Kristy Thomas was recently appointed SVP of global channels and alliances at Vonage, and she believes businesses need to pivot their approach to designing and delivering better customer and employee experiences.
They must also scale customer support and interactions, and adopt a data-driven focus in order to meet ever-increasing demands and expectations, and the shift towards hybrid and remote work. To address the problem, Thomas said that companies need to implement solutions that run on one centralised platform, and align with their existing systems and applications.
Thomas explained, “To do so, businesses must choose solutions – whether it’s a UCaaS solution, a CCaaS solution, CPaaS, or a combination of these solutions – that are powered and operated by a single platform. They also need to be integrated with today’s leading CRMs and business productivity applications.
“With these tools, partners are helping their customers to build personalised, differentiated and innovative customer support and employee collaboration experiences, by powering connections and conversations.”
Thomas has more than 20 years’ experience building and scaling sales and leadership teams. During that time, she has helped global enterprises with their digital transformation and to reach their full potential.
Prior to rejoining Vonage, Thomas was vice president of partner experience and enablement at Intelisys, where she built an ecosystem that supported its customer experience practice by providing partners with the tools needed to serve their customers. This included the creation of a partner marketing programme, education and events, a partner loyalty programme, and high-growth technology programmes.
Thomas previously worked as a senior vice president in the contact centre and sales organisations for Vonage between 2018 and 2020. In the role, she was a part of the team leading the company’s acquisition of NewVoiceMedia, where she helped to drive a customer engagement framework for contact centre transformation that has enabled businesses and their agents to deliver meaningful customer engagement.
Thomas has also held various sales leadership roles for cloud communications providers, including vice president of western sales at Talkdesk, where she was responsible for the leadership and execution of the enterprise field sales organisation within the region. She was also vice president of cloud communications at Masergy Communications (now part of Comcast Business).
In her new role, Thomas will be focused on building on Vonage’s high-growth strategy for indirect routes to market, with oversight of global channels. She said, “I am ready to jump right in and build on my previous experience at the company to further the success of our channel programme.”
Managing your portfolio
One of the biggest challenges currently facing partners is managing an increasingly wide product portfolio of products and/or services. Given that their customers have a wide range of needs and the fact it’s difficult to be an expert at everything, Thomas said they need partners with the required expertise to help deliver for their customers.
“One of the benefits of working with Vonage is that we can cover the entire communications stack – with the Vonage communications platform, businesses have access to UC, CC, APIs and conversational commerce solutions - all from a single, integrated platform,” said Thomas.
“And we also work closely with partners to provide ongoing education, consultative and provisioning support to ensure their partners are equipped to handle all of their customers’ needs that extend far beyond the point of sale.”
Another key trend that Thomas has identified is the daily changing needs and demands of partners and their customers. This presents a huge opportunity for partners to provide their customers with emerging technologies such as AI, she said.
“The use of AI, layered across any solution in your technology stack, holds immense potential to deliver personalised interactions that enhance employee collaboration and customer engagement, and to drive overall innovation in how a company does business,” said Thomas.
“With responsible development and utilisation of AI – such AI-driven virtual agents and conversation flows to augment contact centre platforms – we have the opportunity to help our partners empower their customers to do more than ever before.”
Next-gen comms
Vonage has been at the forefront of developing such technologies. The company’s UCaaS and CCaaS solutions are built from its communications platform and help companies enhance their communication and operations from the office or remotely, enabling next-generation communications between customers, agents, employees and business partners that are more flexible, intelligent and personal.
“Growing our UCaaS and CCaaS business continues to be areas of focus for Vonage and we will continue to invest in and innovate across these solutions to meet our customers’ evolving need for new ways to keep their employees connected and to drive deeper engagement with their own customers for a better overall customer and employee experience,” said Thomas.
“Our APIs are a core component to innovation across these applications, providing the building blocks to infuse programmable capabilities - voice, video, messaging and verification - and new features, such as AI capabilities, into these offerings.”
Moving forward, Thomas said that Vonage’s channel business remains an integral part of its growth strategy, including a strong UK presence.
This interview was included in our October 2024 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.