The ActivateCX Podcast

Don't Buy A Contact Center Until You Listen To This!

• Frank Rogers • Season 2 • Episode 33

Share episode

Buy Your CX Tech in a better way!  https://activateCX.arroyo360.com/activateCXtoday

--------------

Are you considering investing in ai contact center solutions? Before you make a decision, make sure to watch this video for valuable insights on contact center analytics, AI solutions, consulting services, generative AI, and much more. 

Learn about RingCentral's ai contact center solutions and how to maximize ROI with proper discovery when evaluating and buying your cloud contact center. Watch now for a deep dive into a competency first mindset with experts Frank Rogers and special guest Amir Hameed!

Don't miss out on understanding the power of contact center AI platforms and how they can revolutionize your customer service operations. Watch now to make an informed choice!

Chapters:

00:00 The Technical Sales Org at RingCentral

04:15 How Technical Sales aligns with Product

05:50 Home Grown Products

08:00 Building the Native App

10:17  Incorporating Voice of Customer

12:43 Having CEO Input

18:07 There is a Sense of Urgency

19:35 Where is Partner Alignment Here?

22:20 Where the Rubber meets the Road

26:44 The Importance of Buying Strategically

30:10 How Does the Tech team influence Sales

33:01 Closing

Amir, welcome to the show. Thank you, Frank. Pleasure to be here. Amir, you lead up RingCentral's technical sales organization, which I absolutely love, it's kind of near and dear to my heart. What are you doing to build a culture of collaboration and maybe a certain level of innovation inside that group? Absolutely. Yep. So as you mentioned, I've got the technical sales. So globally, I've got all of the, solutions, engineers, designers. The specialists, the sales teams for specialty solutions, such as customer experience, contact centers the event solutions that we have video security, custom engineering. It's a pretty large, fairly large team, but we're very tight knit and we meet on a regular basis and really at the end of the day. Much of our meetings are centered around how we are listening to the customers and then amplifying that voice back into our product team. So in terms of innovation, we talk to customers every day, we listen to the challenges they're having, and then we're also trying to solution and recognizing , where our road map needs to go to ensure that we hit the mark. And how do you think, like your organization in particular, like as technical sales impacts RingCentral at large, because it's a huge company. You've got all the command and control structures that any large business would have. How do you influence the movement of the rest of the business? Yeah, I think what's what I love about my team and my role is we're at the center of it all. We're helping marketing. We're helping with competitive intelligence. You were helping with pricing, we're working very closely with product with engineering when anything new comes out, We'll get access to the alphas the betas. We'll be able to to really dig right into it and they're all asking for our feedback and then of course, we're part of the sales team. So we're, working hand in hand with sales, with the channel partner community, with folks like yourselves, as we do the discovery, with the customers and trying to truly understand, again, what pains are they facing and how can we help transform them into the cloud by bringing the latest and greatest innovations together. So not only do we hear the problems, But we have the empowerment to take what we've learned back into the business to say, Hey, here's how we need to chart our road map. So it's a very empowering, a very fulfilling organization to be at because we feel like we truly have a seat at the table to make a difference. I know that you're a technical person, but I hear a little bit of product evangelism, coming out inside your talk track. How does that permeate the rest of your team? Is everybody similarly kind of engaged in and switched on about Evangelizing. I that's a great question, right? Because we're in pre sales. We're talking to the customers. Now, if we don't have a certain level to your point of of technical credibility, customers are giving, does this guy even know what he's talking about? Is he, plugged in. It's not just RingCentral. It's the industry. Where is the customer experience? The customer journey? Where is the industry going as a whole? Where are our competitors going? So when you come in and you're brought into a situation, you're talking to, senior folks at the decision makers. Ideally, You want to show that passion because you believe in the solutions that you're bringing forward are actually going to help make a difference At the customer so so evangelism is absolutely at the heart of it. And of course, it's talking to customers It's educating channel partners making sure they understand where RingCentral would be a great fit for them because of course there's lots of options out there so I think evangelism is absolutely at the heart of it We have various marketing and marketing events to help stimulate and help drive lead generation. So that's also important, a part of not just myself, but the whole organization is engaged in those activities as well. Who is your best friend from a functional perspective inside the business whether it be sales or marketing or product. Are you most tightly aligned with product and do you work really heavily with them? Are they like your number one relationship? You think that's a that's a tough question. So we're part of sales. So we're in lockstep with sales and then the two biggest partners would be obviously Product and marketing and then there's product marketing. So it's really both of them I think with the product marketing folks, we truly develop and help figure out how to position the solutions that we're bringing forth, from a positioning perspective from a external facing evangelism perspective So we truly get the message out But at the end of the day, product is at the heart of it. Because if , we're not, , we're in pre sales, technical sales. We have a lot of integrity. So we're not going to say something that we don't believe in that our product can't do. So we need to make sure that the product keeps up with the evangelism and the marketing. And so I think it's those three. It's pre sales, sales, The whole marketing organization and the product organization working together in unison to ensure that we're pushing solutions forward., I'm in Canada, mm-Hmm.. So,, you know, Wayne Gretzky, it's like, you wanna go where the puck is moving too, not where it is right now. So we, we've gotta be forward thinking and, and collectively working together in sync. To make sure we're, developing products that customers actually need today. Well, you talk about developing products and we know that in the industry, there's been a lot of movement around merger acquisition. There's been some false starts of course if I think about the zoom and Five9 potential merger that fell apart I think that there's been some influence that's driven a renaissance inside of RingCentral to somewhat develop and build their own products like RingCX, RingSense. Those are things that are inside the organization. They're part of an inclusive set of technologies that you own and drive. How do you think that's elevating the company's offering? Absolutely. So we had great learnings. So,, we've been a major Force in the customer experience world in the contact center world with our great partnership with nice CX one. So our RingCentral contact center offering, which is a superior premium product out there, which brings the best of the nice CX one solution, coupling that with because in many of those cases, there'll be a UCaaS and a CCaaS together. So you're bringing the best of. The UCaaS has right with RingCentrals, what we call now RingEx employee experience, bringing that back together with the best of the customer experience. And that's a great offer at the upper end, but with those learnings, we built well over a 300 million practice in customer experience with that solution tightly integrated with ours. But then we realized that there's a huge segment of the market that we're not able to address. And I think that's where The RingCX complements the RingCentral contact center because it gives us our own solution. So we, control our destiny there. We shape that roadmap 100 percent because it's our own. And it's simple, easy to deploy, , cost effective AI. First being a newer product and we, have close to 400 customers already on that platform, many over a thousand seats. So I think having our own product truly allows us to deliver on the promise and the expectation that people have from RingCentral. And I think that you see ring EX and CX as a complimentary product set. In the industry. People grow by a whole host of different methods, right? They have the, invented here first mentality they have will grow by acquisition or they'll grow and they'll make sure that they have spot solutions that cleverly plug into their core technology. If you think about companies like zoom DialPad, others out there that have had this single pane of glass, like Sprinklr as well, there's many of them. And I think even nice CXOne that you talk about in your enterprise stack is moving towards that with the CX one interface. Kind of unifying a lot of the acquisitions that they've had over time. Where do you see that strategy fitting with your organization with RingEX RingCX RingSense, all these things being available, but wanting to make it unified. Absolutely. We're well down that path. So that single pane of glass is on the road map. We're already there. Like, literally, , every month I look and it's comes more. It's coming together more and more. So that is no question where we're coming from. I think where we try and differentiate ourselves because because a lot of the marketing sounds the same. It's all the same. But we're starting from a tremendous place. Yes. platform of reliability, so we've been able to deliver five nines for nearly five years now That's not a marketing sla. So what we're doing is we're starting from a found, because look, you can have all the bells and whistles you want. There's all kinds of AI and copilots and all that. But when you come down to it, when there's an outage. Everything goes out the window so at RingCentral, our foundation is five nines, not a marketing SLA, true engineering, five nines that we've been able to deliver. And as we bring the RingSense and the RingCX more and more onto that single pane of glass, I believe that delivery of that robust. Platform that's going to be there. That's the key, that's the key differentiator. So bringing it all together in an environment where it's going to be up and running for you. Yeah. You can have all the bells and whistles in this world, but availability is the best experience if we're talking about experience. Absolutely. Yeah. So it sounds like you're doing a lot of listening to the customer. We always talk about product market fit. You come out with a new solution. And if you haven't really been doing the deep engagement with prospective customers and with existing customers to help shape the landscape of what that application is going to be, you can have a real big disparency and, ultimately a flop with the product. So how do you think the voice of customer initiatives inside of RingCentral have worked to influence your product development and direction, product path, et cetera? So that's a primary function of our pre sales organization. So we're, we're listening to customers. We're talking with them and with partners, you know, every single day across the globe. So we've got a, we've got a pulse on exactly. You know what customers pain points are, and we take that back into into into our product teams that again, we've got a cadence with, they want to meet with us. We meet with them. I meet with them regularly. My team meets with them regularly. We actually have a cadence whereby they're constantly providing that feedback loop. On our road map. So the road maps not fixed. You know, obviously, product teams would come together. They'll have a 12 month road map directionally. Here's where we want to go. But what I love about RingCentral is right at the CEO level. You know, Vlad Shmoon is our founder, CEO chairman. He's still at the helm. He's constantly asking my organization representing sales, representing the customer. Is this, are we on track? Is this the right way to go or is there something else that we need to do that will not, not just catch up or keep up, but leapfrog the competition. To delight customers sooner, and that's extremely important. We obviously have things like cabs and and we have some key accounts that we continuously talk to. We bring those customers together. We do it. We do it also with the channel community constantly listening, I think you've got to truly listen. You know, you can be whichever we feel were very strong. Player in the market at RingCentral, but we're humble, we need to listen. We don't know it all. We need strong channel partners, alliance partners, customers themselves that are actually going to validate and tell us if we're on track where we are, and we're going to double down and in other areas where, hey, You know, we need to do more of this. Let's go. Where do you sit in the organization just from a command and control perspective? And what level of voice do you have with the CEO? Where do you provide influence? Where do you get insights in terms of path and how does that shape your energy across the business? Absolutely. So I report to the CRO, Carson Hostetter, and Carson reports to the CEO. So it's, it's a pretty flat organization from that perspective. We have regular meetings with Vlad. In fact two weeks ago, I brought my leadership team in. We did a global leadership team meeting, an NPI or a new product summit. Where again, I did a bit of a QBR with my team. And then I met with all of the executive teams, like from product, from marketing, the, the, the key folks, chief product officer, chief marketing officer various engineering leads. And with Vlad himself, where we just had about an hour and just a very candid discussion where he was probing us like, what are you seeing in the field? What's what's working? What's not working? And based on that actionable stuff. The next day he called a meeting with the senior folks. I'm there as well. And he's like, guys, I want to see an end to end customer journey. How do we, we ultimately implement a RingCX solution? How does it start? Where do we get the lead? Where does the channel play a role? Where does our own, demand gen efforts come into play? You know, how does that work? And literally, and this is the CEO, so you're a CEO, you're pretty busy. He's like, I'm here. I want to see it literally as I start flow charting it for me. So I'm on the whiteboard. Well, you know that the BBR takes this or the channel team comes. Here's a lead. And then we try and qualify the lead. And then we hand it over to my team. And literally we're walking it through. How long does that take? And why does it take that long? And how do you do the discovery? What types of questions do you ask to know that you've done the proper discovery? Like it's, it's amazing. And that's for new acquisition. Well, what about existing customers? We're already there. What about the upsell cross sell opportunity end to end? And then and then I'm here. How does your team take that design and then hand it off to professional services? You know what? How do we make sure that the implementation team has all of the necessary information they need to continue to delight the customer? Because we often hear sometimes, you know, Hey, the pre sales, they wowed us. Right. But then when it got to implementation, there's new people there, and it's incumbent upon my organization to kind of have that handoff so that irrespective of who or a partner, whoever it might be, that ultimately takes the baton and continues the touch and interaction with the customer, that it's a seamless, excellent experience end to end. And this is what the CEO, you know, he's literally doing that. It's like, Okay, this is a little Okay, I get it a little bit. That's rough. You know By the end of next week or the week after I need I need an end to end detail I want more like peel the onion and we actually did that for him. So It's amazing when you see the the ceo is that passionate About how we're addressing customers needs. It's not very difficult for us to be passionate about it. It really is inspiring. Yeah. And really getting into the customer journey and understanding the customer journey and the sales cycle as well. Because we do know that for unified communications is somewhat table stakes. It's Part and parcel of what you would expect as, as part of the normal infrastructure in really any business. It's ex because we're trying to operationalize better communications in the organization, but contact centers, totally different animal. you really cannot sell it anywhere close to being transactional. You have to build a relationship. You have to ultimately understand the problems you have to unpack them. You have to map them to your solution and then come up with a great path forward. And as a result, it's not anything that is just kind of off the shelf. It's a somewhat of a nuanced process and a consulting process that has to occur. And I can see, you know, how that can, can be a little bit of a struggle for an organization making that change because ultimately it's a longer cycle. And it requires a little bit longer legs to get it done. You guys have been in the business for this for a while, but really trying to understand your own product and how that fits, I think. At the CEO level is great because otherwise, he is not just sitting there looking at , what are we doing from an earnings perspective? A customer focused CEO is going to be the best CEO in our current environment and going forward into the future. No, absolutely. Like I said, he's passionate about it. And really, he wants to help. You know, are there any pitfalls? Where can he help? So when he's probing us there and he sees some sort of. Resistance or hesitation or delay or or why does this process take so long? Oh, well, because this is how we do it. Why do we do it that way? Why can't we change it? Well, he's the CEO. He has the power to make the change. Whereas, you know, it's like, oh, well, we're going to make this more efficient. And what do you need? Oh, well, you've got limited resources. I'm the CEO. I'm going to give you more resources to solve that. And then ultimately that that that reflects them in the customer journey, because it's much more seamless for them. They're able to get things. You know much quicker at a higher level of quality and, and really exceed their expectations. So, so definitely having a CEO like Vlad is, it's been refreshing. It sounds like a sense of urgency as well. I mean, Amir, what does what does that mean for your organization? You're not just trying to mail things in and just kind of hold a position. Is there a sense of urgency? Is there something that's driving the business? Where do you think that's coming from? No 100 percent sense of urgency because look, you see how the macro environment is going. It's been difficult to grow, so we've been very fortunate when we look at our peer Competitors our growth rates have still you know exceeded and so it's a matter of how do you continue? Doing that growth increasing that growth you're going to do it through innovation. You're going to do it through process optimization and you're going to ultimately all of that You've got to have a product that the customers are gonna make a difference for. It starts with the product, but again, every person or every team that touches the customer has to leave a lasting impression because there are options, as you say, right on paper, a lot of things sound the same. So the urgency for us is, you know, we, we've made the claim Vlad did that at one of the earnings that we're going to shift from a, a, the leader in UCAS to a true multi. Product company and that's what we're delivering today with the RingSense with the RingCX with all of the AI that we've brought forward. And so the urgency is making sure that we get there sooner and we transform the company along the way. So in any type of industry, in fact, maybe even any relationship, people know you by what you do, not necessarily by what you say. And you talk about an aligned partner community. What does collective success look like for you when you're thinking about a partner community? Yeah. And when I, when there's multiple definitions of partners here, right, we obviously we've got the channel partners, the trusted advisors who are key because as big as we are globally, we'll never have the scale that our channel partner community can bring to the table. And these folks are trusted advisors. They know the customers, they know the verticals they've been with them, so it's incumbent upon us to make sure we work very closely with them, make sure that, and that's why I have specialized. Channel se teams that are that their job is literally to make sure that they're available to the channel partner community Educating them on our latest innovations and they're doing that all the time. And then so you've got those partners that are absolutely critical because these are opportunities And then when we get engaged our sales teams our our our ses, you know We work hand in hand with them walking through the sales process and you rightfully said, you know a customer You Experience or a contact center opportunity is a longer sales cycle, and it needs to be because you're you're getting in so much deeper into the organization that touches so much more. And so for that. Coming back to partners, we have other alliance partners, whether it be like the Baltos of the world, the Cognizant, the yellow.ai's that further enhance our solution with even more. We're doing a lot of AI on our own, but some of these are highly specialized companies that are incredible at what they do. So we make sure with our open platform that we do the testing with them. We've got the integrations, so ultimately we can bring those partners also to the table. For an end to end solution that that is really sticky that the customers are truly enjoying and again the numbers speak for themselves like in terms of how well RingCX has been selling It's not just RingCentral. It's absolutely you know Kudos go to the channel partner community and a lot of the partners that we bring to the table To put that end to end solution out there and then again success begets more success and i'm in sales So Vlad sees that success. So my targets keep going up and up and up. So yeah, I'm excited about it, but at the same time, the urgency is there because, you know, we want to make sure that we, we maximize on that opportunity as Vlad and the company and our shareholders would expect. I like the fact that you talk about discovery. Discovery is a subject that's a core competency of our firm. And fundamentally the way I look at it is, people want to get answers. And if you engage with a prospect, a customer around a particular problem, if you lead with answers, it's essentially deaf process. You know, you're really not starting from the correct point, which is asking a good question. So I feel that those firms that ask the best questions, give their customers the best opportunity for a better outcome. Like, where do you see questions and how do you foster the question asking process with your SEs and across your sales teams to make sure that it's a better conversation? Absolutely. The discovery is absolutely critical, we've adopted a selling through curiosity type of framework. So it's asking the right questions. It's, you know, open ended questions and really kind of leading the customer. To areas that they don't know, we're talking about, you know, they may think they've got a problem. They do they realize it But if you're asking the right questions there, you're actually educating the customer about problems they didn't even know they had because you're asking deeper because they maybe, oh, well, we just want to solve this problem. Meanwhile, there are other lingering issues within their customer journey that they haven't addressed, and they figure, well, we've kind of got a spreadsheet. This kind of thing. No, let's let's talk about let's let's really open it up. Here's what you're doing today. And that's that discovery with our channel partners like yourselves is so key, because we need to talk with it's not just one meeting, it's talked to the agents themselves. Talk to the supervisors. Maybe if you have an opportunity to talk to the customers of that business that you're working with, what do they like? What do they not like? What? Where are the snags? Right. So, you know, you've got one mouth, two ears. We need to listen. We need to ask the right questions, do a detailed discovery. And then as part of the discovery, finally, afterwards, then you start to solution and architect what could be. And then even then you paint a picture, you say, okay, here's where you are today. You know, here's where we could take you. But given your reality, maybe we're taking it in phases, we're truly appreciating where the customer is. You know, we have to show the ROI. And in fact, within my pre sales organization, we have ROI specialists as well. That will work very closely and help the customer better. Build the ROI out. So as they transform and migrate to the cloud, it truly delivers on the promise. And I think that's very important. It's almost like a self funded road map right here. You are today. Here's where you want to go. We can face it to you. You don't take it through this phase. Hold. Keep us honest. We made that ROI for that. Oh, Look at all these savings. Absolutely. We brought this in. This is saving us. Now we can fund the next phase. Then I kind of keep on going. And the important thing there to your point earlier is it's not transactional at all. You're truly a partner to the customer with the channel partner as well. You know, as part of that trusted advisor team looking out for them. Understanding where they're going to go. Keeping on top of what's happening in their segment. You know, we've we've shifted our sales organization to be much more verticalized and that allows the sales teams to be much more, experts and say, even as he's to be much more experts in the industry, whether it's financial services or, or manufacturing or, or, you know, healthcare is, is another one that we do very well in. So the more you work those types of. Customers and accounts, you could become much more familiar with what that industry is doing, whether it's compliance or other, you know, everybody's talking, but what about ethical? Where do we need to be careful? Where do we need to kind of watch it so that we're truly being careful? You know, at RingCentral. You know, we've never shared customer information. We haven't had any slaps on the wrist for doing things like that. Even when AI came out, you know, we're very, very careful. I know in the industry, another competitor got in trouble by, you know training using training, again, live customer data. That is paramount. The, the, the privacy of the customer information is paramount. That's not something that we're going to do. We lay that out up front and we follow through with that. During the pandemic, there were a lot of things that came to the forefront, you know, when you're at low tide, you see what's at the bottom, it can be pretty junky. And one of the things that we saw coming out of it was, People really wanting to be on point about how they buy technology better, because it's been historically very tactical and not as strategic as it could be and should be. And one of the things that, is a three letter acronym, that I bristle at is , RFP, an RFP just seems to me something that is one of those items that we can take and we can we can drop away because it tries to boil things down to features and functions. It's somewhat idiotic in terms of how it stack ranks and compares. It's done in such a way that it obfuscates the real challenge, do you know for your organization what problem you're trying to solve and the customer journey that you do want to create, understanding how you want to have that experience and then finding the technologies that fit that? And for us, that's where we come in as an organization to unpack that and to compare it to the right technologies. Do you have a similar mindset? When you hear RFP, do you think to yourself, do we want to do this? Or are you trying, to shape how clients think about that? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, in general, I don't, I don't like RFPs right there. You know, some in fairness. Some maybe in the public sector or otherwise, you know, it's kind of mandated. So you have to do it. So you're kind of stuck with it. So absolutely do RFPs. We do, but, but in it, to your point, in an ideal case, it's not an RFP. You're having some really meaningful discussions and strong discovery. To the point where, you know, what was the purpose of an RFP in the past? It was like, Oh, well, we're gonna ask all these questions and we'll learn and, you know, and then we can decide. But if you're engaged with the customer, truly in a collaborative fashion, engaged in discovery with folks like yourselves, then the RFP is not necessary, because, you understand You've listened. You come back. And that's really important, as many discovery meetings as you can with as many different departments, different groups is super valuable because you gather all that. And then you huddle and then you understand. Then when you actually get to the prescription where now I'm going to prescribe a solution and you come back, that's where you are the customer because they're looking at it going. Wow, you've truly listened to me. Right. And now you've presented a scenario. You've presented a view of the future that is based on ROI, so it's not just pie in the sky stuff like, Hey, we are going to save you this much money. We're going to allow you to do this much. We're gonna in turn, not just say, so you got the tangible benefits, but also the intangibles, like the customer delight, the stickiness, which is so, so important right now. So when you're able to do a good discovery and come back with a with a prison patient back. To the I love those presentations because you see the customers like, wow, this you've listened to me, you know, you've truly and then and then, of course, you can do pilots. You can do trials. POC's happy to do all of those so they can test it out. So don't just listen to what the power point is saying. Let's put it in your environment. Try it out for a select group of users. Let's go. I mean, that really makes a difference. Yeah, it's evidence. That's for sure. So in terms of your team's involvement, what's the lasting impression essentially that you would like them to make in the sales process? Yeah, ultimately, you know, we come with credibility, so we're there, we listen. We never say we can do something when we can't. I think that's a core tenant within my organization. We absolutely do that. But at the same time, as part of the discovery, if the customer is saying, Hey, I'd like to have this. You don't just say, No, we don't do it. It's a matter. Okay, so can you explain more? Tell me about the use case of how that would work exactly? Because it might be something that we don't have today, but we can take it to the road map, right? We can take it back to the product. We can see when it can be added to the road map, because, as you said, especially in the customer experience deployment, they're not deploying it overnight. It's not. Hey, I turned it on. So very likely, if there is something, Okay. That the customer would want that we don't have probe deeper, ask a lot more questions. How would that work? How is that working today? And how would you like it to work in a future environment? And then again, that's the golden nuggets that we take back to the product that I mentioned earlier, why they want to talk to our team because we're listening to the customers and hey, maybe they've brought up something or maybe collectively with the partner, with the customer and with us, we come together and say, Well, wouldn't it be even better? So that's what you've got today. That's what you have. Imagine you put some AI magic into it, and you had a scenario where you could go from here to there. You can do that. I said, Well, tell you what, I'm not going to promise it, but I am going to be your champion. I'm going to amplify your voice. I'll go back to our product and let me get back to you. And then most of the time, I'm It's like, yes, we can do that by this date. What are the timelines? It aligns. We've got a we've got a happy customer, and it's just so much better than just Yes. No, but we will never say yes to something that we can't do. I think that's important. So the number one thing is my team has integrity. We have integrity. We have technical competence because we truly want to earn that is just like you that trusted advisor status. It's not a given. Trust is earned in my opinion, and I've talked to so many CIOs and senior folks and they tell me you know, Amir, I, see the sales folks and all that folks when, and when the SE comes in the room, that's the one that I pay particular attention to because they understand my environment. They've got the technical background and understanding and, and what they say, I know I can believe because again, they, they have an appreciation of what it will take to get us to what the charts may be saying. Yeah. I believe in competency first. That is truly what customers want. They don't want a catchphrase. They want a relationship based on competency and being an advocate as well. Like just what you talked about. Amir, thanks for being on the show. Pleasure. Thank you, Frank. I really enjoyed our discussion.

Head Shot

Frank Rogers

Host