Thomas Goodmanson has retired following 15 years at the helm of Calabrio.
Goodmanson hopes to take the opportunity to rest and spend more time with his family.
Taking the reigns is Kevin Jones, the former CEO of Rackspace Technology, a business that supports organizations in designing, building, and managing multi-cloud solutions.
There, Jones spearheaded a global expansion, growing its annual revenues from $2BN to $3BN.
While Jones was ousted from the role in November 2022 after his executive team backtracked on its intentions to sell parts of the business, the markets reacted poorly to the move.
Indeed, Rackspace’s stock dropped nine percent, which perhaps proved a testament to his previous successes.
Yet, despite the fallout, Jones is ready to jump straight back into the CEO hotseat.
Setting out his vision on LinkedIn, he stated:
As CEO, I will hold a laser-tight focus on our true-cloud business model, market-leading product, and global presence, but also stay true to my belief that there is no greater differentiator than our people and culture.
Jones also doubled down on Goodmanson’s mantras of empowering the contact center as a brand guardian and optimizing human-centric experiences.
Consequently, Calabrio customers should not expect a significant swing in strategy, which sometimes comes with a CEO switch. The recent changes at the top of 8×8 exemplify this.
Some may have worried about such a shift, especially after Calabrio made another c-suite change in November 2022.
Then, Jim Davies became its new Chief Experience Officer – not to be confused with Chief Executive Officer – following 22+ years as Vice President of Research at Gartner.
Upon his arrival, Davies also underlined his intention to stay true to Goodmanson’s vision for Calabrio and the future of customer experience.
In a Q&A for Calabrio’s blog, he stated: “I wanted to join the Calabrio team because of what it offers, both in and outside of the Calabrio ONE platform.
It’s not the product, pricing model, services or any standalone item that makes Calabrio unique—it’s how it all comes together to provide a clear, cohesive workforce performance platform focused on client success. The sum of all its parts! It’s extremely unique for a cloud company.
Indeed, after acquiring Teleopti in 2019 – a best-of-breed WFM solution – Calabrio came into its own.
Once known as a WFO solution for SMBs, enterprises started to take to the solution. Now, over a fifth of its customers have more than 1,000 agents.
Also, it stepped out of Cisco’s shadow, a vendor with which it had 140+ resellers, establishing close relationships with Avaya, Twilio, and – perhaps most notably – AWS.
Indeed, Amazon Connect lacked many WFM and performance management capabilities when it first entered the space. Calabrio worked closely with AWS, plugging the gaps and helping the vendor lead the market in client acquisition.
Now, Jones must ensure that Calabrio does not lose its momentum as its partners start to add native WFO solutions to their CCaaS platforms.
Goodmanson will undoubtedly hope his replacement and the broader Calabrio team can pull this off.
Wishing a fond farewell to his team, Goodmanson stated: “It’s been an absolute pleasure these past 15 years working to make Calabrio ONE what it is today—the leading workforce performance platform that helps enrich and understand human interactions.
“I am excited to see how Kevin moves the company forward.”
