Podcast appearances and mentions of dan burkland

Sales and Customer Success are essential to the growth and expansion of any organization. So, how you think about them and how well they work together will shape the future of your company. How can you improve your client's customer experience so there are no gaps between sales and customer success? That is the topic of this episode of The Modern Selling Podcast with my guest, Dan Burkland, President of Five9.  As President of Five9, Dan manages the entire customer lifecycle from sales to implementation to ongoing support – all critical to customer success for a cloud software company. He heads global sales, including all direct sales, channels, System Integrators, and ISV partnerships. By leading implementation, professional services, and customer support organizations, Dan has elevated the exceptional, industry-recognized customer service that Five9 provides to its clients. Join our conversation to discover how to integrate sales and customer success for a better customer experience. Why Sales and Customer Success Must Work Together The pandemic has brought many changes, from a shift to remote selling to a focus on digital sales. It has also forced sales, customer success and customer experience strategies to evolve rapidly. Dan says the first reaction to the pandemic was negative, even panic, especially from brick and mortar businesses and retailers who had to move quickly online to an e-commerce set up. In this scenario, the contact center became the new front door of the business for those retailers, their only conduit to their customers and prospective customers. These companies have realized that it is critical for them to take care of customers in a personalized fashion throughout that whole life cycle. “Companies that tend to elevate the strategic nature of customer experience and spend the investment necessary to deliver a great experience are finding their brands are evolving and becoming more prominent. Their retention rates are becoming greater and they create a reputation that builds upon itself and attracts more and more customers.” To accomplish this, there must be an alignment between Sales and Customer Success. And that is what Dan accomplished at Five9, bringing those two departments together under his leadership. “If you operate in silos, you end up with the sales organization tending to lean on or point fingers to a support organization, because they want the support to be delivered a certain way. And you end up with tension between the two. When I brought them under my organization together, it created teamwork, like we hadn't seen before.” That teamwork is reflected when both sales and customer success understand the buyer's needs and pain points and deliver a consistent experience based on those needs.  Listen to the whole episode to learn what sales reps should be doing to better understand their customers (HINT: listen more and talk less). The Customer Lifecycle Process Dan says he doesn't like the word “selling” because it comes across as taking the customer's money and leaving. In a subscription model, however, you have to nurture and take care of the customer for a long time. At Five9 they break their process into four phases: Landing: How do you effectively land new accounts and new customers?  Adoption: How do you adopt them or get them onto the platform? Maximize Value: How can customers achieve all they can from the solution? Expanding: How do you allow your customers to expand to the fullest with your product? Both sales and customer success have a role to play in this process, where the sellers under promise but CS over delivers, turning customers into raving fans. Listen to the full episode to learn more about how this process works and some great tips (illustrated with real life examples) you can implement in your organization. Advice for Sales Leaders Dan has some great advice for sales leaders who need to work closely with customer success teams. 1. Product Updates In product companies, sales and customer success teams sometimes need to discuss new product updates, or enhancements with their clients, but it's not always easy. “One of the things we do is we assign customer success managers to every single account that we have in the company,” Dan says. “They have a very close relationship with the customer, having quarterly business reviews, or in some cases, even weekly touch-based calls with the customer to see how things are going, looking at ways to optimize and improve what's already there and introduce new capabilities.” 2. Business outcomes As sales leaders, we need to bridge the gap between sales and customer success to drive good, solid business outcomes. Dan says we need to shift our mindset from “handing off” a client to CS, to a partnership, where there are team members always involved throughout the journey. “We've got personnel, whether it's sales or customer success, involved throughout the entire life cycle, so that they can manage and be listening for cues. It's a little more costly, but it is worth it.” Listen for Dan's advice on how to handle the transition from the seller to the CSM and how much overlap they should have (HINT: introduce the CSM early, so they can build trust over a period of months before the seller exits and goes back to prospecting).

How do you transition more than 100,000 contact center agents to a work from home setup? And do it without sacrificing the customer experience? In this episode of That’s Genius!, Michael Rose chats with Five9 President, Dan Burkland, about how contact centers can stay safe while providing internal and external customer support during the COVID-19 pandemic.   He talks about:   Transitioning to a Work From Home environment Moving fast to meet changing needs across the globe How cloud-based solutions affect business continuity management Balancing work-at-home and on-prem in our new normal   Additional Resources COVID-19 Resources 10 Tips for Engaging New Agents from Home Five9 FastTrack Program To hear this episode and more like it, subscribe to That’s Genius! on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or tune in on our website.

With the advent of AI, contact center agents will no longer be left to fish around knowledge bases or external data sources. Instead, they’ll have all the information they need delivered to them immediately. In this episode, we interview John Bourne, Senior VP of Global Channels and Strategic Alliances at Verint and Dan Burkland, President of Five9. Listen in to hear John and Dan talk about how artificial intelligence will inevitably reduce churn amongst contact center agents while also providing the ultimate customer experience.

Recorded at CCW Vegas 2018, this week's double-episode offers a deep dive into modern contact center trends. We begin with Dan Burkland of Five9.  As the host of the CCW Excellence Awards, Burkland is the perfect person to answer burning customer management questions.  What are some commonalities among "excellent" contact centers? How are leading organizations handling the digital transformation? We then welcome Terry Lang, Vice President of Comerica Bank's Retail Customer Contact Center. Lang explores the intersection between technology and humanity. How can a "human" approach to technology empower agents to engage customers?  

Customer Contact Week is arguably the biggest and most important contact centre, CX and customer care event on the planet. UC Today attended the event this year, which took place in Las Vegas in June. Five9 was the main sponsor and one of the most visible and prominent brands at the event. Patrick is joined by some of their executive team to discuss the event from a Five9 perspective but also review their position in the industry.

Customer Contact Week is arguably the biggest and most important contact centre, CX and customer care event on the planet. This year's event starts on the 18th of June in Las Vegas and UC Today will be there to bring you all of news. One of the biggest and most exciting brands attending will be Five9 who provide leading cloud contact centre software. In this episode we speak to them to preview the event to find out why it is so important for providers of CX enablers.