Harley Manning
VP, Research Director

Author Insights
Blog
In 2019, Southwest Had A CX Disaster; In 2020, Its Customers Forgave The Airline — Here’s Why
I predicted that Southwest would recover in the CX Index due to the CX equity it has built with its customers. As it turned out, Southwest not only recovered, it set a new high score for the industry and passed JetBlue to take the top spot among airlines.
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Blog
“All Right, You Made Your Point. Now What Do We Do About It?”
On Wednesday, July 15, we’re inviting executives from all companies — large and small, B2B, and B2C — to participate in our inaugural CX Reality Day and test out the real experiences that their brand delivers to customers.
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If You Want To Deliver A Great Customer Experience, Start By Attracting The Right Customers
Focus on attracting customers who will find the experience your firm offers extremely compelling. Otherwise, marketers will shovel prospects in through the front door while customer experience (CX) professionals watch dissatisfied, one-and-done customers flow out through the back door, never to return.
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Answers To Common CX Questions
A round-up of answers to CX questions asked by audience members during the Predictions 2020 webinar.
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The Right Way To Prioritize Customer Experience Projects
Prioritizing CX projects can be relatively easy — if the CX team sets up its measurement program to populate a simple but effective prioritization model.
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The One-Sentence Business Case For Customer Experience
Almost all CX professionals make the same exact mistake when asking for money. Discover what it is and how to avoid it by using a one sentence business case.
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How To Prove That Fixing Customer Experience Problems Cuts Costs
Learn a simple method for achieving financial results with CX.
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Tie CX To $ In Your Measurement System
How to quantify and prove the ability of CX to drive revenue growth in five steps.
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There’s Just One CX Metric That Matters To Your C-Suite — But You’re Not Reporting It
There’s one CX metric you must report to your CEO. It’s not NPS, CSAT, or even our beloved CX Index score. It’s $$$.
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Predictions 2020: For CX, It’s All About Proving Business Results
The ability to deliver business results will be a career-defining issue in the year ahead.
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Hungry For More CX Events? Try FXD In Boston Oct. 24–25
I just got back from Forrester’s very successful CX SF 2019 Forum, and I’m already looking forward to a terrific event that’s happening right here in Boston this coming week. It’s the Mad*Pow Financial Experience Design Conference on October 24 and 25. You can find out more about it at www.fxdconf.com and even save $200 […]
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Two Big Answers Emerged From The US CX Index For 2019
The journeys of Whole Foods and Southwest Airlines exemplify lessons brands can learn from 2019’s CX Index results.
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The Race To Innovate CX In Brokerage And Wealth Management
Recently, Forrester published our CX predictions for 2019. Our first prediction was that stagnating CX quality will cause short, destructive price wars. We cited Fidelity’s two new zero-fee investment funds as an example of how this is already starting to play out. We also noted that Vanguard responded to Fidelity by highlighting its many funds […]
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Blog
2018 Marked 20 Years Of Customer Experience Research At Forrester!
I didn’t want to leave 2018 without noting a milestone for all of us here at Forrester who cover customer experience. It was 20 years ago, all the way back in September of 1998, when we inaugurated our customer experience research by publishing our first report about CX. That report, “Why Most Websites Fail,” introduced […]
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Blog
Predictions 2019: Customer Experience Comes Under Fire
Let’s face it: 2018 was not a fabulous year for customer experience. On average, CX quality was flat, with Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) scores showing little movement for the third year in a row. And what little movement that did happen was toward the middle of our scale, where 62% of brands bunched up in […]
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Customer Experience Q&A: Etsy’s Abby Covert, Information Architect
If you care about CX, you have to admire Etsy. It was the top digital retailer in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index™ in 2017. It excels at differentiating itself with a unique set of products and a distinctive online store, where buyers routinely upload pictures of their purchases alongside gushing reviews. Unsurprisingly, Etsy is also one […]
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Blog
Customer Experience Q&A: Etsy’s Abby Covert, Information Architect
If you care about CX, you have to admire Etsy. It was the top digital retailer in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index™ in 2017. It excels at differentiating itself with a unique set of products and a distinctive online store, where buyers routinely upload pictures of their purchases alongside gushing reviews. Unsurprisingly, Etsy is also one […]
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Blog
Countdown To Forrester’s 10th Annual CXNYC Forum June 19–20
Back in 2009, Forrester launched its first customer experience forum. We picked New York as the location because for years we’d put on a financial services event there, and we knew that our attendees from the banking, brokerage, and insurance industries all had CX on their minds. We didn’t know how well the new event […]
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What Chief Customer Officers Talk About Over Dinner
For a CX transformation effort to go beyond the small and tactical, organizations need an executive in charge of leading the effort. Although these senior leaders go by various titles, the most common is still Chief Customer Officer (CCO). That’s why I was immediately interested when Dell’s CCO Karen Quintos, and her Dell Technologies colleague […]
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Blog
Human + Machine: Forrester’s CXSF Forum, 10/19 – 10/20
Forrester’s CX team is putting the final touches on Human + Machine, our customer experience forum in San Francisco for 2017. This year we shine a spotlight on how AI can improve customer experience. That includes both how companies innovate with AI today, and the most exciting opportunities for tomorrow. We’re starting out with a case […]
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