Wes Dudley has spent over 30 years leading CX at scale, including JCPenney, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and Broad River Retail, the largest licensee of Ashley Furniture. He moved ticket resolution from nine days to eight hours, eliminated 2.7 million inbound calls annually with a single IVR change, and built a 750-seat contact center during COVID while call volume jumped from 16,000 to 115,000 calls a day overnight.

This conversation covers the specific decisions behind those numbers, including how he sequences people, process, and technology investments, when to keep humans in the loop on high-stakes interactions, and what he looks for in a technology partner after seeing both sides of good and bad ones.

Topics Discussed:

• Why AI without a defined plan consistently underdelivers

• Moving ticket resolution from 9 days to 8 hours through routing, not technology

• Eliminating 2.7 million calls annually with one IVR implementation

• Three-tier triage model built to absorb a 7x overnight call surge during COVID

• PPT framework for sequencing people, process, and technology decisions

• How the nature of high-emotion purchases should shape your AI and human handoff design

• CX All-Stars identity program and its role in remote team retention

• What Wes looks for in a technology partner beyond price and product

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