Gartner Expert

Uma Challa

Sr Director Analyst

Uma Challa covers topics in Digital Customer Service, CX, and Service and Support Strategy & Leadership.

Previous experience

Uma brings over 25+ years of experience in digital customer service and was focused on digital transformation initiatives in the last decade.

Most recently, Uma served as a Senior VP of Digital Transformation at Caliber Home Loans, where he led the omni channel initiative by defining the strategy, and driving the implementation of the customer engagement suite platform for enabling consistent, intelligent, personalized customer experience, and a flexible work environment for customer service agents.

Uma previously served as the Senior VP, Digital Product Group Manager at Citibank North America, where he led a team of ~20 product managers to drive the transformation of the product organization to be customer journey centric and innovative. The portfolio of products that Uma led included digital engagement, self-service, foundational and emerging banking channels. Before that Uma delivered digital products across 15 global markets at Citi Global Consumer Bank and drove the implementation of analytics platforms across global markets to understand the customer experience/behavior and performance of the global digital product features. In his 15-year tenure at Citibank, Uma had the opportunity to establish and run the BPM practice for 4 years. Prior to working at Citibank, Uma has been a trusted advisor to clients as a consultant at IBM Global Services in Canada for 5 years.

Uma in his long career has led many transformational initiatives that included process improvements, modernizing and adopting best-fit technology, and influencing changes to the organizational structure to be agile in providing a remarkable customer experience, while reducing costs and generating revenue.

Professional background

Caliber Home Loans, SVP Digital Transformation, 2 years

Citibank, SVP Digital Product Group Manager, 15 years

IBM, IT Architect, 5 years

Areas of coverage
  • Customer Service and Support Technology

  • Service and Support Strategy and Leadership

  • Service and Support Customer Experience and Analytics

  • Service and Support Channel Strategy and Execution

  • Generative AI Resource Center

Education

Bachelors Degree in Economics

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Top Issues That I Help Clients Address

01

What are the business applications in Customer Service and Support for GenAI?

02

What are the business applications of speech/conversation analytics in Customer Service and Support?

03

What role do chatbots/virtual assistants play in customer service and support?

04

How do I mature the enterprise from couple of channels of customer engagement to multi-channel to Omni-channel?

05

How do I deliver consistent customer experience across digital channels?