Oct 22, 2019 Secure Budget for Your Next DCX Project
We all have good ideas on how to transform the customer experience. But getting the budget to execute on those ideas can be challenging.
The keys to success are to determine the right people to fund the Digital Customer Experience (DCX) project, and why they would say yes. Then, of course, ask for a reasonable amount that enables project success without breaking the bank.
Here are some steps successful organizations take:
- Know your business case. Even though your gut sense may tell you a new analytics tool or AI-based chatbot will help your organization, you need to be very specific about how it will help. What is the problem it’s solving or the opportunity it’s creating? What is the data to support your case? Who within your organization or among your customers has agreed with this problem or opportunity? Identifying the business case and gathering the supporting evidence for it typically takes about one month to finalize (more for complex business cases; less for simple ones)
- Find the right people for your project team. As you’re establishing the business case, identify the right mix of people for the project team. This should include IT staff, along with CX, contact center, security, and potentially network teams, as well. Don’t be too narrow. I’ve seen some companies include HR because of the impact on employees, marketing because of the impact on branding, and procurement to ensure speedy purchasing.
- Map AI technologies to the business case. Does this project require AI-enabled chatbots, or some combination of self-service, predictive analytics, Natural Language Processing, or sentiment analysis? Once you’ve identified the problem or opportunity, have the project team identify specific technologies that will address it. You don’t need to have the provider selected; just the technology, a brief overview of how it works, and why it will address the problem. Have a rough order of magnitude cost at this point for hardware, software, services, and internal IT staff.
- Identify stakeholders and make your case. As you’re researching all of the above, always have an eye on who might fund the project. In some cases, it’s straight-forward because a business unit leader has asked you to solve a problem—and he or she plans to fund it. In other cases, there is a company-wide transformation or CX budget you can tap into. But more often, it requires a mix of people who will contribute a portion of the budget needed. And, don’t forget stakeholders who may not have budget, but they have influence. They can evangelize the project throughout the company and with customers to help it be successful.
Setting Budgets
Budgets for DCX range widely, particularly when it comes to individual projects. But across the board, organizations spent between $44,000 and $3.97 million per year on DCX technologies, supported by a staff ranging in size from 4 people to 4,010, depending on the size of the organization. The chart below shows DCX budgets for 2019, by size of organization.
Annual DCX Budget, 2019
Securing the right stakeholders to fund AI-enabled DCX initiatives requires careful planning. To learn more about finding stakeholders and setting budgets in this webinar. To access Nemertes entire 2019-20 Intelligent Customer Engagement research study, please click here.