The CX Cast

Journey mapping is one of the most popular customer understanding and design tools used by CX pros today. But did you know there’s more than one approach to journey mapping? In this episode of CX cast, Principal Analyst Tony Costa discusses four methods for mapping the customer journey: the hypothesis approach, the research-first approach, the co-creation approach, and the quick-fire approach and when to apply each. Tony goes into more detail on the four approaches in his new report co-authored with Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha, “Mapping The Customer Journey, Four Approaches To Customer Journey Mapping: When And How To Use Them” and for best practices for all journey mapping approaches, check out Joana and Tony’s “The Seven Steps Of Highly Effective Journey Mapping.”

Customer experience (CX) has become the top priority for business and technology leaders for good reason — few things drive customers' loyalty more than CX. With competition intensifying and executives' ambitions aimed high, CX pros will see growing interest in their nascent discipline from all corners of the enterprise. But they'll soon find that not all attention is good attention. In this episode, analyst Deanna Laufer discusses the trends that the CX team at Forrester expects to see in 2016. In the podcast, Sam and Deanna refer to the report by it’s old title but you can find it on the Forrester website at "The Spotlight on CX Helps and Hurts."

CX Pros are so focused on asking customers for feedback that they sometimes miss a key source of unprompted feedback in customers’ own words: social media. In this episode, we speak with Senior Analyst Maxie Schmidt about how CX professionals can incorporate social media into their Voice of the Customer programs for maximum impact. Maxie addresses this topic in much more detail in her report “Q&A: The Top 10 Things To Know About Social Media In Voice Of The Customer Programs.”

Design has been a hot topic in business for well over a decade. But now the business world's interest in design is intensifying — particularly among B2B firms like Citrix, GE, and IBM that have each made  large-scale investments in experience design and design thinking. In this epsiode, Principal Analyst Leah Buley discusses the underlying conditions prompting the rebirth of design thinking and how organizations are integrating design into their DNA. Listeners interested in reading more about this topic can check out Leah’s report, “Executive Q&A: How To Build A Design Program.”

While most firms’ technology management groups prioritize compliance and cost-cutting, CX leaders focus their tech management operations on employee success, which leads to customer satisfaction, and ends up achieving superior cost control and compliance anyway. In this episode of CX Cast, Principal Analyst David Johnson from Forrester’s Infrastructure and Operations team shares how infrastructure and operations pros, along with their CX colleagues, can improve customer experience by refocusing tech management and developing new habits for better CX outcomes over time. Forrester clients can read more about how these two groups can come together to improve CX in David and Sam’s report, “Use Customer Experience Insights To Unshackle Employee Potential.”

After a 2-week hiatus, CX cast is back for the new fall season with another look at the role of emotion in customer experience. In the episode, VP and Principal Analyst Megan Burns discusses the basic rules of human emotion and how CX pros can apply these rules to help anticipate and manage customers' emotional experience. To learn more, read Megan’s report on Understanding The Impact Of Emotion On Customer Experience or see her speak live at our CX conference in London in November.  Register before 10/10 and save $200 off the regular registration price with code CX15CAST.

Customer service has decidedly moved away from a phone-only world. Consumers across all ages and demographics have adopted digital customer service channels such as chat, mobile, web, and social. In episode 24 of CX Cast, Senior Analyst Ian Jacobs discusses trends in customer service and how companies need to upgrade their tools to improve the ease, speed, and relevance of customer service. If you enjoyed this podcast, check out some of Ian’s related research here and here. And for more CX research delivered live, in person, join us at our upcoming events in San Francisco or London. Save $200 off the regular registration price with code CX15CAST.

Whether you realize it or not, customer experiences are chock full of emotion. To help CX pros unpack what this means for their experiences, analyst Anjali Lai from Forrester’s Data Insights Innovation team shares the benefits of managing emotions effectively and how one company delivers exceptional emotional experiences for its customers. For more on Anjali’s emotion and CX research, see her speak live at our upcoming San Francisco and London CX forums and save $200 off the regular registration price with code CX15CAST.

Guerrilla marketing is all the rage, with even presidential candidates releasing YouTube videos of themselves cooking machine-gun bacon and destroying a cell phone eight different ways. But did you know that these guerrilla tactics are applicable to CX pros with small teams and tight budgets? In this episode of CX Cast, Senior Analyst Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha describes how CX pros can improve the quality of CX by using available data, experimentation, and pragmatism to create memorable moments that act as a catalyst for CX transformation. For more, check out her report "Guerrilla CX: Improving The Quality Of Your CX Despite Tight Budgets And Small Teams."

Customer experience is still a relatively new field – there are no university degrees in the discipline, and until recently few certification or professional programs. But now we are beginning to see signs of its emergence into a full-fledged profession. In this episode of CX Cast, we speak with special guest Paul Hagen, head of Customer Experience and Innovation Strategy at West Monroe Partners, about what is fueling the professionalization of the CX pro and what it means for organizations. Listeners should also note that we encountered some audio problems in recording this episode so we apologize for any issues with sound quality.