Zen achieves Cisco Customer Experience Specialisation

Zen has achieved Cisco’s Customer Experience Specialisation. It’s an independent recognition that validates how we support customers across the full service lifecycle, from initial design through to long-term operation and optimisation.

And that’s becoming increasingly important to businesses. As enterprise networks become more complex, and more critical to long-term business outcomes, customer experience doesn’t stop when a service goes live.

It’s shaped by how services are supported, adopted, and improved over time. And by the quality of the relationship behind them.

What the Cisco Customer Experience Specialisation is

The Cisco Customer Experience Specialisation is awarded to partners that can demonstrate a mature, lifecycle-led approach to customer success and service delivery.

It isn’t earned through product sales, training courses or certifications alone. To gain the specialisation, partners must go through a formal assessment process and provide evidence of how they operate day to day. That includes how customers are onboarded, how adoption is supported, how service quality is managed, and how long-term outcomes are measured and improved.

In other words, it’s about how services are delivered and supported, rather than simply what is sold.

For Zen, achieving this means our operating model, governance and customer success practices have been independently assessed against Cisco’s global standards.

Why customer experience matters at enterprise scale

For enterprise organisations, networking services are rarely static. Requirements change, environments evolve, and the impact of poor adoption or inconsistent support grows over time.

A lifecycle-led approach recognises that value isn’t created at install, but through:

• Clear service design and onboarding
• Ongoing adoption and optimisation
• Proactive service management
• People who know your network and take responsibility for it

This is the model Cisco is increasingly encouraging across its partner base, and the model Zen has already been building deliberately. As a people-first provider, it’s a philosophy that chimes with who we are.

What this means for customers

From a customer perspective, the Cisco Customer Experience Specialisation provides independent assurance that Zen is set up to support complex networking services over the long term.

In practical terms, it means:

• Support that extends beyond deployment into day-to-day operation and optimisation
• A focus on adoption and outcomes, not just service availability
• Delivery and support that’s consistent and repeatable
• Governance and accountability designed for long-term partnerships

All these points underline a simple reality. That customer experience isn’t an abstract concept at Zen. Achieving this specialisation confirms that it’s built into how we operate, not added on as an afterthought.

Alignment with Cisco’s direction

Cisco is evolving how it measures and recognises partner value. Through its Cisco 360 programme, the emphasis is shifting away from transactional partnerships, and towards lifecycle engagement, service quality, and the importance of customer outcomes.

The Customer Experience Specialisation is part of this. It recognises partners that already operate in a way that supports long-term success, consistency and scale.

And as stated, for Zen, achieving the specialisation reflects an approach that’s already embedded in how we design, deliver and support enterprise networking services.

A foundation, not a finish line

For Zen, this recognition is an independent validation of the way we work today, and a foundation for how we’ll continue to support customers in the future.

As enterprise networks continue to evolve, customer experience will only become more important. Our focus remains on delivering networking services designed for long-term value, supported by people, processes, and partners that customers can rely on.

If you’d like to find out more about networking services at Zen, or how we work with Cisco technologies, explore our networking solutions or speak to the team.