Crescendo Appoints Andy Lee as CEO to Accelerate the Next Phase of AI-Native Customer Experience

Co-founder, executive chairman and longtime enterprise technology leader steps into CEO role as Crescendo helps organizations evolve beyond legacy customer experience (CX) systems

SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crescendo, the only AI-native customer experience solution built to run CX as one unified system, today announced the appointment of Andy Lee as Chief Executive Officer. Lee, who is a co-founder of Crescendo and has served as Chairman of the company, will lead it through its next phase as Crescendo scales its CX platform, expands enterprise adoption and advances its AI-native architecture for companies looking to move beyond fragmented legacy CX systems that limit what AI can do. Matt Price, Crescendo's co-founder and founding CEO, will transition to the role of Strategic Advisor to the Board, where he will support the leadership transition and continue advising the company on its long-term strategy.

This appointment comes at a defining moment for the CX market. Enterprises are rapidly adopting AI, but many remain constrained by legacy CX systems unequipped for autonomous, agentic operations. Crescendo addresses that challenge with an AI-native CX architecture designed to replace fragmented CX architectures, not just layer AI onto them.

“AI is not just another feature to be layered onto traditional software,” said Andy Lee, CEO 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.”

Lee brings decades of experience leading enterprise customer operations at scale. He spent nearly 23 years as CEO of Alorica and now serves as Executive Chairman, giving him firsthand insight into the operational challenges facing today’s largest customer experience organizations.

Crescendo enters this next phase with meaningful customer proof behind its model. The company powers more than 500 AI deployments worldwide, with customers including Lovepop, Headspace, SQUIRE, Nothing Bundt Cakes and Grindr. Results show the model is already working in production: SQUIRE nearly doubled support volume to more than 17,000 conversations in six months with no increase in case backlogs and a 15% year-over-year increase in CSAT. That traction underscores why Crescendo’s next chapter is focused on scaling the approach for more enterprise organizations under Lee’s leadership.

Since co-founding Crescendo in January 2024 alongside Anand Chandrasekaran, Matt Price and Slava Zhakov, Lee has helped shape the company’s strategy as it moves toward a full-stack, AI-native approach to customer experience. As CEO, he will focus on bringing that platform to more enterprise organizations and helping CX leaders solve the foundational infrastructure issues that legacy systems have left unresolved.

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

Crescendo’s platform combines AI-native automation with the operational depth required to support modern customer experience teams. The company is focused on helping organizations reduce complexity across fragmented CX environments, improve the speed and quality of customer interactions, and create more adaptive systems that learn from every engagement.

“From the beginning, Crescendo has represented the kind of applied AI transformation General Catalyst believes will reshape large, complex markets,” said Hemant Taneja, CEO 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 organizations makes him the right leader for this next phase as Crescendo moves from proving the model to expanding its impact.”

Crescendo enters this next phase with a strong platform and customer momentum. Its platform is MCP-native, LLM-independent, and designed for enterprise-grade security, resilience, and scale. The company has also received growing recognition across the AI and CX markets, including a Newsweek AI Impact Award in AI Customer Service, CMSWire’s GOLD Impact Award for Excellence in CCaaS and Customer Service, the 2026 AI-Based Customer Solution of the Year from the AI Breakthrough Awards, a spot on TechRound’s 2026 AI45 list, and the Best of Enterprise Connect Award.

About Crescendo
Founded in 2024, Crescendo is the company behind an AI-native customer experience platform that helps organizations run and continuously improve customer experiences across all interactions, workforce management, quality assurance, analytics, and optimization. Unlike legacy CX vendors that have layered AI onto fragmented architectures, Crescendo was built AI-native from day one — combining customer-facing intelligence, workforce management, quality assurance, analytics, and continuous optimization in one platform. The result is a simpler stack, faster innovation, lower operational overhead, and better customer outcomes.

Media Contacts:
LaunchSquad for Crescendo
crescendo@launchsquad.com

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