At Hill City Global, we love customer experience (CX) and have experience executing CX programs at some of the world’s premier brands. In this 3-part series, we will lean on our expertise to tackle a few of the challenges you may face in developing or expanding your CX program. Our focus will be on the execution of your CX strategy. While CX is easy to articulate in a strategic discussion, its implementation can be difficult. We will cover the following topics: Managing unsupportive line-of-business leaders, making a case for your CX budget, and defining and measuring your CX program.

To run a compelling client experience (CX) program, you need money. And if we are honest, it’s not a small amount. At a minimum, most CX programs will include significant investments in technology, culture-based training, and the development of new processes. There are no rocks unturned in a CX program, as all of these items touch every part of the business. With a scope of this magnitude, it’s no wonder you are seeing CXO positions entering the c-suite.

So what do you do when you are just getting started? How do you secure the necessary resources to fulfill your vision of a fully scaled CX program? You know your CEO and CFO won’t give you everything in your first ever request. They will want to see the value before they open up the purse strings. After all, they will likely be a little hesitant anyway from the “soft” perception CX often has.

Below are four tips to consider when trying to secure funding for your CX program:

1) Get creative with your technology budget by borrowing from your CIO. Most likely, they are sitting on a healthy budget for something where your CX program could sit. If your IT team “charges” the business for technology initiatives, you’ll need to borrow from a line-of-business.

2) Instead of hiring a ton of people out of the gate, designate “CX Champions” in key lines-of-businesses that your program is going to touch. This assignment will do a few things for you. First, it gives you some “free” resources to help with your program. Second, you create evangelists within the organization for what you are doing. Third, you are training CX skills that you need the organization to adopt for the program to be successful.

3) Pull-in Project Managers or Process resources from your PMO to build out the processes and manage the implementation of your project. Eventually, you will want to have a few people on your team, but for now, you might be able to get by with shared services resources.

4) Don’t forget to ask for everything you want (and more!) even though you know you won’t get it. The executive team needs to see the full vision of where the program is going, regardless if they aren’t ready to fund it now entirely.

In part three, we will discuss how develop measures of success for your CX program.

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About Hill City Global:  Our mission is to see our client’s vision come to life through the implementation of their strategic initiatives by working alongside them as a trusted partner. We do this by providing project implementation and related consulting services through our easy to work with team that knows how to communicate and fits your culture. We are proud to call Sofia, Bulgaria home. Learn more at www.hillcityglobal.com. 

Company Leadership: Ryan Fischer, CEO and Founder 

Board of Advisors: Chris Daum, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors at FMI Corporation; Joseph Swarengin, Vice President and US CFO of Krispy Kreme; Adrian Donato, Ed.D, University of Southern California (USC) Lecturer and Founder of InterEd Strategic.