By: Ingram Micro

We all know how important delivering a great customer experience (CX) is these days. But the experience doesn’t just make end users happy; it also greatly affects a partner’s bottom line. Studies show that brands that offer a good customer experience are more likely to see their revenue grow faster than those who don’t put CX as a top priority. Customer feedback—understanding their needs, expectations, preferences and how they perceive their experiences with your brand—is critical to understanding how best to deliver the CX they desire.
 
It’s this kind of CX forward thinking that’s driving tech leaders to evolve their software and hardware buying models, replacing “pay up front” capex offerings with more flexible “pay as you go” opex (i.e., subscription) offers. However, as customers move to new buying models and acquire new technologies, they face a growing skills gap that’s required to operationalize their solutions, and this is where we must focus our attention.
 
Building More Profitable Relationships
Partners recognized the shift in customer expectations and has been adapting to this changing market with a carefully defined CX strategy. For reseller partners, this strategy enables you to develop a customer success practice with the right people, tools, processes and infrastructure to best support your customers throughout the lifecycle. It means your customers get the full value of their investment at every stage and achieve the business outcomes they expect.  At the same time, CX gives you the opportunity to increase revenue and extend the relationship.
 
What If You’re Not Staffed for A CX Practice?
Many partners recognize that their sales processes need to evolve to match their customers’ needs for a higher-touch consultative experience that continues after the initial sale. But there are obstacles that keep partners from creating CX teams, whether it’s being short staffed or not knowing where to get started. Partners may step in to offer CX as a service (CXaaS) to help fill this gap. “CXaaS provides our partners with the ability to provide CX services and value throughout the lifecycle of a sales opportunity without the upfront costs or the investments necessary to create their own CX practice.” says Peter Graber, executive director advanced solutions, Cisco, at Ingram Micro. 
 
The goal of CXaaS is to help partners create lifelong customers, adds Nicole Dziedzic, senior vendor business manager at Ingram Micro. “And the best way to do that is to have that post-sales motion outside of their organization, which can be hard to quantify for companies that are new to building a lifecycle practice, especially because balancing a business transformation is a delicate operation. So, by offering Ingram Micro’s resources to our resellers, we’re ensuring that the follow-up after the sale is properly handled, that partners can create customers for life, and they can realize the ROI much quicker. Companies are expecting more value out of what they purchase, and we want to ensure we’re helping our partners achieve that value for their clients more quickly.”