Cohere struggles with delivering its product effectively to clients — not because of capability, but because of internal dysfunction.
The Product team acts like they run the company (not everyone but a majority), often ignoring implementation realities and stakeholder needs. Collaboration is minimal and egos are high.
Product managers routinely dismiss critical client work as “not on their roadmap” — as if helping a client isn’t part of their job.
Leadership in both Product and Client Experience are incredibly out of touch. Escalating issues only adds confusion, especially when the Client Experience Officer (or whatever title she goes by) gets involved. Her presence often complicates things more than it helps.
She’s brought in several questionable hires into key roles (Integrations, Tech Services, QA) — none of whom seem equipped to do the job effectively. The person who leads technical services literally adds zero value, his default is to blame other teams for the any issues that come up. He preaches process but his team has none, and the processes other teams have laid out his team does not follow. People across the organization do not enjoy working with this guy.
The Implementation team is viewed as Cohere’s glorified secretaries, and are widely looked down on within the organization — largely due to the Senior Director of Implementations, who lacks relevant experience and interest in developing her team. Her leadership style is rigid, top-down, and non-collaborative. And we have seen that spill over into Product as well from her, so I can only imagine what her team goes through. I’ve been part of calls where she cuts off or belittles the implementation manger running the call. With her being overly involved in all meetings it’s pretty normal your input is discouraged unless it matches her exact opinion…if it doesn’t she’ll continue to schedule follow up calls until you are worn out and give in.
Cohere talks a lot about innovation and transformation but fails to empower the people who could actually make that happen.