Doubling down on Cisco Customer Experience with our partners!

As we start a new year, I am reminded of the journey many of us have been on with our partners as we have spent 2019 working hard on Cisco’s Customer Experience portfolio.   We have filled our partners full of information, new terminology, new technology and plenty of “Lingo Bingo” (aka the unofficial game of tech terms thrown out during a conference or event) throughout the year!

Nonetheless the timing and impact of all of this transformation around lifecycle is critical for our partners, so that they can align and react to how we at Cisco are evolving our business NOW and doing so in a way that is “together” with our partner especially as we consider this lifecycle & digital transformation journey we are all on. It’s clear, there is no model at Cisco without our partners!

When I joined this role to lead CX Partner Go-To-Market within the Global Partner Organization at Cisco after years under my belt working on Consumer and Content Industries,  I was just like so many partners, completely LOST six month’s ago! I was looking for someone to give me the “cliff notes” on the strategy, and how it impacted our partners. So, as one might imagine this topic was one that was top of mind for a lot of our partners during last months Cisco Partner Summit. Simply put the CX lifecycle strategy with our partners can be broken down into three areas of focus:

Monetize

First, as a partner take a look at your business model and how you monetize your products and services. What do you offer today, and what will you offer in the future? How do you adapt your business model to meet changing customer expectations and stay profitable along the way? Alignment with the lifecycle improves customer intimacy and increases renewals and customer investment in professional and managed services. That’s why we’re focusing on it.

Our CX Success Portfolio is extensible and provides opportunities for you to differentiate your business and engage with customers throughout their journey including our premium offers like Solution Support, BCS 3.0 or our new Operate Offers. As a Cisco partner you’ll get access to insights using API’s and CX Partner portal, that enable you to identify new extensible service opportunities that address customer needs.   You can strengthen customer relationships and expand your services business.

Not only can you differentiate your business with lifecycle services, but you can demonstrate your expertise with the Cisco CX Business Specialization. We launched the new CX Specialization designed with one goal in mind: to help you develop or enhance your customer success practice with the right people, tools, processes, and infrastructure to best support your customers throughout the lifecycle.

Operate

As you operationalize your CX transformation, Cisco is here to help. We’re creating a renewals and roles blueprint to help you identify key points of customer interaction, the resources needed for customers success, and how Cisco and your organization will work together to meet customer needs.

We’re building new customer and partner portals with API’s that will provide access to actionable insights and provide opportunities to differentiate and scale through digitization.

We’re also developing new ways for partners to participate in the delivery of Cisco CX services (Expert Resources such as Ask the Experts and Accelerators and Trusted Support or both). The new service delivery options provide opportunities for eligible partners to engage with customers at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle in using their Cisco investments. Delivering these services helps you to differentiate your business and uncover even more opportunities to deliver your own services to help your customers move the lifecycle and accelerate time to value.

Organize

Customer Success won’t work unless you have the right organization with endorsement from the very top including the CEO and the senior leadership team and throughout the entire organization where customer success is at the forefront of the business and core tenant of the business strategy.

We’ll provide you with helpful insights to incorporate customer success in your organization’s culture.

Cisco has launched role-based trainings and certifications to provide your teams with the skills needed to deliver the Customer Experience and support accelerated growth

You see, together with our partners we have a great opportunity and these three focus areas shared last month continue to ring true as our partners join us on this amazing experience.  I hope this “cliff notes” recap helps some of our partners fully realize the business opportunity with Cisco around Customer Experience.

Happy selling!