By Jim Lundy
Niki Hall Rejoins Five9 as Chief Marketing Officer
This is a story about returning to a place you know – that is in your backyard. This week Intelligent Contact Center provider, Five9 announced that Niki Hall, who is currently at Contentsquare, is returning to Five9 as its Chief Marketing Officer.
Going Back to Five9 – Teaming Up with CEO, Mike Burkland
Niki Hall worked at Five9 about five years ago as VP of Corporate Marketing but left to become a CMO at two other firms, Selligent and Contentsquare. At Contentsquare, Niki executed well by helping them scale their branding and crisp up their demand generation.
While it is increasingly becoming rare that a person returns to a firm they worked at previously, it is not uncommon. It is a tribute to both Niki and Chairman and CEO Mike Burkland, who himself just returned to be CEO in November 2022. So in reality, the band is back together and Mike and Niki can continue Five9’s growth trajectory.
Defining the Category Called the Intelligent Contact Center (ICC)
One thing that many don’t know, is that five years ago, when Niki was at Five9, Aragon Research and Five9 partnered to develop and announce the category we call Intelligent Contact Center (ICC). In 2018, many did not believe that Contact Centers would ever be intelligent, but Niki helped to push the idea and Aragon Research has published its category definition note that forecasted this shift.
Jump ahead to 2023, and Virtual Agents and Agent Assistants are here and getting smarter every day. While some other research firms are still not writing about ICC, Aragon Research has led the way and we are about to publish our fifth Globe on the ICC.
Building the Brand at ContentSquare
All things considered, Niki leaves Contentsquare, the rising Digital Experience Analytics firm, in great shape. Brand awareness is way up and demand generation has helped fuel record growth there. We expect Contentsquare to IPO in the next 18 months.
Bottom Line
Some say you can never go back, but Niki Hall is rejoining Five9 and joining Mike Burkland, so the band is back together. Five9 has done very well in the last five years, but we are only in the early innings of the Intelligent Contact Center.
See the Future of Unified Communications and Collaboration with CEO and Lead Analyst Jim Lundy!
Airing LIVE on Thursday, November 16th at 10 AM PT | 1 PM ET
The Future of Communications and Collaboration
The second largest market in enterprise software is Communications and Collaboration. With a growing focus on AI and on enabling users to do video, voice or messaging based interactions, Communications and Collaboration is poised for the most change as Video becomes pervasive and messaging takes over from email.
Join Aragon Research’s Founder and CEO, Jim Lundy, on Thursday, November 16th, 2023 as he talks about what the future of UC&C looks like.
Key issues being covered include:
- What are the trends driving the evolution of Communications and Collaboration?
- How will AI and CoPilots make communication and collaboration more efficient?
- How can enterprises stay ahead of and take advantage of all of the innovation that is coming from Providers?
