Five9's Success and Future with Telarus Advisors

Telarus Advisors praise Five9’s performance and discuss the company’s success and future, including the introduction of Jake Butterbaugh. The discussion focuses on Five9’s goal to be the preferred CX and AI company, their leadership in developing and delivering IVA, and the addition of AI solutions into their portfolio. There is an emphasis on the importance of delivering AI for CX and the recognition of Five9’s success in reducing friction for partners. The conversation also explores best practices for success in the CX space and the differentiation through end-to-end partnership approach, highlighting the power of collaboration between Five9, Telarus, and partners.

Introduction to Five9 and AI

Telarus Advisors, wow. Your performance with five nines has been just outstanding. In fact, someone could someone could say incredible. And here to discuss the success we’ve had with Five9 and the bright horizon, our bright future with five9, maybe even share some news about what’s happening on the road map, the exciting road map road map with Five9. It’s Jake Butterbaugh.

Jake, welcome to, our big show here. It’s good to have you. It’s good to have your leadership at Five9. You guys are really trailblazers in the space.

AI, CX, all these things coming together. I’d love to unpack a a few highlights with you, and our Telarus community.

Well, thank you for having me. It’s incredibly nice to be here.

Yeah. Look. There’s a lot in the headlines about AI. You can’t turn on your computer without seeing some news about AI in our space and the technology advisers out there. They’re trying to figure out how to navigate that. Walk us through how Five nine’s is using AI to enhance the customer experience and the CX space and maybe even talk about some of the early successes we’re having.

Love it. Well, as many of you know, Five nine’s goal is to be your preferred CX and AI company. Our strategy overall is to deliver AI for CX by those who know CX the best. Right? So many of you know that we’ve been around doing CX for twenty plus years.

But with AI, we’ve been delivering that now for many, many years. We actually were the industry leader in developing and delivering IVA, and we continue to see incredible IVA success. But what we’ve done is we’ve added a number of additional AI solutions into our overall portfolio, and we’ve seen amazing success.

In twenty twenty four, when it comes to AI, truthfully, we’re all about delivery.

AI is a significant pillar of our business. In twenty twenty three, we finished the year with AI representing seventeen percent of our new bookings, which basically means it supersizes our partners’ deals and our customers’ value.

But what we see with AI is that time and time again, we hear that customers are looking for a trusted partner in AI because they’re finding that AI is complex. AI is evolving. AI is constantly on the move. The Spot AI solutions often are poorly implemented.

So what they’ve asked us to do is to not just be a Spot solution, but to be truly an embedded AI solution inside of our platform, to be practical in terms of AI that use that that works for use cases for customers, to be engine agnostic, to work with Google, to work with Einstein, to work with Watson. All of those things are what we’re being asked for, and most of all, to be responsible with our AI solutions.

Yeah. Look. When you talk about CX and AI, this some of these solutions get pretty gnarly and pretty complex. So when you when you make those statements, like, you’re bringing it all together, single source, it’s not pieced together. It makes a lot of sense. But for some of the some of the sort of rookies to the space, it can seem very intimidating.

Success with Five9

We’re having tremendous success. We have for years. Our partners love working with Five nines. I think part of it is because you reduce some of the friction in what you just described.

So you bring best in class tech. You bring it all together, but you also make it really easy. In in your view, what are some of the secrets to success the successes that we are having with Five nines? What what are we doing together as a team that are making this engine run?

Well, what you said is a good start to the answer.

But what it does come down to is that, you know, as a company, we truly are committed to partnerships from the top down and all across the organization. Right? We truly do believe we’re all in this together. And so we genuinely have a sell with, deliver with, build with mentality.

The build with is about being the most seamless, integratable CX AI solution on the planet. Right?

And look. We do take our partner’s advice. We listen. We take action. We make investments.

We’ve created certifications. We’ve created Yes. Partner specific modules to allow you as partners to be hands on in developing the workflows and getting them deployed.

Right? That’s a truly partner centric motion for us. And like I said, it’s a commitment all the way through the company, and we intend to stay long term committed to partners adding value to our customer deployments.

Yeah. I love it, Jake. Look. When you talk about commitment, a lot of times you hear executives like yourself talk about commitment, but the rubber meets the road with the proof.

And little behind the scenes, action that a lot of people don’t get to see. You and I were talking before we started, this interview here, and you were talking about how you were engaged in a negotiation, hands on, getting a buzzer beater across the line before the end of the quarter. So I think that just rings true to the championship team you have that you guys roll up your sleeves. You’re helping the partners achieve amazing outcomes.

Commitment and Hands-On Approach

So we really appreciate that. One of the things, to piggyback off that because you’re hands on, you’re out traveling around around the country, around the world, working with advisers. You see success at a lot of different levels, new entrance into the CX space, the veterans who just continue to expand their business with you. Is there something that that you think about when you get on a plane or get in an Uber as you’re decompressing for the day and you think, man, I wish everybody would just do this one thing.

Insights from Traveling and Best Practices

I mean, I I know there’s no secret. There’s no one thing, but is there some trends that you see? I think that’s a good way to bring this to a close. Like, what are some best practices for success?

Yeah. Well, maybe I don’t wish everybody would do it, because I do think it’s a five nine differentiator.

Okay.

So let I’ll keep it uniquely ours. But from from the standpoint of partnerships, I genuinely believe we’re differentiated because we work with our partners all the way from the initial identification and opportunity well into day two, you know, through the deployment, through the upsell, cross sell, through keeping a customer for an incredibly long period of time. I think that is a differentiator for us, and I think that’s how Five nine and Telarus have matched up well.

Differentiation and Growth

You know, you just mentioned, you know, I just finished a deal, but I also earlier just finished the Telarus QBR.

Yes.

And the interesting thing that we talked about is how we’re growing in terms of number of partners supported, number of net new logos won, and, ultimately, our collective book of business is growing. And I think that taps into, you know, our differentiated way in which we approach customers, where we say, Telarus has the consulting services and white glove services that help those partners. Five nine brings technology alliances and brings that to bear, you know, whether it’s ServiceNow or Salesforce.

We’re talking about holistic customer value. And, yeah, when I sit down on a plane and I’m decompressing, I’m looking at that, like, here’s incredible opportunity.

Yeah.

And, you know, look, just to highlight one partner who hopefully is out there, we had a great win with Sara Associates where together, Solera, Sara, and us won a pharmaceutical company together, two hundred twenty five agents.

It’s gonna grow to much bigger than that. And we won because we focused on delivery, we focused on the power of the three of us, and we focused on bringing Verint, Salesforce, Five nine together as a whole customer solution.

So, yeah, I don’t want our, competition to copycat us. I just want five nine and the Telarus partners and us to do more of that together.

Yeah. I think that’s a great way to end it. You talk about the power of the three of us. Right? Five nines, the trusted technology advisor in the field, and Telarus coming together.

Ego’s aside, we all focus on our superpowers, and we’re winning more business together than ever before. So, Jake, thanks for you thanks to you and your world class team at Five Nines. We appreciate you and all that you do and the partners who are out there looking to really succeed with CX and with this emerging AI technology that’s really taken the world by storm, lean into five nines. All the best to everybody who’s watching. Take care. Be great.