We’ve all got our go-to guy/girl for those specialist jobs we don’t do every day.
You know the one: always helpful and never frustrated when suggesting the same simple process they suggested to you last time.
Whether in pre-sales, customer onboarding, delivery or service, the channel partner model can exacerbate the often tricky issues that flow from sitting between the network provider and end-user.
In times of need, the end-user looks to their provider for support; the provider looks to the reseller for support, and the reseller looks to the network for support.
Often, everyone’s looking – but sometimes the answers are hard to find.
The search usually ends (successfully) with the specialist go-to geeks who have carved themselves an impressive reputation in their field for just sorting it out.
But someone calling someone who knows someone is SO analogue.
Portals are where it’s at: and for reseller partners looking to onboard and service new customers quickly and easily, they are an increasingly important part of the wider pre-sales proposition.
“Automated onboarding is efficient and scalable: two words which routinely sit at the very top of most of our partners’ wish lists,” says Christian Hed, Chief Marketing Officer at rapidly-expanding European UCaaS giant, Soluno.
“Everyone’s goal – ours, our resellers’ and our resellers’ customers’ – should be to have a happy end user able to quickly and easily resolve their own issues with a few clicks via an engaging customer portal. That kind of easy automation is pretty much a prerequisite now”
It’s why Soluno has invested in its MyAcademy interactive learning platform: where partners’ teams can learn the new skills they need to deliver on those aims AND benefit from a ‘knowledge-on-demand’ resource of continually-evolving content that brings ongoing value to all parties.
Thirty–minute courses provide users with everything they need to know about Soluno’s products and solutions, ensuring they have the right knowledge to support both initial customer onboarding AND subsequent day-to-day delivery and customer service.
”The skill levels and experience that exist within our partners’ teams are the factors which differentiate them in the market,” says Hed. ”Those are the factors that can help drive new business for them, so naturally we want to support them as much as we can.
“The platform is full of best practice and has a searchable knowledge base. The user experience is a rich one thanks to a wide range of engaging content such as pictures, videos, presentations, quick links to external websites and interactive mockup interfaces. It makes the information fun to consume and easy to digest.”
The courses – which cater for a variety of functions and roles and which end with a quiz to test the learners’ knowledge – are also providing added value to many organisations that have incorporated them into their own internal workforce development programmes.
That means Soluno’s partners can easily validate and improve the skill levels within their organization and make their continual development scalable.
“The main focus is on helping our partners’ workforces learn how to maximise customer satisfaction and leverage profitability,” adds Hed. “But of course the platform doubles as a single source of accurate, continually-updated product information. If a partner has a customer issue, it’s now easier to find the answer in MyAcademy rather than by shooting their usual Soluno contact an email.
“It also means that that end customer’s trust in our partner to really know our product, and to be able to resolve an issue internally rather than need our help, is hugely boosted.”
For the go-to geeks, that is no doubt a very welcome development that will enable them to focus fully on the things that matter most.
Just make sure you don’t delete their number altogether..!
