The "We're Listening" blog keeps you in the loop about what Cisco is hearing from our customers and partners, and what we're doing to address your top pain points. Teams across Cisco work together to fix these areas of concerns, and in this blog, you've heard from some of the experts who lead the improvement efforts. At the center of their efforts is Cisco's Ease of Doing Business program, which looks at all the customer and partner feedback from surveys, individual meetings and conferences to determine the biggest pain points, and then pulls in the right people from across Cisco to make change happen.

The Ease of Doing Business team recently returned from Cisco Live, where they captured valuable feedback from our customer and partner attendees. I've asked Steve Morrisey, who leads the program, to summarize his top moments from Cisco Live, and to give us a hint at the changes we have in the works.

 By Guest Contributor Steve Morrisey

A few weeks ago, my team and I attended Cisco Live 2013 in Orlando, Florida. Cisco Live is always a valuable opportunity for us to connect with customers and partners. Whether in formal sessions, hallway conversations or via social media, you give us great insight into your experience doing business with Cisco, telling us what's working and what we need to fix. 

One of the highlights for me this year was the opening keynote from John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. John talked about the importance of a simplified customer experience in the face of increasing business and technological complexity. He predicted that as more people, process, data and things are connected to the Internet in the phenomenon known as the "Internet of Everything," your biggest challenge will be to simplify how you manage your business as well as your network -and that Cisco's biggest priority is to help you get there by being more straightforward and easy to work with. John laid it out in plain terms:

"Our goal is to make sure we stay focused on your priorities. Every time we connect with you, we want to walk in your shoes, hear what you see. We want to delight you, and we understand that a fundamental change is required in the way we interface to you. This change, I believe, will help us to become the#1 IT company."

My takeaway: simplifying your experience is a win-win situation.

Another highlight was the presentation on the new Smart Software Licensing solution. In a previous blog post, Brian Jeffries hinted at this new capability, and the demonstrations were worth the wait. Brian's team will be visiting the blog soon to talk about their Cisco Live experience.

Along with the Smart Licensing update, our upcoming "We're Listening" posts will talk about new improvements to Cisco.com and the Return Materials Authorization process. In the meantime, my team and I will continue to look for the high-priority improvements that Cisco needs to make next -and we need your feedback to ensure we're on the right track. You can send us your suggestions for new improvements at any time via this quick survey. You can also contact us directly at [email protected].

Looking forward to your feedback,

Steve