We recently chatted with Olivier Jouve, the newly appointed executive vice president at Genesys, to get his thoughts on the future of cloud customer experience and his plans as head of our PureCloud business unit.

First, there’s no pretense with Olivier. He’s geeky, smart and entrepreneurial — from his days launching start-up tech companies to leading product management for enterprise giants like IBM. He’s a tech innovator to be reckoned with. And, he’s funny enough to take my bad jokes on. But best of all, he gets it, and he has impressive plans for PureCloud by Genesys.

Olivier sees exponential growth, gains in market traction and more customers in our future.  He envisions adding to our amazingly talented team with people who think outside of the box and who keep inventing to make the customer experience better.  And he wants to revolutionize the industry through artificial intelligence and machine learning, which by the way is totally within in his wheelhouse.

As an expert in Internet of Things (Iot), machine learning, text analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), Olivier has some pretty cool ideas to advance PureCloud beyond today’s limits of customer experience. He says the future lies in AI by leveraging the mass amounts of data available through omnichannel customer interactions to enable machine learning to better understand people’s sentiments, attitudes and behavior and predict future actions.

Curious yet? Watch my interview below with Olivier to learn more about his plans at Genesys for PureCloud.

As for the human side of Olivier, I think you’ll like that part too. Here’s a further glimpse into our conversation to provide you with an insight into how his mind ticks.

Q. What’s a book you’ve read recently that had an impact on you?

Olivier: One book I found fascinating recently was The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine. It’s about the 12 domains that will influence what’s ahead of us in terms of the intersection of human and machines. The idea is that we aren’t going to be able to stop what is going to happen in the next 30 years. Artificial Intelligence (AI), of course, will be a main driver. Sharing, questioning and cognition are a few topics that Kelly covered that are quite interesting as they relate to customer experience. Kelly predicts that machines will get better at answering questions, but humans will continue to be a master at asking questions. To me, if you combine all these forces, they can be a roadmap for us at PureCloud as we design its future.

Q. Who do you admire most as a business leader?

Olivier: It’s Elon Musk. I like that he is bold, he’s holding on to his dreams, and he makes them happen. He’s like the Jules Verne of the twenty-first century.

Q. What are the accomplishments that you are most proud of?

Olivier: First, a happy family and wonderful children. Second, I am proud to have developed and embedded analytics experience a part of everything I have done over the last thirty years, from customer sentiment analysis to Internet of Things.