The CX Cast

AI is rapidly evolving from sci-fi fodder to a paradigm-shifting technology that will impact every aspect of our daily lives — and advances in voice and natural language understanding are at the forefront. With millions of voice-activated digital assistants already in homes today, along with those built into billions of smartphones, how can brands use […]

Managing CX well, let alone even establishing a formal CX program, requires coordination across the organization. In this episode, Laure Park, VP of Customer Experience at Quest Diagnostics, joins us for a candid discussion of lessons learned from building a CX program in a complex ecosystem within the healthcare industry. From the outset, Laure fostered […]

Guest: Todd Walthall, SVP of Customer Experience at Blue Shield of California. Todd walks us through his background in the customer service and CX, working for iconic companies like USAA and American Express before coming to Blue Shield. Then he talks about the health insurer’s focus on inspiring trust among its members, as well as […]

In this week’s episode of CX Cast we are joined by John Lincoln, the customer experience leader at Duke Energy, and Adele Sage, Principal Advisor from Forrester’s Customer Experience Council. John shares his experience as a customer experience professional, first at Wachovia and then at Duke. He talks about how the utility has transformed its […]

It takes engaged employees and a customer-centric culture to achieve your customer experience goals. Companies can leverage employee onboarding as a key opportunity to set the stage for sustained employee engagement and build the right culture. In this episode, we discuss ways that CX pros can help evolve the onboarding experience — and make a connection with their new […]

In this week’s episode of CX Cast, Sam Stern is on his own talking about how CX professionals can adapt their research and design skills to improve the employee experience. He highlights several examples of how companies have taken this approach to transform their employee experiences, and how companies have started to look for emergent […]

Personalization is all the hype, and for good reason: Consumers expect brands to leverage the data they exchange to deliver better experiences. But many personalized experiences today miss the mark. In this episode, we explain how to approach personalization programs with person-centric objectives. Click the title below to read more: Pivot To Person-First Personalization

This week, we talk to analyst Andrew Hogan about Facebook’s recent F8 conference. Andrew shares the big announcements that CX pros should pay attention to, including the huge number of chat bots, the increasing moves into augmented and virtual reality, and Facebook’s push to get developers interested in customer research techniques and best practices. Click […]

Forrester interviewed customer experience (CX) professionals at brands that showed the biggest year-over-year improvement in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) from 2015 to 2016. In this episode, we discuss key takeaways of how those brands achieved significant CX improvements. Click the title below to read more: How Companies Improved Their CX Index Scores, 2016

Conducting research for a customer journey mapping effort involves more than learning what customers do, interact with, think, and feel. To yield meaningful benefits, CX pros must gather research that not only exposes the customer journey but also lays the groundwork for the broader CX improvement initiative. In this episode, we uncover the real objectives […]

In 2016’s edition of research about digital customer experience (CX) trends, Forrester identified the rise of conversational interfaces and concierge services. In this year’s report, we examine how those trends are playing out and highlight two new ones gaining momentum as we enter 2017: 1) artificial intelligence (AI), voice, and biometric capabilities further transforming user interfaces and 2) companies […]

In this episode, we welcome Senior Analyst Jenny Wise to discuss her upcoming research on emerging interfaces, interaction design, and what CX pros need to think about when exploring new technologies. Prior to her current role on Forrester’s CX research team, Jenny was a senior analyst serving B2C Marketing Professionals. In that role, her research examined the consumer […]

Prior to joining Forrester’s research team, Faith spent nine years working in customer and patient experience. In this episode, Faith shares lessons learned from the field and an overview of research of hers that we can look forward to in coming months.

CX professionals and their teams need the support of the entire organization to create and deliver great experiences in a sustainable way. The most important group of colleagues to work with is senior executives. The best way to work with them is through an executive steering committee that makes key decisions about the experience. In […]

Thanks to the Obama administration’s final push to improve the federal digital customer experience (CX), customers are using and enjoying most digital channels more than ever. The bad news is that federal websites and mobile apps are in trouble, and customers remain skeptical about the future of digital government. In this episode, we detail key findings from […]

To show the connection between improving CX and growing revenue, Forrester built models that demonstrate how CX improvements drive revenue growth through increased loyalty. In this episode, we discuss the underpinnings of those models. To see the revenue potential from improving CX for 13 of the industries included in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), […]

Unless you have a well-defined customer experience (CX) strategy, your CX will be haphazard at best and fail to deliver sustainable benefits. In this episode, we explain how to develop a research-based CX vision aligned with the business and translate it into a CX strategy the organization can understand and implement. This is an extensive update of […]

The nascent Trump administration has said virtually nothing about customer-centric government. However, the actions that President-elect Trump has promised in other policy areas will impact the customer centricity of US federal agencies — in some cases reversing efforts by the Obama administration. In this episode, Principal Analyst Rick Parrish joins us to discuss major trends […]

For many business-to-business (B2B) companies, selling new products and services to current customers is the pathway to growth. To get customers to spend more, though, B2B firms must prove they’ve given customers a valuable experience. Enter customer success management (CSM). Emerging from the tech industry, this new discipline seeks to ensure that the value B2B […]