@five9 CX Summit Interview with CEO Mike Burkland

Yeah, so first of all, just to clarify, I never really left. I became chairman of the board when I got stage four cancer in 2017, and I stayed very close to the business and the team. And then recently, my doctors gave me a very good long-term prognosis, and that has allowed me to get back to doing what I love. As I said today, there were really four main reasons. Number one, I just believe so strongly in this team of people here at Five9. We have a unique culture, an amazing team of people. We have some of the best and most exciting technology to change the world of customer experience. I believe in the market opportunity. We're in a massive market of cloud contact center and CX replacing these legacy systems. It is a 10 to 15 year runway of growth ahead of us. It's an exciting time. And there was a fourth reason: I care. I really care about this company. Having run the company for 10 years from the very early days, through my five years as chairman, this company means a lot to me. It's much like we have three real children, and this is our fourth child, so to speak. The company means a lot to me, the people mean a lot to me: our customers, our partners, our analysts and influencers. I just care, and that's why I came back.

Oh, it's dramatic. I mean, really, a CEO's job is to run the company on a day-to-day basis. The Chairman's role is really to run the board, and that role is completely different. I was actually an executive chairman for the first couple of years of that five-year period, and I was much more hands-on in the first two years as executive chairman. That's actually a real job. And as a chairman, I also stayed very involved because, quite frankly, given my history with the company and the fact that the leadership team here wanted my involvement, I was very careful to let them pull me in where they wanted my involvement. But it's nowhere near the day-to-day involvement of the CEO job.

Oh my goodness, that's a long topic. People in technology, we talk about it so often. Remember, we are a technology company, right? We're providing software in the cloud for running contact centers and creating great customer experiences. But it's important in this day and age to understand that unlike the old days of software when you really shipped software to an enterprise and they ran it from there, this is a new world: software as a service. And that 'as a service' is really important. We are earning our customers' business every single day. We're an extension of their team, and we're responsible for the Five9 platform and our solutions. And so because of that, the power of people becomes much more important. It's not just technology, but it's having our enterprise customers choose us because of our people also, because they know that we're an extension of their team and we have to execute.

Yeah, that one thing I would say is: be yourself. Be yourself and be a leader. My definition of a leader is very simple: it's a person that people want to follow. And if you think about that at its core, it's very simple. Your job as a leader is to help the people that you've brought onto your team. And it's a team. Your job as a leader is to help them succeed. And if you take that approach to leadership, it's an obligation, it's a duty. But I love doing that. That's what I live for: helping our team succeed. And I think that's the number one piece of advice I would give anyone that's leading an entrepreneur, a CEO of another company, or an early stage company. Just keep that in mind. That's the real job of a CEO.

Oh my goodness, we are in such a unique situation in our market. The importance of CX is not one thing, but there are about three or four things that are coming together all at the same time. So it's a perfect storm of customer experience becoming mission critical, more mission critical for every enterprise. It's no longer a cost center that we're helping reduce cost. This is a mission critical effort to improve customer experience. The digital transformation and the shift to the cloud, yes, AI, this revolution that we're all living in. Absolutely, it's taken the world by storm. And quite frankly, just the overall market opportunity is the most exciting part. And the fact that we've got the team and the technology, the technology and the people to go conquer this opportunity is exciting.

Well, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Juanita.