October 2, 2024 • 21 mins
To get the most out of a solution, you need to understand its capabilities. To understand its capabilities, you need a knowledgeable guide. To get a knowledgeable guide, you need Ingram Micro’s CARE program.
Shelby Skrhak speaks with Chris Heinrich, technical adoption executive, and Jason Kennedy, sr. customer success account executive, both of Ingram Micro, about:
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Spreaker.
Shelby Skrhak speaks with Chris Heinrich, technical adoption executive, and Jason Kennedy, sr. customer success account executive, both of Ingram Micro, about:
- The importance of customer success
- The CARE program and what it means for customers
- How customer success raises contract value
To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramMicroUSA #B2BTechTalk
Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Spreaker.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro,
a place to learn about how to grow your business
and stay ahead of technological advances before they become mainstream.
This episode is sponsored by Ingram Micro's Expantage, the next
Level way to transform your business's potential and reshape how
customers see you through advanced transactional data.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Let's get into it. Welcome to B to B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. I'm your host, Shelby Skirhawk, and
our guests today are Chris Heinrich, technical adoption executive, and
Jason Kennedy, Senior Customer Success account Executive, both of Ingram Micro.
Chris and Jason, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Welcome, good to be here, Thank you, thanks for having
us here.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Shelby.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
All right, well, so today we are talking about customer
success and care an acronym as a service. But first
I want to get to know our guests a little
bit more. So, Chris, let me start with you. Tell
us about yourself and how you made your way to
Ingram Micro.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Sure. Oh yeah, so hi everybody. My name is Christopher Heinrich.
I'm a technical adoption executive. As Shelby had stated, I've
been with ingram Micro for almost fourteen years now, and
I've been supporting our Cisco business unit in practice for
all those fourteen years. Prior to Ingram Micro, I spent
about five years at a local voiceover IP reseller here
(01:27):
in the Buffalo, New York area, so I have about
twenty one years of IT knowledge behind me, and like
I said, I've been supporting the Cisco business practice for
those fourteen years at Ingram. I am on the technical side.
I started my career at Ingram focused on our technical support,
software design or solution design and support building solutions for
(01:49):
our Cisco partners, and then transitioned into a field focused
role where I got to travel and support our Southern
customers and our Cisco partners in that territory. And then
COVID came along and ruined all those plans. So for
the last three and a half years or so, I've
been supporting our customers success practice and care as a
(02:11):
service practice here at Ingram.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Excellent, Jason, how about you?
Speaker 5 (02:15):
So I have a varied background in IT, but I've
been in it for about twenty five years now. Most
of that time has been on the sales side, so
I've worked with vendors such as HPE and Dell. I've
been on the partner channel side as a direct to
end users sales up and I've also then worked here
at Ingram, starting on the Microsoft Cloud sales team and
(02:37):
then moving over to the care team to be part
of their customer's success program. So currently, as a senior
Customer Success account executive Ingram, I play a pivotal role
in ensuring that customers to achieve their desired business outcomes
while using Cisco's products and services, and some of the
responsibilities I have our strategic leadership with building deep relationships
(02:58):
with our senior leaders, customers and organizations and partners, and
help aligning the Cisco account teams to deliver on goals
and strategies. Customer advocacy is a big part of my
role as well. As a primary advocate for our customers
with Cisco, I've helped to ensure that their needs and
feedback are addressed and then really helping customers realize their
(03:19):
business outcomes and get full value of their investments at Cisco,
and by making sure that the Cisco solutions are driving
the business outcomes and ensuring successful adoption.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So let me clarify then, so when you say customer
we are talking about the resellers customers or are we
talking about the resellers themselves?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
So it's twofold.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
And in my role I work with I have a
customer as a partner and sometimes a customer as an
end user customer. So I will work with both those
and the executives and teams on both those sides. With
our partners, I really help them understand our programs and
help them leverage our programs with their end user customer,
and sometimes will actually get on calls or meetings with
(04:03):
the end user customer to help clarify what business outcomes
they're trying to get in there from their Cisco solution
and really kind of align the CX strategy with those
business outcomes.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, and so seex customer success. Let me be a
complete novice and ask, you know, what is customer success?
I guess as a service? What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
So customer success as a service is really a model
where companies either outsource their customer success functions or use
our team at Ingram as an expansion of their customer
sif SEX team. And really the key points of doing
that are scalability, CS, service helps businesses scale their customer
success efforts quickly and efficiently. By leveraging the external expertise
(04:47):
and resources of our team, you get proactive support and
for active engagement, personalized support and ongoing assistance really to
ensure customers derive maximum value from their products and services.
There's also improvement metrics. We have different programs and resources
available and the goal of the improved metrics is to
enhance customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, which in turn is
(05:10):
just going to boost revenue and reduce churn. And then
we offer flexible solutions. As of CX as a service provider,
we can offer tatered solutions, and then we have a
pretty good list of offerings that are broadband solutions that
we have that as an extension of our team really
kind of addresses all the goals or gaps that they
(05:32):
might have in their organization, in their sales organization.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Okay, well, so Chris, when we're talking about customer success again,
maybe you know a plane language, you know what that
The way that I am interpreting this is that you know,
it helps a customer really be aware of and know
how to use the technology that they've purchased. That is
that a correct assessment of kind of the plain language
(05:57):
of customer success And is that a problem that you
see often?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, that's correct, Shelby, and it is a problem that
we see often. Like I said, I've been supporting INGRAM
and customer success for the last three and a half years,
working with our partners and our end customers. And a
lot of the motions that are happening in the technology
world today, a lot of the offers that are being
presented and purchased through customers are in the form of
software and more so in the form of annuities and
(06:24):
enterprise agreements. And the big picture here to look at
is when partners are selling these solutions to their customers,
ultimately there's going to be a renewal date for that subscription,
whether it's a one year or three year, five year,
seven year, whatever it may be. At some point the
customer is going to have to make a decision on
whether they going to renew that solution or not. So
it's not really a set it and forget it like
(06:46):
some of the traditional technology solutions have been in the past.
And what we've seen has a lot of partners are
selling these amazing solutions to their customers. They're buying enterprise
agreements which come in the form of many different software
packages within the Cisco world, and sometimes the customers are
not taking full advantage of that software agreement. Ultimately, that
(07:07):
could lead to a poor experience and in the end
may not turn into an automatic renewal. So we've been
working closely with our partners and these customers to help
identify some of these gaps. We help to educate the
customers on what they're getting within their software agreements, because
not everybody knows exactly all the included bells and whistles
that they get with their software package. We also work
(07:30):
directly with these end customers on the technical side. That's
my corresponsibility to work with the customers IT teams to
their c levels and have them understand where their objectives
are with purchasing the solution, but also what are some
of their technical challenges and hurdles that they're seeing that
are preventing them from seeing the value in the solution.
How can we help better optimize their IT teams. How
(07:52):
can we better help educate their users so they fully
adopt the technology. Those are the types of things that
we work through within our custom success or care as
a care team to help ensure that these customers see
the full value in these solutions. And it's happening in
the Cisco world, and it's also happening across the technology
stack where every vendor is more looking more towards transitioning
(08:14):
that model to a recurring revenue software based annuity model.
And if you don't address the customers, and you don't
understand your customers and don't understand whether the's not having
whether're struggling, or they're not achieving their goals, ultimately there's
an inherent amount of risk for a partner at that
point because the customer can just not renew or potentially
go to another vendor or partner. So that is why
(08:37):
we stress the importance of customer success and that's why
we've been seeing some great success so far.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
With our partners. So, Chriss, how does ingram micro specifically
help with customer understanding and enablement? I mean, you know
this customer service practice, you know, it's definitely seems like
an essential part of it. But you know, maybe the
resellers in the channel, they don't have the time or
the resources to be able to do this. So how
(09:01):
does Ingram micro help.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, So, through our Ingram micro Care as a Service program,
you know, we engage directly with the partners and we
help them identify specific customer opportunities that are our potential
good fits for a customer success motion and helping them
walk them through the customer success journey. From there, we
usually work with a direct person at the partner that's
(09:26):
responsible for their customer success practice and through them, we
help engage with their account rep teams, the person that
sold the solution or is selling the solution to this
particular customer. From there, we learn some additional details about
that customer. We understand why they may be purchasing this solution,
we understand you know, how it's going to be implemented
(09:47):
and deployed. We get timelines and we also get key stakeholders,
so the people that will be involved with this type
of engagement. We also get the buy in from the
account rep as well. So sometimes we have to explain
customer success to these account managers because they may not
know our sole purpose in this whole life cycle journey approach.
So after we do all that, we then set up
an introduction call with the customer. We introduce ourselves as
(10:10):
an extension of the partner's team for customer success, and
we introduce our roles and our responsibilities and how we
will help that customer through their life cycle journey. Our
main goal is to ensure that the customer sees the
value in the solutions that they're purchasing, and we help
them answer questions around their particular solution, but it comes
more in the form of assisting them with technical enablement
(10:31):
adoption trainings, whether they're for the customer's IT staff, just
better understanding of the solutions that they're purchasing and using,
and sometimes the users. There are certain technologies like collaboration,
for example, where it's in front of the user, the
users using it day in and day out, and some
of these users may not understand the new technology. They
may not understand how to use those types of things.
(10:51):
So we do a lot of enablement and adoption to
these customers for their end users on how to use
the particular devices, how to use the particular software on
their laptops, on their phones, so that the customer can
see the full return on investment and ultimately we are
portraying a good amount of value to the customer through
the partner, and we in hopes that at the end
(11:14):
of that renewal time that it becomes a non event
that the customer renews and is loving the Cisco solution
and potentially adding to that enterprise agreement or software agreement
with additional technologies down the road.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Got it? Got it? Okay, Well, so Jason, let me
come to you. So, I mean, then, the goal of
a customer success practice, I'm I'm learning it's it's to
create this recurring revenue model. But I wonder if you
can just go into a little bit more of the
specific challenges that resellers often face in achieving this. Like,
(11:46):
you know, of course they's that is their goal, but
you know, what are some of those hurdles that you
have a hard time clearing when you're trying to create
this type of practice.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You know, Shelby, there are some significant challenges that I
see with partners in that area. Some of those challenges
that I see a resellers facing in their SX practice
really kind of relate to headcount and internalizing knowledge. There's
certain certifications and programs knowledge that a reseller needs to
have to have a successful customer success program and things
(12:20):
such as headcount turnover and their CSM bandwidth, uh, you know,
really kind of can impede the success of that program.
And this overall knowledge and understanding of the many programs
also present challenges. The programs change year over year, sometimes
quarter over quarter. You know, they people get promoted an
organization or leave an organization and then they have to
(12:41):
start over with certifications with the new uh, you know,
the new member of their team. And then sometimes organizations
don't have a fully mature customer success program and they
might be having many.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Hats for that for that customer success manager, he might
be their CSM and their internal sales rep or you know,
he might have three or four roles in the company.
And trying to just have where all those hats and have,
you know, be successful in the CSM organization definitely makes
things challenging.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I'll just add too to that. There's also some some
issues that we see when it comes to speaking with
some of the partner's account reps and their you know,
their account management teams and just having them understand what
customer success is and where it fits and how it
can help their customers in the long run. And that's
some of the challenges that we face because ultimately, if
(13:30):
we don't get the account reps buy in to work
with the customer, we don't get to work with the customer.
So that's sometimes a challenge that we need to overcome,
and we need to portray and show illustrate to them
what the customer success motion looks like and the value
that it can provide their customers and them as well.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That's that's a great point, Chris.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
A lot of the end user sales reps for our
resellers don't often get to hear the message directly from
the Ingram team, So the CSM is often translating basically
our program and their words to their end user sales
reps and trying to get their buying on the program,
and without understanding the true value of our program. Sometimes
customer reps are that end user sales reps might think
(14:09):
it's in a disruption to them or slowing down the
sales cycle in their way. So when we get the
opportunity to actually present that directly to the sales team,
we see a lot faster adoption and.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Buy in rate.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And Jason, let me have you clarify, so the acronym care,
what does that stand for the.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
Care stands for a customer adoption, renewals and experience.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And our team is part of the experienced team.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Got it, the experience piece of it. What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Well, we really want to be able to provide a
program that's going to be able to leverage our INGRAM resources,
reduce churn to the full adoption of the life cycle.
And they even provide a way that they can monetize
the life cycle and the customer success program. And through
the program that we offer, there's a natural cross sell
(14:58):
upsale opportunity.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You know, the average contract.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Value we see it kind of goes up about ten
percent the first eight months for customers that are going
through this or for partners that are using our Customer
Success in their life cycle journey.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Really yeah, And the one thing that I'll add too
is when you look at the experience right and you
can just relate it back to our own personal lives.
We all have digital subscriptions to know, other platforms, you know,
movie platforms, you know, whatever, music platforms. If our experience
is poor, what do we do. We look for the
next best thing, or we cancel the subscription we have
and find something else. And that's the same in the
(15:33):
technology world. Right, if the experience isn't great for a
particular solution, there's a good chance the customer may not
go back to that solution when the renewal time comes up,
or even look to cancel it, which is even worse.
So going back into our motion, we are trying to
prevent that from happening. We are speaking to the people
at the customers and giving them the know how, giving
(15:55):
them the insight, optimizing their solutions to them, not just
that it's fully implemented in deploy but it's fully optimized
to them so they can get the best bang for
their buck with the solution.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Right because I'm sure you see it all the time
that end customers don't realize the breadth of features that
they have at their fingertips simply because they just don't
understand fully the technology. Right.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I mean we've unfortunately, we've worked with a few customers
in the past where we came in kind of later
in the life cycle and they came to us with
a few requests and we kind of illustrated to them like, hey,
your solution includes that. It's included that from day one,
and they're like, wow, we wish we would have known
that when we first implement this solution, because it would
have solved a lot of headaches and problems over the
(16:39):
last two year and a half. So again that's why
it's important. This is a life cycle emotion, right. This
isn't just a set you know, implement it and set
it and forget it and leave the customer and come
back to them in three years and expect the renewal.
This is working with them day in and day out
on their on their challenges and their needs, just highlighting
the solutions that they purchased so they're fully aware of it,
so that again this that that renewal becomes a non
(17:01):
event and that they're loving that solution.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, as we start to wrap
up our episode, we always ask our guests the same
final question, and that's where do you see technology going
in the next year? So I know that is broad,
but you know, within this space kind of just what
you're seeing, what you're keeping an eye on, you know,
So if you were to prognosticate for this time twenty
(17:24):
twenty five, Chris, I'm going to start with you.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, I mean from what I'm seeing, obviously the hardware
gets bigger and better faster. You know, it's always evolving,
right when it comes to the buying models and how
we're seeing technology vendors like Cisco, for example, what we're
seeing is a huge uplift in software enterprise agreements where
(17:48):
where they're combining multiple architectures, technology architectures for instance, security collaboration,
the networking piece all into a single software agreement. It's
making it easier for the customer to consume it. They
have one you know, one renewal date for all those technologies,
and it's allowing them to see more expansion and upsell
(18:10):
opportunities because they can add more products and solutions to
that software agreement. We're seeing a lot of customers that
purchase basically what we call Ala Karte software, which is
like ones e two zie types of software now wrapping
these Ali Kard software pieces from Cisco into an enterprise
agreement for those various reasons, right, there's many different benefits
to that, and we are continuing to see a shift
(18:32):
in that in the Cisco world. I think they do
it best and and it's not stopping anytime soon. So
what I could project in twenty twenty five is is
more of that with some even more incentives to move
existing customers that have these types of ALI card solutions
into those software enterprise agreements.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, okay and Jason, how about you?
Speaker 5 (18:53):
You know, really, over the next year, I see customer
experience as a service having several key advancements.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
One of the things I see is increased AI integration.
AI and machine learning is going to play a larger
role in personalizing customer interactions and predicting customer needs, and
this will be leading to more proactive and efficient service needs.
Omni channel support is another thing I think that we'll see.
There'll be a stronger emphasis on providing seamless experiences across
multiple channels, and this is basically to ensure customers can
(19:23):
switch between platforms without losing continuity. Enhanced data analytics is
another area that I see that will come up the
next year. Companies are going to need to leverage advanced
analytics really to gain deeper insights into customer red behavior
and then helping to tailor services and improve customer satisfaction,
and then scalability and flexibility programs such as Ingram's Care program.
(19:46):
The excess as a solution, solutions will become more scalable
and more flexible, and this is going to allow businesses
of all sizes to adopt and benefit.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
From these technologies.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
So I say that these trends are going to help
businesses deliver a more personal, efficient, and secure customer experience over.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
The next year.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Excellent. Well, for listeners who have any questions about something
we talked about today, how can they reach out, Chris,
I'll ask you.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, sure, we have an email alias care at ingrammicro
dot com. You could reach out on that way. Also,
I am on LinkedIn, so if you want to look
me up on LinkedIn, you can feel free to engage
with the directly there. Then we can look forward to
speaking with anybody that wants to talk a little bit
more about the customer Success motion and some of the
different options that we have at Ingram that can help
(20:35):
support their customers.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Jason, we can reach you on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
That is correct, guests, excellent.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Well, guys, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for
the time today.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, thank you Shelby, Thank you Shelby, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, and thank you listeners for tuning in to B
to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Be sure to
subscribe if you haven't already and don't forget. You can
find all of these episodes on the ingram micro expan platform.
Until next time, I'm Shelby Skirrehawk.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You've been listening to B to B tech Talk by
Ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by ingram micro Exvantage.
B to B tech Talk is a joint production between
Sweetfish Media and ingram Micro. To listen to this episode
and many others, visit ingrammicro dot com.
You're listening to B to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro,
a place to learn about how to grow your business
and stay ahead of technological advances before they become mainstream.
This episode is sponsored by Ingram Micro's Expantage, the next
Level way to transform your business's potential and reshape how
customers see you through advanced transactional data.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Let's get into it. Welcome to B to B Tech
Talk with Ingram Micro. I'm your host, Shelby Skirhawk, and
our guests today are Chris Heinrich, technical adoption executive, and
Jason Kennedy, Senior Customer Success account Executive, both of Ingram Micro.
Chris and Jason, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Welcome, good to be here, Thank you, thanks for having
us here.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Shelby.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
All right, well, so today we are talking about customer
success and care an acronym as a service. But first
I want to get to know our guests a little
bit more. So, Chris, let me start with you. Tell
us about yourself and how you made your way to
Ingram Micro.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Sure. Oh yeah, so hi everybody. My name is Christopher Heinrich.
I'm a technical adoption executive. As Shelby had stated, I've
been with ingram Micro for almost fourteen years now, and
I've been supporting our Cisco business unit in practice for
all those fourteen years. Prior to Ingram Micro, I spent
about five years at a local voiceover IP reseller here
(01:27):
in the Buffalo, New York area, so I have about
twenty one years of IT knowledge behind me, and like
I said, I've been supporting the Cisco business practice for
those fourteen years at Ingram. I am on the technical side.
I started my career at Ingram focused on our technical support,
software design or solution design and support building solutions for
(01:49):
our Cisco partners, and then transitioned into a field focused
role where I got to travel and support our Southern
customers and our Cisco partners in that territory. And then
COVID came along and ruined all those plans. So for
the last three and a half years or so, I've
been supporting our customers success practice and care as a
(02:11):
service practice here at Ingram.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Excellent, Jason, how about you?
Speaker 5 (02:15):
So I have a varied background in IT, but I've
been in it for about twenty five years now. Most
of that time has been on the sales side, so
I've worked with vendors such as HPE and Dell. I've
been on the partner channel side as a direct to
end users sales up and I've also then worked here
at Ingram, starting on the Microsoft Cloud sales team and
(02:37):
then moving over to the care team to be part
of their customer's success program. So currently, as a senior
Customer Success account executive Ingram, I play a pivotal role
in ensuring that customers to achieve their desired business outcomes
while using Cisco's products and services, and some of the
responsibilities I have our strategic leadership with building deep relationships
(02:58):
with our senior leaders, customers and organizations and partners, and
help aligning the Cisco account teams to deliver on goals
and strategies. Customer advocacy is a big part of my
role as well. As a primary advocate for our customers
with Cisco, I've helped to ensure that their needs and
feedback are addressed and then really helping customers realize their
(03:19):
business outcomes and get full value of their investments at Cisco,
and by making sure that the Cisco solutions are driving
the business outcomes and ensuring successful adoption.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So let me clarify then, so when you say customer
we are talking about the resellers customers or are we
talking about the resellers themselves?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
So it's twofold.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
And in my role I work with I have a
customer as a partner and sometimes a customer as an
end user customer. So I will work with both those
and the executives and teams on both those sides. With
our partners, I really help them understand our programs and
help them leverage our programs with their end user customer,
and sometimes will actually get on calls or meetings with
(04:03):
the end user customer to help clarify what business outcomes
they're trying to get in there from their Cisco solution
and really kind of align the CX strategy with those
business outcomes.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, and so seex customer success. Let me be a
complete novice and ask, you know, what is customer success?
I guess as a service? What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
So customer success as a service is really a model
where companies either outsource their customer success functions or use
our team at Ingram as an expansion of their customer
sif SEX team. And really the key points of doing
that are scalability, CS, service helps businesses scale their customer
success efforts quickly and efficiently. By leveraging the external expertise
(04:47):
and resources of our team, you get proactive support and
for active engagement, personalized support and ongoing assistance really to
ensure customers derive maximum value from their products and services.
There's also improvement metrics. We have different programs and resources
available and the goal of the improved metrics is to
enhance customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, which in turn is
(05:10):
just going to boost revenue and reduce churn. And then
we offer flexible solutions. As of CX as a service provider,
we can offer tatered solutions, and then we have a
pretty good list of offerings that are broadband solutions that
we have that as an extension of our team really
kind of addresses all the goals or gaps that they
(05:32):
might have in their organization, in their sales organization.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Okay, well, so Chris, when we're talking about customer success again,
maybe you know a plane language, you know what that
The way that I am interpreting this is that you know,
it helps a customer really be aware of and know
how to use the technology that they've purchased. That is
that a correct assessment of kind of the plain language
(05:57):
of customer success And is that a problem that you
see often?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, that's correct, Shelby, and it is a problem that
we see often. Like I said, I've been supporting INGRAM
and customer success for the last three and a half years,
working with our partners and our end customers. And a
lot of the motions that are happening in the technology
world today, a lot of the offers that are being
presented and purchased through customers are in the form of
software and more so in the form of annuities and
(06:24):
enterprise agreements. And the big picture here to look at
is when partners are selling these solutions to their customers,
ultimately there's going to be a renewal date for that subscription,
whether it's a one year or three year, five year,
seven year, whatever it may be. At some point the
customer is going to have to make a decision on
whether they going to renew that solution or not. So
it's not really a set it and forget it like
(06:46):
some of the traditional technology solutions have been in the past.
And what we've seen has a lot of partners are
selling these amazing solutions to their customers. They're buying enterprise
agreements which come in the form of many different software
packages within the Cisco world, and sometimes the customers are
not taking full advantage of that software agreement. Ultimately, that
(07:07):
could lead to a poor experience and in the end
may not turn into an automatic renewal. So we've been
working closely with our partners and these customers to help
identify some of these gaps. We help to educate the
customers on what they're getting within their software agreements, because
not everybody knows exactly all the included bells and whistles
that they get with their software package. We also work
(07:30):
directly with these end customers on the technical side. That's
my corresponsibility to work with the customers IT teams to
their c levels and have them understand where their objectives
are with purchasing the solution, but also what are some
of their technical challenges and hurdles that they're seeing that
are preventing them from seeing the value in the solution.
How can we help better optimize their IT teams. How
(07:52):
can we better help educate their users so they fully
adopt the technology. Those are the types of things that
we work through within our custom success or care as
a care team to help ensure that these customers see
the full value in these solutions. And it's happening in
the Cisco world, and it's also happening across the technology
stack where every vendor is more looking more towards transitioning
(08:14):
that model to a recurring revenue software based annuity model.
And if you don't address the customers, and you don't
understand your customers and don't understand whether the's not having
whether're struggling, or they're not achieving their goals, ultimately there's
an inherent amount of risk for a partner at that
point because the customer can just not renew or potentially
go to another vendor or partner. So that is why
(08:37):
we stress the importance of customer success and that's why
we've been seeing some great success so far.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
With our partners. So, Chriss, how does ingram micro specifically
help with customer understanding and enablement? I mean, you know
this customer service practice, you know, it's definitely seems like
an essential part of it. But you know, maybe the
resellers in the channel, they don't have the time or
the resources to be able to do this. So how
(09:01):
does Ingram micro help.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, So, through our Ingram micro Care as a Service program,
you know, we engage directly with the partners and we
help them identify specific customer opportunities that are our potential
good fits for a customer success motion and helping them
walk them through the customer success journey. From there, we
usually work with a direct person at the partner that's
(09:26):
responsible for their customer success practice and through them, we
help engage with their account rep teams, the person that
sold the solution or is selling the solution to this
particular customer. From there, we learn some additional details about
that customer. We understand why they may be purchasing this solution,
we understand you know, how it's going to be implemented
(09:47):
and deployed. We get timelines and we also get key stakeholders,
so the people that will be involved with this type
of engagement. We also get the buy in from the
account rep as well. So sometimes we have to explain
customer success to these account managers because they may not
know our sole purpose in this whole life cycle journey approach.
So after we do all that, we then set up
an introduction call with the customer. We introduce ourselves as
(10:10):
an extension of the partner's team for customer success, and
we introduce our roles and our responsibilities and how we
will help that customer through their life cycle journey. Our
main goal is to ensure that the customer sees the
value in the solutions that they're purchasing, and we help
them answer questions around their particular solution, but it comes
more in the form of assisting them with technical enablement
(10:31):
adoption trainings, whether they're for the customer's IT staff, just
better understanding of the solutions that they're purchasing and using,
and sometimes the users. There are certain technologies like collaboration,
for example, where it's in front of the user, the
users using it day in and day out, and some
of these users may not understand the new technology. They
may not understand how to use those types of things.
(10:51):
So we do a lot of enablement and adoption to
these customers for their end users on how to use
the particular devices, how to use the particular software on
their laptops, on their phones, so that the customer can
see the full return on investment and ultimately we are
portraying a good amount of value to the customer through
the partner, and we in hopes that at the end
(11:14):
of that renewal time that it becomes a non event
that the customer renews and is loving the Cisco solution
and potentially adding to that enterprise agreement or software agreement
with additional technologies down the road.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Got it? Got it? Okay, Well, so Jason, let me
come to you. So, I mean, then, the goal of
a customer success practice, I'm I'm learning it's it's to
create this recurring revenue model. But I wonder if you
can just go into a little bit more of the
specific challenges that resellers often face in achieving this. Like,
(11:46):
you know, of course they's that is their goal, but
you know, what are some of those hurdles that you
have a hard time clearing when you're trying to create
this type of practice.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
You know, Shelby, there are some significant challenges that I
see with partners in that area. Some of those challenges
that I see a resellers facing in their SX practice
really kind of relate to headcount and internalizing knowledge. There's
certain certifications and programs knowledge that a reseller needs to
have to have a successful customer success program and things
(12:20):
such as headcount turnover and their CSM bandwidth, uh, you know,
really kind of can impede the success of that program.
And this overall knowledge and understanding of the many programs
also present challenges. The programs change year over year, sometimes
quarter over quarter. You know, they people get promoted an
organization or leave an organization and then they have to
(12:41):
start over with certifications with the new uh, you know,
the new member of their team. And then sometimes organizations
don't have a fully mature customer success program and they
might be having many.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Hats for that for that customer success manager, he might
be their CSM and their internal sales rep or you know,
he might have three or four roles in the company.
And trying to just have where all those hats and have,
you know, be successful in the CSM organization definitely makes
things challenging.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
I'll just add too to that. There's also some some
issues that we see when it comes to speaking with
some of the partner's account reps and their you know,
their account management teams and just having them understand what
customer success is and where it fits and how it
can help their customers in the long run. And that's
some of the challenges that we face because ultimately, if
(13:30):
we don't get the account reps buy in to work
with the customer, we don't get to work with the customer.
So that's sometimes a challenge that we need to overcome,
and we need to portray and show illustrate to them
what the customer success motion looks like and the value
that it can provide their customers and them as well.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That's that's a great point, Chris.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
A lot of the end user sales reps for our
resellers don't often get to hear the message directly from
the Ingram team, So the CSM is often translating basically
our program and their words to their end user sales
reps and trying to get their buying on the program,
and without understanding the true value of our program. Sometimes
customer reps are that end user sales reps might think
(14:09):
it's in a disruption to them or slowing down the
sales cycle in their way. So when we get the
opportunity to actually present that directly to the sales team,
we see a lot faster adoption and.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Buy in rate.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And Jason, let me have you clarify, so the acronym care,
what does that stand for the.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
Care stands for a customer adoption, renewals and experience.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
And our team is part of the experienced team.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Got it, the experience piece of it. What does that mean?
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Well, we really want to be able to provide a
program that's going to be able to leverage our INGRAM resources,
reduce churn to the full adoption of the life cycle.
And they even provide a way that they can monetize
the life cycle and the customer success program. And through
the program that we offer, there's a natural cross sell
(14:58):
upsale opportunity.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You know, the average contract.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Value we see it kind of goes up about ten
percent the first eight months for customers that are going
through this or for partners that are using our Customer
Success in their life cycle journey.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Really yeah, And the one thing that I'll add too
is when you look at the experience right and you
can just relate it back to our own personal lives.
We all have digital subscriptions to know, other platforms, you know,
movie platforms, you know, whatever, music platforms. If our experience
is poor, what do we do. We look for the
next best thing, or we cancel the subscription we have
and find something else. And that's the same in the
(15:33):
technology world. Right, if the experience isn't great for a
particular solution, there's a good chance the customer may not
go back to that solution when the renewal time comes up,
or even look to cancel it, which is even worse.
So going back into our motion, we are trying to
prevent that from happening. We are speaking to the people
at the customers and giving them the know how, giving
(15:55):
them the insight, optimizing their solutions to them, not just
that it's fully implemented in deploy but it's fully optimized
to them so they can get the best bang for
their buck with the solution.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Right because I'm sure you see it all the time
that end customers don't realize the breadth of features that
they have at their fingertips simply because they just don't
understand fully the technology. Right.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I mean we've unfortunately, we've worked with a few customers
in the past where we came in kind of later
in the life cycle and they came to us with
a few requests and we kind of illustrated to them like, hey,
your solution includes that. It's included that from day one,
and they're like, wow, we wish we would have known
that when we first implement this solution, because it would
have solved a lot of headaches and problems over the
(16:39):
last two year and a half. So again that's why
it's important. This is a life cycle emotion, right. This
isn't just a set you know, implement it and set
it and forget it and leave the customer and come
back to them in three years and expect the renewal.
This is working with them day in and day out
on their on their challenges and their needs, just highlighting
the solutions that they purchased so they're fully aware of it,
so that again this that that renewal becomes a non
(17:01):
event and that they're loving that solution.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, as we start to wrap
up our episode, we always ask our guests the same
final question, and that's where do you see technology going
in the next year? So I know that is broad,
but you know, within this space kind of just what
you're seeing, what you're keeping an eye on, you know,
So if you were to prognosticate for this time twenty
(17:24):
twenty five, Chris, I'm going to start with you.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, I mean from what I'm seeing, obviously the hardware
gets bigger and better faster. You know, it's always evolving,
right when it comes to the buying models and how
we're seeing technology vendors like Cisco, for example, what we're
seeing is a huge uplift in software enterprise agreements where
(17:48):
where they're combining multiple architectures, technology architectures for instance, security collaboration,
the networking piece all into a single software agreement. It's
making it easier for the customer to consume it. They
have one you know, one renewal date for all those technologies,
and it's allowing them to see more expansion and upsell
(18:10):
opportunities because they can add more products and solutions to
that software agreement. We're seeing a lot of customers that
purchase basically what we call Ala Karte software, which is
like ones e two zie types of software now wrapping
these Ali Kard software pieces from Cisco into an enterprise
agreement for those various reasons, right, there's many different benefits
to that, and we are continuing to see a shift
(18:32):
in that in the Cisco world. I think they do
it best and and it's not stopping anytime soon. So
what I could project in twenty twenty five is is
more of that with some even more incentives to move
existing customers that have these types of ALI card solutions
into those software enterprise agreements.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, okay and Jason, how about you?
Speaker 5 (18:53):
You know, really, over the next year, I see customer
experience as a service having several key advancements.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
You know.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
One of the things I see is increased AI integration.
AI and machine learning is going to play a larger
role in personalizing customer interactions and predicting customer needs, and
this will be leading to more proactive and efficient service needs.
Omni channel support is another thing I think that we'll see.
There'll be a stronger emphasis on providing seamless experiences across
multiple channels, and this is basically to ensure customers can
(19:23):
switch between platforms without losing continuity. Enhanced data analytics is
another area that I see that will come up the
next year. Companies are going to need to leverage advanced
analytics really to gain deeper insights into customer red behavior
and then helping to tailor services and improve customer satisfaction,
and then scalability and flexibility programs such as Ingram's Care program.
(19:46):
The excess as a solution, solutions will become more scalable
and more flexible, and this is going to allow businesses
of all sizes to adopt and benefit.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
From these technologies.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
So I say that these trends are going to help
businesses deliver a more personal, efficient, and secure customer experience over.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
The next year.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Excellent. Well, for listeners who have any questions about something
we talked about today, how can they reach out, Chris,
I'll ask you.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, sure, we have an email alias care at ingrammicro
dot com. You could reach out on that way. Also,
I am on LinkedIn, so if you want to look
me up on LinkedIn, you can feel free to engage
with the directly there. Then we can look forward to
speaking with anybody that wants to talk a little bit
more about the customer Success motion and some of the
different options that we have at Ingram that can help
(20:35):
support their customers.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Jason, we can reach you on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
That is correct, guests, excellent.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Well, guys, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for
the time today.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Yeah, thank you Shelby, Thank you Shelby, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, and thank you listeners for tuning in to B
to B Tech Talk with Ingram Micro. Be sure to
subscribe if you haven't already and don't forget. You can
find all of these episodes on the ingram micro expan platform.
Until next time, I'm Shelby Skirrehawk.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You've been listening to B to B tech Talk by
Ingram Micro. This episode was sponsored by ingram micro Exvantage.
B to B tech Talk is a joint production between
Sweetfish Media and ingram Micro. To listen to this episode
and many others, visit ingrammicro dot com.
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