Riverbed has announced that Dan Smoot has joined Riverbed as the company’s first Chief Customer Officer reporting to Paul Mountford, CEO. Smoot, who previously was a senior executive at Salesforce, will focus at Riverbed on the customer’s journey and their success, and ensuring they receive outstanding value and performance from their technology investments. He will be responsible for global support and renewals, professional services, education, customer success management and Riverbed’s vertical solutions. He will be focused on the customer lifecycle strategy in order to drive long-term partnerships with both Riverbed customers and channel to deliver exceptional experiences and services.
“Dan is the right leader with the right experience to help our customers along their digital journeys, so they can maximize performance and drive meaningful business outcomes,” said Paul Mountford, CEO of Riverbed Technology. “He’s an expert at understanding the intersection between an organization’s business needs and the technology investments and support and services they need to drive their success. Additionally, as more Riverbed customers move to subscription services, Dan will play a key role in helping ensure they receive continued value. We expect Dan’s leadership and contributions to make an immediate impact as we help our customers digitally transform their business, while delivering a customer experience that drives long-term customer loyalty and retention.”
“Riverbed has an outstanding heritage advocating for customers and I’m excited about the opportunity to further build on this, as Riverbed looks to help customers turn their digital strategies into digital performance,” said Dan Smoot, Chief Customer Officer at Riverbed Technology.
Smoot brings a tremendous amount of experience and leadership in global sales, customer success and channels to his new role. At Salesforce, Smoot was most recently Executive Vice President of Global Partner Sales where he managed the worldwide partner sales organization, with an annual contract value target of $2.1B. He was also the Executive Vice President of Market Readiness at Salesforce where he created a global organization to deliver critical go-to-market operations. Both roles revolved around ensuring a great customer experience.
Prior to Salesforce, Smoot worked at VMware as Senior Vice President of Global Customer Operations where he oversaw global services and renewals, global channels and alliances, OEM sales and go-to-market strategy. Before VMware, he spent more than 10 years in a variety of senior leadership roles at Cisco.
Smoot holds a BA in Environmental Science from the University of California, Irvine.
