Last summer, my family purchased an electric vehicle (EV). Excited about the prospect of never having to go to a gas station, our purchase originated mainly from convenience, and who are we kidding, cool technology. Since then, we have enjoyed our EV, taking it on trips, charging it when needed, and only stopping at gas stations for snacks, candy, and the occasional lottery ticket.
One of the unexpected perks of our EV has been car maintenance—or lack thereof. At 15,000 miles, owners simply replace the windshield washer fluid, with all other enhancements delivered to the vehicle as updates via the cloud. The car also constantly collects data through sensors from its surrounding environment to help refine the driver experience and advance its technology.
Using data to drive engagement
Like my EV, Cisco collects data to understand how our products and services are being used by our partners and customers. We then gain insights on how to further improve our programs. Without this information, it is difficult to know whether a customer is using their purchase efficiently and effectively, or whether bugs and issues are causing problems. Through telemetry, we can automatically collect the data we need from customers in a transparent and ethical way, then analyze it to improve the processes and performance of our devices and software.
In May, we went a step further, releasing enhanced telemetry in Cisco Lifecycle Advantage Success Program Insights. If you don’t know, Lifecycle Advantage is a leading customer experience management program for partners that leverages insights and automation to drive retention and growth. It centers on important milestones in the life of a customer and uses action-triggered email automation to provide partners with a simple, efficient customer engagement tool. If you aren’t already enrolled, you’re really missing out.
Enhanced telemetry, better guidance
With Lifecycle Advantage Success Program Insights, partners get even more information to help lead customers through the lifecycle while scaling their own customer success practices. Success Program Insights gives partners ways to better manage accounts, act on recommendations to progress stalled customers, connect data to customers, and in turn, help customers get the most from their investment. All this, at no cost to the partner.
For partners to see telemetry data, a customer must first provide digital consent. Partners can access the link to request customer consent directly within Success Program Insights. This consent gives partners permission to view data collected from the customer’s use of the product or service they purchased. Before enhanced telemetry, partners could see general telemetry data, but it was difficult to understand how to use it or align it to customer progression. With enhanced telemetry, partners gain a deeper understanding of how customers are progressing in their deployment with direction on how to use the data to better support them. The enhancements show recommended and required exit criteria that customers should meet to continue through the lifecycle. Each exit criterion is checked off upon completion, along with the date of when telemetry was last collected. There is also extra context around telemetry points, interface improvements for clarity around when exit criteria are completed, and an overall standardized and simplistic format. Not to mention, it is available for all offers available in Success Program Insights.
Improved customer satisfaction
With access to this new data, partners can help customers realize value from their investment sooner and personalize the customer experience, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and higher renewal rates.
While my EV uses the data it collects to enhance my car’s sound system, incorporate a blind-spot video, or introduce cool sound effects that replace the horn; Cisco uses the data it collects to understand our customers better and support our partners with programs and services that meet their needs.
Enroll in Lifecycle Advantage today
Already enrolled? Log in and check out enhanced telemetry in Success Program Insights.
Want to see enhanced telemetry in action? Visit us at Cisco Live, June 12-16, 2022
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In theory it should be a great way using telemetry to seamlessly monitor a customers journey. In practise it turns out to be less so. The current LCA platform and specifically SPI, doesn’t take into account changes in customer setup (change to the DNAC deployment for example), which may then inadvertently change the telemetry ID (which you have no control over). If the customers journey has already started this then leaves a false representation that the journey has stalled – when it hasn’t. Fixing an instance like this is somewhat challenging (after several months it has yet to be achieved). Mandated exit criteria in SPI journeys for some cases assumes a customer has every Cisco technology there is (in reality that isn’t always the case). Again movement along the journey will falsely stall, through a decision of an end customer to exercise their right to have choice. As I said at the beginning, it’s a great concept but has some flawed thinking behind it. Other areas of LCA the digital engagement piece for example, are very good and worth a partners time and effort to setup.
Kevin,
Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. We greatly appreciate hearing from our partners, and are pleased you are using Lifecycle Advantage and Success Program Insights and experiencing the value the program brings. We are aware of the challenges you mention and already have a few things in motion to address the points you make.
In the coming months, we will be introducing the ability for partners to log adoption barriers in Lifecycle Advantage Success Program Insights. This will help identify when exit criteria are not aligned with a customer’s goals or when they don’t in fact, as you mentioned, have every Cisco technology to reach their end goal. This addition will route information back to Cisco teams to help us better understand what exit criteria pieces are truly achievable by a given customer and allow us to update the exit criteria accordingly based on the insights we receive.
In addition, we are currently adjusting the adoption framework for DNA-C use cases. These changes will impact how the framework is set up, will help reinforce the telemetry ID, and address when a customer may appear stalled, if/when in fact are not.
We are very appreciative of your feedback. It is through partner feedback that we can continue to improve and enhance the program. If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Lifecycle Advantage Business Development Manager. We hope with these changes, you will continue to use and see value from Lifecycle Advantage and Success Program Insights.