Customer experience software vendor Verint has tapped Dave Rhodes as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, cementing leadership for the company’s next phase following its combination with Calabrio.

Rhodes, who previously led Calabrio as CEO, now takes the helm of the unified organization as it aims to position itself as the definitive leader in CX Automation—a category that’s rapidly consolidating around AI-driven efficiency, analytics, and workforce intelligence.

The appointment isn’t just a leadership update. It’s a signal that Verint intends to move aggressively in a CX market reshaped by generative AI, automation mandates, and mounting cost pressure on contact centers.

A Leadership Move at an Inflection Point

“Dave is exactly the right leader for this moment,” said Mike Lipps, chairman at Verint, citing Rhodes’ experience scaling high-growth software companies and his deep familiarity with customer experience and workforce engagement markets.

That “moment” is worth unpacking.

Enterprise brands are under growing pressure to prove ROI from AI investments—not someday, but now. Contact centers, long seen as cost centers, are being reframed as data-rich hubs for revenue growth, retention, and customer intelligence. Vendors that can blend automation, AI copilots, analytics, and workforce optimization into a unified system stand to win.

Rhodes steps into a company that now combines:

• Verint’s AI-powered automation and analytics platform

• Calabrio’s workforce engagement management (WEM) suite

• A massive aggregated CX data footprint across global enterprises

In short: more data, more automation layers, and a stronger claim to end-to-end CX orchestration.

The Strategic Play: Data + Workforce + AI

The Verint-Calabrio combination creates one of the largest customer experience data sets in the market, according to the company. That scale matters.

Modern CX automation hinges on three pillars:

1. Operational AI – automating repetitive interactions and workflows

2. Agent augmentation – copilot bots, real-time guidance, and conversational AI

3. Workforce optimization – scheduling, forecasting, performance analytics

Individually, these capabilities are table stakes. Integrated under one architecture, they become defensible.

By bringing Calabrio’s widely adopted workforce engagement tools into Verint’s broader automation and analytics stack, the combined company can now span:

• Workforce engagement management

• Agentic and conversational AI

• Copilot bots

• CX analytics and data intelligence

The result is a tighter narrative: automation that improves both customer outcomes and employee productivity.

Why This Matters Now

The CX software landscape is undergoing rapid consolidation and reinvention. AI-native startups are pushing aggressive automation models, while legacy enterprise vendors are racing to retrofit generative AI into existing stacks.

Verint’s bet is that scale and integration beat point solutions.

Rhodes underscored the urgency in his first statement as CEO: brands are under “enormous pressure” to harness AI for tangible business value immediately. That phrasing reflects a broader shift in enterprise buying behavior—less experimentation, more measurable outcomes.

Boards and CFOs want:

• Higher sales conversion

• Lower churn

• Increased agent productivity

• Reduced operational costs

If a CX platform cannot directly tie to those metrics, it risks irrelevance.

From Workforce Engagement to Full CX Automation

Calabrio has long been known for workforce engagement management—scheduling, quality monitoring, and performance tools for contact centers. Verint, meanwhile, built its reputation on analytics, compliance recording, and enterprise automation.

Under Rhodes’ leadership, the combined company appears to be moving beyond incremental feature expansion toward a more assertive positioning: CX Automation as a strategic growth lever.

The phrase “Business outcomes, now,” repeated by Rhodes, reinforces that urgency. It’s not just about deploying AI—it’s about operationalizing it across the front office.

This also reflects a broader industry evolution:

• Workforce engagement is no longer just HR-adjacent tooling.

• Conversational AI is no longer just chatbots.

• Copilots are becoming embedded productivity engines.

Vendors that can unify these layers into one platform narrative gain pricing power and competitive leverage.

Competitive Landscape: High Stakes, Heavyweight Rivals

Verint’s ambitions place it squarely in competition with enterprise CX heavyweights and emerging AI-first players alike.

Major CX platforms are aggressively investing in:

• Generative AI copilots

• Predictive analytics

• Unified data layers

• Low-code automation

Meanwhile, AI-native startups are pitching full-stack contact center replacements built entirely around automation-first architectures.

Verint’s advantage lies in its installed base, enterprise relationships, and now, expanded workforce capabilities. Its challenge will be integration speed and innovation velocity—two areas where startups tend to move faster.

Rhodes’ background in scaling software organizations could prove critical in maintaining momentum while executing complex integration.

What Customers Should Watch

For existing Verint and Calabrio customers, the key questions will revolve around:

• Platform unification timelines

• Pricing and licensing structures

• AI feature rollout speed

• Data interoperability

• Migration complexity

If the integration delivers seamless AI-driven workflows across workforce engagement and automation layers, the value proposition strengthens considerably.

If not, customers may look to modular alternatives.

A Defining Chapter for Verint

Leadership transitions often signal a strategic reset. In this case, the move appears less about course correction and more about acceleration.

Rhodes inherits a company with expanded scale, broader capabilities, and a clear market narrative: CX Automation at enterprise depth.

The next 12–18 months will determine whether Verint can convert that narrative into measurable dominance—or whether the rapidly evolving AI CX space remains fragmented and fiercely competitive.

For now, one thing is clear: Verint is betting that unifying automation, workforce intelligence, and AI under one roof isn’t just a product strategy—it’s the future of customer experience.

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