Great Customer Experience, our promise to partners and customers

Go ahead, take a deep breath. It’s been a busy couple of months for Cisco, our ecosystem partners, and the customers we serve. One minute we’re in Las Vegas, rolling out products and plans at the Partner Summit. The next, we’re in Barcelona taking in the sights of a centuries-old city, talking about what’s on deck for Cisco and its global partners in 2019.

Talk of technology innovation against a backdrop of history makes sense to us. We’re on a journey together. It’s evolving over time, and it’s based on valued relationships combined with the products and services our customers love. Many of the partners I speak to are starting to transform their approaches today, and they are excited to brainstorm creative  ways to engage their customers throughout their lifecycles.  My 1:1s this week confirmed that our entire partner ecosystem  (resellers, consultants, providers, learning partners, ISVs and distributors) will all play a role in driving customer success.

Across this week, we received support for the plans that were announced at Cisco Partner Summit,  particularly for the upcoming  Customer Experience Specialization and Certifications along with the new CX offers. As partners, it’s important for you to continue your investments in Lifecycle Advisor to scale your lifecycle and customer success practices. Don’t forget, you can find a treasure trove of case studies and lifecycle enablement tools on SuccessHub, including Lifecycle Advantage.  And download our new white paper “Partners + Cisco = Customer Obsessed” to learn more about how together we will drive the best customer experience in the industry.

Ultimately to accelerate customer success and to maximize our opportunities, we need to change what we sell, how we sell, and how we mobilize our partners together with our customers.  Many partners believe these new CX offers will enable them to engage the customers at more points in their lifecycles, and increase add on services, hardware and software sales, while improving renewals.

Cisco Account Managers are telling me that they will increasingly value partners that have lifecycle capabilities as they grow their recurring business. On the other side, partners also are excited to engage in converations about how to better leverage telemetry, how to build and customize their own lifecycle services, and how to plan and execute more effective quarterly business reviews.

Finally, I would also like to thank all of the partners that shared best practices in our Partner Lifecycle Opportunity session on Monday as well as all the familiar faces that I met with across the week that shared their ideas and feedback.  It’s clear to me that  Cisco and our Partner Ecosystem will evolve and mature our approach in order to deliver on our promise of the best customer experience.   Here at Cisco, we are all in!