Unfortunate CX Investment Reality
There are way too many companies out there today that have forgotten the old adage, ” you get what you pay for”. Investing in Enterprise CX Software is probably one of the most important and strategic business decisions impacting the future of companies today. Unfortunately too many companies are more interested in checking the boxes off based on the word of software vendors rather than forcing them to show those capabilities. And the final decision is based on price and price alone!
The Big Question
How much more should a company pay for a better solution? Is it important that the right decision enable and increase sales across channels by upwards of 30%? And operational efficiencies realized within the first year of production at levels upwards of 40%? Is great CX important with “true” omni-channel along with one routing engine for all channels and complete visbility, reporting and analytics for CX / Customer Journey? Is the elimination of silo channels a priority? You have to say, “hmmm”.
The big question – Is it right for the leading solution to offer the same price as inferior products?
If your business has money to invest in the growth of business OR if you are funded and forced into a telephony / contact center upgrade because of an end-of-life scenario OR if you are looking at digital modernization of customer engagement – Why in the world would you you buy this?
When you could have this for a little more money which quickly repays itself with proven ROI.
The Truth of the Matter
Contact center, telephony upgrades and digital customer engagement project cycles occur anywhere between 2 to 15 years. The fact is that these type of projects do not happen on a frequent basis but when they do happen they are strategic and can make a huge difference in the future of your business. It is not like trading in one car for another if you are not happy with the performance of your first decision. The truth of the matter is many companies have made bad decisions and have wasted a lot of time and money.
There are 6 Major Points to Factor in Decision Making
- Vendor is rooted in proprietary hardware and networking and the CX and Contact Center portion of their business is less than .001% of their overall revenue. Seriously consider the level of focus and expertise in Customer Engagement and question why they are offering huge discounts on the contact center piece if you buy other equipment. Will this help your business?
- Vendor is on a long slow decline, major debt issues, recent bankruptcy, lacks funding for innovation and new development in CX Solutions and has lost many trusted adviser level internal resources that were focused on CX and Contact Center. Seriously question why they are offering huge discounts if you continue with this generally incumbent vendor. Maybe retaining that annual support agreement is critical to their survival. Will this help your business?
- Vendor is 100% focused on Contact Center and is considered the leading innovator and fastest growing Enterprise CX Solution in the market for Contact Center. But due to aggressive acquisition strategy they are struggling to keep and/or migrate customers from older legacy solutions to new V1.0 solutions that are not proven. Are they really just for sale? Will this help your business? (link)
- Vendor began in the CRM space with a large jump on other competitors and has developed as the defacto standard in cloud CRM but not CXM. But to compete in a mad dash to hold on to the cloud lead they have acquired sub-par solutions around CRM to broaden their offerings with many of those solutions actually 3rd party with loose and risky integration points. They are still not profitable even after 10+ years in business. Will this help your business? (link)
- Vendor is rooted in IT Service Management (ITSM) based on the Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) framework. Solution is focused and designed to serve internal IT Help Desks and not Customer Engagement. They were forced to move into the CX market because IT Help Desk has become a commodity and they had to make that move to stay viable as a company. Will this help your business? (link)
- Vendor is focused 100% on CX in the cloud bringing “white glove” CX to any business both B2B or B2C and is agnostic from a telephony perspective connecting with any telephony solution. According to Gartner, “Telephony is a Commodity, No Longer a Differentiator“. This vendor spends over $5B a year on innovation and portfolio of cloud offerings can remove silos in your business including customer service, e-commerce, sales, marketing and back office connecting all customer touch points with true omni-channel. Will this help your business? (link)
I am sure there are some that will disagree or be offended with these points but I respectfully challenge those folks to check out what the analysts are saying and they will find these points to be spot on!
Also check out other blogs on this site that contain real life scenarios that I have seen in the CX Market.
Do not let this post heat you up so stay cool with this 1940 GE 272810 oscillating fan!
BillCookCX
