Leapfrog CX Strategies

Evan and Dave chat with Stewart Bufferfield , the co-Founder of Slack .  Slack is the leading channel-based messaging platform, used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems, and drive their businesses forward.  In this podcast we cover a lot of ground, including Microsoft, recent acquisitions, Slack Connect, Amazon Chime, Enterprise Grid, and more.  Stewart has been regularly recogni...

Evan and Dave chat with Bruce McClelland , the recently named CEO and President of Ribbon Communications .  Ribbon Communications is a global communications and network solutions provider to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors. Bruce is a technical business leader with a proven history of developing and growing businesses. Previously, Bruce was CEO at ARRIS and led...

Dave and Evan chat with Ryan Hollenbeck , Senior Vice President, Global Marketing and Customer Experience at Verint .  Ryan Hollenbeck is responsible for driving global corporate marketing, solutions marketing, marketing communications and operations, analyst and public relations, and sales enablement. Ryan also serves as executive sponsor of the Verint Customer Experience Program that focuses on...

Dave and Evan chat with  Anthony Bartolo , the Chief Product Officer at Avaya .  Anthony Bartolo is responsible for product development, product management, emerging technologies and corporate strategy across Avaya’s premise and cloud-based solutions. He rejoined Avaya last November, and reports to CEO Jim Chirico. Bartolo has over 30 years of functional and general management experience in transf...

Dave and Evan chat with  Dmitry Netis of Q Advisors , a global investment firm focused on enterprise communications.  Netis heads Q Advisors' origination and business development efforts. He has over 24 years of experience that combines finance, venture investing, sell-side equity research, and operational industry experience across the telecom, media, and technology (TMT) sector. Most recent...

Dave and Evan chat with Antony Passemard , Applied Conversational AI and CCAI lead at Google Cloud.  This is a naturally intelligent conversation about how AI is changing the contact center. We cover terminology and then get into how Google is leveraging its vast AI capabilities to improve customer service - at other companies.  Antony has been in IT for over 20 years and spent the last 12 working...

Dave and Evan discuss recent enterprise communications news. We discuss this Insider Report: https://talkingpointz.com/april-2020-insider-report/ Voicemails:  Blue Jeans: 4:40 Starfish: 11:15 2600Hz: 14:15 Workplace by Facebook: 21:10 Pexip: 25:30

Dave and Evan chat with Del Currie , Head of Solutions at Sneek.io . Sneek.io provides what's known as persistent video. Though, it's not persistent video. It's really better described as a next generation of presence that involves frequent snapshots. Instead of a green or yellow icon, Sneek.io users see frequent snapshots of their colleagues, and presence can be seen if he or she i...

Dave and Evan chat with Sri Srinivasan ( LinkedIn / Twitter ), the new GM of Cisco Collaboration . In this discussion we talk about organizational changes, Sri's priorities, Webex in March, and what Sri learned from Microsoft. Prior to recent promotion, Sri was responsible for Webex including Meetings, Teams, Calling, and room hardware.  Sri has broad software experience across platforms and...

Dave and Evan chat with Mary T. McDowell , CEO of Mitel . In October 2019, Mary McDowell was named the CEO of Mitel. Many industry professionals first met McDowell during her term as CEO of Polycom. She exited Polycom when it was acquired by Plantronics (now known as Poly) in 2018.  Prior to Polycom, McDowell was an EVP at Nokia, where she was in charge of the company’s $15B global feature phone b...

@davemichels and @evankirstel discuss the TalkingPointz Insider Report for March News - our discussion features celebrity voicemails. Subscribe to TalkingPointz Insider Reports https://talkingpointz.com/pricing Insider reports are accessible to non subscribers after 100 days. https://talkingpointz.com/category/insider/

Dave and Evan chat with Murali Sitaram , GM of Microsoft Yammer and Office 365 Groups.  Yammer is an enterprise social networking service used for internal communications within organizations. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012, but hasn't done that much with it - until recently. Yammer got a whole new look. Although Yammer and Teams offer a lot of the same functionality, the two apps are posi...

In this TalkingHeadz podcast, Dave and Evan discuss the news and events of February, with special guests via voicemail. We discuss the February Insider Report, published the first week of March on TalkingPointz. Insider Reports summarize and analyze the major news and events from the prior month. You can subscribe to Insider Reports at https://talkingpointz.com/pricing/

Dave and Evan chat with Craig Walker , the CEO of Dialpad . Craig Walker is the co-founder and CEO of Dialpad, a born-in-the-cloud UCaaS provider. Previously he led Dialpad Communications Inc., (acquired by Yahoo! for $50 million), a pioneer in VoIP services, and later co-founded GrandCentral (acquired by Google for $100 million). Dialpad has raised $120 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ve...

Dave and Evan chat with John Hernandez , the CEO of Selligent . John Hernandez is well known in the communications industry as a contact center pro.  In August of 2017, he took those skills to Selligent, a marketing cloud. Selligent leverages automation and AI to improve the customer experience. Selligent's marketing platform provides a cohesive, flexible platform designed for agile, marketer...

Dave and Evan chat with Jeff Lawson , the Co-Founder and CEO of Twilio .  Jeff Lawson realized that communications are essential to every business. He got the idea as a result of his experiences as an entrepreneur and developer during a time when the API model for technology services was emerging. Lawson and co-founder Evan Cooke created Twilio, and effectively created a new enterprise communicati...

Dave and Evan chat with Brian Day the newly named CEO of Fuze . Last month, Fuze named Brian Day its new CEO. Actually, Brian announced it himself in a blog post that also reemphasized Fuze's commitment to enterprise customers.  Fuze was among the first UCaaS providers (under it's original brand Thinking Phones) to penetrate larger customers. While most providers started small and are wo...

Dave and Evan chat with Quentin Gallivan , CEO of BlueJeans Network .  Quentin was named the CEO of BlueJeans in August 2017. He brought to the company extensive experience in growth. As a founding executive at Verisign he grew the company to $1.5B in revenue (and took it through an IPO). He also grew cloud-based security market leader Postini to more than 35,000 customers (and over 10M users) bef...

Dave and Evan chat with Yaniv Masjedi , CMO at Nextiva . Yaniv Masjedi started building the Nextiva marketing engine on day one (day one of Nextiva) about 12 years ago. That involved introducing to prospects this crazy concept of a cloud-PBX. Nextiva offers UCaaS, video, team chat, and CRM services. It is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ. As CMO, Yaniv is responsible for Nextiva's marketing an...

Dave and Evan chat with Milton Chen , founder and CEO VSee .  Milton is a video pioneer that has built VSee into a powerful telemedicine platform.  Telemedicine is no longer a fringe idea, in fact, some insist on dropping the "tele" part because it's just medicine now. It can save lives, and improve healthcare, and reduce costs. VSee serves over 1000 companies including Walgreens, M...

Dave and Evan chat with Paul Jarman , CEO at NICE inContact .  Paul is a pioneer of the CCaaS, movement. Paul was instrumental in guiding inContact from its roots in telecommunications to its leadership position in the cloud-delivered contact center sector. He has been a part of every major enhancement the company has made since 1997. Mr. Jarman has spent his career building a service-driven busin...

Dave and Evan chat with Julian Codorniou , Vice President of Workplace by Facebook . Julien joined Facebook in 2011 to build the EMEA gaming team and then led the global Platform Partnerships team, helping Facebook partners to build, grow and monetize their apps with Platform. Prior to Facebook, Julien was director of business development at Microsoft Corp where he created and launched the BizSpar...

Nidal Abou Ltaif is known for his desire to help his customers use technology to make a difference in people’s lives.  Nidal joined Avaya as the sales leader for the Middle East in 2003. In early 2014, was selected to lead the newly formed Global Growth Markets theater that includes MEA, Turkey, Russia, India, and China. In August 2015, he was named President of Avaya International with responsibi...

Dave and Evan chat with Mark Strassman , Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unified Communications and Collaboration at LogMeIn .  Mark serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager for LogMeIn’s Unified Communications & Collaboration business unit overseeing market-leading UCC products GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, Jive, Grasshopper and more. Mark joins LogMeIn from BlueJeans Netw...

Dave and Evan chat with Sagi Dudai , the CTO of Vonage.  As CTO he is responsible for leading Vonage’s technology vision, architecture and design, overseeing all aspects of technology development, including new products, their enabling technologies and R&D.  Prior to being named CTO, Mr. Dudai was Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Vonage, responsible for software development co...