How the channel can redefine the customer experience

The importance of customer experience has increased drastically in the digital age. Customers now assume that they can interact with a business whenever and wherever they want and expect instant gratification from the products and services they purchase. The room for error that may have existed before the digital transformation, certainly no longer exists.

Through the introduction of social media particularly, customers now control the conversation by expressing their anger, asking for assistance or praising their brand. In short customer expectations are high and word of mouth travels quickly.

To cater for customers increasing demands to a joined up ICT environment, businesses are under constant pressure to have employees work longer hours to maintain the appearance of being always available.

However in today’s competitive environment the workplace is more than just providing a space where employees do their jobs. Businesses need to provide a workplace where employees want to come to work. Employee engagement and satisfaction are vital parts of the employee experience and will have a knock-on effect to the customer. Companies are becoming more aware of this and are beginning the change the culture and internal process to ensure employees are working as efficiently as possible.

Customer expectations are high and word of mouth travels quickly.

In order to sell solutions and support customers you need to listen.

For many businesses the move into this new digital ground can feel uncertain.

The challenge being to strike the right balance between adopting modern, efficient digital practises, whilst still remaining in touch and personable to your customers.

What does this mean for the channel?

The key for the channel – sell solutions rather than products. The channel has been receptive and quick to embrace the digital transformation particularly in regards to marketing and finance. It appears to have slowed in terms of adopting digital practise to sell, project manage and on-board customers.

Whilst this leaves a lot of room to implement new practises, the test will be where not to digitalise. There is a reluctance, and perhaps for good reason, to substitute face-to-face contact with a video or audio conference to close a deal or on-board a customer.

In order to sell solutions and support customers you need to listen and understand how their business operates and what they want to get out of the transaction. The digital transformation begins with the relationship between partner and customer rather than the individual product.

The key for the channel – sell solutions rather than products.

Long-term success in the channel depends on more than product alone.

Our view would be that a channel partner must ensure that the transition to any new solution needs to be smooth – most businesses are usually looking for evolution rather than revolution. The key would be adding new solutions that give a tangible value, and this puts the partner in a good position to cross sell another product or add to the solution. As we know technology moves rapidly, so in order to ensure the communications solutions you implement will be relevant to the customer’s business plans for the long term, it needs to be mobile and flexible.

Enabling Gamma partners to do better

To produce big results partners need a supplier with the right balance of price, solutions and support. Without this, the relationship can be unproductive, stifled by a lack of expertise and backing.

Our is aim is to make it easy for partners to do better, providing access to the Gamma Academy for all their training needs, Accelerate for white-label marketing material / lead generation and the Gamma Portal to provision and manage services online. With these tools partners can focus on what they do best – providing excellent customer service and offering clients the right solutions for their needs.

When thinking of new solutions Gamma works to understand the pain points of many businesses and then the technology that can deliver the improvement and the cost structure that ensure it can be delivered at a price point that businesses can afford.