Calix appoints former Salesforce EVP as chief customer officer

March 29, 2023
A pioneer in the cloud industry during his 16 years at Salesforce, John Durocher will expand the Calix customer success organization to accelerate its customers’ transformation from legacy broadband operating models to a managed service innovation model.
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Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) has announced its appointment of John Durocher as chief customer officer (CCO), demonstrating the company's stated long-term commitment to helping broadband service providers (BSPs) succeed in a transforming industry.

Calix prides itself on playing a critical role in enabling BSPs to differentiate themselves in their markets, provide superior experiences, and transform their business models through the unique Calix platform and managed services.

In a press release, Durocher is described a cloud industry pioneer with over 30 years of experience helping customers achieve breakthrough business transformations and maximize technology investments. He was most recently an executive vice president at Salesforce, where he ran customer success, support, services, and renewals. He is widely recognized as one of the founders of customer success in the cloud industry.

As CCO at Calix, Durocher will leverage his extensive experience to scale and expand the Calix business unites for Customer Success Services, Professional Services, Education Services, and Global Support Services.

As one example of the expanding investment in customer success, Durocher will oversee the expansion of Calix Business Insights Services, which launched in October 2022. As noted by the company, this capability enables even the smallest BSPs to leverage the data available in Calix Cloud to build business-transforming action plans faster and with significantly deeper insight than a data-blind and slow-moving legacy competitor.

Durocher commented:

“The chance to lead the renowned customer success, services, education, and support organization at Calix as they work with BSPs to uplift their rural communities is a once-in-a-career opportunity. Calix is built on the transformational mission to enable BSPs to simplify their business and excite their subscribers to grow their value and enrich life in their regions. With the massive influx of public, private, federal, and local funding entering the industry, the teams at Calix are working with BSPs of all types and sizes to significantly impact the future of their communities and society. I’ve watched with deep admiration as the customer success organization at Calix set a new broadband industry standard for customer enablement and support services under Martha’s extraordinary leadership. I look forward to reaching great new heights together.”

Michael Weening, president and CEO at Calix, commented:

“Our 12-year, $1+ billion investment in the industry’s only end-to-end cloud, software, and systems platform has matured at a pivotal time in the broadband market. Legacy providers are coming to grips with the fact that the dumb-pipe speed strategy they have used for decades is a fast path to business decline. Calix-partnered BSPs work closely with our teams—well beyond our unique platform—to completely transform their businesses. The Calix customer success organization is at the forefront of this critical partnership for change. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with John again as he brings extensive knowledge to guide our teams in supporting our customers’ success. Furthermore, John’s decision to join Calix, when he could have gone to any company in the cloud industry, is a testament to how inspiring it is to support our customers’ purpose: transforming communities for generations to come.”

Durocher succeeds Martha Galley, who has served as Calix chief customer success officer since 2018 and founded the company’s customer success function. Since its inception, the company notes its customer success organization has enabled thousands of BSPs to transform their businesses and grow their value for the communities they serve.

Over several months, Galley will transition to executive vice president of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at Calix. This new function will allow her to significantly further the company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals by expanding partnerships with customers through joint ESG initiatives. 

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