Why I Keep Returning to Five9 CX Summit

Five9 Guest

September 21, 2023

There is no better time to reflect on a successful Five9 CX Summit than on my red-eye home. The ideas are fresh, but more importantly, the energy is still building around our partnership. I was proud for Kyndryl to be a Platinum sponsor this year, an investment that highlights our commitment to the partnership and, more importantly, the focus that Kyndryl is bringing to modernizing our customer’s contact centers.

This is my third year as a Five9 customer, my second year attending CX Summit and, more exciting to me, the first anniversary of announcing the Five9 and Kyndryl partnership at CX Summit 2022.

This got me to reflect on our year as a partner. I get asked by a lot of customers, “Why Five9?” The answer is simple. The technology stacks among the top-tier contact center providers are relatively commensurate with one another. This isn’t a dismissal of the importance of a strong platform, and Five9 has done a great job leading the industry in IVA technology, standard out-of-the-box features, ease of use, and everyone’s favorite 2023 topic, Generative AI. But the main reason I’ve continued to invest my personal energy into the partnership, and why Kyndryl sees Five9 as a strategic alliance, is our combined ability to drive our customers’ success.

Back to CX Summit. Two years running and I always leave with a new sense of inspiration. Senior executive conversations, valuable vendor introductions, and opportunities to share experiences with customers are a few reasons why my time at CX Summit time, is time well spent.

My Kyndryl colleague Darryl Wilson spoke with Five9 Chief Customer Officer Andy Dignan about our consult capabilities and industry trends to help close out the week. This was a dream come true for me because I got to hear how Kyndryl helps our customers modernize their customer’s contact centers. As I write this, I realize it is one of the few opportunities I’ve had to highlight a phenomenon I’ve been able to witness from a front-row seat as Kyndryl evolves. As a 90,000-person startup, we’ve attracted the best talent in the world, from competitors and industry, all with one thing in common. They are ambitious and eager to modernize the entire industry. I am surrounded by extraordinary heritage talent and a dream team that we’ve been lucky enough to attract to take Kyndryl’s customers into the future. Our partner ecosystem also highlights this, with the freedom to pick the best of breed!

(These comments won’t be evergreen as Kyndryl continues to grow. So, I wanted to make sure I was able to sneak in how honored I am to get to work with some of the most experienced folks in the industry.)

I got to share my experiences as a Five9 customer in a fireside chat. At the pre-Summit prep session, the Five9 team was extremely focused on ensuring I chose the points I wanted to discuss, what I wanted to emphasize. It is the honesty that comes from working together to migrate more than 200 customers together in less than three months. Our honeymoon period has come and gone, with an occasional sock left on the floor, we continue to partner together with intent. I shared stories on how we’ve deepened our partnership through finding new ways to collaborate. Ultimately, one of us will pick up the sock, and that is the sign of a strong partnership. It isn’t how you behave when days are sunny, but how you come together during a hiccup (and they’re all just hiccups).

What invigorates me the most about Five9 CX Summit is the enthusiasm everyone has around an emerging space. It sounds funny to say that contact center is emerging, but when you consider most contact centers are still run with physical, on-prem hardware, there is a lot of energy to change that for a better customer experience. Five9 has an exceptional partner ecosystem, and the booth conversations immediately centered on solving customer challenges. These challenges all hinge on improving the overall experience. I believe in our relationship with Five9 because we continue to show up together for our customers.

The openness, transparency, and culture of customer success led Kyndryl to choose Five9 as a partner. Kyndryl has built a fully integrated digital experience platform that centers around Five9 has built a platform focused on joyful CX. It’s a relationship that is just getting started and we can’t wait to show customers what Kyndryl and Five9 can do together.