Change was in the air at this year's Channel Partners Convention & Expo. You couldn't miss the fact that the city was preparing for its first Formula 1 race in over 40 years. While road crews were hard at work on the strip, partners and vendors were hard at work on the show floor.
We had a chance to talk with the industry's top vendors and partners. Everyone we talked to had a similar impression: change is coming to our industry.
Similarly, when we look at the companies our industry sells to, they are also changing.
McKinsey gives two striking data points for companies and their technology partners in their Six CEO priorities for 2023:
100% of CEOs are thinking about technology
67% say they are not getting the financial value they expected from their technology investments
Furthermore, these companies are thinking and acting more like software companies. The article states that top performers believe software they developed is key to standing out from their rivals.
With all of this in mind, we have to ask:
Are we doing enough?
UCaaS and CCaaS are the undisputed darlings of our industry. These solutions are easy to understand, easy to purchase, and quick to implement. Channel partners in particular sell a lot of UCaaS and CCaaS.
And for good reason: they form an important starting point for moving to the cloud. UCaaS helps knowledge workers communicate better. And CCaaS helps companies significantly improve service with features including multiple channels and live chat.
But how do UCaaS and CCaaS help our customers execute a differentiated customer experience strategy?
Do they generate actionable customer insights that sales, marketing, and operations can use to create better customer engagement?
Do they bring together rich customer data that enables better product development, service delivery, and customer experience management?
Do they automate and improve team member and customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle?
We can do more
Vendors have taken note of the opportunity to deliver more.
We see more companies offering CX tools that work together with UCaaS and CCaaS. This combination of capabilities promises to deliver the ROI that 67% of CEOs don't feel they are getting today. It will also help companies deliver the end-to-end customer experiences that set them apart from their competitors.
Here are two customer experience tools that will help our customers do more:
CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service)
CPaaS enables companies to deliver custom experiences at every stage of the customer journey. It serves as the communications glue between customers, employees, and the company's systems including UCaaS, CCaaS, CRM, and sales & marketing automation.
Customer Experience Management Software
These platforms enable companies to measure and understand the customer experience at every stage of their journey. Executives, managers, and frontline workers see exactly the information they need to improve the customer experience every day.
Bringing it all together
Top performing companies bring together CPaaS, Customer Experience Software, and the rest of their business applications under a unified customer experience technology strategy.
Customer experience consultants help companies & channel partners create and deliver these strategies with CX consulting, systems integration, and managed services. We founded Creo Solutions to deliver these exact services for enterprises and the partners serving them.
Looking toward 2024
Technology, strategy, and customer need are coming together at the right time.
As good as this year was, we believe that Channel Partners 2024 will be incredible. Our conversations with vendors, partners, and enterprises make us believe that our industry is poised for change.
This year we will see an increased emphasis on extending customer experience discussions beyond UCaaS and CCaaS. As a result, we will see more companies saying they are seeing the expected financial impact from their technology investments.
If you would like to learn how you can do more this year, contact us today.