Maxie Schmidt
Principal Analyst

Author Insights
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Learn How Your CX Practices Measure Up By Completing Forrester’s New Survey
We identified 12 essential CX practices every organization must master to create and sustain experiences that drive customer loyalty. An exceptional customer experience (CX) doesn’t happen by accident! Take our simple new Customer Experience Practices Survey to learn how well your organization is performing in the essential 12 practices. You’ll see these key practices and how we […]
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Drive revenue with great customer experience – Our 2017 analysis will help you make the case for CX investments
If you are like other CX pros, at some point in your CX career you’ll encounter the “money question.” Your CEO will ask you: “What’s an improvement in our customers’ experience worth in dollars and cents?” And it’s likely that you won’t have a (good enough) answer. I say that because I know that 50% […]
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New Benchmarking Data: State Of VoC Programs, CX Research And Journey Mapping…
… in the making. Do you want to know… How future-proof is our VoC program? Are we doing enough to gain deep customer understanding? Are we maximizing our use of journey mapping and should we be doing journey analytics? Take our benchmarking survey to get the answers and benchmark your and your company's efforts! As a […]
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Why CX? Why Now? Happy CX Day, 2016!
Happy CX Day! As part of our CX Day celebrations, which include a very special episode of CX Cast, and a comprehensive CX reading list that doubles as a holiday gift buying guide for the CX pro in your life, we are launching a new report: Why CX? Why Now? In collaboration with my colleague, Sam Stern, […]
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Forrester Wave™ evaluation of the Customer Feedback Management market
I am pleased to announce that Forrester Research is commencing a Forrester Wave™ evaluation of the Customer Feedback Management market and collecting data for a separate VoC vendor landscape overview. I will lead the project and the expected publication date is March 2017. For more information about the Forrester Wave process, please read here. CFM / […]
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Measure Emotions In Customer Experiences To Improve Loyalty
Do you know how your customers feel about their experiences with your firm? Customers’ emotions can damage — or improve — customers’ perception of the overall experience and your firm’s ability to grow. Customers’ emotions affect whether you’ll lose or keep them, whether they will buy more or less from you, and whether they will […]
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How To Win Funding For CX In B2B – 4 Steps To Building A Burning Platform To Spark Action
Are you working as a CX pro in a B2B company? And do you find it challenging to make the case for your CX program? You are not alone. In fact, many CX pros in B2B companies we spoke with struggled to get funding for their efforts –because they can't isolate the role of CX […]
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What Do CX And The Environmental Movement Have In Common (AKA Top 10 Tactics To Rally Your Organization Around CX Metrics)?
We all share this sentiment that we want to protect our resources — our planet for generations to come — so that our children and their children can live happily ever after. It’s that warm and fuzzy feeling we get when we see a little girl holding a flower in her hand. I realize that […]
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Pitting Big Data Versus NPS Isn’t The Way To Success In CX Measurement
You might have seen a recent blog by Tony Cosentino on how “Big Data Analytics Will Displace Net Promoter Score (NPS) for Measuring Customer Experience” because “NPS is prone to error, lacks a causal link with financial metrics, and lacks actionable data.” And while Mr. Cosentino’s blog highlights a critical issue in CX measurement, it […]
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What’s New With Customer Feedback Management (CFM) Vendors: A CX Pro’s Guide To The Evolved CFM Vendor Landscape
Forrester published a new report with highlights of changes among customer feedback management (CFM) vendors to give you the crucial insights you need to understand your CFM options. Why? Since the 2014 reports on the VoC vendor landscape and VoC vendor go-to-market strategies, we saw some big changes in the CFM market. Many changes are good […]
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New Research On Making The Case For CX In B2B — Be Part Of This Research
Deanna Laufer and I are collaborating on a new report on how to make the case for customer experience in B2B. And we'd love your inputs. How will clients benefit from this report? With longer sales cycles, fewer customer accounts, and an abundance of client roles and influencers, B2B companies are challenged in making the […]
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Contribute To New Research On VoC Vendors In China By My Colleague Sam Jaddou
My colleague, Samantha Jaddou, who’s an analyst on the CX team covering the China market, is working on a report about the customer feedback management (CFM) vendor landscape in China. This report will better help Forrester clients, particularly companies that operate in China, understand to whom they should turn to satisfy CFM needs. She is […]
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Voice Of The Employee Can Cure Broken Customer Experiences, But You Need An Effective Program To Mine It
Last week, many of our customer experience (CX) analysts — including me and my colleague Sam Stern —were glued to their computer screens, watching a presentation by a big bank. It had introduced a tool to capture and manage ideas from its employees on how to improve the customer experience. This presentation mattered to us because only 25% […]
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There is a secret to better CX metrics: Journey mapping
There is a way to better identify and share customer experience (CX) metrics. And it is a tool that your company – like many others may already be using… but not for that purpose. I am talking about journey mapping. Recently I have done more and more workshops for our clients on how to use […]
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Is your company moving beyond surveys when measuring customer experience? I’d love to include you in my new research
CX professionals rely on surveys a great deal to measure customer experience. That’s because surveys have their advantages but they have limits, too. If your company has taken steps to move beyond surveys to measure customer experience, I'd love to hear your opinions, experiences and advice for my new research on “CX Measurement – Beyond […]
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Want to Drive Action With Your VoC Program? Cater to Your Internal Customers!
In our latest survey on the state of the art of VoC programs, 71 percent of respondents said their VoC program was not fully or mostly effective in driving actions. That's jarring. No matter how much effort you put into collecting VoC, the insights are still only as good as what stakeholders in the company […]
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The State Of VoC Programs, 2014
Voice of the customer (VoC) programs play a critical role in improving customer experience. They gather data for customer experience (CX) measurement efforts and uncover insights that help improve customer understanding. To assess the state of VoC programs, we asked companies how long their VoC program has been in place, how valuable the program is […]
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Make the Business Case: Better Customer Experience Can Deliver More Than $1 Billion In Revenue Growth
In the age of the customer, you need to be obsessed with your customers. And that obsession can pay off big time — as we have shown over and over again: Years of Forrester data confirm the strong relationship between the quality of a firm's customer experience (CX) and customer loyalty. And this means revenue […]
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A Mistake To Avoid When Using CX Metrics For Employee Incentives
Do you use your customer experience (CX) metrics to incentivize frontline employees in your company? Here is a cautionary tale I came across in my wireless provider’s store. While I was chatting with the representative who took care of my problem, I overheard another representative ask a customer for a 9 or 10 on the […]
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Benchmark Your Voice Of The Customer Program: Participate In Forrester’s Upcoming Research On The State Of VoC Programs, 2014
How mature is your company's voice of the customer (VoC) program? Compare yourself against the state of the art and find out: How VoC programs affect customer experience and business results. How companies integrate and analyze data from different sources. How VoC program owners share customer insight. How they drive action based on their insights. Which […]
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