Five9, the cloud contact center provider, has hired Anand Chandrasekaran, previously director of Facebook’s messenger platform, as executive vice president of product management.

Five9’s Anand Chandrasekaran

In his new role, Chandrasekaran will oversee the strategy, road map and life cycle of Five9’s product portfolio. He will report directly to CEO Rowan Trollope.

“I’m a firm believer in customer relationships as a core driver of retention for companies and brands, and that AI can help humans within these service-oriented companies to retain those relationships and make them even stronger,” Chandrasekaran said. “It’s what drove my work at Facebook building the Messenger platform and my passion for picking technology bets at the interface of people and businesses, and it has immense potential in the contact center. I’m very excited to join Five9 and to work with the team to elevate customer experience though the contact center.”

Chandrasekaran has 17 years of experience building products and leading product organizations. At Facebook, he spent nearly three years overseeing its Messenger software developer community. Before that, he was chief product officer at Snapdeal, one of India’s largest e-commerce companies with annual gross sales exceeding $9 billion, and Bharti Airtel, one of the world’s largest mobile network operators with almost 300 million subscribers.

“Anand’s track record for developing innovative products at scale, seen in his extensive work at Facebook, combined with his expertise in strategic communications, makes him an excellent addition to our executive team,” Trollope said. “His outside perspective will complement our contact center experience to ensure continued innovation and leadership.”

Chandrasekaran is the newest member of the Five9 executive team, which the company recently expanded with the additions of Jonathan Rosenberg, previously with Cisco’s collaboration technology group, and David Pickering, formerly with Intuit.