Six years ago the industry went home in two weeks. Most contact centers kept the org chart and lost the floor: the supervisor who spots a bad call, the two-minute coaching fix, the new hire learning next to someone good. Most never rebuilt it.

In this episode of the CX Gurus Podcast, host Darren Prine (CRO & Co-Founder, Cloud Tech Gurus) talks with Sameer Maini, CEO and Founder of CollaborationRoom.AI, who spent 20 years running contact center and BPO operations before building software for them.

In this episode

• What contact centers actually glued together in March 2020
• What they lost when they left the building, and what it shows up as in the numbers
• Why many remote centers are “surviving, not thriving”
• A before-and-after customer story: 33% more calls taken and 27% more revenue in 90 days (client-reported)
• What a great remote contact center looks like in 2026
• The talent a remote center can hire that a building never could

Chapters
0:00 Highlights
0:44 Welcome: how remote work lost the floor
3:25 March 2020: the scramble to go remote
6:19 What centers lost when they left the building
10:31 What is still broken in remote contact centers
13:52 What a virtual contact center floor looks like
17:57 Visible proof of compliance, and standing out as a BPO
20:12 Customer story: LMM Inc.
23:25 Supervisor alerts and agent safety
24:43 The ideal remote contact center in 2026
27:16 ROI: productivity, handle time and attrition
31:26 Raising a daughter and running a company, remote
32:45 The talent a building could never hire
36:13 Business continuity and disaster recovery
36:53 Wrap-up

Want a demo or a conversation about rebuilding supervisor presence in your remote operation? Reach out to Cloud Tech Gurus: https://cloudtechgurus.com
Past episodes: https://www.cxguruspodcast.com/
Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cxguruspodcast

Results discussed are the guest’s own, reported by his customers. Cloud Tech Gurus is a partner and distributor for CollaborationRoom.AI.

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

Wes Dudey spent his career designing customer journeys. Then a massive heart attack — six cardiac arrests, 55 shocks, a 1% survival odds — followed by kidney failure, put him inside a journey he didn't design.

In this first episode of CX Gurus, host Jess talks with Wes about what he learned as a patient that he never fully understood as a CX executive: what customer effort actually costs someone living it, not just measuring it.

This episode also marks Jess's own first public conversation about her kidney disease journey — making this less an interview and more two practitioners comparing notes from the other side of the counter.

Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@cxguruspodcast

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com

In this episode of Contact Center Journeys, Fred Stacey sits down with John Coulter, SVP of Sales at Five Star Call Centers, to talk about developing future leaders in today's remote world — and how mentorship, networking, and staying connected keep our industry growing strong.

Timestamps / Chapters:

00:00 – Developing leaders in a remote world

02:30 – John's journey through the contact center space

08:10 – The challenges and opportunities of remote culture

14:00 – The importance of mentorship and finding your network

20:15 – Fred's key takeaways and closing thoughts

Hosted by: Fred Stacey

Produced by the Cloud Tech Gurus Team. Subscribe for more insights from industry leaders. Visit www.cloudtechgurus.com