Partner Hurdles Adopting AI

CF: For partners, what kinds of challenges are they facing when it comes to helping their clients utilize AI?

ML: In my mind, it’s a lack of enablement. Partners have been selling telco, and contact center, and CCaaS and UCaaS … they’ve been selling these other types of technologies for so long, that they’re not the experts in AI/VA as they are in these other technologies. Right now, I think the lack of knowledge that exists is not the fault of the partners; they just don’t have the time and the bandwidth to put in the time to learn, to take the trainings, and go to these webinars and do the research. Not only do they not have the time to learn what the technology is capable of but also how to implement it in a way that’s going to be powerful and impactful to the customer. How do partners stay up to date with what the technology is going to be able to do in six months to a year? There’s such a big learning curve there. My personal suggestion is if partners want to build an AI practice, I suggest they hire someone — one person within the organization — to become that AI/VA and IVR subject matter expert and spend three months learning the providers, and learning at an industry level, each provider, where they’re strong and where they’re weak. Position that individual so that the partner sales teams can lean on them. Where there’s a knowledge gap, lean on your providers. As a provider, we’re spending a lot of money and a lot of resources putting this training together for partners because we know this is where the technology is going, and we know this is where the knowledge gap is. Ask us for webinars, ask us for e-books, ask us for recommendations and we will happily pass them along.