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Charting the Course: Five9 Global Partner Program Successes and Future Goals

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Jake Butterbaugh SVP, Global Partner Organization

What an amazing 1H of 2024. Thank you to all our Five9 partners, our joint customers, and our team members for building such amazing momentum.

On the heels of completing Five9’s annual Partner Advisory Board meeting with top-producing partners across our balanced routes to market (i.e. partners of all types), it is my pleasure to share with you the top 5 themes I captured from our time together. 

  1. Trust Is Earned. We have gained the confidence of our partners through years of sustained dedication to achieving partnership success. This is an earned privilege, and it remains my goal, as well as that of all Five9, to continually uphold and reinforce this privilege. 
  1. The Five9 AI Portfolio Is Truly Differentiated. Both what we have today in existing products and our near-term roadmap will help us gain even more ground in this space. Five9 is an AI-driven company and we’re actively delivering “AI for CX, by those who know CX the best.” 

  1. Five9 Technology Alliances Are Powerful. After years of proven success with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Verint, Microsoft, Oracle, and now Google, our joint value propositions and deployments differentiate us from our competition. We are delivering the most seamless customer solutions to set new industry standards for CX together.

  1. Go Out and Win. It's encouraging that our partners want us to be more assertive, they believe in our joint value and know that the market is on the move – both the premise to cloud migration AND the CX AI customer value movement.

  1. Remain Committed to Fair Partner Rules of Engagement. Five9 has reaped the rewards of being a leader in the industry, which means our partner community continues to grow. Fair partner rules of engagement form a bedrock of trust and success with our partners. We will continue to support alignment between our salesforce and our partners as we grow together.

We’re committed to taking our partners’ voices seriously and appreciate their time commitment to collaborate with us at PAB. These themes will help to shape our strategy as we plan for 2H. 

Let’s now look at our 1H experience and our 2H plans for all the 1,000+ Five9 partners we are very happy to be working with. The first half of this year has been remarkable, marked by a series of significant achievements and fruitful collaborations with our valued partners. It's evident that our commitment to our balanced routes to market strategy and investing in cutting-edge technology has been instrumental in driving our success.

One of the standout aspects of our 2024 journey thus far has been the collective triumphs we've experienced alongside our partners, deal by deal, brick by brick. But we had a few big highlights too. 

  • We hosted dozens of our partners at our Five9 Sales Kickoff event to begin the year and awarded over 25 partners with annual achievement awards. 

  • We were honored with Partner Program recognition by CRN. 

  • We expanded our investment in our Partner Success team. 

  • We hosted the successful Partner Advisory Board gathering.

To expand on the third point of this list, in 2023 Five9 launched Partner Success to focus on helping partners deliver great customer experiences post-sale. We assigned dedicated Partner Success Managers to over 20 partners, who represent more than 600 customer domains. This team collaborated with partners to create and execute tailored success plans, hosted enablement sessions to help partners eliminate white space, and worked with partner support organizations to uplift customer support delivery. The team has also looked inward to improve tools, processes, and resources to make partnering with Five9 better than ever. At Five9, we’re firm believers in helping our partners not just “win the deal” but win for the life of the customer. Partner Success is integral to executing that strategy, and our continued investment in the Partner Success Team is demonstrative of our commitment to our partners.

Another key pillar of our commitment to our partners is our emphasis on investing in Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Recognizing the pivotal role that APIs play in driving innovation and enabling seamless integration, we've spared no effort in expanding and enhancing our API offerings. By providing robust, scalable, and developer-friendly APIs, we've empowered our partners to unlock new possibilities, streamline operations, and deliver enhanced value to their customers. Our investment in APIs underscores our commitment to facilitating collaboration, fueling innovation, and driving collective success. By providing our partners with the tools and resources they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, we're not only strengthening our partnerships but also laying the foundation for sustained growth and prosperity in the years to come.

We know the competitive landscape of the industry is fierce, shaped by dynamic technological advancements and evolving customer expectations. Companies compete not only on the robustness of their CX platforms but also on features like AI in self-service, agent assist, translation, omnichannel support, AI-driven analytics, and seamless integrations with existing CRM systems. This is where Five9 is building a powerful differentiation by being “the best to partner with.”

Our Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Jon Anderson agrees: “The market is being inundated with all things AI and the promise it brings coupled with new entrants seeking to bolster weak balance sheets. Five9’s heavy investments in AI have delivered very real, powerful self-service enhancements and multilingual AI capabilities to its increasingly global customer base while continuing to strengthen its already market-leading customer experience (CX) portfolio.” It will be our pleasure to share our unique Five9 AI approach with our partners as we enter the 2H.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to our partners, our shared goals, and our relentless pursuit of excellence. As highlighted by the PAB members, we will embed those five key themes into our 2024 second-half Global Partner Organization growth plans. Together with our partners, Five9 will continue to innovate, collaborate, and push the boundaries of what's possible – driving joint success thanks to the continued commitment to our partners. 

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Jake Butterbaugh SVP, Global Partner Organization

Call 1-800-553-8159 to learn more about Five9