Many vendor partners (VARs) have either recognized the value of having a Customer Experience (CX) practice or may have been required to have a Customer Experience practice to maintain their partner level with the vendor. Take Cisco for example, to be a Cisco Gold partner you must carry the Cisco Customer Experience Specialization. These specializations are not simple to obtain, usually requiring a substantial time investment and additional head count to meet the specialization requirements.
In the beginning, it’s a whirlwind of activity with many practices being built on processes the organization already has in place and CX theory (most of that based on new or “green field” implementation). This is all well and good and provides a great foundation to build from, but how does this translate into profit?
Value is at the heart of CX, and people, in general, are willing to pay for something that they see a value in. Building a profitable CX practice starts with identifying lifecycle services that the organization can provide that will bring additional billable value to their customers.
This may sound easy but what we are seeing is that many partners struggle with this part of building out their CX practice.
I’ve heard more than once, “customers are not going to pay for that” or “customers want it cheaper not more expensive”, and my response is, then your customer doesn’t understand the “value” of what you are proposing.
According to Gautam Mahajan from Sage Journals, “Customer value is the perception of what the product or service is worth to a customer versus the possible alternatives. Worth means whether the customer feels s/he go benefits and services over what s/he paid.”
Let’s take a step away from CX for a minute. As a former Sr. Technical Project Manager and PMO director, I have heard the same statements from customers about project management. When they get the quote and they think the price is too high, the first thing they say is, “take off the project management, we don’t need that.” My response to that has been, you don’t understand the value of project management, but if you want to remove it that is up to the account team. My next statement is, if you determine that you do require a project manager at a later point on this solution, the price will double.
It never fails that within a few weeks of the project I get a call from someone asking for an update on the project and a project plan and that’s if the project is going well. If a project gets derailed, I will get angry calls from the customer telling me that we were not keeping an eye on the project and had not recognized the risk and they wanted someone assigned to the project immediately. I would send a quote for double the price of the original fee and get an even angrier call from the customer, but in the end, they would usually pay the price. The lesson here is the customer didn’t think about or understand the value that a project manager brings to a complex technical delivery project and how the customer benefitted from having a project manager.
It has taken years for customers to see the value in project management and today they don’t even question when most partners add a percentage of hours to every solution just for project management.
Customer Experience/Success is much the same. Partners are going to have to help customers see the value in the CX services that they provide.
For example:
- Reduce the amount of time it takes an employee to complete task or remove that task by taking it on as a service.
- Increase customer satisfaction through customization of applications that interact directly with their customers.
- Ensure adoption of new features and functionality throughout the lifecycle of a solution.
These are just a few examples of how a partner could show value in CX services they provide. In theory, they sound simple, but it’s not as easy as it sounds (ask anyone who has tried). There is real work involved in solving real problems. Understanding how to identify what your customers need and how to achieve success is not as easy as applying a “use case” definition to it. There may be multiple points of reference, applications, dashboards, and stakeholders involved to meet the customer’s needs and expectations, and it’s up to the partner’s CX team to figure it out and provide the services to bring it all together.
If you would like to know more about building an profitable CX practice, please join our upcoming webinar “Next Steps in your CX Lifecycle Journey” or you can contact us directly at RevolutionCX@tdsynnex.com.
