All numbers are indicative; budgets vary:
1. WhatsApp integration
Idea: Integrating using WhatsApp API to send notifications to the customer. As WhatsApp launches payments, leverage that opportunity for increased sales. Manage chats and subscription accounts in WhatsApp as it launches new features in 2018.
Industry annual budget range: Rs.30 lakhs to Rs.1.5 crores
2. Feedback management
Idea: Implement Net Promoter Score methodology across the company (create a Customer Experience Council, details customer journey maps, impactful close looping of the customer). If feedback already implemented, then improve it by upgrading the technology, do innovative things to increase ROI on promoters and handling detractors.
Industry annual budget range: Rs.75 lakhs to Rs.2.5 crores
3. Comprehensive Analytics
Idea: Command Centers will graduate beyond social media in 2018. You will need comprehensive marketing analytics across different verticals of the business. Here the needs vary drastically from industry to industry. Basic needs: integrating different data sources into one Analytics Command Center to using deep analytics to get consumer insights and improve business. In BFSI, using analytics to create new models for customer origination.
Industry annual budget range: Rs.1 crore to Rs.10 crore (wide range because of different needs)
4. Speech to text technology
Idea: With speech recognition models finally improving to an acceptable error rate, this year will see huge investments made in using speech to text technology. Some will use it for auto-tagging of calls and find patterns which led to sales closures, while some will use it for identifying calls for quality assurance and training needs. Others will use it to create analytics around voice recordings which give a deeper insight into the customer.
Industry annual budget range: Rs.50 lakhs to Rs.1 crore
5. Self-help and bots
Idea: Your last year's budget on chatbots may or may not have given you the ROI that you were expecting but this year, there will be significant investments in self-help knowledge bases. We're not talking FAQs. We're talking Uber-type customer support which combines FAQs with specific answers for the customer using APIs. Even for discretionary answers (e.g. refund of cancellation fee), it uses an algorithm to decide. That's the future.
Industry annual budget range: Rs.1 crore to Rs.2 crore