Dave Chang

Dave Chang has spent roughly 15 years leading Carnival Cruise Line’s contact center organization and now oversees more than 1,800 sales and service professionals. His role sits where customer experience meets commercial performance, which shapes how he thinks about the contact center itself. Rather than treating it primarily as a service function, Chang runs it as part of Carnival’s revenue engine.

The industry’s demand moves quickly with consumer preferences, economic conditions, and major disruptions, and Chang’s teams have to adapt just as quickly, balancing service with the opportunity to turn customer conversations into bookings, stronger relationships, and repeat business. CX, in that model, isn’t separated from growth.

People are the other side of the equation. Chang has described his leadership philosophy as “People First,” tying employee engagement directly to organizational performance. For an operation of Carnival’s scale, that means the people speaking with customers every day aren’t simply capacity to manage. Their judgment, engagement, and ability to connect with guests influence the commercial outcome.

Chang extends that thinking beyond Carnival’s existing workforce. He helped build a recruiting relationship with Caribbean Maritime University in Jamaica, creating another route into the cruise industry while exposing students to careers they may not otherwise have considered. He has also invested in scholarships and opportunities for students from his former school, York Castle High.

The common thread is development. Chang’s approach assumes that better customer outcomes depend on continually strengthening the people responsible for delivering them, whether they’re already inside the contact center or preparing to enter the industry.