Ready for transformation: CX insights from Cisco Live 2019

The past few days have been nothing short of fantastic. Cisco Live was packed with exciting CX announcements, great conversation, and inspiring talks. It’s something I look forward to every year, and it’s always a little hard saying goodbye.

But on the other hand, I can’t wait for the year ahead. There are thrilling changes on the horizon. The enthusiasm and optimism of Cisco Live is something I’ll carry forward as we continue to help our partners transform their businesses.

Whether you were in attendance or are catching up virtually, here are highlights and helpful resources so you can continue to be inspired all year long.

Transforming how we support our customers, together with our partners

Maria Martinez, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, announced Cisco’s new approach to customer experience. She spoke about Cisco’s long history of innovation, and about how that legacy has carried us forward to today. Now, only Cisco and our ecosystem of partners is positioned to deliver the truly integrated multi-domain infrastructure that the businesses of tomorrow rely on. If you missed her talk in person, you can watch it here.

Insights, data, training and more to enhance the partner experience

Alvio Barrios and I dedicated a session to the exciting developments that are helping our partners both perform and transform. Alvio reviewed the 9 Building Blocks to driving customer experience also described here.  We discussed the insights and expertise that Cisco delivers to support our mutual customers, including our Business Critical Services that use machine learning to automate fault management to complement your existing offers, and act as a foundation for additional services that you can develop and sell to your customers. We also shared information about where to go to brush up on your skills, or to further develop your business (SuccessHub, Accelerate). Feel free to watch the recording of our session here.

A video series inspired by your feedback

The best part about these events in that I get the opportunity to meet with many of you to hear your feedback on our CX Partner Model and learn more about your transformation. This week some of the key insights included:

– Partners are excited to hear more about how to monetize their existing investments in customer success.  When we dig into our new offers (coming next year), partners do see that they have a great opportunity to build unique,  new services (managed and/or professional)  that they will be able to sell, however they may need to change their approach.

– All partners want to learn more about where we are going with customer experience. To this point, we created a video series that gives more details about the CX Partner Model, which you can view here.

Getting the partner perspective

Renata Randi, Chief Marketing and Alliances Officer at Logicalis, joined me for a Facebook Live session where we discussed what these announcements mean for both Logicalis and our entire partner network. She also gave us an update about how the CX transformation is going at Logicalis. Check it out here.

Denny Trevett and Renata Randi of Logicalis

More learning opportunities for our partners

At the CX Partner Enablement Booth, we shared the relaunch of SuccessHub, an online resource center that includes the SuccessTalk learning series. It’s designed to help you in your transformation and is available globally.

We also demoed the new Customer Success Manager training that is coming soon to Accelerate. Accelerate offers a collection of tailored e-learning modules that you can take at your own pace. It’s designed to strengthen partner sellers’ expertise to target, create demand, and effectively sell Cisco recurring offers.

We are excited to be on this journey together with you.  Thanks for the continued partnership and feedback.

Between inspiration and implementation, there’s a bridge.