SuccessKPI CMO builds a brand focused on AI-powered contact center transformation
It’s not the first time Dave Toliver has served the contact center industry, but it may mark the moment when almost everything about it changes.
As the new chief marketing officer (CMO) for Fairfax Country, Va.-based SuccessKPI, Toliver comes into the role with a background that includes stints at Genesys, Microstrategy and Health and Safety Institute (HSI). His focus will not only be in building SuccessKPI’s brand, but helping the firm stand out in a field filled with vendors offering to enhance contact centers with artificial intelligence (AI).
In an interview with 360 Magazine, Toliver noted that the current debates over where to apply AI within contact centers is not unlike the early days of interactive voice response (IVR), which also promised unprecedented improvements to the customer experience (CX).
“It was either really frustrating, or people would find that companies had done it well, and it could be helpful as long as they could accomplish what they were trying to accomplish. And most of the time, it was getting to the right person quicker, and having that human be able to help them,” Toliver said. “Fast forward 20 years, and we’re in a very similar stage with AI.”
One big difference, Toliver said, was that many organizations first deployed AI primarily with an eye towards reducing costs. AI is being approached more holistically, where generative AI can synthesize data to better understand what those calling into contact centers want and need, for example.
SuccessKPI’s role is to sit on top of disparate, sometimes poorly-connected contact center solutions and bring fragmented data together for improved reporting and offer a better line of sight into what customers and service reps need.
“You have a Genesys call center solution over here, and Genesis has reporting tools, but you may have an Avaya system or a Cisco system, and a Five9 system or something else in another location,” he explained. “The Genesys (solution) is not reading the Five9 information, and vice versa. Each of those will feed into SuccessKPI, and see everything that’s happening across all contact centers in one single reporting system.”
SuccessKPI can also allow contact center managers to trigger events such as transcribing call logs or pulling relevant information from scripts to help service reps handle a complex problem.
So far, SuccessKPI has found traction primarily within large enterprises operating in sectors such as government, health-care and logistics. Toliver said the company’s solutions have traditionally been brought in through other vendors who don’t offer its capabilities. His near-time priorities include building brand awareness as well as independent demand generation.
“You can only get so far by relying on partners and hoping that they bring you in on these things and to grow to the next level and grow the business,” he said. “We have to do things on our own as well.”
Toliver said the ideal CX for SuccessKPI’s customers is one where they can easily develop tailored approaches to service even if they’re operating multiple contact centers across different geographies.
“(It’s where) you’re really using AI to analyze all of your call data for you, much like you would do with ChatGPT, where you can ask (the platform) a deep question, it goes through all of your call data, and it surfaces, things that you may not have had the answers to so you can make decisions on it,” he said.
