The events have the past two years have opened the eyes of many businesses to the cloud – not least when it comes to customer experience.
Much of the hesitancy that businesses had regarding migrating to the cloud has dissipated, largely because they had no choice when it came to empowering agents to work remotely.
But it’s important to remember that it is not just end-user businesses that have had to embrace this change.
Many channel partners had been successfully selling traditional contact centre products and were reluctant to transform when cloud-based technologies emerged, Marcie Stout, Director of UCC at US-based distributor TD SYNNEX, explained to CX Today.
TD SYNNEX has a close relationship with Five9 in the CX space which sees it bundle Five9’s offering with complementary technology, creating complete solutions that channel partners can resell to customers.
Marcie said that this ability to resell whole solutions rather than point products has been key to driving adoption among channel partners.
An equally important shift has seen vendors show a willingness to create flexible programmes for partners.
“Two years ago, there was a load more hesitancy from the channel to sell cloud,” Marcie explained.
“But more and more resellers are now opening their doors to whole solutions, rather than staying in one lane.
“When cloud migration started, it was very much a compensation issue for partners, but that isn’t the case now. Vendors have really opened up to both referral and resell models, which has helped drive transition in resellers that were set in their ways.”
Partner Convergence
Five9’s RVP of Partner Sales Casey Dunigan said that the vendor has placed a great emphasis on what he referred to as partner convergence, which removes the boundaries between referral partners, VARs and managed service providers.
The partnership between Five9 and TD SYNNEX lets partners transact via the model that works for them, with TD SYNNEX stepping in to provide services that the partner themselves cannot.
For example, a partner who could not offer day two support to a customer would typically have been designated a referral partner. This is not necessarily the case now because SYNNEX will deliver the service on the partner’s behalf.
“We’re seeing referral partners wanting to do more resell and resellers wanting to go down the recurring revenue route,” Casey said.
“We’re really able to identify whitespace in their strategy, and then plug and play with the TD SYNNEX offering.
“The emphasis is really on partner convergence and saying to partners that they don’t have to be one or the other. Many programmes today don’t have that ability”
No Longer a Race to the Bottom
The adoption of cloud-based customer experience has coincided with a shift in buyer habits.