Matt Price, CEO of Crescendo chats about the benefits and growing impact of conversational commerce on modern sales cycles in this SalesTech Star interview:
_______
Hi Matt. Tell us about yourself.
As CEO and co-founder of Crescendo, I lead the organization in its mission to redefine the role and capabilities of the modern contact center with AI. By blending generative AI with real human expertise, we’re moving away from traditional models that use automation to simply deflect and defer customers. Instead, we’ve developed a hybrid human-and-AI model focused on solving problems directly for the end-user, prioritizing superior customer experience while also improving overall business outcomes.
My path to founding Crescendo started long before AI became a buzzword. I actually began my career at a software help desk company — an experience that gave me a permanent “customer-first” perspective, which has directly influenced my approach to building Crescendo.
Throughout my career, I’ve helped grow several different companies, and I still spend a lot of my time as an angel investor and advisor. I love helping the next generation of founders take an ambitious idea and turn it into a scalable reality.
I’ve always been interested in emerging technology. As a kid in the UK, I hated sitting in classrooms and instead went to a local department store every day after school to play with the display computers. That’s how I effectively taught myself to code: iterating and experimenting. I’ve found that it made me really appreciate experimentation over long, theoretical planning, and also honed my outcome-focused mindset: what matters is if you can do something useful with the tech. Not the credentials.
How is contextual commerce changing the buying-selling game today?
Contextual commerce is dissolving the boundaries between support and sales because it can use AI as a unified “enterprise concierge” that orchestrates every customer interaction into a seamless, intent-driven journey across any channel a customer chooses to engage. Many companies have historically limited service to only a few channels because they fear overwhelming customer support teams and delivering a poor experience. With real-time sentiment detection and multimodal intelligence, AI allows organizations to address complex support needs while simultaneously identifying high-impact revenue opportunities –– while reducing the economic cost of delivering great service at scale – transforming customer experience from a reactive cost center into a proactive growth engine.
It means that anytime a customer is not satisfied or has a question, service is elevated so that in addition to resolving a customer’s initial issue, the entire experience can be turned into a positive relationship-building opportunity, and even connect directly to a sales moment. By removing traditional resource constraints, companies can open the door to more conversations across more channels with confidence. What was once just a focus on resolution is now an opportunity to truly engage with the customer in a way that fully integrates service and sales. Many of these new interactions naturally convert into sales with AI either closing directly or handing off to a human assistant, often increasing order value. It’s a true game-changer for brands in that they can now offer a luxury-level experience without resource constraints.
Can you talk about Crescendo’s latest AI shopping features and how it’s impacting better online sales cycles?
Crescendo recently launched its Multimodal AI Shopping Assistant on the Shopify App Store to make it easy for companies to implement and unify customer service and product discovery into a single, intelligent conversation. Unlike traditional bots that treat service and sales as separate workflows, our AI assistant resolves complex support inquiries while simultaneously guiding shoppers to the right products based on real-time intent and context. It’s the first time that the industry has had access to the type of AI that enables this type of integration at scale, and we’re thrilled to be one of the first to be able to offer it to our customers.
Key capabilities include direct connections to their Shopify catalogs, real-time knowledge updates and tiebacks to sales, seamless handoffs to human experts when needed, and end-to-end attribution that allows brands to see exactly how AI influences revenue, conversion rates, and average order value.
This integration is fundamentally transforming chat from a cost-heavy support function into a high-performing revenue channel. We’re seeing chat-to-order conversion rates as high as 58% –– nearly four times the industry average of 5-15%. By eliminating the friction between discovery, support, and checkout, we’re enabling customers to move from a vague request to a completed purchase within a single interaction, accelerating sales cycles while delivering a more personalized shopping experience.
Emilio Latorre, SVP of Operations at Lovepop, noted that the implementation of Crescendo’s technology directly resulted in stronger conversion rates and larger basket sizes for customers who interacted with the platform, with many customers stating it felt like talking to someone who genuinely understood what they needed and was able to execute it for them from start to finish.
Tell us more about leading brands from around the world and how they are using AI powered shopping assistants to boost conversions.
The brands leading this shift are using AI-powered shopping assistants to break down traditional business silos and transform everyday support interactions into opportunities to deepen customer relationships and increase revenue. By integrating across systems like support, sales, and inventory, these AI assistants act as a proactive partner, anticipating customer needs and guiding them seamlessly toward purchase.
Equally important, top-performing brands recognize that AI should not operate in isolation. By maintaining a continuous “human-in-the-loop” feedback cycle, they ensure their AI assistants deliver experiences that are not only efficient, but emotionally intelligent and brand authentic. This collaboration between AI and human experts creates a higher standard of service, strengthens trust, and ultimately drives stronger conversion performance.
For customer-facing brands looking to streamline their CX and sales experiences with AI assistants, what top tips come to mind?
Brands should be focused on transitioning away from “bolt-on” bots. I think we’re seeing the headlines about AI integrations failing for enterprises and brands because, for the past few years, there’s been wishful thinking about simply “adding” AI features, pressing a button, and seeing results. But as with any emerging technology, real change is going to take investment. For a technology as revolutionary as AI, it requires a total rethink of processes, operations, and business models, as well as employee retraining. Leaders in CX need to instead consider AI-native operations, and use their existing employee experts to help fine-tune AI performance and operations in a way that makes sense for the company, including looking deeper than surface-level metrics and analyzing where escalations occur between AI and human teams.
Leaders should regard AI as a more junior member of the team rather than a mere tool. In doing so, companies can establish an appropriate balance of autonomy and oversight for these assistants, serving as a framework for integrating AI into the CX strategy without sacrificing trust or accuracy.
Additionally, organizations should ensure AI is well-trained with copious amounts of relevant data and deeply orchestrated across CRM and ERP systems rather than operating in a silo. By doing so, they can prioritize a seamless experience that yields high-quality, curated knowledge over raw data volume, which allows them to maintain the accuracy, efficiency, and quality of service needed to serve the modern customer.
Finally, the right AI partner is just as important as the AI itself. You can have the best, shiniest AI tool in the world, but the real impact happens when you find a team that aligns with yours. The best partner will be there beside you to train the AI to solve your customers’ specific problems, helping you continuously tune performance through quality assurance, feedback loops, and ongoing improvement to ensure the technology is implemented correctly and ready to pivot and evolve as you receive feedback.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview With Matt Quarles, Chief Revenue Officer, Tiugo Technologies
Five thoughts around AI and the future of sales before we wrap up.
The Shift from “Containment” to “Engagement” is Key
AI chatbots should never push customers away or make their experience more frustrating. However, many companies that implement AI use it simply to divert customer requests away from human employees to save time, without considering the impact this has on customers and the broader business. This often happens when CX and ecommerce leaders are forced to spend their time stitching together tools and managing operational details rather than designing the service and sales experience itself. The future of AI in sales — which is already taking shape — goes far beyond repeating canned responses or pointing users to FAQs. It can handle complex, nuanced tasks at scale: processing returns, upgrading subscriptions, qualifying leads, and more.
This is the future I believe in: AI as a real problem-solver that turns customer pain points into opportunities to build loyalty. When leaders focus on being service and sales designers, and rely on the right partners to handle the underlying complexity, AI becomes a powerful driver of both experience and growth.
For Nuanced Scenarios, “Human-in-the-Loop” is Imperative
The way we see it, the value in AI isn’t to replace humans in the workforce. Its purpose is to reduce workload, boost efficiency, and enable teams to focus on higher-value work. For sales-oriented assistants, AI should handle discovery and qualification at scale, then seamlessly hand off to a human when the situation requires greater nuance or judgment – more human touch. The goal is not to cut existing employees, but to empower them. When a human agent steps in, they have full context to close the deal quickly and confidently.
Focus on Data Grounding to Avoid Hallucinations
To prevent AI from making up information, assistants must be grounded in proprietary brand data. Clean source material — such as product manuals, CRM data, and brand guidelines — ensures reliable, accurate interactions. Proper data grounding prevents hallucinations that can damage customer trust and derail sales, ensuring a reliable experience for customers that strengthens both experience and loyalty.
Incorporate Brand Identity into AI
AI should do more than respond accurately. It should deliver service in a brand’s unique voice, transforming interactions from simple transactions into personalized concierge experiences. Whether a brand’s voice is high-end luxury or conversational and fast-paced, AI that captures its nuance has the power to become a genuine growth engine.
Success = Seamless Multi-Channel Continuity
For AI to unify customer experience and sales, it must maintain context across platforms. The experience for a customer that starts on Instagram and moves to a website chat should feel continuous. AI-to-human handoffs must also be seamless. Customers should never have to repeat themselves, as fragmented experiences compromise both efficiency and trust. Seamless multi-channel continuity maximizes the impact of AI on both experiences and conversion.
Read More: Salestech for Network-Led Growth: Turning Internal Relationships into Pipeline
About Crescendo
Crescendo is the first AI-native contact center, built to deliver peak CX performance in the AI era. While others sell seats, licenses, or hype, Crescendo ties its success to business outcomes. The Crescendo platform combines the world’s smartest, auto-tuning AI with multilingual “superhuman” experts, ensuring every interaction is fast, accurate, and empathetic. Unlike legacy service providers or bolt-on AI, Crescendo delivers peak performance in weeks, not months. From rapid deployment to predictable outcome-based pricing, Crescendo helps enterprises scale effortlessly while preserving quality. In a world of overpromise and under-delivery, Crescendo guarantees outcomes that others only talk about.
About Matt Price
Matt Price is the Founder & CEO of Crescendo, the first AI-native customer contact center. Matt previously spent more than a decade at Zendesk Labs, where he founded the company’s European operation and led global marketing of products and strategic projects as SVP and Executive Leader. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles at several high-growth software companies, three of which went public and two that were acquired. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Reading.
