, with the firm having recently launched its new AI-driven bot Analytics tools.
With the aim of enhancing Quality Management (QM), the tool promises to provide contact centers with improved performance data and insights, which the organization believes will optimize the user experience.
The solution also has the ability to arrange all transcript conversations by topic, facilitating more efficient issue resolution and simplifying the review process.
In doing so, users are able to monitor and improve the quality of chatbot and voicebot performance.
Calabrio claims that the tools QM and analytics capabilities will help to increase customer satisfaction, keep adoption rates low, and unlock savings opportunities.
In discussing the launch of the new solution, Martins commented:
“Most of us have had a frustrating experience with a chatbot. Now imagine you are trained to help customers, and the very tool – a bot – being used to help improve a user’s experience results in frustration for customers and the call center agents trying to help.
Our Bot Analytics changes the game, works with any virtual agent, and improves interactions, cost savings and customer and agent experiences.
Calabrio’s latest tool is an indicator that it will continue to focus on leveraging AI to enhance its CX offerings, which was a key factor in the company’s acquisition of Wysdom at the start of 2024.
Indeed, at the time of the merger, Kevin Jones was still the firm’s acting CEO.
Speaking then, Jones appeared enthusiastic about the potential of Wysdom to bolster Calabrio’s workforce management (WFM) offering:
“We are excited to bring Wysdom and Calabrio together to help our customers use AI to drive optimal allocation of resources across both human and virtual agents.”
The deal also helped to enhance Calabrios’ AI and machine learning capabilities, as well as boost its customers’ agent engagement, productivity, and return on investment (ROI).
More on Kevin Jones and Joel Martins
Prior to his role at Calabrio, Jones was CEO of Rackspace Technology, where he played a part in expanding the company’s global presence and increasing annual revenues from $2 billion to $3 billion.
However, Jones was removed from his position in November 2022 following a decision by his executive team to halt plans to sell parts of the business, leading to a nine percent drop in Rackspace’s stock.
For Martins, it has been something of a baptism of fire at Calabrio.
Having started his new position as Chief Technical Officer in May of last year, within nine months, he has also taken on acting CEO duties.
While the vendor has neither confirmed nor denied whether they are considering Martins for the permanent position, if they did, it would mark his first time in such a role – having previously held CTO positions at MicroEdge, Social Solutions, and Apryse.
