As part of Cresta’s continued global expansion, we’re thrilled to welcome Andrew Cannington as our new General Manager of APAC. With decades of leadership experience building and scaling high-growth tech companies across the region, Andrew brings deep expertise, a customer-first mindset, and an energizing vision for what comes next.
In this Q&A, we sit down with Andrew to talk about his journey, why now is the right time for AI in the contact center, and how he sees Cresta’s opportunity to lead in the APAC market.
You’ve worked across some of the most transformative periods in tech—what led you to customer experience and AI?
I grew up traveling extensively—Indonesia, all over Asia—and that gave me a sense of how big the world is beyond just the country you live in. I moved into tech, studied engineering, and started building businesses. For the last 15 years, I’ve been running expansion for high-growth tech companies across APAC. About 10 years ago, I joined LivePerson, which was revolutionizing the contact center industry.
There was always this promise that you could automate and digitize conversations, so you could truly understand the Voice of the Customer and power workflows — but the tech was never capable of truly executing that vision… until now.
What excites you most about joining Cresta, and why now?
This time is different. The business trends around the world have accelerated. It’s not about growing out of one place and slowly expanding—it’s all happening at once. So you have to move now. I looked at the market and the technology, and Cresta was the only player I found with the perfect combination: the right executive team, the right technologists who can adopt the best of what’s available today, and investors who’ve done their diligence.
After conversations with the team — this was the best group of business people I’d come across. Their ability to adapt strategy and make high-quality decisions quickly is incredibly rare.
What will your role look like, and how do you see Cresta growing in the region?
My role is to build the APAC market. The world operates in two sprints out here – when I wake up, an entire day has happened, so I spend mornings engaged in the Cresta world and then the afternoons in Australia. It’s like living multiple days in one.
Australia is a great ‘land and expand’ target for tech companies: it adopts enterprise-grade technology fast, scales quickly, and shares business models with the UK and US. But thinking beyond Australia to the rest of the APAC region, we expand into areas that are not homogenous, and use vastly different business models.
We can learn so much and evolve our product, strategy, and thinking. That’s how we’ll deliver even more value globally.
What opportunities—and challenges—do you see for AI in the contact center across APAC?
Almost every board in Australia is asking their executive team what they’re doing with generative AI. The #1 use case on earth for generative AI is in the contact center — not just to drive down costs, but to improve retention, CSAT, everything.
But it’s a noisy, crowded space. Change management is hard, and decision-making is even harder. There’s a lot of window dressing and hollow promises right now. The challenge is working your way through all the marketing to find what’s real.
This is exactly like previous waves of change in technology, but the pace is on another level. AI is evolving so quickly. Decisive action and momentum has never been more important.
What stood out to you about Cresta’s team and culture?
The people are experts in their field—they’re the best at what they do on a global level. They communicate extremely well in a fast-paced environment. They’re also just really interesting people, with all these incredible successes happening outside of their jobs. I met someone in our New York office who was a former professional dancer.
Most importantly, they’re unbelievably focused. Everyone here is not just going to work—they’re building something special, and they’re all in on the vision.
What’s your leadership philosophy?
I’m very aware of my strengths and weaknesses. So I hire the best people I can find to work with, and then I empower them to lead and drive change. On the customer side, I’ve been lucky to work with the best customers in the region, and the best people within those organizations, who genuinely know how to achieve change. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see that growth. Ultimately, it comes down to the people.
What trends do you see shaping the future of CX?
There has been a desire to digitize, to automate, to enable self-service for 10 to 15 years. But even in that, the human role isn’t going away – it’s evolving. Now we can finally give agents the tools and knowledge to deliver the kind of service they want to deliver.
The outcome of that will be higher retention of the humans in this area, who by the way are some of the hardest working and least appreciated people in the workforce. Up to this point, the technology and business environment has not been geared towards them. Traditionally, technology has been forced on them, without clear thought on how it actually assists them and makes their jobs easier.
That’s what technology should be focused on. That’s what Cresta is focused on: being genuinely human-centric. It’s about reducing the significant time that’s draining everyone’s energy and giving it back to meaningful, high-impact moments.
What do you love to do with your time when you’re not at work?
I’ve got three kids — one at university and two in high school — so a lot of my free time is spent ferrying between sporting events. I manage a rugby team and a rowing team, so there’s a fair bit of organizing, coaching, and parenting that keeps me busy.
I’m also a big fan of online chess, especially when I’m traveling. I’m also extremely active – I spend a lot of time outdoors or at the gym. Health and performance are a big focus for me.
Andrew’s vision for APAC is bold, people-driven, and built on decades of real experience transforming customer engagement across the region. We couldn’t be more excited to have him leading the charge as we expand our global footprint and help more businesses unlock the full potential of AI-powered customer experience. Welcome to the team, Andrew!
