AI
“The customer service rep is coached through the interaction with these intelligent agents through a customer desktop so the agent is almost on autopilot. They can just guide the process more, as opposed to having to drive it. “If that does a good job, then businesses can also use it in self-service, where the analytical AI comes back into play to predict customer service issues before they happen.” Serving Customer Zero While the contact centre is already experiencing some of the advantages that AI can bring, for the reseller, the common thread of advice is to use AI within your own organisation before trying to sell it to the customers. “The channel partners who are making the most progress are those acting as ‘customer zero’ – adopting AI internally, understanding its impact firsthand, and then using that experience to guide end- customers,” said Harvey-Jones. “That internal adoption builds credibility and enables more informed, outcome-focused conversations. “Resellers can demonstrate leadership by embedding AI into their own operational processes before positioning it externally. When channel partners use AI internally, they move beyond theoretical discussion to practical experience.” “Some of the major opportunities for cloud resellers are both internal, for example, within their own sales department and operations, as well as external, with AI-led value propositions they bring to their clients” added Van der Putten. “Internally, for instance, in our own company, we have our own internal sales automation applications that we sell to our customers. Lead scoring, finding opportunities, planning meetings, figuring out what to focus on, and how to move deals to the next stage. Our sales automation applications internally and externally are heavily AI-led because you don’t have the luxury of a handful of salespeople who are stars and the rest are not performing.” Van der Putten finished by adding that resellers need to avoid falling into the trap of becoming an AI consultancy if they want a repeatable business. “Externally, resellers should think about what they can add on top of their value proposition. If we use the hyperscalers as a commodity but add some applications, vendors, services that are just one layer above in this AI application layer, as opposed to underlying foundation models or underlying AI services. “I think that’s an opportunity for resellers to think about what they can offer more in that application layer. Take the services of the companies that are doing Agentic AI or provide an AI governance layer, or a responsible AI layer on top of it. “Intelligence sounds useful, but if you can’t put it into a process, it’s going to be pretty useless. So use vendors that have strong process or workflow capabilities that you can plug the AI into.” X
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Resellers can
demonstrate leadership by embedding AI into their own operational processes before positioning it externally. When channel partners use AI internally, they move beyond
theoretical discussion to practical experience.
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