Comms Business Magazine (CBM): Can you update us on the Vonage Channel strategy?
Adam Wilson (AW): At Vonage, we have a simple philosophy for our partners in the Channel – the success of their business is instrumental to our growth. We are committed to working with our partners to put our collective customers at the heart of everything we do – from the development of our products and solutions to our sales, support and marketing frameworks.
Owning our own tech stack from unified communications, contact centres and a communications platform as a service, we are uniquely situated to enable our partners deliver communication solutions that help businesses improve digital engagement with their customers, and in doing so, enhance both customer and employee experience to create greater satisfaction and brand loyalty. Vonage is uniquely positioned to enable partners in helping their business customers succeed in an increasingly customer experience driven economy.
CBM: Are you seeing any impact as a result of the Coronavirus?
AW: We have seen increased interest and sales activity for our products and solutions, especially our UCaaS offering, Vonage Business Cloud (VBC).
While a natural disaster may expedite the shift to widespread remote work, the movement toward a more distributed workforce has been growing organically for some time. Research suggests that remote work is effective and that workers can even be more productive at home.
Rather than try to stop this inevitable shift in the way we work, business leaders can instead embrace our ability to bring the office anywhere. To help them prepare for this new paradigm, they can turn to technologies that specifically allow for productive, efficient, and easy remote work that can be a pillar of business continuity.
We are well equipped to keep our own business running smoothly while we do the same for our customers. We’ve reached out to customers to provide guidance on how they can quickly and easily set up a remote workforce to ensure business continuity. By helping them to best leverage their Vonage service, our hope is that they will be armed and ready for their office to be anywhere - even if only for a short period of time.
CBM: What are we likely to see from Vonage this year?
AW: Change is part of our DNA. Our original business brought the power of VoiP to the familiar phones of families and small businesses. Since then we’ve built the world’s most flexible cloud communications platform for businesses, to help our customers stay ahead. We provide Communications APIs, Contact Centres, and Unified Communications.
We’re uniquely flexible in how you access our capabilities. Customers can take their pick of proven applications, all ready to go or select from our extensive portfolio of APIs to create their own applications and integrations. Or get the best of both: choose the apps they need and customise them with our APIs.
This flexibility can help them in many ways. Hold great conversations across the channels of their choice. Create new, personalised experiences for customers and employees. And unlock the power of data and AI as never before – making any conversation, anywhere, more successful.
All through one unified cloudbased platform, so they can scale and flex securely and reliably, with just one partner. No one else can do this. We’re reinventing communications once again.
CBM: How are you helping Channel Partners win more business?
AW: In the main this comes down to providing an intimate approach to channel development and business development with our partners. Being close to the channel partners and being able to provide timely responses when they have clients engaged, providing clear value propositions and differentiators, along with transparency in terms of how and why we win is more important than the channel incentives on offer.
Without the ‘why’ and the ‘win’ there will never be a sale and commission payment! As mentioned previously in this interview, the success of the partner’s business is instrumental to Vonage’s growth. Incentivising our sales teams to win with the channel means our sales people are glued to the partner (in the best of ways!) ensuring they receive the right support during the sales cycle; understanding the business drivers, how to engage with different lines of business stakeholders and how to counter resistance. This is particularly useful if the partner has sold UCaaS for example but not CCaaS or APIs.
CBM: How are you helping Channel Partners win more business?
AW: In the main this comes down to providing an intimate approach to channel development and business development with our partners. Being close to the channel partners and being able to during the sales cycle; understanding the business drivers, how to engage with different lines of business stakeholders and how to counter resistance. This is particularly useful if the partner has sold UCaaS for example but not CCaaS or APIs.