New LiveVox CEO Talks Contact Center Technologies, Partner Relationships, Recession
"Channel partners are an extension of an organization's information infrastructure."
December 7, 2022
![The Ecosystem Model The Ecosystem Model](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blteef36ba9a9addc83/65240df56399937953942d33/Leader-4.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Shutterstock
CF: You were CEO of Lastline, a cybersecurity company. Obviously, you know that it’s a company that powered network security products through AI. This seems like a great background for working at LiveVox whose portfolio is obviously heavily geared toward artificial intelligence. So how has this experience at Lastline prepared you for the responsibilities you now have at LiveVox?
JD: In many ways, you wouldn’t think there would be correlation between leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning for network detection and response and working at LiveVox. Ironically, it is actually very similar. We’re leveraging artificial intelligence essentially to greater fidelity to the alerts that security operation centers were having to deal with because they were completely overwhelmed. An enterprise customer may have 10,000 security alerts on any given day. And to have analysts and people that are working in the SOC and channel partners and system integrators all combing through all those alerts every day and trying to find the one or two that are really important is an intolerable task. In security there may be 2 million open jobs and everyone’s running their infrastructures with fewer people than they need. Well, fast forward to LiveVox, I see exactly the same thing. They’re operating in a contact center struggling with getting people, training people and not having people turn over all the time. Agent efficiency, agent productivity, agent impact has become the most natural place to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning because you can make the agents much more predictive, so much more productive, so much more intuitive about what they’re going to need to help resolve a customer issue.
CF: Your background in cybersecurity and high finance don’t seem like a linear progression to working on behalf of an omnichannel customer experience platform, although I could be wrong. How will your experience in those fields help you as CEO and, additionally, how will this experience help the company?
JD: If you look at the last four or five companies that I’ve worked at, including going all the way back to maybe even Aruba Networks, there was one element that I think they all very much shared. It’s that my time in those places greatly expanded their channel footprint. The programs that we offer for channels, the types of channel partners that we appeal to, channel profitability, channel retention, channel time to value… these were all a foundational principle of everything that I plan to do at LiveVox. The world has changed, and channel partners are no longer an extension of a vendor’s sales organization where we give them quotas and we send them leads and all that baloney. Channel partners are an extension of an organization’s information infrastructure.
CF: Other than agent attrition, what do you think is the most pressing concern of contact centers today?
JD: The typography of the workforce is a big challenge for contact center administrators today where everybody is everywhere. Some people are returning to the contact center, but most people today have some kind of a hybrid environment. That means they need to invest in cloud, and they need to invest in the legacy on-premises equipment that’s become very expensive. I think it’s companies like LiveVox that are truly 100% public cloud architectures, but at the same time have a reliance, a need, and an intersection with our customers on working with the channels. Sometimes with public cloud companies, it’s not obvious where the channel fits in. In our case, it’s definitely obvious because most of our customers have these hybrid environments and they need to embrace things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, anomaly detection, which are really well-handled in the cloud.
CF: With your technical experience in mind, which LiveVox product are you most excited about? And can you give some insight into what direction the company will be taking innovation?
JD: I think the omnichannel is something that’s here to stay. People want to interface with whoever’s providing customer support or technical support or helping them navigate some sort of other customer interaction. Those people want to interface in lots of different ways. SMS, WhatsApp, web sessions, chat, voice, voice messaging. We’re all a little bit different. Sometimes I like to interface in text and sometimes I like to interface in email, and sometimes I like to do something on the web and people are going to need to support all that. Being able to illuminate quickly is going to be the most exciting part of the technology interface with customers and leveraging it. We’re in the early innings with machine learning and artificial intelligence and its ability to help with this process. And so I won’t go into that. With artificial intelligence, it’s truly profound what we’re able to do now that we weren’t able to do just five years ago with our ability to do high speed computing, our ability to centralize massive amounts of data and to be able to train classification engines. The experience that someone had with AI 10 years ago was pretty underwhelming. The experience today is revolutionary.
CF: What are your goals for LiveVox from a financial and technical standpoint for the next year or two years?
JD: We just had an earnings call. We outlined our financial goals for the company. I want to be a great solution for our customers. I want to deliver value to our customers. The ones I have met in early days tell me that they really do like our products that they are very reliable and deliver value. I want to continue that heritage. I also want to hear from our partners that say they were able to build a business on top of our platform, were able to improve the overall customer experience by being part of the value chain and that they see boundless opportunities. That’s what I want to hear the partners say. Because I really believe that there’s still maybe 10 to 20 million seats that are sitting in on-premises that need to move to a more hybrid, more distributed, more cloud-oriented solution. I want to hear the general partners say that they understand our solution, that they agree with its appropriateness.
CF: If we had a recession, how do you think LiveVox’s product portfolio would weather such conditions?
JD: I would never be so brazen to say that we would be immune from economic conditions. However, I do think that we’re part of something even bigger which is the move to cloud computing. There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of workloads that are moving to public cloud hyperscaler environments. As I mentioned earlier, there are tens of millions of seats that are going to move to this environment. If there’s a bump in the economy, maybe it slows that down for a little bit. What we’re going to focus on is delivering great value to our partners, to our customers and to becoming even better partners with our channels and with the other elements of our solution that make it all go. I think it’s blue skies ahead.
CF: How are partners instrumental to LiveVox’s business model and are there plans to invest more financially in partners in the next year? And does it make sense to do so in a rocky economy?
JD: Let me just characterize one thing. I don’t think of partners, I think of building intelligent, thoughtful channel partner programs. It’s generally the gift that keeps on giving when you when you build out your channel. And I don’t see it as a huge burden from an expense perspective or from an investment perspective. I view LiveVox and our channel community as very harmonious and synergistic in every interaction. Investment when you’re talking about partners is sometimes a mischaracterization. If they do well, we do what we all do well together. And I just think we have a huge opportunity to not only do well together with our partners but also to guarantee our customers a better experience in the process. I’m super optimistic about the future and the future for our customers as we continue to embrace relationships with the channel.
CF: How are partners instrumental to LiveVox’s business model and are there plans to invest more financially in partners in the next year? And does it make sense to do so in a rocky economy?
JD: Let me just characterize one thing. I don’t think of partners, I think of building intelligent, thoughtful channel partner programs. It’s generally the gift that keeps on giving when you when you build out your channel. And I don’t see it as a huge burden from an expense perspective or from an investment perspective. I view LiveVox and our channel community as very harmonious and synergistic in every interaction. Investment when you’re talking about partners is sometimes a mischaracterization. If they do well, we do what we all do well together. And I just think we have a huge opportunity to not only do well together with our partners but also to guarantee our customers a better experience in the process. I’m super optimistic about the future and the future for our customers as we continue to embrace relationships with the channel.
In November, John DiLullo was named CEO of LiveVox, a cloud-based provider of customer service and digital engagement tools. He replaces Louis Summe who co-founded the company and served as CEO for more than 22 years.
“John brings a compelling mix of relevant technology and commercial industry experience, a proven track record of successfully scaling go-to-market operations and a customer-first orientation, making him the ideal leader for LiveVox as it enters its next phase of growth,” said Stewart Bloom, executive chairman of LiveVox, earlier this year. “The board is confident that John has the right vision and expertise to support the company’s existing customer base, expand LiveVox’s product suite to new markets and customers and maintain the company’s commitment to consistent innovation and customer service.”
Channel Futures sat down with DiLullo to talk about his views about that innovation and customer service framework. DiLullo also discussed his background in cybersecurity and why it’s relevant to his new role at LiveVox. In addition, he reflects on the possibility of recession and how much of that will influence the company and partners.
Channel Futures: How did you go from an academic background in electrical and electronics engineering to a career in sales and the channel?
LiveVox’s John DiLullo
John DiLullo: It was as easy as falling in love. I came out of the technology business, and I have two patents that were granted early in my career. I started as an engineer in spacecraft operations but at some point I realized there’s this whole world outside of just building better mousetraps, and I became infatuated with the whole idea of selling technology. My first real job was selling systems or key systems, phone systems, and I learned how hard it really is to get through sales and understanding competition, understanding channels and understanding all the things that need to go right for a customer to get success and derive value from technology. And that became a fascination of mine for my entire career. I couldn’t have picked a better career choice and the way I got here now seems very serendipitous, but I’ve been so lucky.
See the slideshow above for the continuation of the interview.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
Read more about:
AgentsAbout the Author(s)
You May Also Like