Each year, we ask the contact center community to nominate their choices for the ICMI Top 25 Thought Leaders of 2023. From several hundred nominations, we present the 25 thought leaders for the coming year. Please click on their LinkedIn profiles below, and be sure to congratulate them for their service to the CX and contact center industries.

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Mike Aoki

Trainer and Speaker on CX and Sales, Reflective Keynotes, Inc.

“Mike is an absolute pro! He’s so passionate and committed to helping the contact center community rise to better engage its employees and clients.”

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Matt Beckwith

Director of Customer Service, FELLERS

“Matt shares the wealth through mentoring, teaching, and supporting others in the Customer Experience community.”

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Sangeeta Bhatnagar

Principal, SB Global Human Capital Solutions

“She is the most hard-working person that I know, and always willing to help others achieve their goals.”

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Nate Brown

Co-Founder of CX Accelerator and Sr. Director of Customer Experience at Arise Virtual Solutions

“Nate can deliver a killer keynote, write inspiring content, and connect the dots and thread the needle through CX and employee experience, contact center metrics, and CX metrics.”

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Juanita Coley

CEO and Founder, Solid Rock Consulting

“She works to normalize women in tech roles, and close the user adoption gap with Contact Center tech, particularly with WFM solutions.”

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Jenny Dempsey

Community Organizer, CX Accelerator

“Jenny continuously innovates ways to meaningfully connect with and delight people and is an asset to any company who wants to better focus on their customers.”

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Neal Dlin

Chief Human Officer, Chorus Tree

“Neal’s posts are thought provoking and provide a different perspective for the customer experience field!”

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Annette Franz

Founder and CEO, CX Journey, Inc.

“Annette provides consistent coverage of customer experience.”

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Peter Gregg

Director of Customer Care, Americas, iRobot

“He is always willing to help and his experience with small to massive companies and doing CX at a global scale, few are in this space and at his level. Huge asset to the community.”

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Greg Kihlstrom

Principal, Chief Strategist, GK5A

“His continued work in the field of customer experience as an author, faculty member, and podcast host is invaluable to the industry.

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Afshan Kinder

Partner, SwitchGear

“I believe that Afshan’s collaboration with various contact centers across Canada is significant in reshaping the way contact centers operate in a way that will be vital to promoting a healthier work culture.”

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Jim Iyoob

Chief Customer Officer, Etech Global Services

“As a leader he doesn’t hesitate to develop the next generation by challenging them to learn skills to become servant leaders and to always be curious to bring actionable insights to the table to improve the quality of work and experience for agents.”

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Sean Mahoney

Solutions Consultant, XSell Technologies

“Sean is a Swiss Army knife of a colleague and leans in on contact center, CX, and customer service, pivoting across topics with ease.”

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Sheila McGee-Smith

President and Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC

“There isn’t a topic that Sheila isn’t well-versed in — or a topic that she doesn’t weigh in on — and she leaves everyone better off for it.”

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Ben Motteram

Principal, CXpert

“He tweets interesting articles daily, contributes his time and effort to answering CX Questions of the Day, and writes blog posts with common sense, actionable advice that add value to anyone managing a CX program.”

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Dmitri Novomeiski

Area Vice President, Cloud Applications, LTI

“He has strong industry experience, innovative solutions, thought leadership experience and great customer service background.”

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Leslie O’Flahavan

Principal and Owner, E-Write

“Leslie’s approach to contact center and customer experience is all about people and the way they can understand each other better. She always seeks to improve things for all concerned.”

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Justin Robbins

CX Evangelist, UJET

“Justin has so much wisdom and credibility. He is always sharing great stuff and helping others. He embodies the best of CX!”

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Jacob Shields

Director of Customer Experience & Technology, GuideStar

“Jake is such a caring, genuine person who puts the needs of the customer first and finds a way to get the rest done.”

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Stacy Sherman

Vice President, Marketing, Agent Experience, and Customer Experience, Liveops

“She has an undeniable passion for CX, and has been a huge part of making companies rethink CX.”

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Shawndra Tobias

Vice President Customer Experience, Etech Global Services

“Shawndra seamlessly combines her years of contact center operational excellence and data utilization to create actionable insights for the teams she interacts with.”

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Jeff Toister

Author, The Service Culture Handbook

“Jeff is a best-selling author and a true thought leader, someone whose perspective is fresh, well-informed, creative, and inspirational.”

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Gregorio Uglioni

Head Business Transformation, Kantonsspital Winterthur

“Gregorio is very active in the CX community, and is committed to driving CX to the next level and sharing a lot of knowhow with his podcast.”

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Jeannie Walters

CEO & Chief Customer Experience Investigator, Experience Investigators

“Jeannie shares great content about CX in a lot of different formats.”

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Jeremy Watkin

Director of Customer Experience and Support, NumberBarn

“Jeremy has such helpful content and is always sharing something new; he has a big following and a big heart.”

Throughout the year, we’ll be asking our ICMI Thought Leaders questions about the contact center industry, and sharing their thoughts, so stay tuned! In the meantime, be sure to congratulate them for their service to the industry!

Source: ICMI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders for 2023