Most business leaders understand the importance of customer experience (CX). They know they need to take steps to improve CX, but don’t know how to do it—or what technology they need. According to a 2022 Forrester survey of 484 global CX leaders, 64% say investing in new products and services to streamline CX is a high or critical priority. But nearly all who responded say it is at least mildly challenging to identify where to start to improve CX and customer journeys.
For many traditional companies, improving CX means investing in new technology such as customer journey management (CJM) software. But committing to new technology is not easy for many executives—even when it is budgeted for. Those in leadership positions often experience buyers’ remorse, making them more reluctant to approve future technology purchases. According to a Gartner survey of 1,120 individuals involved in the evaluation and selection of technology products, 56% had a high degree of purchase regret over their largest enterprise technology purchase.
How can CX teams create buy-in from executive decision makers to purchase the right CX platform? How can they inspire confidence in leaders responsible for deciding how to invest company money?
CX leaders need to build and present a solid business case that demonstrates how the right solution will meet stakeholder expectations, address organizational priorities and realize better business results. Here’s how to do that.
Four Steps to Build a Business Case for CX Tech Investments
- Demonstrate the need for change. To create buy-in for a new investment, highlight current tech stack inadequacies. Show that existing solutions are inherently limited in scope and are hitting a ceiling well before getting the job done. According to 217 global CX leaders who are using a customer engagement solution, many (70%) are using customer relationship management (CRM) software, live chat tools (66%) and/or mobile apps (62%) as their primary means of handling CX. Yet less than half (41%) of those leaders noted improvements in either customer satisfaction or increased sales, and only 46% reported better customer retention. This means a customer engagement solution that handles a single facet of the customer experience is not sufficient to improve CX. A customer engagement solution must address all phases of the customer’s journey. To help build your cases, consider these key performance indicators to measure CX:
- Customer satisfaction scores (Cstat)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Churn rate
- Repeat sales
- Digital containment rate
- Account activation rate
- Quantifiable benefit attribution
Use these metrics to create a benchmark, identify friction points and gaps in your program and compare them to the metrics of top performing companies to create the vision of CX success.
- Educate the buying committee on customer journeys. Businesses must improve customer journeys to enhance CX and increase retention. Yet many business leaders don’t understand this important concept. According to the Forrester survey, 40% of CX leaders indicated that lack of understanding or appreciation for customer journeys is a major challenge to delivering successful CX. Gather evidence that supports a journey-driven strategy, including:
- Analyst research and vendor reviews (e.g., The Forrester Wave for Journey Orchestration Platforms) – You’ll want to make sure you’re reviewing industry leaders like CSG.
- Reviews and feedback from industry peers – Checkout peer-to-peer review websites such as G2 to understand product strengths and weaknesses from actual users.
- Forward-looking thought leadership from top-tier consulting firms such as McKinsey, Deloitte and Bain & Company.
Once you gather evidence, it’s pertinent to share relevant use cases with executive leadership to gain buy-in. By leveraging these resources and including evidence, the buying committee can gain a comprehensive understanding of how a journey-driven strategy can drive the organization towards enhanced CX.
- Determine costs, return on investment (ROI) and risks associated with implementation. To create buy-in, it’s important to assess how a CX platform will increase revenue (via greater sales and customer lifetime value) or reduce costs associated with customer service operations, acquisition and/or employee turnover. Work with prospective vendors to calculate the total cost of ownership (including acquisition, ongoing maintenance/support fees and end-user training), then use the projected cost savings, revenue increase and total cost of ownership to calculate ROI. Also determine the payback period—the time needed to recover the initial investment before positive benefits begin. Highlight the competitive costs and risks of doing nothing to improve CX (e.g., customer churn, reduced lifetime customer value). Leverage the vendor’s case studies and success stories as data points in building out the business case.
- Describe the implementation process. Detail out this information to establish clear expectations:
- How long it takes to get the system up and running and when can the business expect to see a return
- Compatibility/integration with existing systems (e.g., CRM, customer data platform, billing system, contact center system, voice of customer systems, messaging platforms)
- Which IT team members and other teams need to be trained on the new technology
- What metrics will be used to measure success
CSG Xponent Ignite Is Here to Help
Gathering all this information is time and labor intensive, but vital. CSG’s CX team will work with you to build a business case for improved customer journey management by:
- Assessing your organization’s CX maturity
- Identifying desired business outcomes
- Calculating expected ROI
- Outlining findings in a brief to present to leadership
Not only will we share industry-specific best practices to give you a running head start and speed up implementation; we’ll also provide the technology to make it happen. CSG Xponent Ignite provides pre-built customer journeys for four key industries: financial services, healthcare, retail and telecommunications. The foundation of Xponent Ignite is CSG Xponent, our award-winning, industry-leading customer engagement solution that combines a customer data platform with best-in-class customer journey management and journey analytics. With pre-built journeys and pre-configured integrations, seamlessly tap into your current tech stack to make all your data and current systems work better, together.
Remember: You don’t need to boil the ocean. You can start with one journey use case, prove out the value; and expand your program from there!
