technologyreseller.co.uk 31 What we focus on when working with our partners is understanding the pain points of the customer and making sure we can show outcomes and use cases that will basically solve the customer’s problems and deliver ROI. Rather than going in with ‘we’ve got this feature/function; this is how it works’, we’re going in and listening to their pain points and working towards the outcomes that they need. Joel Neeb, our Chief Transformation Officer, has been developing AI-based tools for us internally that allow us to really dive into a customer’s history and look at it from a vertical standpoint, to see what’s worked for other customers in their vertical and then build out things like value maps. With a partner, we can present a value map of their business and how our solutions can support them. It’s all about ensuring the customer gets the outcomes they need rather than features and function-based selling. That’s been a big shift for us this year. AI is really important. We need to ensure that when we talk to customers about AI we make them understand how they can benefit from it, because they don’t need everything. AI is interlaced in our product, end to end. How can we make sure they get the best functionality from it so that they can improve services to their customers? How can they do things like predictability, looking at historical data, looking at intent? Rather than just going ‘here’s everything we’ve got’, we’re trying to make sure they use AI in the right way. TR: You’ve got lots of AI elements within the platform, and there’s been a big increase in usage, but is it actually helping partners win deals? EM: Absolutely. What partners tell me is that customers want to hear about AI, but they don’t need everything, because that’s with, they need to know we’ll do what we say we’ll do, and they need to be able to hold us, and me, to account. How can we be the vendor they choose to work with? My channel team, my sales team have to operate in the right way to be a true channel business. TR: 8x8 has been launching a lot of products recently. How do you help your partners cope with that speed of innovation? EM: We’re bringing lots of new things to market, so we’ve also been looking at how we support our partners in their sales cycle and how we can uncomplicate the complicated and improve lead conversion and the deal velocity rate. in EMEA, for example, we rolled out rules of engagement for deal-ready protection, making it clear how that operates. The next pillar is our GTM strategy, in terms of what I’m doing to help our partners grow and reward them for doing so. Do we have the right programs in place? Do we have the right enablement journey for our different partner types? We’re trying to do things that are quite different. MDF and events etc. are great but how can we take that to the next level? Our partners are very busy, so how can we help them prioritise which customers to go after? Then, there’s SDR support. Can our SDR team provide consultancy to our partners or even work on their behalf? The third pillar is how we are innovating and investing. Going back to the first pillar, we have to invest in the tools partners are using and the portals they’re using and make sure we treat them as part of our extended team, for example, by rolling out the value mapping tools our sales teams use to partners as well. In February, we launched an Innovation Council, where we tell partners what’s coming and how we make things like AI work in the channel, because the way in which it’s purchased, with credits and tokens, is very different to what we’ve done historically. How can we make that work for partners? Last and by no means least, in fact it’s becoming more of a lynchpin than ever, trust and partnership. It sounds basic, but given the number of vendors partners work Q&A continued... What’s new in the 8x8 Platform for CX 8x8 Pulse: to capture and index interactions across calls, meetings, emails and support tickets, making conversation data searchable and actionable across the organisation (available now for select 8x8 customers). 8x8 Resolve: a critical communications solution that delivers incident and emergency alerts to frontline workforces through the 8x8 Platform for CX, eliminating the need for separate alerting tools (available now for select 8x8 customers). 8x8 AI Routing: to dynamically match customers to the best-qualified expert across the organisation and use interaction data, including transcripts, sentiment and historical patterns, to automate skills configuration, eliminating months of manual setup and stale profiles (available now for select 8x8 customers). 8x8 AI Studio: to create and deploy AI agents, with support for multiple AI models, voice-powered agent building and one-click connectors to third-party business applications, enabling teams to deploy AI agents without additional vendors or custom development. 8x8 Workforce Management: automated assistive quality evaluations and enhanced forecasting and scheduling available at no additional cost to existing 8x8 Contact Centre customers.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=