From Headset to C-Suite: Miranda Collard on CX Leadership

Dom Nicastro: Hey everyone, Dom Nicastro here, editor-in-chief of CMSWire.com, back with another episode of CX Decoded. Today we’re diving deep with someone who has spent over three decades in the contact center world, climbing from the front lines to the C-suite.

That’s right — we’re joined by Miranda Collard, global chief client officer at Teleperformance, or TP as you’ll hear us say. Miranda’s been through it all — from wearing a headset as one of the company’s first agents to shaping AI-powered customer journeys for some of the biggest brands on the planet.

We’ve pulled together five big takeaways from our conversation — insights that every CX and contact center leader should hear.

(Editor's note: Check our Miranda Collard's full interview on CMSWire TV).

A Frontline-to-C-Suite Journey that Shapes Leadership

Dom Nicastro: When you talk to someone who has been with the same organization for over 30 years, you expect wisdom — but Miranda brings something even more valuable: perspective. She’s lived every rung of the contact center ladder, and it influences how she leads today.

Miranda Collard: I definitely listen to a lot of [calls], but definitely from a partnership perspective, obviously connecting all of the dots and the capabilities and hopefully making dreams come true as C-Suite's develop their objectives over time and through the years and what they need and how they need to adopt their customer journey.

I would say being a frontline agent, a lot of us come into this business, you know, as a college job, which is what it was going to be for me. And I fell in love with what we did as a company and organization and the people and, you know, the clients. And so was able to make a career out of it.

But, you know, I actually grew up in the operation. So I spent 22, I want to say 22 years running contact centers, the COO of our US region before I went over to the client side. So that really set me up for how everything works mechanically, right? Like all the wheels and the cogs really set up for me to be extremely helpful from a partnership perspective and how we can do better, greater things together.

Dom Nicastro: That’s a blueprint for empathy in leadership — starting at the front lines and carrying that operational knowledge into boardroom strategy. For CX leaders, this is a reminder: you can’t optimize what you’ve never lived.

Related Article: What Is a Contact Center? Omnichannel Customer Experience Redefined

AI’s Real Impact is Behind the Scenes

Dom Nicastro: AI in the contact center gets a lot of attention for flashy customer-facing applications, but Miranda says the real magic is often invisible — and that’s where the biggest gains happen.

Miranda Collard: I think now we're starting to see, you know, that we're past the ideation phase in really mapping the generative and AI tools and technologies. People, I think, have a misconception that this is kind of on a front end experience level versus what you can really do from a backend perspective, which creates those efficiency gains. Because when knowledge is easier for you to find and provide resolution, you're going to have customer satisfaction gains.

You're going to improve retention. When you have technology and tools that will help you drive even sales solutions, these tools will help you understand what the customer needs most and when.

So when you're showing up ready to deliver on those things, you start to see all of those elements of key performance indicators improve. But I think one of the unspoken things that really improve in all of these interactions is the retention of your people. When they're successful, and you're helping make them more successful, they continue to stay and grow and, you know, hopefully become the next global chief client officer.

Dom Nicastro: This flips the AI conversation on its head — it’s not just about faster chatbots, it’s about arming your people to be more effective. That’s where satisfaction scores and retention rates start to climb.

Emotional Intelligence is a CX Power Tool

Dom Nicastro:  The best agents don’t just solve problems — they connect with people. Miranda’s approach to developing emotional intelligence (EQ) in contact centers is a masterclass.

Miranda Collard: It's one of the hardest jobs that you'll ever do. It's also one of the most rewarding in development of your skills, right? In your personal skills and your soft skills and your emotional intelligence and all of those things. I've been a firm believer my entire career that culture is everything.

Obviously 31 years at TP, I learned a lot of that through the culture and value system of TP. And really at the heart of that is servant leadership, right? We're here to serve, we're here to serve our employees, we're here to serve our customers.

And as part of that, we have always been maniacal about how we show up for our employees. And now in this instance, how we show up from an emotional intelligence perspective.

Just as pervasive as it is from an adoption of AI and technology, it's equally as such on how we're enabling the frontline to further those emotional intelligence skills. Because you're going to have to show up in a different way, which means we need to make sure that at the same time and in parallel, that we're preparing the frontline, the management, the leadership with our emotional intelligence program. Which by the way has been, you know, active now — I believe we're up to 60 to 80,000 people that have gone through this training program.

Dom Nicastro: AI might make interactions faster, but EQ makes them matter. Scaling emotional intelligence isn’t a “nice-to-have” — it’s a CX differentiator.

Related Article: The Growing Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Marketing

Empowering Agents Through Insight Gathering

Dom Nicastro: The front line isn’t just where problems get solved — it’s where some of the best ideas live. Miranda has built systems to bring those ideas forward.

Miranda Collard: If you're looking for an answer, all you have to do is walk into your contact center and have a conversation. You'll find an answer on product. You'll find an answer on friction. You'll find an answer on what needs to change, what's happening by market. I mean, there is expert information that they don't even realize they have in their brains.

And all you have to do is kind of suck it out and collate it and make sure the right people understand it. We have processes for that, obviously, at TP for years and years to bring forward all of that information.

But what's even more crucial right now — and as a part of kind of mirroring the EQ and the AI perspective for us — is that in our business, there is a standard quality practice... but now you're able to do that every day with AI. You don't need somebody sitting here checking the boxes, but what you can do now is start capturing those insights and information that's coming in. And if you can just nurture that and bring it forward and do something with even 10% of it, you are going to make such a significant difference.

Dom Nicastro: That’s the essence of agent empowerment — not just scoring them on performance, but listening to them as innovators.

Turning Insights into Action in 2025

Dom Nicastro: Collecting data is easy. Acting on it — and making it matter for both customers and agents — is the next frontier.

Miranda Collard: I think the insight to action has always been a top priority. I think the action is the difference, right? Because I think we're now more enabled than ever to actually put real activity in place that's going to improve that enablement. Whereas before, the technology wasn't necessarily as advanced or it would be an expensive and a big undertaking. It's not uncommon for a frontline person to have to log into up to 16 systems. It's not uncommon to sit in training for six to 16 weeks.

But that action, I think, is the most exciting part of what's going to happen in 2025. And really, finally, for those of us that have been doing this for so long, finally, we're going to be able to take that enablement and that frontline experience to the next level. If we could just do a fraction of what we've wanted to do in technology on that front over the coming years, it will improve experience globally across the board. Every single, every single customer experience will improve just with that activity.

Insight Without Action in the Contact Center? Just Noise

Dom Nicastro: Insight without action is just noise. The organizations that act — even incrementally — will set the pace for the industry. That’s a wrap on this conversation with Miranda Collard — a leader who not only talks the talk but has walked every step of the CX journey herself.

From headset to C-suite, her perspective bridges technology, empathy and action. Whether you’re running a global contact center or leading a small CX team, there’s a clear through-line here: empower your people, leverage technology to remove friction, and never lose sight of the human connection. That’s how you build experiences that last.