Six years ago the industry went home in two weeks. Most contact centers kept the org chart and lost the floor: the supervisor who spots a bad call, the two-minute coaching fix, the new hire learning next to someone good. Most never rebuilt it.

In this episode of the CX Gurus Podcast, host Darren Prine (CRO & Co-Founder, Cloud Tech Gurus) talks with Sameer Maini, CEO and Founder of CollaborationRoom.AI, who spent 20 years running contact center and BPO operations before building software for them.

In this episode

• What contact centers actually glued together in March 2020
• What they lost when they left the building, and what it shows up as in the numbers
• Why many remote centers are “surviving, not thriving”
• A before-and-after customer story: 33% more calls taken and 27% more revenue in 90 days (client-reported)
• What a great remote contact center looks like in 2026
• The talent a remote center can hire that a building never could

Chapters
0:00 Highlights
0:44 Welcome: how remote work lost the floor
3:25 March 2020: the scramble to go remote
6:19 What centers lost when they left the building
10:31 What is still broken in remote contact centers
13:52 What a virtual contact center floor looks like
17:57 Visible proof of compliance, and standing out as a BPO
20:12 Customer story: LMM Inc.
23:25 Supervisor alerts and agent safety
24:43 The ideal remote contact center in 2026
27:16 ROI: productivity, handle time and attrition
31:26 Raising a daughter and running a company, remote
32:45 The talent a building could never hire
36:13 Business continuity and disaster recovery
36:53 Wrap-up

Want a demo or a conversation about rebuilding supervisor presence in your remote operation? Reach out to Cloud Tech Gurus: https://cloudtechgurus.com
Past episodes: https://www.cxguruspodcast.com/
Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cxguruspodcast

Results discussed are the guest’s own, reported by his customers. Cloud Tech Gurus is a partner and distributor for CollaborationRoom.AI.

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Wes Dudey spent his career designing customer journeys. Then a massive heart attack — six cardiac arrests, 55 shocks, a 1% survival odds — followed by kidney failure, put him inside a journey he didn't design.

In this first episode of CX Gurus, host Jess talks with Wes about what he learned as a patient that he never fully understood as a CX executive: what customer effort actually costs someone living it, not just measuring it.

This episode also marks Jess's own first public conversation about her kidney disease journey — making this less an interview and more two practitioners comparing notes from the other side of the counter.

Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@cxguruspodcast

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

In this episode of Contact Center Journeys, Fred Stacey sits down with John Coulter, SVP of Sales at Five Star Call Centers, to talk about developing future leaders in today's remote world — and how mentorship, networking, and staying connected keep our industry growing strong.

Timestamps / Chapters:

00:00 – Developing leaders in a remote world

02:30 – John's journey through the contact center space

08:10 – The challenges and opportunities of remote culture

14:00 – The importance of mentorship and finding your network

20:15 – Fred's key takeaways and closing thoughts

Hosted by: Fred Stacey

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Is customer service just a stepping stone, or can it be a meaningful, long-term career?

In this episode, Fred Stacey sits down with Nate Brown, Head of Education & Enablement at Metric Sherpa and co-founder of CX Accelerator, for an honest conversation about careers in customer experience, mentorship, leadership, and why CX still matters more than ever.

Nate shares his journey from frontline customer service roles to becoming one of the most respected voices in the CX community. Together, they unpack what makes customer experience a true competitive differentiator in a world where products can be copied, but loyalty cannot.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why customer service is more than an entry-level job
• - How mentorship shapes meaningful CX careers
• - The role of human connection in modern CX
• - Automation vs personalization in contact centers
• - Advice for the next generation of CX leaders
• - What the future of customer experience looks like

Contact Center Journeys exists to inspire the next generation of CX and contact center professionals by sharing real stories from people who built their careers in this space. There are no sales pitches, just honest conversations and lessons learned.

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

He walked into a random job fair with no plan, and walked out with a career that took him from answering phones to running contact centers across the globe, without a college degree.

In this episode of Contact Center Journeys, host Fred Stacey talks with Tyler Orrell about the unlikely path, the hard lessons along the way, and what keeps him up at night as AI reshapes the global contact center industry.

Tyler's story is exactly why this show exists: the contact center isn't a dead-end job — it's one of the best places to build a career.

Tyler Orrell — Konnect Media Solutions: www.konnectmediasolutions.com

Host Fred Stacey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredstaceyaincx/

About Contact Center Journeys

Contact Center Journeys shares the real stories of the people who built their careers in CX and contact centers — to inspire the next generation coming up. No pitches, no selling. Just the journeys. Hosted by Fred Stacey.

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Is AI transforming the contact center, or is the industry focused on the wrong things?

In this full episode of the Contact Center Journeys Podcast, Fred Stacey sits down with Bill Staikos, CEO & Managing Partner at Be Customer Led, to break down the real future of customer experience, AI, and the workforce.

Bill shares powerful insights on:

• Why companies misunderstand AI's role in CX
• - The danger of replacing people instead of augmenting them
• - How AI will reshape work, culture, and customer expectations
• - Why surveys are failing modern CX teams
• - What the next 5 years of contact centers will look like
• - The rise of wearables, multimodal AI, and agent-to-agent interactions
• - What younger professionals should do to build a future-proof career

This is one of the most grounded, forward-looking CX conversations you'll hear this year.

About the Speakers

Fred Stacey — Host of Contact Center Journeys & CEO at Cloud Tech Gurus. A veteran CX and contact center expert focused on elevating the next generation of leaders.

Bill Staikos — CEO & Managing Partner at Be Customer Led. CX/EX leader with 20+ years across financial services, consulting, and enterprise transformation.

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Gina Gibson — CEO of Think Forward and host of The Tech Matchmaker podcast — has led digital transformations for organizations ranging from 50 to 45,000 agents. In this episode she shares her journey from agent to CEO and her vendor-agnostic playbook for future-proofing the contact center.

In this episode:

• Gina's origin story: from frontline agent to CEO
• The vendor-agnostic approach to matching tech to the actual problem
• Future-proofing the contact center without losing the human element
• Leading transformations from 50 to 45,000 agents
• Making technology work better for the people behind it

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Justin Robbins is a thought leader in customer experience with a human-centric approach to workplace engagement and over two decades in CX operations and leadership. He joins Fred to unpack why disengagement happens at work — and the practical moves leaders can make to restore trust and motivation.

In this episode:

• Justin's origin story and the paper-route lesson in honoring preferences
• Why disengagement actually happens
• Removing the friction points that frustrate agents
• Using technology to support — not replace — human connection
• The leader's role in engagement, and why continuous learning matters

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com