Pascal Beaudoin, M.Sc., Director of Customer-Centric Solutions, Business Performance and Information Technology at Beneva, is an active member of the Genesys Orchestrators™ Program, where he shares his insights and expertise. In this article, Beaudoin discusses his perspective on leadership in the experience economy (as told to Ginger Conlon).  

For most of my career, I’ve alternated between business and IT roles. These various experiences provided me with a unique ability to understand complex problems from both angles and translate them into clear, practical solutions. And although I wasn’t directly in contact with customers in those roles, I understood the importance of customer experience (CX). When we processed transactions, accuracy and communication mattered.  

I’ve carried that critical thinking and customer focus with me to my current position as Director of Customer-Centric Solutions, Business Performance and Information Technology at Beneva — my first true role in the CX ecosystem. 

I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I do. For the past three years, I’ve been having so much fun working with my team, supporting the Genesys solution.  

What surprised me most was the impact I’m making. When you support a platform that enables most of your company’s sales and service interactions, you know your work can make a difference. 

Genesys is a critical component in our operation. That reality shapes how I think about leadership, quality, pace and the skills required to succeed in today’s experience economy. 

Transparency and Empowerment in Practice 

My leadership style is results-driven, built on transparency and grounded in practical problem solving. It blends coaching and empowerment. I believe in giving people clarity of objective, removing barriers and trusting them to deliver value in their own way. 

I also prioritize purpose and pace. Purpose means knowing where we’re heading. When you understand the long-term target, daily decisions become easier; work becomes aligned and meaningful. Pace is about being deliberate. In our environment, quality matters more than speed. We pace ourselves accordingly. 

As a leader, I also focus on turning complex problems into simple, actionable solutions that make sense to both IT and business teams. For example, during our migration to the Genesys Cloud™ platform, we had to accelerate parts of the transition, prioritizing certain contact centers earlier than planned. Instead of shielding the team or issuing directives, I explained why the timeline had changed. I was fully transparent about the business context. 

Then I asked them: What do you need to be successful? 

I left it to the team to tell me if they needed more staff, wanted to bring in Genesys Professional Services or needed any specific support from me. That’s empowerment. That builds engagement and trust. 

Employees today want leaders who communicate openly, value emotion as much as logic and understand that experience isn’t only for customers — it’s for employees, too.  

In the experience economy, leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions for your team to succeed. For me, that meant becoming more intentional about listening and about facilitating cross-functional collaboration. 

This is critical for any CX executive today. If you’re not facilitating cross-functional alignment, you’re not truly leading customer experience. 

Like many organizations, at Beneva we have a complex web of teams: business units, IT, marketing, workforce management and more. Each team has different priorities and timelines. What’s best for one unit isn’t necessarily best for the organization as a whole.  

So, we built cross-functional governance structures that bring together representatives from each group. The focus isn’t “my business unit” or “your business unit.” The focus is the client. The goal is to determine what’s best for our clients overall.

Employee Experience Is the Force Multiplier

More than ever before, customer experience is inextricably linked to employee experience. I’ve seen firsthand that when people feel supported, appreciated and psychologically safe, the quality of customer outcomes changes dramatically. I believe employees will give you back tenfold what you invest in them in terms of stability and the quality of their work environment.  

But if your employees are stressed, unhappy or poorly trained, you will not get a great customer experience. Stress is never a good motivator for quality work. 

This is true for contact center agents and IT teams alike. Everyone needs to feel calm, confident, well trained and supported. When they do, they can deliver better outcomes for customers. 

We support 22 contact centers and manage hundreds of requests per month. The pressure is constant. It’s easy for frustration to build when requests feel last-minute or urgent. So, I coach my team to pause and put themselves in the other team’s place. Maybe they’re under pressure, too. 

The same principle applies to agents serving customers. In insurance, customers often call during stressful moments — car accidents, house fires, uncertainty about where they’ll sleep that night. They may not have their contract number.  

That’s why empathy is one of the three skills that matter most today. Empathy lowers friction; it makes customers and colleagues feel understood. 

Adaptability and critical thinking are the other two key skills. 

Cloud-based solutions move fast. We’ll plan major changes over a longer time frame, but smaller updates can happen within days. And one small change in an interface can create a much larger change in a process. 

CX teams must be adaptable. Change is constant. Leaders must normalize it. 

And as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more embedded in contact centers — handling everything from routine inquires to call summaries to appointment scheduling — critical thinking becomes even more important. For example, an agent cannot blindly copy an AI-generated summary into a client file. They must review it for accuracy and completeness. AI is not perfect. Human judgment matters. 

That’s why, although there’s fear that AI will replace humans, I don’t see it that way. AI will replace most routine tasks, yes. But customer experience is rarely routine.  

It’s our responsibility to learn how to work with AI. We need to understand its strengths, weaknesses and limitations. If you don’t, you’ll ask the wrong questions, get flawed outputs or even implement the wrong AI tools. You may also miss opportunities that AI presents. 

Challenge Plus Purpose Equals Motivation

For leaders, this shift means rethinking not just how work gets done, but what keeps teams engaged. Often, people are motivated by meaningful challenges.  

My team thrives when we implement something new, especially when it delivers real business value and makes agents’ lives easier. Right now, we’re implementing email in Genesys, and the team is having fun doing that.  

Succeeding in the experience economy isn’t just about having the best technology to improve customer and employee experiences. It’s about empowering experts, investing in employees, collaborating across silos and strengthening human judgment in an AI-augmented world. 

The leaders positioned to be most successful in the experience economy know that technology enables experience, but people define it. 

To learn more about the Genesys Orchestrators program, visit us online today.