Overview:

At Cisco, I founded and scaled a CX innovation lab focused on rethinking how customers engage with support across digital and social channels. The goal was to move from fragmented engagement models to a cohesive, scalable service system that unified intake, routing, escalation, and resolution.

Problem:

Customer engagement was fragmented across disconnected systems and channels:

• Separate intake paths for social, digital, and support channels
• Inconsistent routing and escalation rules
• Limited visibility across customer interactions
• Fragmented knowledge reuse across teams and experts
• Slow information gathering from technical experts

This resulted in inconsistent experiences, slow resolution, and missed revenue opportunities as customers struggled to navigate support and purchase pathways.

My Role:

I led CX platform and experience innovation initiatives across Product, Engineering, Sales, and PR, defining the target-state service architecture and driving execution from concept through scaled rollout. My work focused on designing unified customer engagement systems across digital and social support channels, including workflow design, intelligent routing, operational scaling, and expert-led resolution models powered by a global network of 150+ technical SMEs.

I also partnered closely with AI/ML teams to design prioritization and routing systems that filtered non-actionable noise, improved case accuracy, and surfaced high-value customer and sales opportunities.

Approach:

I approached the challenge as an ecosystem design problem, focusing on creating a unified, scalable customer engagement system across digital, social, and support experiences.

Journey & Friction Analysis

Mapped end-to-end customer journeys across support and social channels to identify fragmentation, routing inefficiencies, escalation gaps, and opportunities to improve resolution quality and customer experience continuity.

Intelligent Routing & Operational Design

Designed unified intake, routing, escalation, and resolution workflows powered by AI-enabled prioritization and intelligent case classification to reduce noise, improve routing accuracy, and connect customers to the right expertise faster.

Experimentation & Continuous Optimization

Introduced structured experimentation frameworks, including MVP pilots and A/B testing, to validate operational improvements, optimize workflows, and scale high-impact engagement models across global support operations.

Solution:

The resulting system transformed fragmented customer engagement channels into a scalable, intelligent operational ecosystem designed to improve routing accuracy, expert engagement, and customer resolution outcomes.

Core Capabilities

• Unified social, digital, and support engagement into a cohesive omnichannel service model
• Implemented AI-enabled routing and prioritization systems to improve case accuracy and reduce non-actionable noise
• Built a scalable expert engagement network connecting customers with 150+ technical sales engineers and subject matter experts
• Introduced knowledge capture systems and intelligent response workflows to improve consistency, scalability, and operational efficiency
• Operationalized structured crisis response and escalation pathways for high-risk customer interactions

Outcomes:

• Reduced non-actionable “noise” cases by approximately 98% through AI-enabled intake filtering and intelligent prioritization
• Achieved approximately 99% routing accuracy through AI-driven classification and escalation systems
• Generated approximately $2M in sales pipeline impact during a 6-week pilot of expert engagement workflows
• Delivered $1.2M in operational savings through platform and vendor optimization initiatives
• Scaled a global expert engagement model powered by a network of 150+ technical SMEs
• Improved customer resolution speed and consistency across high-volume digital and social support channels
• Built and operationalized a scalable knowledge-sharing ecosystem connecting support, sales, and technical experts

Related Article: How Cisco Used Social to Build a Bridge to Its Customers

Interactive Touch-Screen CX Support Command Center at Silicon Valley Headquarters