Scaling New Heights with our Five9 Partners

Two weeks ago, I took this picture in Rocky Mountain National Park while on a quick vacation to get a bit of fresh air. The goal was to recharge so that I could be fully energized to continue to work for a company that I absolutely love. As I looked at this picture, I realized it was also a good image for our current goal of building “next level partnerships.” And with that target in mind, I’d like to share a few thoughts about our acceleration plans for our partner community.

Climbing higher

Two years ago, when I first started this adventure with Five9, I knew I was coming into a company that had built a great foundation for powerful partnerships. The people, the culture, and the desire were all in place to help expand Five9’s role as a trusted partner to address even more of the market together.

To help further the alignment with our partners, we introduced what we called the “sell with” state of mind. We worked incredibly hard to make sure we built real partnerships, repeatable winning relationships, and unique value in as many partnerships as possible globally. We evangelized internally and externally on the value of our partnerships, while also making incremental investments in our tools, our processes, and our supporting teams to make the business more efficient for our shared end customers.

Through these moves, we have seen resoundingly strong partner growth and I am incredibly grateful for the trust our partners place in us.

Now as we move into fall, and as CCaaS and AI continue to show tremendous upside, I’m excited to say, “Let’s go higher!”

Expanding our partnership methodology

We’re going to expand beyond the “sell with” state of mind, and move toward a more comprehensive “Sell with, deliver with, and build with” partnership methodology. This philosophy reflects the ongoing nature of our work to help customers reimagine the contact center and realize results.

Later this month, we will introduce our inaugural class of Certified Implementation Partners, a select group of partners that includes Babble, Carousel (NWN), CDW, Inflow (formerly PeakView), ICQ24, Nuveto and ScanSource (Intelisys), who have completed the necessary training and requirements to be certified Five9 delivery partners. We take immense pride in our exceptional NPS (Net Promoter Score) for implementations and overall customer satisfaction, and these partners recognize how important this is and have invested in their time and talent to help us continue to deliver outstanding customer results.

In addition, later this year, Five9 will be announcing a new Certified Integrated Network Partner program. These certified partners around the world complement Five9’s service with their own network capabilities and have formal testing acceptance and operational alignment in place for a more simplified customer experience. This is a model we’ve proven before with several telecommunications service providers globally, but now we’ll have this formal verification.

When it comes to the “build with” partnership capabilities, the opportunities are nearly endless. Great customer experience requires a holistic point of view that includes third party tools, CRM (customer relationship management) systems, alignment to UCaaS, ISV (independent software vendor) relationships, and frequently consultative customer engagement to develop and deliver the needed workflows to deliver excellence.

Here’s our approach: We focus on what we’re great at – CCaaS. Then we partner exceptionally well to deliver the rest. I enjoy working with partners who architect these environments and maximize the value of the total partner ecosystem. With our rapidly growing ISV portfolio,  Five9 Workflow Automation tools,  Five9 VoiceStream capabilities, Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) solution, and several other developments, I can assure you, “building with” our partners will be exciting for a long time to come.

Meet us at the summit

When I started this role, I said, “Together we are on the front end of a phenomenal opportunity to capture a market and build successful relationships for many years to come, and we are committed to [our partners].” Now I’m happy to say that my commitment has deepened, and the market is even bigger. Thanks to our partners for making Five9 great, and for their partnership on this journey. Let’s keep going higher!

To learn more about how we’re scaling new heights with our partners, join us at the Five9 CX Summit on Sept. 1-2, 2021. Please register and connect with us at the event!