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In this short take, I discuss the lessons learned from evaluating 14 vendors for the Forrester New Wave™: Conversational AI For Customer Service, Q2 2019. Check out the video below. For more insights, Forrester clients can dig into the full evaluative research here. And if you have more questions, reach out via inquiry.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then what is a video worth? 100,000? 1 million? The human brain processes video 60,000 times faster than text, so that’s a whole lot of words. B2B buyers are wired to deal with visual information and to remember stories. Reading large blocks of text is the type of […]

(Coauthored with Riccardo Pasto, senior analyst and Seles Sebastin, senior research associate) It’s that time of the year again — a cold and wet June in Sydney as we try to survive another winter. The good news is that we’re bringing some warmth and cheer to this cold winter: The Forrester Banking Wave™: Australian Mobile […]

I spoke with UserZoom CEO Alfonso de la Nuez Monday about his firm’s announcement last Thursday that it has acquired Validately. Why? Because many companies ask for my help selecting a usability testing vendor, and the first thing I ask them is what they need the tool to do. Do they need moderated and unmoderated […]

Omnichannel — it’s everybody’s favorite word these days. But whenever I hear it, I am reminded of the sage words of “The Princess Bride’s” indefatigable Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” And the adtech industry is no exception. It’s not that they don’t […]

I am back from two days at UX STRAT 2019 — a conference that gathers an international community of design leaders and experience makers. This single-track conference offers presentations about the latest trends at the intersection of business strategy, user experience (UX), product, and service design. The three big takeaways for me this year are […]

Last week, Publicis Sapient named John Maeda its chief experience officer. You might be thinking “Who?” if the rise in business’ focus on design has escaped your radar. Well, Maeda is a world-renowned design leader with a sterling résumé, including an MIT Media Lab professor, president of one of the top design schools in the […]

CMOs Must Balance Technology And Creativity Spending Marketers are overfunding technology and underfunding creativity. Forrester forecasts that spending for adtech, martech, data, and analytics will grow between 9% and 11%, while spending for agencies will grow a mere 2.4%. Consequently, the experiences that marketers create are built on the same common technology platforms, solve the […]

It’s not hard to see the signs that the data economy is heating up. Virtually all decision makers want to be insights-driven. They mine their own data, yet increasingly they want incremental insights that drive further differentiation and competitive advantage. External data hunting is on the rise: 56% of decision makers say their firms are […]

(Jeremy Vale coauthored this post.) Brace yourself: Computer vision is coming. “The Long Night” is finally over, and enterprises see the opportunity more clearly than ever. With AI replacing biological rods and cones, computer vision is now a must-have weapon in every firm’s arsenal. Computer vision solutions are spreading like wildfire. While use cases such […]

Recently, I attended Rosenfeld Media’s Enterprise Experience conference as an input to research I’m conducting about enterprise user experience (UX). My three top takeaways about how to improve UX for employees: Use Sense-Making To Bring Order To Chaos Tatyana Mamut, Nextdoor’s chief product officer, captured a widespread sentiment at the event about the importance of […]

As the saying goes, if we waste now, we might want it later and regret the waste. Well, it’s even worse than that in the global food system. We waste now, and we want it at the same time. One of the paradoxes around food is that we have both too much and too little […]

Based on the many press inquiries we’ve received at Forrester, the industry is keen on predicting Facebook, Inc.’s immediate demise. (Note: Facebook, Inc. is inclusive of the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its other apps, services, and hardware. We simplify and call it “Facebook” for the purposes of our research.) But not so fast. […]

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) disruptors are storming onto the scene and growing at a rapid clip, proving that the improbable can become reality overnight: Few expected that buying mattresses out of a box or discovering personal eyewear styles from the comforts of home would become commonplace consumer behaviors, let alone business model blueprints with skyrocketing valuations. DTC […]

On the outside: Social media’s total global advertising spend is expected to balloon to $110 billion by 2022 (with Facebook taking 75% of the global spend market). Social networks are happy. Investors see dollar signs. Marketers feel justified in their spending. On the inside: Social media’s underbelly conveys a picture of turmoil. Consumers can’t quit […]

Welcome to this episode of FORR in 3. In this video, Amanda LeClair and I discuss whether digital maturity matters, based on our survey of almost 800 enterprises in North America and Europe. (Spoiler alert: It does matter.) For example, unlike digital beginners, which often pursue initiatives in an uncoordinated way, advanced firms treat technology […]

Business leaders in the financial services (FS) industry are used to tracking success with measures that reflect shareholder, investor and market regulator values like return on equity, net profit, assets under management and capital adequacy ratio. This is the ‘money story’. However, most don’t always know how these important measures are affected by customer experience (CX) and customer engagement, or the ‘customer story’.

  Agencies’ creative perspective, the very currency of the business, is at risk and can only be realized by shifting billions from tech to fund creative differentiation. “The value of agency creativity is at risk of disappearing.” The marketing industry is woefully out of balance, from agency/client relationships to new business requirements and compensation. The […]

As you heard from us at last month’s Digital Transformation & Innovation 2019 Forum, all your innovation investments and efforts should be focused on addressing customer experience needs and challenges. For nearly every industry, a key aspect of this is proactively addressing any health issues or risks your customers face or may encounter in the […]