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When faced with increased absenteeism and productivity issues in its global contact centers, Microsoft’s Consumer Support Services unit decided to try something different. Using advanced mechanisms from games, Microsoft radically changed its agents’ experience. The results, absenteeism dropped by 12%, agents averaged 10% more calls per shift, and employee knowledge and satisfaction levels shot through the roof.
Watch our recent webinar with Centrical’s Dee Nilles, formerly Senior Business Program Manager at Microsoft, and Luke Jamieson, gamification guru and one of Panviva’s 2019 top 25 CX influencers, to learn how they did it.
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Join us for a great session packed with valuable insights, takeaways, and best practices
Dee Nilles, is a contact center expert, consultant and enthusiast with over 25 years of industry experience. During her career, Dee has led strategic and daily operations at multiple call centers, globally. At Microsoft, she managed and deployed key strategic initiatives across global consumer teams such as gamification programs, agent enablement, supplier support model and operations optimization.
Luke Jamieson, is the founder and CEO of Playfulli and is an expert in helping organisations use play to define purpose, increase employee experience, diversity, positive cultures and deliver sustainable progress. His approaches have attracted many coveted awards and his enthusiasm for CX and EX has helped shape some of Australia’s largest organisations customer and employee experience programs. Most recently Luke has received global recognition for his thought leadership, being named in the Top 150 Global Customer Experience Thought Leaders by Survey Sensum in 2020 and Top 25 CX Influencers by Panviva.
“CX leaders should stop isolating contact centers from other departments. Customer experience is increasingly cross-functional. In 2025, integrating CX insights across the organization will be critical to delivering seamless and cohesive experiences.”
Brad TompkinsTompkins comes to Centrical with more than 25 years of experience in software and hardware sales. Prior to joining his role as Chief Revenue Officer at Centrical, he was CEO at Workspot. He held the position of Chief Revenue Officer at IGEL as well as senior sales leadership positions with Red Hat, Hewlett Packard (now Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and Citrix.
Tompkins holds an MBA in Business Administration and Management from the University of Virginia, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and served in the US Navy as a Nuclear Propulsion Technician.
“Knowledge Management: It is not exactly underrated but it will be bigger than what it is in 2025. Vendors are likely to boost R&D investment in knowledge management for contact centers in 2025.”
“Human-centered AI, where AI is used not just to automate and drop money to the bottom line, but used to service up insights to support team members and delight customers. I see generative AI with conversational context and tonal analysis as pretty critical here.”
“The future? Goodness, there’s so much, but I really believe 2025 is the year of community. We’re not just taking tickets anymore—folks we’re drawing people in, getting proactive, and co-creating with customers. Community will become a normal service channel, with customer service workers facilitating and adding value.”
“The myth that technology/AI is a quickly implemented CX superpower. Companies will realize that we can’t harness a lot of these gains without quality data that is clean and well-organized.”
“By 2025 the buzzword omnichannel may be on its’ last leg. Customers want their issues resolved quickly and accurately and they would prefer not to need to contact us in multiple channels that we can see at one time.”
“For 2025, the main trend I’m watching is ‘AI agents’—bots powered by AI that are becoming more autonomous. Unlike basic responses, these AI agents can handle end-to-end customer interactions, reducing the need for human intervention. Expect significant developments from vendors.”
“Stop talking about AI. It’s like talking about the internet being a thing. It’s here. The better focus is start thinking about how AI enhances the lives of your team. So stop talking about AI and start doing something about it.”
“AI and CX will drive hyper-personalization, using consumer data to segment customers, deliver key messages, and provide fast, accurate responses. Technologies like chatbots and predictive analytics will close the gap between brands and consumers.”
“The blending of CX and EX will accelerate. The days of reducing friction for customers at the expense of employees are over. Indeed, because AI-enabled customer experiences often require AI usage by customer-facing employees, leaders will have to ensure a frictionless work experience to drive AI adoption and deliver value.”
Read Stephanie’s full interview
One myth that will be debunked in 2025?: “Customers are on the edge of their seat waiting to hear what you have to say. We need to learn about what’s important to customers by asking more questions.”
Doron Neumann
April CrichlowApril has 20+ years of global marketing experience in the high-tech industry with leadership experience across brand, demand generation, and customer adoption.Previously the Global Head of Marketing for SAP SuccessFactors, April was responsible for end-to-end marketing for SuccessFactors around the world. In this role, April led strategic marketing plans to grow global brand recognition, revenue, customer success and category creation of human experience management (HXM), which is focused on solution innovations that put the employee at the center of work. April also served as a Diversity and Inclusion Lead at SAP and led global thought leadership and strategic partnerships inspiring an inclusive culture, women’s equality, supplier diversity, and sustainable supply chains.
April has been honored by various organizations including CRN’s “Women of the Channel” and as a “Top 100 Ethnic Minority Executive” by EmPower. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Marketing from Simon Fraser University, Canada’s leading comprehensive university.
Gal RimonGal founded Centrical (previously GamEffective) in 2013, with the vision of helping companies empower their employees’ performance, making them the center of business success.Prior to that he was CEO of Gilon-Synergy Business Insight, a national leader in Business Intelligence. In 2010, Gilon-Synergy was acquired by Ness Technologies (NASDAQ:NSTC) and Gal went on to serve as Senior VP at Ness, and was member of its executive management.
Prior to that he was VP customer relations and operations at Deloitte Consulting. He also worked at EDS and Bashan. He holds a MBA degree in Marketing and Information Technologies from the Tel Aviv University.
Daphne SaragostiDaphne has over 15 years of experience in Customer Relations and Retention in both B2B and B2C environments. Her area of expertise is leading customer success, consulting and global professional services teams within public and private sector companies. She is focused on leading teams to grow the partnership with our clients.
Prior to Centrical, Daphne worked software and service companies in the online marketing and gaming industry.
Daphne holds MA in Statistics – Specialization in Operations Research and a MBA degree, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Linat MartLinat Polak Mart has more than 15 years of expertise in managing product strategy and operations in high-volume organizations.Previously, she held the role of Head of Product Experience and Communications for LivePerson, a leading Conversational AI platform, where she played crucial part in delivering significant product innovation and customer growth. Prior to her time at LivePerson, she held multiple senior product roles at NICE, a leading enterprise customer experience (CX) software provider, including Director of Product Portfolio and Director of Product Management.
Linat holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Computer Science from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). She graduated magna cum laude from both institutions.
Ella DavidsonElla Davidson is responsible for managing Centrical’s employee relations worldwide, including organizational development, talent management, benefits and recruitment. Ella has more than 18 years of human resources management experience. Prior to joining Centrical she was vice president of human resources at myThings and OpTier – leading SW companies, and consulted numerous entrepreneurs and startups in the Israeli hi-tech industry and Israel and in the US.Ella holds a B.A in Psychology from the Hebrew University and MSc in Organizational Behavior from Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University.
Ariel HermanAriel has over 16 years’ experience in a wide variety of R&D leadership roles. He is highly experienced at building R&D teams from the ground up, driving high levels of accountability and ownership and setting up automation infrastructures. For the past 10 years Ariel has managed both in-house and offshore development teams at companies ranging from startups to enterprise organizations.
Prior to joining Centrical, Ariel served as VP of R&D at Worthy.com where his team dramatically improved product stability, quality and execution. Before that, he was VP R&D at Applicaster where he led infrastructure changes from project to product. Ariel has also held various R&D positions at Retalix (later acquired by NCR).
Ariel holds B.sc in Computer science & Math, and MBA degree in Information Technologies, both from Bar Ilan University
Ronen Botzer