budget

Are you making this mistake when journey mapping?
We already know that people are making mistakes when they’re journey mapping. I’ve outlined several of them in past posts:

5 Myths of Journey Mapping, in which I wrote about:

I originally wrote today's post for CallidusCloud. It appeared on their blog on April 13, 2018.

How do you prioritize your CX improvement initiatives?

You've listened to customers. You've mapped their journeys. And you've identified a lot of improvement areas that would make the experience light years better for your customers.

What was on the minds of CX professionals in 2018?

And, most importantly, what does it mean for 2019?  That has yet to be determined, but "execution" and "results" are two words I'd like to see more of this year!

It's fun to see what was interesting for you - my audience - to read in 2018. I shared 58 blog posts (that includes a few posts from guest authors) in 2018; here are the top eight (because 18 would be way too many!) posts, the most-read CX Journey™ posts, that I wrote last year.

No customer experience budget? No problem!

As a follow-on to my post earlier this week about companies having no budget for customer experience improvements, I thought I'd compile a few ideas on how to move beyond the "no budget" excuse and make improvements that cost little to nothing.

No customer experience budget?

I haven't written a CX Journey™ Musings post lately, but I found a topic that warrants a bit of reflection.

I recently read an article on MyCustomer about a study that Ovum and BoldChat conducted in which they found that many companies don't have the necessary budget to improve the customer experience. Specifically, the findings noted in the article state:

Social media marketing budgets are set to rise for 40% of firms across Europe in 2011 and budget for social media marketing is an issue for only 18% of brands. These findings come from Meltwater Group’s Future of Content report, a survey of with marketing and social media decision makers from 450 brands across the world, including the US, UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Australia.

After writing about Agile Budgeting, I stumbled serendipitously (as is the way with these things) on a Tom Fishburne post about Waterfall Planning that echoed some of the points I was making. Specifically, how crafting an annual plan is "like getting a bill through Congress", what with all the hours of spreadsheet crunching, debate, negotiation, and compromise, followed by more of the same, before eventually settling on "a plan that is wrong the moment it's inked". Tom goes on to mention Ian Sanders, who gave a talk on Unplanning at last years SXSW (there's also a short e-book here if you're interested).

From our experience in optimizing about €5 billion in media funds around the world, we know that between 2 and 40% of any marketing budget delivers absolutely no value to the business.  If you’d take a (kind) mean of 10%, this would mean that – globally – annually about $50 billion goes down the drain.  Not counting the parts which deliver “little value” and the opportunity cost of lost commercial impact.

The coming marketing decade will be about common sense.  Most of the tools we need to develop relevant, engaging and reputable brands exist.  It’s just a matter of using them.  So rather than tell you about the next new thing to use, I encourage you to double-check whether your 2011 marketing plan takes into account the following items.

by: Jennifer Rice

As consumer expectations rise and trust in corporations decline, the need for ethical business practices is greater than ever. Yet in a recession, companies seeking to cut costs will likely postpone important CSR initiatives or cut spending in favor of core business initiatives.

But it doesn’t have to be either-or. Companies that consider social and environmental initiatives as potential innovation platforms and brand builders — not expenses — will come out ahead.