The nuts and bolts of basic CX programs are well understood — identify problems that hamper the customer’s journey, fix them, repeat. But leading firms have moved beyond this approach and play the long game, and that requires a fundamentally different set of chops. In this episode of CX Cast, VP and Research Director John Dalton joins us to discuss companies playing the long game, what sets them apart, and those that will share their stories at Forrester’s upcoming forum for CX leaders in NYC in June. For more on Forrester’s CXNYC 2016 forum or to register, visit Forrester’s event site.

On this week's episode, Forrester Researcher Dylan Czarnecki joins us to discuss fast and scalable ways for customer experience (CX) professionals to shape business decisions with direct customer engagement. For more on how to engage customers and utilize technology to get big insights without big costs, check out the "Brief: Six Ways To Add Speed And Scale To Customer Insights" Forrester report.

Structured surveys are the workhorse of customer experience (CX) measurement programs, but often fall short when it comes to capturing real time insights about the totality of an experience. In this episode of CX Cast we invite guest Paul Hagen, head of Customer Experience and Innovation Strategy at West Monroe Partners back to the podcast to discuss the evolution of voice of the customer programs from 20-question surveys to real-time, predictive tools that drive insights. We also discuss what makes a mature voice of the customer program. For more on this topic, check out Forrester's reports "Beyond Surveys: New Tools For More Effective CX Measurement" and "How To Drive Action With Your VoC Program" as well as Paul's blog and bio at West Monroe Partners.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

To consistently deliver great experiences, companies must align employee goals with customer metrics. To get it right, companies must make employees accountable for parts of the experience that they control. Tune in to this episode to learn how CX pros can empower employees to assume accountability for customer experience results. For more, read the "How To Set Employee Goals That Drive Great CX" Forrester report.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

On this week's episode, we speak with Forrester's Vice President of Customer Experience, Moira Dorsey. Before taking on the challenge of improving experience for Forrester's customers, she led the customer experience research practice. She was intimately involved as our focus moved from digital experiences, to an enterprise focus, encompassing all touchpoints and activities, as well as the culture of organizations. 

Moira has a deep research history writing about personas, among other topics, and several of her reports are still relevant to CX pros today:

The ROI of Personas

How Personas Drive Experience-Based Differentation: Four Examples

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

What explains the consistent, high-quality customer-service of Japanese companies? Tune in to this episode to hear from Principal Analyst Ryan Hart as he explains Japan's world-class "omotenashi" service culture and what CX pros around the world can learn from it to improve their own CX and customer service. For more, check out the "What The World Can Learn From Japan's Exquisite Service Culture" Forrester report.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

Great customer experiences don't happen by accident - they're a result of well-orchestrated actions among your employees and partners. But collaborating to deliver this experience can be hard, especially when your workforce is vast and distributed. Luckily, a wide variety of collaboration tools exist to simplify information sharing. Forrester Senior Analyst TJ Keitt joins us in this episode to discuss those collaboration technologies that are essential to helping organizations create better customer experiences. To learn how CX professionals can shape effective collaboration technology strategies, see the "How to Spur Collaboration Across Your Customer Experience Ecosystem" Forrester report.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

In this episode, we talk about how Forrester tries to drink its own champagne. Forrester's Director of CX Research And Insights, Sarah Bloomer, joins us to discuss her work to improve the client experience inside of Forrester. She's mapping journeys, conducting in-depth client research, developing prototypes for new experiences, and making sure that Forrester products and services deliver value to clients. Listen to how she translates client requests - like wanting more flexibility, or content that is consumable in the cracks of the day - into specific changes to Forrester's products and services. 

Related Research:

How To Assess The Quality Of Your Customer Journey Maps

How To Prototype Like A Pro

Customer Experience Strategy Best Practices

Brief: Using Data To Drive Customer-Centric Employee Behavior Change

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

Customer experience pros know that they need to design emotionally compelling experiences that stand out from the crowd. But digital innovations risk being stymied by design tropes like overzealous push notifications and a predisposition towards screens. In this episode of CX Cast, we speak with Forrester analyst Andrew Hogan about what's driving these worrying trends and how companies can innovate their digital experiences and avoid falling in these design traps. For more on what keeps designers up a night, check out Andrew's latest report on the topic, Brief: The Things That CX Designers Worry About.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.

Great customer experiences stem from a company's deep understanding of its customers' motivations, goals, and behavior. This understanding is fundamental to breaking the cycle of asking and receiving feedback about the status quo to learn what customers are missing in an experience. But most companies aren't conducting the proper research to support this deeper understanding. In this episode, we welcome back Senior Analyst Deanna Laufer to discuss how CX professionals can employ the right customer research at the right moment to develop a resonant CX strategy. To learn more, see the "Anchor Your CX Strategy In Customer Understanding" Forrester report.

Listeners, we'd love to get to know you! Whether you just want to say hi or share a CX story, send us an email.