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On this episode, we ask big questions about how customer loyalty is formed — and how AI can be leveraged to build stronger connections with customers.

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What does customer loyalty look like in the age of AI?

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Explore the transformative potential of Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) solutions and learn how to navigate the evolving landscape of AI-driven customer interactions with this executive brief from Frost & Sullivan.

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The CCaaS breakthrough: Redefining customer interactions with AI

Join Ajinkya Malasane, senior director, product strategy and marketing for TELUS Digital (formerly TELUS International), and Vikram Chatterji, co-founder and CEO of Galileo, a generative AI (GenAI) evaluation company, as they provide efficient and effective ways to solve key GenAI project blockers for easier deployments.

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Crafting production-grade GenAI applications

Discover how TELUS Digital used our proven field operations testing (FOT) experience to create a high-quality dataset for training advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles (AV).

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Curating high-quality data for the training and validation of ADAS and AV models

On this episode, we explore how eco-friendly apparel brand Frank And Oak evolved its business model to adapt to customer expectations — and how data, feedback and technology are used to optimize its CX strategy.

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What is the Frank And Oak secret for adapting to changing customer preferences?

On this episode, we discuss how start-ups can deliver exceptional customer experience with limited resources — and how businesses of all sizes can use these tactics to thrive in a competitive environment.

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How can start-ups achieve the same world-class customer experience as a Fortune 500 company?

Join industry experts from TELUS Digital and Everest Group as they explore how leading technologies, such as generative AI, automation, analytics and more, are delivering value for organizations without compromising service quality.

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Efficient CX delivery: A tech-driven approach

Discover how TELUS Digital assisted a leading U.S. autonomous vehicle (AV) developer in refining the scenario comprehension and motion planning capabilities of their AV bot.

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Enhancing an autonomous vehicle bot’s scenario understanding with tailored fine-tuning datasets

You've heard of product-market fit, but what about profit-market fit? Learn the difference and how scaling tech brands can achieve it.

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Why achieving profit-market fit is essential for scaling brands

Robert Zirk: As a customer experience leader, it's safe to assume you're convinced of the potential value that CX investment can bring to an organization.

You likely have ideas and plans that could bring out some serious improvements.

According to Forrester's Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience, 99% of CX decision makers worldwide list CX improvements as one of their top priorities.

But as you may know all too well, it's not other customer experience leaders that you need to win budget from.

Those improvements you're prioritizing might come at a cost, and you'll need to make a case for investment that resonates with your leadership team.

The same Forrester report indicates only 40% of CX leaders anticipate a budget increase of 5% or more, suggesting the other 60% may struggle to keep up with inflation.

Securing the budget is just the first step. Implementation brings its own challenges, like the pressure CX leaders face to do more with less, prove a return on investment and deliver results with emerging technologies.

So today on Questions for now, we'll ask: How can leaders win and optimize investment in CX?

Robert Zirk: Welcome to Questions for now, a podcast from TELUS Digital, where we ask today's big questions in digital customer experience. I'm Robert Zirk.

Robert Zirk: The email you've been expecting just landed in your inbox. (sound of an email notification) It's time to start planning your budget for the next fiscal year. So what do you, the CX leader, need to know before you even create a spreadsheet?

Jeannie Walters is a customer experience expert, keynote speaker, host of the Experience Action podcast and the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, where she and her team work with leaders at a variety of organizations to help shape their customer experience strategies. Jeannie notes the importance of establishing the right mindset about what CX means to your organization.

Jeannie Walters: When we talk about continually investing in CX, we really need to remember that experience is a driver in how people make purchasing decisions — not just the first one, but continuing with your brand. So understanding that, by investing in customer experience, by investing in removing the friction, by making things easier for customers, you are actually investing in the success of your organization. It's not a “nice to have”. It is absolutely part of doing business.

Robert Zirk: And the consequences of a lack of investment in the customer experience can have a significant impact on the financial health of the company.

Jeannie cited a Qualtrics XMI study that found that 51% of consumers either stopped or reduced spending with a brand following a negative customer experience.

Jeannie Walters: I can't think of any other consequence that we would have in business that makes a stronger case for this, right?

We need to make sure that if we are investing, let's say, in becoming more operationally effective and efficient, that the flip side of that is not making something require more effort for the customer. We have to make sure that we're always looking at what is actually happening on the customer side of things so that we can help them take the next step that they want to take with us. And if we don't do that, people are voting with their dollars and with their feet and with where they shop.

And so, if you provide an experience that is just lacking, is not keeping up with the pace of the world, not keeping up with the convenient options that people are expecting, because that's what they're experiencing as customers elsewhere, then you're really missing opportunity to drive those bottom line results around revenue.

Robert Zirk: Forrester reported a third consecutive year of global declines in CX quality and one of the reasons cited is employee burnout. Alain Méric, vice president of sales at TELUS Digital, notes that a lack of investment in CX can be a contributing factor.

Alain Méric: If your team, if your advisors, if people who are talking to customers every day don't feel they have the means, they have the tools, they have the services, the solutions to keep those customers and be proud when they talk to your customers about your brand, I think the morale is dropping and then it goes into attrition and all the challenges with regards to retaining knowledge and driving efficiencies within the operation.

Robert Zirk: Encouragingly, he's noticed greater interest in the customer experience from C-suite executives.

Alain Méric: I'm old enough to remember the days where customer experience was a cost base and every C-level leader wanted to reduce that cost within the organization. Where today, C-level leaders understand the experience, the benefit and the need for a differentiated customer experience, and are more aware of the benefits that will derive from the right investments.

Robert Zirk: As you begin to prepare your case for more budget, Jeannie reminds CX leaders not to confuse measurements with outcomes and to ensure business goals are reflected in their rationale.

Jeannie Walters: I really believe that we have to make it a win, win, win all the time. Whenever we're building a business case, whenever we're asking for not just investment of money, frankly, but also investment of people's time, of people's attention, of cross functional leadership, right? Like, we cannot do this alone. That's part of the challenge of customer experience.

So I think when we talk about return on investment, it's really important to think about what is that doing for our customers? What is that doing for our employees? And what is that doing for our overall organization? And sometimes what that means is talking about some of those stats — like, what would happen if we could lower our customer churn rate 1%? What would happen then? And by figuring out, “Okay, we know that would maybe lead to millions of dollars in certain organizations. If that's our goal, then how can we reverse engineer and say, ‘If we invested here, if we made these improvements, we believe we could have lower churn’?” Then everybody starts understanding this isn't just about trying to make people do extra.

You hear that sometimes or you hear that it's just about making customers happy. It's more than that. It's about helping customers take the next step with us, with our brand and so speaking that language can be very important. Get really clear on what you're asking for. And when you talk about investment, get really clear on being realistic around that, because there will be a return on any improvements that we make but we have to connect those dots.

Robert Zirk: And, in doing so, it's important to ensure that the expectations you set are both realistic and aligned to specific business outcomes.

Jeannie Walters: Get really clear on what the goal is and then work backwards from there, because we can talk about things like customer lifetime value, which is a great metric, but a lot of organizations can't quite figure that out yet. They just don't have access to the right data points to really figure that out. So I would look at what are your organizational goals and what do your leaders really care about?

There are some leaders who really care about living the brand promise. That's part of their ethos. That's part of who they are. So you want to look at: “Where in our experience do we not do that? How can we make sure that we are identifying places where maybe we're not living up to the brand promise that will be really meaningful to that leader?” And then break it down further and think about “Where are those levers that we can pull? Where are those efforts that we can invest in around customer experience that will influence those outcomes?”

We use something called a CX success statement where we break this down because, too often, the goals that I see around customer experience, they don't really define what success looks like. So then in a year, people are scratching their heads saying, “We invested in all these platforms, and we have all this data, and we have all these dashboards, but so what?” Right? “We're not seeing the actual outcomes.”

I like to say customer experience is a mindset, strategy and discipline, and you have to go in that order. So you have to get the mindset of “Who are we to our customers? And what's really important?” And then you break that down to a strategy of “Where can we actually influence these goals that we want as an organization?” And then the discipline is really, “What do we do every day? Where do we put in our efforts? How do we build those bridges across the organization so we can influence the right actions to get those outcomes, so we know what success looks like? And then we can celebrate when we get there.”

Robert Zirk: When gathering data to support your budget, Jeannie asserts that it's important to look at a range of sources: your quantitative numbers, qualitative feedback, and how your customers are behaving.

Jeannie Walters: Customers will tell you with not only their words, but also their behavior. We also talk about metrics as if they're final, and really, they're indicators — and I want us to use that word a little more often, too. Like, NPS is an indicator of something. It's about what people are planning, but it's not really about their behavior. And so, we need to make sure that we're also looking at “What do the operational metrics tell us? What do behavioral analytics tell us?” I'm a big fan of just, like, observation sometimes and saying “What's happening in the store, in the bank branch? How are people navigating that in real time?” Because feedback only gets us so far. Humans don't always make sense. We don't always say what we actually do. And so, combining all that with the idea of “What is the goal of this organization and who are we to our customers?” We have to constantly tie that together to make our case.

Robert Zirk: Some indicators, like Net Promoter Score, can even be the precursor to more intangible metrics, like engagement that leads to customer referrals, employee referrals and word of mouth.

Jeannie Walters: If I'm an employee and I'm dealing with happier customers, I'm going to be a happier person. I'm going to tell my friends that they should work at this place. I'm going to go home and feel really good about the job I'm doing. And if we can do that for customers and make them feel connected to our brands and like they're actually valued and cared for, then the intangible is they're going to take that feeling and share that. They're going to share it not only by referring people, but also just out into the world, saying that “This brand makes me feel really good.”

Robert Zirk: When preparing budgets, Jeannie notes that because the customer experience affects the entire organization, CX initiatives require cross-functional support from other departments and teams.

Jeannie Walters: We cannot do this alone. The role that I see that is really confusing to me is when a CX leader is told “Your job is to get Net Promoter Score up,” right? You're given no resources, no team, and you are not accountable for the changes that need to be made. We could say all day “NPS is low because people hate the mobile app and that's what's dragging us down.” Most CX leaders are not developing the mobile app. So I think part of it is defining what is it we're really trying to do and who else do we need involved? Because if we can ask for that upfront, if we can define that upfront, then again, people start connecting these dots and seeing that this is not just something that is on a dashboard that isn't really meaningful. This is about something bigger and it's about really making it so that, again, we have lower costs and higher revenue.

Robert Zirk: Some of the initiatives and programs you may be considering might be longer term investments that will take time to lead to the goals you've set. Alain notes the importance of finding ways to demonstrate shorter term wins nested within those larger projects.

Alain Méric: There needs to be a guide, right? That's the North Star you are aiming for and how that North Star needs to be depending on your company culture, your market strategy, your cost strategy and then you can build your roadmap and iterate your investment. I believe today there are lots of solutions that don't need you to commit for three, four, five years but that you can bring more flexibility with regards to your investments and adjust and move.

Robert Zirk: Once you have a working budget and an idea of where you want to invest, you'll likely further discuss what you're looking to achieve and what you'll need to get there.

Mark Raffan is a negotiations expert, host of the Negotiations Ninja podcast, and the founder and CEO of Negotiations Ninja, an organization that works with some of the world's largest companies, helping teams and leaders to negotiate better and get more value. Mark concurs that proving the link between CX and a return on investment is key.

Mark Raffan: Fundamentally, the logical part of the budget process is about ROI. So if you're competing for ROI, right, whomever you're requesting the budget from is thinking primarily about ROI. There's a ton of data online to be able to show why and how an improved customer experience is going to deliver a higher return on investment. If you just say something to the effect of, “Hey, if you invest in this customer experience tool that we want, we will generate more money,” whomever is going to be reading that is going to go, “Cool. Prove it.” How do you know that, right? How can you say that? So being able to show the data and show the research to show that investing in customer experience drives more revenue — you should be able to do that.

And get that independent research, right? Don't just rely on the research that whomever is selling you the tool is providing you, because that obviously is going to feel and sound biased. So additional third party research is going to be really important to your persuasion tactics, but also, this is why it's important to work with your procurement and supply chain team to contractually obligate whomever is selling you the idea of the ROI on the CX tool to put that in the contract so that we can say, “Okay, we achieved this ROI. You are obligated to help us achieve this ROI. If we don't achieve that ROI, what do we get back?” Right? “What penalties are we going to put in place? If we achieve more than the ROI, great. Maybe we'll reward you even more. Fantastic. That's what we want from this process.” So making sure that you work with your internal procurement and supply chain team to put those KPIs in place and making sure that we can actually track that process is very important.

Robert Zirk: But making the case for a budget isn't simply about proving ROI.

Mark Raffan: The thing that you have to realize is that you are not just competing for a set amount of budget. You are also competing against all the other people that need that budget. And budget, of course, is limited and it's going to be distributed to a set number of folks in order to try and achieve that goal, the maximum results for the organization. Now, what most people don't also realize is that there is budget being allocated to things that are going to drive less ROI than their projects.

How is it that those folks that have a lower ROI drive the acquisition of their budget and you, who has a higher ROI, does not? That's where persuasion and influence come in. And so, for a lot of people, they really struggle with this idea of “My project delivers a higher ROI, therefore I should get more of that budget.” You probably are not doing a good job persuading and influencing the person who allocates that budget in order to achieve that.

Robert Zirk: So, in addition to the logical component of the budget, which is making those direct links to ROI and business outcomes, leaders need to consider how they can create an emotional appeal and evoke a particular feeling to bolster their arguments when discussing budget with senior leadership.

Mark Raffan: What you have to try and establish, as someone who is trying to acquire that budget, is “How am I going to get you to emotionally invest in my way of thinking?” But people are primarily motivated by two big things: pain and pleasure, right? So people want to avoid the pain of making a bad decision or acquire the pleasure of making a good decision.

We know that statistically, in the vast majority of negotiation cases, especially around persuasion, that people are more motivated to not miss out on something than they are to acquire something. So if I can highlight my decision in their minds as, “Okay, if you make this decision, you won't miss out,” then I know that's going to be significantly more persuasive than potentially the other way.

And remember, you need to frame it as an opportunity to the person who is allocating the budget. This isn't just a math decision for them. They are trying to make a decision that is best for the organization. So you need to frame this as an opportunity to invest.

The other side of that is the pleasure side. Most often in negotiation and persuasion, pleasure is most associated with the acquisition of something to gain pleasure, right? So “If you do this, you will get all of this additional stuff. You will get this benefit. And if those benefits are emotionally motivating to you, then you will move in that direction.” And I have to be able to balance both in the persuasion argument equally, as much as humanly possible. Where a lot of people go wrong is they rely too heavily on pain and the fear of missing out. The problem with that is that becomes too much of a recurring theme. It's almost like you're using fear as the motivator only, and if you're only using fear as the motivator, then people generally tune out.

Robert Zirk: Jeannie highlighted how a CX leader could approach the emotional appeal to their pitch.

Jeannie Walters: I like to include customer quotes, videos, recordings, things like that. At least one. You're not saying that it's representative of everybody. You're just telling one customer story. And the reason that's so important is because you can show those graphs all day long. We've all been there, where then you play a recording of a contact center recording that didn't go so well. And that's when the executive sits up and says, “Oh my gosh, we cannot treat people this way.” Because we connect that way.

We can't ever forget that all of those numbers, all of those percentages, they represent real people and they're living real lives. CX leaders can lead here by connecting with that emotion, with those real life stories as well as those all important numbers and indicators and metrics.

Robert Zirk: And finally, Mark notes that CX leaders trying to win budget need to reinforce their argument by demonstrating their own credibility.

Mark Raffan: If I have a history of delivering on my promises, showing you that your investment is warranted, showing you that I will deliver on the ROI, you're significantly more likely to give me the money than to someone else who has less credibility. But then the question becomes “How do we establish that credibility if we have none?”

So, if we're new to the organization or we don't have, let's say, as extensive a history as the people competing for this budget, we can use what we call piggyback branding to be able to show how our department has executed on projects. So it doesn't necessarily have to be something that you personally have executed on, but you can piggyback off of the credibility of your own organization, your department, to show that they have executed on that value or give examples from the past that you have executed on before, and that is going to help you establish that credibility.

Robert Zirk: Mark spoke to the most common objections leaders might hear during a budget discussion and how you, as a CX leader, should respond.

Mark Raffan: “Can you do it for less? Can you generate this ROI with less money?” The answer is “No, we cannot. We've calculated what we need to be able to generate that ROI, and we need to be able to do that to generate that ROI.”

Another thing that you're going to start to think about is decision and solution related to urgency and importance. For example, someone in a budget allocation may be saying “We need to work with this other part of the business because it's more urgent,” to which your question is going to be, “Help me to understand that urgency a little bit more. What is the decision that needs to be made?” “They want to invest this.” “Okay, when does that decision need to be made?” “It needs to be made by this time.”

That's going to help you really establish what the true urgency is and whether it's actually more urgent than what your request is. Then you need to ask the following question: When does a solution for that thing need to be in place? Because decision and solution are two different things. We conflate them in the budgeting process, but they are not the same thing, right? We say, “Well, how urgent is this project?” What are you asking? Are you asking about the decision for the project? Or are you asking about the implementation of the project? Make sure that you're separating those when you're asking who is competing for this and when that decision needs to be made and when that solution needs to be in place.

But quite equally, it's not just about the urgency and finding out when the decision and the solution needs to be in place. It's about “What is the impact to the business?” This is when we get into the ROI discussion, right? So what's the impact to the business if that decision isn't made by that time? Why do you want to understand this? Because if someone else says it's urgent, but we actually find out that this decision doesn't have to be made until fiscal calendar next year, is it actually urgent? Could we put this off until the next budget cycle? We can't really put ours off and we've got to have strong reasoning to be able to prove that. So we need to be able to support that.

Now, the other thing is what is the impact if the solution isn't in place by that time? What's the impact to the business? “We won't do those things, but that's not that big of a deal, so we'll just wait longer.”

So you need to dig into and understand, “Okay, if you've allocated or decided that you want to allocate budget in another direction, help me to understand why that is, what's going on with that project, what is the urgency? When's the decision need to be made? When does the solution need to be in place?” And then what's the impact? When does the solution need to be in place and what is the impact to that solution? Gotta understand that. Otherwise you're not going to be actually negotiating for something that makes sense.

Robert Zirk: But it's not a given that the number on your spreadsheet is going to be the number you get back. 16% of CX leaders Forrester surveyed anticipate their budgets will stay the same and 9% believe their budgets will decrease. So, what do you do if the budget comes back and you've received less than what you've asked for?

Mark Raffan: First things first, don't ask for what you need, ask for more than what you need, right? So a lot of customer experience leaders, marketing leaders go into this budgeting process saying “Okay, this is exactly what I need to get the job done, that's how much I'm going to ask for.” You've already made the worst mistake possible, which is not asking for more. Because whomever is allocating the budget is most likely going to reject that and if they reject that and you get through the process, they're going to give you less. So you must ask for more than what you need because we know that the internal budgeting process is going to counter and they're going to offer you less in the situation.

Robert Zirk: If you've only asked for what you need and are allocated a budget that's even lower, Mark emphasizes that leaders need to return to the negotiating table and be straightforward about the ramifications.

Mark Raffan: Speak directly to the request. “Hey, we need this. We're requesting this. This is required for us to execute on our project in order to get the ROI that we have presented to you. If we can't invest this to get the ROI, the likelihood is that ROI has to change.”

Robert Zirk: We've covered how to successfully plan and negotiate for a CX budget. Once you have your budget secured, how do you optimize it to ensure you're making the best use of your organization's investment?

In Forrester's State of CX Teams survey, leaders reported a fairly even split in their CX budgets between technology; initiatives, projects and improvements; data and research; and services. But Jeannie notes that there isn't a definitive answer to how budgets should be allocated.

Jeannie Walters: I mean, again, I think this all comes down to your goals. And what I have seen is that a lot of times we think that, for instance, I know a lot of organizations who are like, “Oh, we, we just need more analysts, right? We just need to slice and dice this data more. We need people who understand how to do that.” And that might be the right option if you know what you will do with that data. And I think the kind of long tail on a lot of these goals isn't defined, and so defining the goals around that so that you can then prioritize based on that.

And the other thing I always say is, like, if you know you're in a position as a CX leader today, where you're thinking, “Oh boy, I need to prove this. I need to get people on my side. I need the leaders to buy in. They're not buying in yet.” Then look for where can you have the most impact short term, where can you actually show the change, show the positive outcomes that you want to show, quickly, and look for what you need to invest there.

At the same time, have that long-term vision so then you can say, “Hey, now that we've done this, let's go ahead and take this next step and invest further.” Again, be realistic. I've seen a lot of organizations who just want to do everything and it feels like everything is a priority in customer experience if you have not defined your strategy. If you know your mission, which is how we define mindset — because sometimes we can't be all things to all people, so first we have to get that mindset figured out, then we've got to define that strategy. And as long as you have that strategy defined, that can really help you with priorities. Because otherwise, everything feels like a priority in customer experience.

Robert Zirk: And if everything is a priority, then nothing is truly a priority.

Jeannie Walters: Exactly. That's exactly right.

Robert Zirk: In Forrester's 2025 Budget Planning Guide, technology is the area set to see the largest increase in budget, with 37% of leaders anticipating an increase of 5% or more.

When advocating for bold new technology that may not have as much of a track record behind it, Jeannie advises leaders to take the time to understand how it links to the existing technology framework of the company to ensure that its implementation and use is seamless.

Jeannie Walters: Make sure you understand how it connects to other parts of the organization's technology. I think one of the things that we learned as CX leaders during the whole pandemic shutdown, supply chain management had a lot to do with how people felt about their customer experiences. And so customer experience leaders suddenly wanted visibility into what does the supply chain look like? And how do we know where to get that information? And that's something that, if you're not careful, those tools and those technologies are highly siloed. And so it's very hard to deliver a holistic customer experience if we are not connecting that.

Robert Zirk: And Mark suggests leaders work with their procurement or supply chain teams to set defined KPIs with technology providers.

Mark Raffan: Number one: make sure that you're working with your supply chain or your procurement department to put KPIs in place with the new technology provider to ensure that they actually can deliver and make sure that technology provider is contractually obligated to deliver on the ROI that they sold you on.

There's a lot of people that get sold on the idea of something without making it contractual. So work with your procurement team, work with your supply chain team to actually get them to put that in the contract with that technology provider. Once that is in there, that further reinforces the logical argument that you have with whomever is allocating the budget to say, “Look, if it doesn't work out, we've got them on contract to pay us if it doesn't work out. There is a penalty involved if they don't deliver this ROI that they've sold us on.” So you need that to be able to support that logical argument in the favor of that. So don't forget about tying in the required organization — in this case, procurement or supply chain or whatever they're called in your organization — to make sure that you are actually executing on something.

Robert Zirk: Besides technology, you'll also want to optimize the human component of your customer experience — the frontline team members who play a fundamental role in delivering your CX. Specifically, as Alain referenced earlier, getting team member attrition in check.

Studies from Deal show that the cost of replacing a team member can reach up to 20% of the departing employee’s annual salary. And a Gallup report indicates that it often takes a full year for new hires to achieve their highest performance levels. And that's all just to get back to where you were before the departing employee left.

Engaged employees deliver better customer experiences and are also more likely to stay, so investing in the employee experience can save on the costs of hiring and training a replacement, performance setbacks and lower engagement rates among remaining team members.

In support of your team members and of your own CX objectives, there is value in taking a hard look at your processes. Alain suggests that new initiatives be mapped to your processes and introduce new efficiencies.

Alain Méric: So there are solutions today available to streamline your processes, reduce manual workload.

Robert Zirk: Reducing manual workload by automating tedious processes can better position your team members to focus where their qualities bring the most value, which positively impacts engagement.

Alain Méric: We are ourselves starting to use it as part of our day to day and drive efficiency. So I think — and that's a starting point, because if you can create efficiencies within your operation, you can make a deal a bit with your leadership to say, “I'm creating room and space for innovation.” So it's a good starting point and solutions are available today to drive those, but it is available today where you can still create improvements in your customer satisfaction and customer engagement. By creating those efficiencies, you create a pool of resources available to innovate further.

And then a couple of other states around driving insights and what we call Voice of the Customers and Voice of the Customers program, where you can bring back to your organization, either with marketing or product or supply chain, wherever your different shareholders, you can bring back insights that are going to help the company improve and implement better workflow, delivery, supply, enhanced product that are going to drive more competitiveness.

Robert Zirk: Jeannie highlights automation initiatives as opportunities for CX leaders to streamline processes.

Jeannie Walters: We sometimes are just not asked to think this way about what are we doing today that we're going to do again tomorrow and the day after that, that maybe could be automated. And again, I always want to balance this with what is actually happening for the customer. So any kind of change we make on automation, we have to still provide customers choice. So if there are people who don't want to take advantage of the self service or the automation, giving them a choice, an option where they can call, where they can get the support is really important as well.

But I would say that I try to do this in my personal life and with my own small business. We do things just by rote sometimes, because that's how it's always been done. And if you really challenge you and your team to think about what could be automated, and how could we automate it? There is so much out there right now that can really help with that. Of course, it needs to be tested. We need to make sure that the humans involved are getting the right information at the right time. But I really just think there's a ton of opportunity there.

Robert Zirk: Alain pointed out that with new technology, there are considerations like integration, resource allocation and data security. And while it can be difficult to keep pace with competitors who are trying to move just as quickly, it's important to take the time to learn as much as possible.

Alain Méric: There are very good professionals around. There are very clear use cases, either with regards to agent augmentation or with regards to customer-facing solutions.

Robert Zirk: Alain also points to managed services and the value that can be gained from a partnership with a company like TELUS Digital.

Alain Méric: And then you get help from people who have done it, are a bit advanced, have already learned from maybe some mistakes and can help you.

One thing which is interesting when — I'm mainly working with tech companies, and when we talk about technology within the customer experience space, they always say to me, their first reply is, “Oh, we are a tech company. We don't buy tech services or tech solutions from a third party.” And I said, “Okay, when's the last time you had resources available within the organization for customer experience?” And then they laugh because they know a lot of the resources, developers, product resources are dedicated to the core product of the companies and customer experience is a bit, like, the last priority. So that's where you can access some companies who are providing those services to help you craft your strategy, your plan, the pilot and your returns.

We have partnerships with leading softwares that are driving those efficiencies within the organization that are helping and predictive analytics. So we have those partnerships in place and we can provide the managed service that will give you a combination of the expertise, the scale and the flexibility we have.

Scale is driving efficiency, right? If we have scale working with those software, we can help you benefit from the scale without you going on your own and trying to shop from different solutions and services. You have access to expertise, talent from strategy to software development to evolving your GenAI model to make them more relevant to the use cases you're implementing for your customers.

Robert Zirk: Thank you so much to Jeannie Walters, Alain Méric and Mark Raffan for joining me and sharing their insights today. And thank you for listening to Questions for now, a TELUS Digital podcast.

For more expert insights on today's big questions in digital customer experience, be sure to follow Questions for now on your podcast player of choice to get the latest episodes as soon as they're released.

On this episode, we explore strategies for building a compelling business case for customer experience (CX) investment — and how to optimize the budget you’ve secured.

Episode cover image for Questions for now, a TELUS Digital podcast, featuring an illustrated character holding a tablet and pointing to a series of charts.

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According to Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience, while 99% of CX decision-makers list CX improvements as a top priority of senior executives, only 40% anticipate they’ll receive significant budget increases.

CX leaders must combine evidence-based arguments with emotional appeals to secure the investment they need for success. And then, whether or not you procure the resources you’re looking for, a new set of challenges arise when it comes to optimizing the budget you are granted. CX leaders must excel at making the most of limited resources, demonstrating ROI and leveraging emerging technologies effectively.

Our expert guests share key strategies on how to navigate the process of budget planning, negotiation and optimization to keep pace.

Listen for the actionable insights of Jeannie Walters, CX expert, host of the Experience Action podcast and CEO of Experience Investigators; Mark Raffan, negotiations expert, host of the Negotiations Ninja podcast and CEO of Negotiations Ninja; and Alain Méric, vice president of sales at TELUS Digital.

Access Forrester's Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience for insights on where to increase, decrease or experiment with your CX budgets for 2025.

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