Leapfrog CX Strategies

Dave and Evan  discuss how Balto can improve CX with automated coaching with Founder and CEO Marc Bernstein.   

Marc Bernstein is the Founder and CEO of Balto, which offers real-time automated guidance for contact center agents.

Like most founders, Marc has made his share of mistakes. In particular, he noticed as a technology sales rep, that many of his mistakes were preventable - not to mention costly. Marc thought there should be a better way, that tech maybe tech can help. That’s when Marc realized he needed to start Balto. Balto listens to the call and offers real-time and post-call services.

Marc graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Marketing, Psychology, and Entrepreneurship, and is on a mission to transform how organizations communicate with their customers.

Dave and Evan  discuss life in the UCaaS driver's seat with Dave Sipes, the CEO of 8x8.  We cover XCaaS, the economy, Teams, stadiums, and much more. 

Many of us met Dave during his 12 year stint at RingCentral, ending with the role of Chief Operating Officer. It was an extraordinary period for RingCentral. Dave led innovation, engineering, global sales, marketing, customer care, international operations, corporate development, and business development. Dave left RingCentral in June of 2020 ... and emerged as the CEO of 8x8 in December of 2020.

Before joining RingCentral, Dave was co-founder and COO of Branders.com, the nation’s largest online B2B seller of promotional items. Prior to that, he worked in brand management at PepsiCo and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton in their marketing intensive group, providing strategic guidance to marketing and media companies such as Heinz Company, Callaway Golf, and Universal Pictures. Dave also serves on the board of directors of PandaDoc, an all-in-one document automation company that streamlines the process of creating, approving, and eSigning proposals, quotes, and contracts.

He holds a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of California, Berkeley.

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode  Dave and Evan  discuss how carrier services can improve services such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom  with Dawn-Marie Elder, GM and COO of SIPPIO. 

SIPPIO offers a single platform and automation for DRaaS (Direct Routing as a Service), Operator Connect, and Zoom Cloud Peering, These are all cloud-native services on Azure. In this podcast we learn more about SIPPIO and Dawn-Marie, and even uncover a few unmentionables. 

Dawn-Marie was a pioneer in cloud sales with Microsoft's launch of BPOS (now Microsoft 365). At Avaya she got exposure to Telephony and digital transformation. 

Dawn-Marie lives in North Carolina. In addition to COO, her other titles include Mother, Wife, and Chief Gardner. 

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode  Dave and Evan  discuss employee engagement with Gideon Pridor, CMO and Chief Storyteller of Workvivo. 

Gideon drives marketing strategy and execution for technology start-ups with a penchant for international business development.  Before Workvivo (and a well-deserved sabbatical) Gideon was VP Marketing at TravelPerk, One of the world’s fastest-growing SaaS companies, Perfecto (acquired by Perforce), and others. 

Gideon is a frequent speaker at industry events, an HRtech enthusiast, and a startup mentor helping companies build their story and tell it to the world.

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode  Dave and Evan  discuss the lack of creativity of sports in El Salvador with Brian Beutler, CEO and Co-Founder of Alianza. 

Brian claims to enjoy creating innovative solutions to big problems, so opted to start Alianza in 2009.  In 2020, Alianza acquired Counterpath and Message Hopper, giving it a fairly broad portfolio to offer its service provider customers. 

Alianza offers a full stack cloud communications service that empowers service providers to create and deploy their own communications offerings. Cloud communication products include voice, video conferencing, text messaging for businesses, residential phone service, and standalone UC softphones. 

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode  Dave and Evan toss questions back and forth with Josh Little of VolleyApp. 

Josh is a serial entrepreneur. "I am a maker who is prolific at creating original works that I am proud of and are worthy of remark."  He has started and exited several companies, and he loves to make things happen. 

Asynchronous communications are all the rage. SMS, WhatsApp, Slack and more are often easier and preferred over a phone call.  But text messages have their own set of issues.  Confusion is all too common. Voicemails can be more clear than text, but are also limited in their own way. 

An emerging option to consider is asynchronous video. Each user records a short talking head video and shares it with other(s ). Recipients can respond in turn with their own video clip (TalkingHeadz!). Volley offers an enterprise-grade async video service. It can be used on its own, or in conjunction with messaging apps such as Teams and Slack.  And, it's free! 

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we have great guests. In this episode Dave and Evan grill Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca, about AI. 

As a seasoned digital marketing and SaaS leader with over fifteen years of extensive experience bringing products to market in emerging categories, Gregg's led large teams and worked with the world's best enterprise brands. Most recently, Gregg led Salesforce Marketing Cloud's social marketing product line, where he integrated $1 billion of M&A investments into the Salesforce product portfolio. 

Before Salesforce, Gregg drove product strategy and development for Salesforce Chatter, helping define the nascent category of enterprise social networking and rolling out one of Salesforce's most successful products. Earlier in his career, Gregg was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and worked in sales, marketing and product roles at several startups. He graduated from Stanford University and holds a Master's degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we have great guests. In this episode Dave and Evan hangout with Ujjwal Singh, Head of Workplace from Meta. 

Ujjwal Singh is a product and engineering leader with a focus in enterprise and SaaS technologies. He is the Head of Workplace, Meta’s business communication platform. 

Ujjwal is responsible for Workplace’s tech, engineering, design and research teams, as well as partnering with sales and partnerships to ensure the growth of the business. Before Workplace, Ujjwal helped found Facebook’s New Product Experimentation group, helping foster new ideas and business development. 

Previously Ujjwal was a partner at Area 120 and a senior engineering director at Google where he helped start the Hangouts project and worked at YouTube.  He was also  the CTO of GoFundMe. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Ujjwal enjoys working with early stage companies, running, and traveling, and currently lives in London with his family.

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we have great guests too!

In this episode Dave and Evan discuss trends and possibilities of conversational AI platforms with Dan Miller of Opus research. 

Dan Miller founded Opus Research in 1986 and helped define Conversational Commerce.Dan held management positions at Atari, Warner Communications and Pacific Telesis Group (now part of AT&T). He also served as Editor-in-Chief of The Kelsey Report, where he also oversaw the launch of advisory services on local online commerce, voice & wireless commerce and global directories.

Dan received his BA from Hampshire College and an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

TalkingHeadz is an interview format podcast that features the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we have great guests too. In this episode Dave and Evan discuss the importance of brand with Michael Gold, the CEO of Intermedia. 

Michael Gold joined Intermedia in 2011 which may have something to do with its revenues increasing five fold since. The provider also transitioned from an email and web hosting services to a channel-first UCC provider (voice, video, chat, contact center, email PLUS services such as file sharing, backups, security, archiving, and more.  

Intermedia is the only cloud company to have earned J.D. Power-certified technical support 6 years in a row. In 2020, Intermedia became the exclusive worldwide cloud communications provider for NEC. 

Gold has 20+ years of senior management experience in software, cloud services and channel development. Before joining Intermedia, Gold was CEO of Zlago. he was also an SVP at Parallels. Gold holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Stanford University.