Greater Channel Partner Experience – The Key to Success in the New Normal

In this pandemic, restricted movement and social isolation have become the new normal. Therefore, the logistical situation of the majority of channel partners and their workforce today is vastly different from that of the beginning of the year. With remote working the new normal, the challenge is reaching out to customers, partners, clients, and employees.

With an exponentially growing need, channel partners with no proficiency in mobility solutions are being expected to deploy remote workplace and security solutions by their primary clients. Hence, it is becoming necessary for the channel partners to re-configure on-premise networks for handling high volumes of workflows and become competent and digitally aware to stay relevant.

The Silver Lining

With the circumstances ubiquitous around the world, there is no greater opportunity for vendor-channel partnerships and universality of purpose than in the present-day context. 

An improved channel partner experience requires getting to the root of their vendor’s crisis with adequate resources for resolution. With the situation rapidly changing, both technical and business support is paramount today. 

Technical support needs are well documented, but business support works to guide channel partners on aligning with evolving market requirements and opportunities. This further allows recognizing patterns to determine the business direction and access to financing options. 

Empowering channel partners in this situation will go a long way in establishing a long-lasting relationship.

Driving loyalty

As the point of contact between your products and the end-user, channel partners possess the unique power to influence consumers about your company. Logically, the more the number of channel partners, the higher the sales. 

Transforming to stay relevant

The pandemic as we have seen has proved to be an accelerator on several fronts. Digital transformation is the key here as it offers innumerable possibilities for the channel partners from strengthening customer relationships to improving revenue. These further add to actionable insights required to transform the business outlook of channel firms with a focus on the customer need for digital transformation support. 

Rising to the challenges of the pandemic and enabling channel partners to successfully adapt, engage, and serve customers is no longer optional, but an imperative. 

Rewards and loyalty programs are important in fostering long-term partnerships. The idea of such reward-based programs is to maintain channel partner engagement. Recognizing partners who actively participate, continuously interact with the company, and possess the motivation to successfully sell the products is the first step.

Meeting Evolving Needs

There can be no better channel partner objective than becoming a ‘trusted advisor’ to customers. This implies that the channel partner provides excellent counsel to customers who rely on them for not just technology, but also strategy. 

This starts by building a strong foundation, providing them with the right tools and strategy, and importantly reward them the right way. 

Being trusted advisors in the present-day context will serve as the foundation for a long-term relationship both between you and your partner and between them and the end-user. This will drive loyalty and investments. Reaching out to on-premise customers, resolving challenges, and offering customer support is the best way to go about this. 

With adequate awareness, training, and expertise, partners are and can be in a unique position to manage, design, create and execute, and monitor product solutions to make it simple for end-users in times of crisis. 

Despite the upstream current, channel partners are swiftly embracing tactical approaches to resolve issues faced by customers. In addition to strategic changes, it is becoming imperative to meet evolving customer needs through partners capable of listening, sharing pain points, advising, and being responsive. 

A reward-based incentive system does wonders to boost morale and improve productivity during these unprecedented times. 

What makes something the ‘right’ reward? With an increasing need to motivate channel partners by promising a reward that will be valued. The right rewards will ensure your channel partners’ attention and will go a long way in earning their loyalty. This makes gift cards a smarter choice over traditional gifts. 

Higher value ensures higher engagement. Being easy to personalize makes it simple to gift. Gift cards ensure guilt-free shopping and can be used by family members. This significantly eliminates logistical challenges making it easy to manage and track. 

An effective rewards program goes a long way in keeping the partners engaged with your company. 

Therefore, this is the best time to develop a transformative strategy that is customer-centric rather than product-centric. It is imperative to find solutions to help customers survive the pandemic and thrive in the future.

How can Zaggle Propel help?

Zaggle Propel is a simplified platform to manage your employee and channel partner rewards and engagement programs. We work towards developing programs for companies to better serve their partners across several areas during this temporary downturn. With extensive real-world experience in transforming channel partner experience, we work towards adapting to better support partners through your periods of transformation. 

Zaggle Propel allows effortless budgeting that simplifies planning, analyzing, and budgeting of rewards effectively and efficiently based on organizational budget. With a multi-level hierarchy, managers have autonomy in rewarding. The rewards disbursed in the form of points are credited directly to the beneficiaries’ account which can be easily redeemed against an extensive catalogue of vouchers.

Our centralized dashboard allows you to track and analyze the rewards disbursed in real-time. In addition, we offer custom integration with existing systems as per specific organizational requirements.

Sign up with Zaggle Propel today to reward your beneficiaries.