Photo: Tony Bates
Omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions company Genesys announced this week that it has named Tony Bates as its new CEO effective immediately. Bates is succeeding Paul Segre — who is going to continue working at Genesys as chairman of the company. Bates is going to continue working on the board of directors at VMware and eBay as well.
“The opportunity to lead Genesys at this pivotal moment is truly an honor,” said Bates. “With its next-generation cloud business growing 85% year over year and rapid injection of AI throughout its customer experience platform, Paul and Tom have done an incredible job building Genesys into a market leader with a remarkable customer base. Especially noteworthy is its PureCloud offer, which is one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses ever, on par with high-growth companies like Zoom.1 The immense opportunity ahead of us is clear, and I intend to ensure that we capitalize on it.”
Bates has decades of experience driving business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies through industry transitions and rapid scaling. This includes Cisco’s Service Provider business and its Enterprise and Commercial division to over $20 billion in annual revenue.
And Bates also worked as CEO of Skype where he expanded the business to more than 170 million connected users. After Skype was acquired by Microsoft, Bates was named as a president responsible for unified communications before working as executive vice president of business development and developers.
“In my 12 years as CEO, I’ve had the privilege of working with the best team in the industry. We have repeatedly disrupted the market, most recently with our cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) innovations, and ended 2018 with $1.5 billion in revenue – our best year yet,” Segre said. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to step into a new role as chairman at this high point in the company’s history and welcome our new CEO, Tony Bates, at a time when there’s so much opportunity for Genesys.”
The Permira Funds and Hellman & Friedman own a combined majority stake in Genesys.
“Tony brings years of proven success leading technology businesses as they navigate change and drive rapid growth. We welcome his energy, direction and leadership as Genesys builds on its recent momentum. We would also like to thank Paul and Tom for their stewardship, deep engagement and strong initiative in propelling Genesys forward as the undisputed leader in the customer experience market,” explained Hellman & Friedman partner Tarim Wasim.
And Genesys President Tom Eggemeier is going to transition to a new role as partner at one of the company’s private equity investors Permira. Permira is known for investing in WeddingWire and backing its merger with XO Group to form The Knot Worldwide, the sale of Magento Commerce to Adobe for $1.68 billion, the acquisition of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions (SPVSS) business (known as Synamedia), and its investment in innovative payments company Klarna.
“Since we began our relationship with Genesys in 2012, we’ve had the privilege of working closely with Tom and have seen firsthand how his innovative, passionate and team-oriented leadership style has helped to deliver the results that have made Genesys an industry leader,” added Brian Ruder — who is Co-Head of Technology and Partner at Permira — about bringing Eggemeier to the private equity team. “At Permira, we pride ourselves on the way we work collaboratively with portfolio companies to help execute their strategies and drive value, and we are confident Tom will contribute massively to each element of the investment cycle for Permira and the companies we back.”
Currently, Genesys powers over 25 billion of the world’s best customer experiences every year. And the company’s success is based on connecting employee and customer conversations on any channel. There are 11,000 companies in over 100 countries that trust Genesys’ customer experience platform for driving great business outcomes every day. And Genesys’ industry-leading solutions work on-premises and in the cloud.
