Referrals: Customer Referrals Overview

• Sell and deploy value-added services beyond the benefit to customers
• Get connected with customers who need the services which they specialize in
• Lower the cost of customer acquisition
• Uncover earning opportunities

Key facts point to the partner opportunity through referrals:

• FastTrack drives approximately 95% of all incoming referrals to the FastTrack Partner Community
• Partner quote: “FastTrack Benefit referrals help build a relationship with customers.” 
• 80% of Referral Ready Partners surveyed want more RFAs (FastTrack Benefit Referrals)

FastTrack Benefit Referrals

• FastTrack Request for Assistance Form is submitted by customers or the Microsoft field
• Partners deliver the FastTrack Benefit as outlined in the FastTrack Service Description

All FastTrack Ready Partners (FRPs) will receive FastTrack Benefit Referrals.

Standard Referrals

• FastTrack Request for Assistance Form is submitted by customers or the Microsoft field. Or from a Microsoft-identified customer propensity list
• Partners may charge for all non-Benefit services
• All FastTrack Partner Community (FPC) members (including FastTrack Ready Partners) will receive Standard Referrals

How do FastTrack Referrals work

Both types of referrals (Standard Referrals and FastTrack Benefit Referrals) follow a process including phases of Submission, Evaluation, and Assignment and Partner Delivery.

Submission

A FastTrack Request for Assistance (RFA) may be submitted by the customer via the Microsoft Admin Center or through a form in the Microsoft Setup site. The Microsoft field may also submit RFAs via the Setup site. All RFA requests will be routed back to the Tenant Admin for approval prior to triage and assignment to a partner or delivery team. Review the section below, Examples of Communications.

When an RFA is received, it is reviewed and routed to a delivery team as a FastTrack Benefit Referral or a Standard referral (paid deployment, adoption or other consulting services).

In addition, the Microsoft program team may identify customers at high propensity for growth with the help of a partner. Those customers may also be assigned to partners as Standard Referrals.

Evaluation and Assignment

• Referral matching of a partner with a customer is dependent upon the following criteria:
  • Workload endorsement (see Knowledge Base article on partner endorsements)
  • Location where partner services may be provided (home location and other countries served)
  • Language in which partner services may be delivered (12 FastTrack languages: Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese (resources speak Mandarin only), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese)
  • Target customer size: Number of employees
  • Industry: Limited to Education, Government or Non-profit.
  • CPOR claims by existing partners: Claiming Partner of Record in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program.
• Once a partner is matched with the customer, the partner receives a Referral Notification email directing them to respond to the referral in the FastTrack Partner Experience (FPX) within 2 days.
• Once a partner accepts a referral in FPX, the Partner Assignment email is sent to the requestor, the customer, the account team, the FPM, and the partner informing them of the match. The partner is expected to contact the customer within 2 business days of the assignment email.

Partner Delivery

• If this is a FastTrack Benefit Referral, the partner is expected to deliver the benefit according to the Benefit Description and then optionally sell value-added services to the customer.
• If this is a Standard Referral, the partner is expected to evaluate the customer situation through a no-obligation consultation and propose appropriate paid services.
• If applicable, the partner should submit a CPOR claim for the workloads serviced for that customer.

Closing a referral

• Partners are expected to return to FPX at the end of the customer engagement to inform Microsoft that the work outlined in the referral is complete. This does not mean that the engagement with the customer is over. It simply provides Microsoft with visibility into the length of a referral service and awareness of when the customer need is fulfilled.

Examples of Communications

Example: Request for Assistance (Benefit Referral)

Example: Admin communication to approve Request for Assistance (Standard Review)