Crescendo appoints Andy Lee as Chief Executive Officer

Crescendo has appointed co-founder Andy Lee as Chief Executive Officer. Founder and former Chief Executive Officer Matt Price has moved into the role of Strategic Advisor to the Board.

Lee, previously Chairman, takes charge as the customer experience software company pushes for broader adoption among large organisations. Price, who led the business from launch, will remain involved in long-term strategy.

The leadership change comes as companies across customer service and contact centre operations weigh how to use artificial intelligence in systems that often rely on older software and separate tools. Crescendo argues this fragmented setup makes it harder to deploy AI across customer interactions and internal workflows.

Lee is a long-time executive in customer operations. He spent nearly 23 years as Chief Executive Officer of Alorica and remains its Executive Chairman, giving him experience in large-scale outsourced customer service operations.

He also helped found Crescendo in early 2024 alongside Anand Chandrasekaran, Matt Price and Slava Zhakov. As Chairman, he has already helped shape the company's strategy and its focus on a unified customer experience platform.

Crescendo says it has more than 500 AI deployments worldwide. Named customers include Lovepop, Headspace, SQUIRE, Nothing Bundt Cakes and Grindr.

One customer example comes from SQUIRE, which handled more than 17,000 conversations in six months after nearly doubling support volumes without increasing case backlogs, according to Crescendo. The company also says SQUIRE recorded a 15% year-on-year rise in customer satisfaction.

Market shift

The broader customer experience market has become a focal point for AI investment as vendors and corporate buyers look beyond chatbots and seek wider changes to service operations. Many businesses still run customer support, workforce management, quality assurance and analytics through separate systems, creating an opening for newer suppliers offering a more integrated model.

Crescendo is targeting that market. It says its software brings together customer-facing automation, workforce management, quality assurance, analytics and optimisation in a single system, rather than layering AI tools onto existing software estates.

"AI is not just another feature to be layered onto traditional software," said Andy Lee, Chief Executive Officer of Crescendo. "The companies that will get the most value from AI are the ones that radically rethink the foundation of their customer experience operations. Legacy CX stacks are fragmented and difficult to adapt. Crescendo is building for a future where AI-native systems can understand intent, coordinate work across channels, and continuously improve with every interaction."

Backers of AI software companies have increasingly focused on sectors such as customer service, where large labour costs and heavy interaction volumes make automation attractive. Crescendo counts General Catalyst among its investors.

"The future of customer experience won't be built through incremental upgrades to legacy platforms," Lee said. "Organisations need a fundamentally different operating model. Crescendo has built that foundation, and our focus now is helping more enterprises make the transition with confidence."

Next phase

Lee's appointment marks a shift from early product and customer validation to a broader enterprise push, according to the company. That suggests Crescendo wants to deepen its presence among larger businesses reviewing how core customer service systems should be rebuilt around AI.

Its pitch rests on the idea that companies need to replace, rather than extend, systems built before the current wave of AI tools emerged. Crescendo says its platform is MCP-native and LLM-independent, and designed to work across a range of enterprise use cases.

The business has also gained industry recognition through awards in AI customer service and contact centre software. While such accolades do not always translate into long-term commercial success, they can help younger companies build visibility in a crowded software market.

General Catalyst Chief Executive Officer Hemant Taneja linked the management change to the next stage of growth. "From the beginning, Crescendo has represented the kind of applied AI transformation General Catalyst believes will reshape large, complex markets," said Hemant Taneja, Chief Executive Officer of General Catalyst. "Customer experience is one of the clearest examples of a system ready to be rebuilt for an AI-native future. Andy's experience scaling customer operations for enterprise organisations makes him the right leader for this next phase as Crescendo moves from proving the model to expanding its impact."