Channel Vet Joins AireSpring MSP and aggregator AireSpring announced that Ken Bisnoff has joined its leadership team as the senior vice president of customer success. Bisnoff comes with more than 30 years of experience leading high-performing organizations through periods of rapid organizational growth and expansion. During his career, Bisnoff has held various management leadership positions, most notably as a founding member of the TPx Communications (formerly TelePacific) executive team, where for more than 20 years he played an integral role in that company’s transformation from a regional CLEC to a billion-dollar national provider. During his time at TPx, Bisnoff held various roles that included leading direct and indirect sales, human resources and marketing communications. Ken Bisnoff, AireSpring SVP Most recently, Bisnoff served as senior vice president and channel chief Americas at GTT. Prior to GTT, Bisnoff was a co-founder of telecom industry consultancy Eagleteq Advisors (now X4 Advisors), a company focused on enabling technology solution providers, distributors and their investors to grow revenue, expand distribution channels and transform market positions. Technology solutions distributor Clarus Communications has launched “Charlie,” a copyrighted AI chatbot built on the Falcon AI Large Language Model and designed exclusively for technology distribution. The AI chatbot aims to transform how agents interact with their customers, boosting productivity and service delivery, said the company. “Our mission at Clarus has always been to empower our agents to serve their customers better,” said Chris Torbit, managing partner at Clarus Communications. “With Charlie, we’re taking a giant leap in that direction. This technology not only demonstrates our unflinching commitment to our agents but also stands as a testament to our dedication toward agents and their customers’ success.” Built with the agent partner in mind, Charlie reportedly can perform an array of instant tasks including serviceability checks, channel manager lookups, quoting, order tracking, commission rate and sales performance incentive fund (SPIF) lookups, and more. Agents now can manage these tasks seamlessly and instantly, giving them more time to focus on customer interactions and service delivery. If an agent uses Clarus’s proprietary inventory management product for back-office support, the agent can place Charlie into the client’s environment, helping the agent provide additional value to the customer and relieve competitive pressure. Charlie would validate the client and provide specific inventory data including location information, circuit IDs, supplier customer service information and authorized users, as an example. “This is invaluable information when there is an outage, and up-to-date and instant data is needed to work on a service issue,” said Clarus executives. A highlight of the Charlie AI chatbot is its ability to integrate with Salesforce, providing agents with unlimited scalability options. This integration enables agents to leverage Charlie to efficiently manage customer data and help their internal and external stakeholders find data quickly and drive data-driven decisions. Exclusive to Clarus agents, Charlie is available on multiple platforms, including Microsoft Teams, SMS, or a web chat interface. Clarus Unveils AI Chatbot for the Channel CHANNEL MANAGEMENT 66% The percentage of channel firms that say their profit margins generally increased over the last year, mainly in the areas of business consulting, IT consulting, and managed services, according to CompTIA’s “2023 State of the Channel” report. 42 CHANNELVISION | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2023
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