Rival Expands Sales and Customer Success Teams

In Canada, insight tech business Rival Technologies has hired former Maru/Blue exec Sal Rustom for a new role, Director of Business Development. In addition, Brett Henderson joins as Senior Customer Success Manager; and Donald Ross as Customer Success Manager.

Rival is part of the Reid Campbell Group - set up two years ago by former Millward Brown Global CEO Eileen Campbell, and Vision Critical founder Andrew Reid and his sister Jennifer. A year ago, Rival raised more than $CAD 8.5m from Canadian investors, for use in continued platform development and to expand sister company Reach3 Insights. Last month, Rival and Reach 3 launched a mobile message-based platform, through which brands can access 'focus groups on demand' at scale.

Rustom joins from respondent access specialist Maru/Blue, where he latterly served as Manager, Strategy and Development, having previously worked for the Maru group's communities specialist Maru/Matchbox as Sales Manager. Henderson worked at video data mining specialist LivingLens as Global Director - Customer Success, before transferring to customer experience management specialist Medallia, after its acquisition of LivingLens. Prior to this, he held senior positions at customer experience management (CEM) company ResponseTek; MR agency Lana Porter Group; Vision Critical; and Ipsos Reid. Based in Vancouver, Ross joins with nearly ten years MR sector experience, gained in community management and customer success roles at Maru/Matchbox and Vision Critical.

Commenting on the appointments, Reid says that during the pandemic, his firm has seen more companies making the switch from traditional, e-mail-based research techniques, to Rival's conversational, mobile message-based tech. 'The expansion of our sales and customer success team will enable us to meet the growing demand for our platform in the market while providing the best possible customer experience to both new and existing clients,' Reid adds.

Web site: www.rivaltech.com .