In our new “CX One on One” series, we will meet the dynamic and talented team members behind the scenes at NICE representing all the facets of the world’s #1 cloud native customer experience platform. We recently sat down with Chris Morrissey, VP, Sales, CX International, pictured above at left with friends after reaching the summit of Mount Whitney in California, the highest mountain in the continental U.S. He discussed our global growth and recent new customers in Europe, Asia and South America, and shared more about his passion for CX, the talented international team of professionals he’s assembled and how growing up around the world prepared him for this role.
Chris Morrissey understands better than most that it’s about the journey – not the destination.
A lifelong traveler who spent half his childhood living on different continents, he recognizes the parallels in how good customer experience makes every journey a lot smoother.
“After a lifetime of travel, I've learned to appreciate quality customer experience when you're away from home,” Morrissey said. “I’m in tune with our customers because CX can make all the difference in the world. I love helping brands deliver that kind of experience.”
Morrissey has been part of our CX team for six years, most recently serving as Vice President, Sales, CX International since summer 2021. In his current role, he’s focused on delivering CXone to our global markets by assembling an international team and coordinating with industry partners who have a vast knowledge of each region.
Together, they work to tailor our value proposition to various verticals and present the advantages of the personalized digital-first experiences with CXone, the world’s best-in-class cloud CX platform.
Global education
Morrissey calls his current role the perfect segue of his international exposure and passion for CX. Morrissey’s global education stems from his father’s career in the oil industry, which took the family from the Middle East to Europe. That intense zest for traveling followed him in adulthood as well.
“Being worldly in my youth is something I carried with me even after college,” he said. “I spent two years backpacking around the world, spending time in Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and all over Europe.”
This global education provided a foundation of knowledge and interest in the regions he now serves.
In addition to navigating cultural differences, he’s adept at understanding the complex regulatory environments of different regions. For example, there are banking and privacy laws unique to different regions within Europe as well as within every individual country in Asia.
Building a ‘partner ecosystem’
Like the title of the award-winning movie, you could say Morrissey and his team need to be everything everywhere all at once.
Managing a team focused on continued record booking growth requires a high level of coordination and collaboration. That’s where Morrissey’s expertise and NICE’s impressive international bandwidth dovetail.
“With NICE as an established international player in the market, we’re able to leverage that existing sales organization with precision,” Morrissey said. “The breadth and depth of our company’s global footprint combined with our products’ impressive global capabilities allow us to continue growing market share.”
As NICE accelerated its R&D advancements to make sure our solutions are embedded, the sales chain grew stronger. “We’ve built a sales force with less overlap to create tighter segments globally. In doing so, we’ve been successful in boosting capacity within our team,” Morrissey said. “Having a larger sales team operating in shorter segments galvanized higher participation to optimize the overall organization.”
Calling it a “partner ecosystem,” Morrissey has built results-driven sales channels cultivating relationships with partners that are proven experts in the regions they serve, and truly have a lay of the land.
“The word that comes to mind when describing our relationship with our partners is ‘symbiotic.’ We’re in sync every step of the way. Our sales force is extremely high touch, so we’re working side by side with our partners in messaging and our pre-sales team is very involved in making sure we're bringing the right products to bear with the right design,” Morrissey said.
He added, “Many of our partners have had relationships for more than a decade with their customer base and are always looking for the best products to bring to them. That’s where we come in and deliver a high-touch consultative part of the sales process.”
Morrissey explains the partners we work with fit into three main buckets:
- Communication providers
One of our major partners in this group is RingCentral, a leading provider of business cloud communications and contact center solutions. This group also includes unified communications as a service (UCaaS) providers and global service providers (GSPs).
- SI (System Integrator)
These companies specialize in bringing together component subsystems to ensure they function together. This includes partners such as Infosys, Atos and Tech Mahindra.
- Value-added reseller (VAR)
These regional providers sell a series of different products and can help spur channel growth on a local level.
“Our existing sales infrastructure put us in a prime position to help our partners broaden the portfolio of solutions they could sell. For example, a partner that historically was selling just workforce management (WFM) is now getting into the CCaaS space,” Morrissey said. “Our new innovations also created a huge opportunity for us to identify and sign new partners that were focused in new areas for us. We’re looking forward to recruiting and onboarding new partners in the months ahead.”
Celebrating big wins
Morrissey and his team thrive on winning new business for CXone, entering new markets and growing key accounts across all verticals.
“I love winning as a team. NICE has created an environment where we really celebrate wins together,” he said. “We count wins like entering a new market or solving a challenge a customer is having and being their partner to achieve significant results. That’s the culmination of working together with smart, passionate people.”
He counts the following as big wins in addition to expansions with a few international luxury brands. New customers include:
- A smartphone-based taxi booking and dispatching service in Singapore, which also operates in Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam
- A large private sector bank in Brazil and one of the largest financial institutions in Latin America
- A global leader in next-gen business services, which employs 420,000 contact center agents worldwide serving customers in over 265 languages and dialects in 170 countries
- A fast-growing insurance provider based in the United Kingdom that is focused on data and digital services
“We also are working closing with new customers in partnership with Orange Business Systems, a major partner in France,” he added. “And we partnered with Etisalat Digital to drive the availability of the CXone platform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”
If you weren’t in CX…
Sometimes you need to disconnect to reconnect, says Morrissey. He loves engaging with people day-to-day but believes pausing to immerse himself in a vigorous outdoor activity allows him to reset. In his time away from work, you can find him outdoors hiking, skiing or even paragliding. Most recently, he hiked Mount Whitney in California, the highest mountain in the continental U.S., for the first time.
So, his answer to what he’d be doing if he weren’t in CX naturally was a job where he could surround himself with natural beauty. He would get back to his roots as a river rafting guide, which he worked as while he was traveling around the world after college.
“In a heartbeat, I would go back to river rafting if I weren’t in CX. I would blow the cobwebs off my memory and see if I could be a guide again. I loved it. That job is what supported my backpacking travels in Europe and Asia,” Morrissey said.
Chris Morrissey sky diving over Palm Islands in Dubai.
What’s next
Like the invigorating feeling he gets climbing the highest peak, Morrissey is looking forward to the new altitudes CX innovations will reach.
NICE CX has the edge in the global marketplace with its multinational flexibility, and that puts Morrissey’s sales team on track for a market expansion strategy. NICE’s innovations to enhance the end-to-end digital experience for customers is a market game-changer, giving his team leverage.
“We’re seeing the adoption of digital platforms across the board. We have our finger on the pulse of those emerging regional differences. For example, people communicating with businesses via WhatsApp when they have a need event is much more prevalent in the global markets than it is in the U.S.,” he said.
Having that deep understanding of CX trends and offering a solution for businesses looking to stay ahead of their customers is what empowers CXone’s edge.
“We’re starting the year pursuing a faster percentage growth potential in our core markets and we’re eyeing expansion to new markets,” Morrissey said. “Knowing how to capture that momentum requires passion and a vision of the future.”
He added, “I continually motivate myself and my team by asking if we’re executing fast enough to keep up with the speed of change – and overall changing expectations and technology in the market. We’re focused on rising to the challenge and maintaining our market leadership position.”