Unlocking the power of partner experience for greater CX impact

Article by Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh

Great customer experience (CX) fuels revenue growth. This statement sounds like common sense—plain, simple and supported by many studies over the years. However, it takes on new meaning in today’s world as analysts, sales leaders and executives alike agree the customer journey has forever changed.

CX is the crucial element that enables brands to survive disruption. Smart businesses have doubled down on customer experience, in particular the digital experience, since so much of a customer’s decision-making is now done online. CX is also what creates preference for brands and keeps customers connected to those brands.

“A positive customer experience can help improve customer retention and loyalty. It can also help convert customers into loyal brand advocates.” – Forrester

But What About Partner Experience?

Our partners are often on the front line between our customers and us. And there has been  growing acknowledgment that partner experience matters. It drives partner productivity and stickiness. Partners who are committed to your business value proposition are more likely to invest in the relationship and expertise around your products/services. In other words, good partners enable your business to scale. Analysts, advisories and forward-thinking ecosystem orchestrators are taking note.

But how does this translate to how your customers experience your products and brand through partners?

Analysts often claim that up to 75% of all world trade is delivered through or with a partner. How do you separate that experience with your product or service from the experience the customer has with your partner?

Answer: You cannot.

Partners Are the Customer Experience

Once you understand this, you will think about how you partner in a very different way.

We often think of a channel partner as a route to market. But partners have become inextricably intertwined in the customer experience. There is a parallel partner journey across all the touchpoints of the customer journey.

In the digital customer experience, for instance, customers are likely to have multiple touchpoints before they reach out to a salesperson, and that person is increasingly a partner, who can bring the whole solution and talk the language of business outcomes. Partners more frequently than not identify the customer opportunity. Yet, recently released research  indicates that only about half of partners are actually transacting and contracting the opportunity, at least in the field of business-to-business (B2B) technology sales.

This points to a growing influence of partners who are not traditional channel distribution partners.

As you look across all the roles a partner may play in the customer experience, it becomes apparent that no single partner can fill all the roles. In B2B enterprise sales, customers are buying more than a product or a service. They are buying business outcomes. Most enterprise technology sales are comprised of a cluster of partners, an ecosystem of products and services. To ensure a well-orchestrated customer experience, the ecosystem must be well-orchestrated as well.