8x8 Lands IntelePeer, NICE Alum to Lead Channel Sales

Cloud communications provider 8x8 has tapped contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) channel veteran Geoff Chretien as vice president of channel sales.

Chretien in his new role will oversee 8x8's efforts with its tech services distributor (TSD) and technology advisor (TA) partners, who transact in the agent sales market. He reports to global vice president of channel sales Michelle Paitich, who joined the company late last year. Chretien replaces Michael Quince, who last month joined NICE as regional vice president of partner sales.

Many partners in the technology advisor channel know Chretien for his lengthy stints in channel at CCaaS providers NICE and Genesys. He most recently led channel sales at communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) provider IntelePeer. Chretien said that while working at IntelePeer was an exciting experience, he wanted to go back to focusing on the CX and CCaaS market.

"I've got a passion for the contact-center-as-a-service space. Almost half of my career has been spent in it. I really enjoy the partner relationships that I made over those years and the teams I've had the privilege of leading. it's a space that I'm very, very comfortable and very familiar with," Chretien told Channel Futures in an interview.

He added that 8x8 provides more than CCaaS. The vendor built a reputation among customers for its unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) offering and over the years evolved its CCaaS platform. The latter started with a CCaaS partnership with Contractual, which 8x8 went on to buy in 2011. The standalone 8x8 Contact Center offering launched in 2019.

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Now 8x8 frames CCaaS, UCaaS and communication APIs as part of its larger platform.

"When you look at the 8x8 platform as it relates to unified communications and contact center and CPaaS, it's exactly the kind of platform that has the capability to scale and really help customers as they move forward in their customer experience journeys. So it was really a great time and great opportunity for me to pull all of my experience together, the things that I really enjoy doing, and the partners I really enjoy doing it with, and aligning all that together with 8x8 to really take the hill going forward," Chretien said.

Aram Bolduc, president of tech advisory firm TopSpin Tech, said some customers start by buying a UCaaS solution and then move to buy CCaaS. And a company that offers both products can have an advantage, he said.

TopSpin's Aram Bolduc

“In the enterprise space a lot of times they're separated. But in the 50-500 employee space, if you're selling 500 UCaaS seats, there might be 50 or 100 contact center seats in a company like that," Bolduc told Channel Futures. "And a lot of people want it to be fully integrated and maybe deal with the same one vendor. That's where 8x8 is a good fit, as well as a couple other players.”

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Chretien said partners like having a single-vendor solution for CCaaS and UCaaS.

"It's really all about a single pane of glass, all about unifying communications across the enterprise, be it contact center or the business environment or all points in between, and having one supplier, one vendor, one partner, to be able to line all that up with and then grow with," he said.

Chretien said he is arriving at 8x8 at a time when other new people are coming in to the channel program, many of which he knows well. His team is currently recruiting someone to support TSD partners in the Northeast.

8x8 Channel Compensation

Chretien and Paitich both came to 8x8 after the company implemented a significant reduction in its commission rate for unified communication products.

The cut, implemented July 1, 2023, did not apply to existing residual UC commissions or any contact center commissions.

CEO Samuel Wilson said at the time that the change allowed for "pricing flexibility."

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"We are not capturing that margin in-house; we are not trying to capture that margin in-house. What we wanted to do was enable our sellers and the channel partners to be more competitive in the marketplace," he said in an interview with Avant CEO Ian Kieninger. "There are several companies now that are actively going around the TSD/agent channel and selling directly to end customers, and they're using price as a weapon. And we had a choice. We could either follow that route and I think make a mistake relative to our channel, or we could embrace it but have to make changes in compensation for our low-end products."

Other UCaaS providers also reduced their commission rates.

Bolduc said that while 8x8 was leaning into its CCaaS offering at the time, the drop down to 15% for UCaaS put the vendor much lower than most of its rivals.

“They made it more difficult for themselves by reducing the compensation for UC … Years later now, I think they have realized that, and recently they're upping some of the commissions in a specific way to try to get attention back on not just CCaaS but also UCaaS," Bolduc told Channel Futures.

Chretien said he couldn't speak on compensation strategy that occurred before his tenure. He told Channel Futures he and Paitich envision unified messaging for the entire technology platform.

"Not only UC but contact center, CPaaS, the AI infusion across it and our unique abilities with regards to Microsoft Teams. And then to compensate fairly and competitively to our partners as they're accustomed to," he said. "It's about aligning the vision of the company and what we want to do going forward with our partner community in the best, most competitive way possible."

Bolduc said Chretien has built a trusted reputation in the advisor channel.

“He's a good guy, and the partners know him. People will give him their honest feedback, and if he can get the executives at 8x8 to listen, then maybe there's a resurgence that could happen," Bolduc said.

Chretien said he made a point of emphasizing relationships in his career.

"I work for 8x8, and that's the logo on the front of my jersey, but I work at the privilege of the partners that I get to work with. So I want to make sure that they're an extension of my 8x8 family and they feel as much a part of our company as I do. I've always trying to lead that way," he said.