age of the customer

As I’ve reported, the degree of tech-driven market disruption has never been a higher priority for every company, across every industry, than it is today. Thanks to rapidly evolving emerging technologies such as AI/ML, IoT, and blockchain, as well as the megacloud vendors who offer priced-per-hour access to tech innovation chains, everyone now has the ability to craft new […]

Financial services firms are on the hunt. They’re hunting unicorns. As firms like Revolut and TransferWise attain valuations of $1 billion or more, the pressure to find the Stripes of this world before their value skyrockets has never been stronger. But it’s not just the unicorns that firms are hunting. They’re also chasing the wolpertinger. […]

The 2018 Enterprise Service Management Wave is out! Take IT Service Management, add the Age of the Customer, stir in some Employee Experience and a healthy dose of low/no-code platform, and voilà! Enterprise Service Management! Or if you prefer a more traditional description, we define Enterprise Service Management (ESM) as: Extending IT service management capabilities […]

Jane Austen once said that her idea of good company is clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation. With this delightful idea in mind, I request the pleasure of your company at the second edition of Forrester’s Financial Services Summit in Mumbai on October 10. As the host, I promise you great […]

We encounter algorithms every day in many different experiences — from YouTube to Facebook to Uber. Personalization and individualization (impossible to do without algorithms) are hailed as keys to the experiences of the future and form the centerpiece of the very best and most seamless experiences. And computing capabilities and services make this more common and […]

We know it: Customers are increasingly demanding protection for and control over their data. Firms that meet and exceed these expectations are recognizing and treating privacy as a value; they’ve successfully created a business reputation for privacy and security and thus inspire customer trust. As a result, their customers are more likely to choose to […]

Seamlessness is quite the buzzword these days. It seems that brands of all shapes and sizes are vying to achieve it — from cars, to shopping, to payments, to even “co-living” communities, the storied “seamless” experience seems to be everywhere. But are the experiences that we think are seamless in fact delivering superior experiences? Many firms […]

Seamlessness is quite the buzzword these days. It seems that brands of all shapes and sizes are vying to achieve it — from cars, to shopping, to payments, to even “co-living” communities, the storied “seamless” experience seems to be everywhere. But are the experiences that we think are seamless in fact delivering superior experiences? Many firms […]

In Episode 154 of The CX Cast (subscribe!), we were excited to have our colleague, Principal Analyst Emily Collins, join us to talk about loyalty programs and their influence on customer experience. Here are five things I learned during our conversation:  Airlines started it. Loyalty programs started 30-plus years ago in the airline industry as a reaction to deregulation. Without strict […]

In today’s fast-paced world, you’d be hard-pressed to find an IT shop that isn’t at least experimenting with Agile. The pressure for IT to accelerate and innovate faster than ever before is real. But it’s not just IT that is feeling the heat. In most firms, every leader in every function is under pressure to […]

Fintech is white-hot. Venture capital and private equity firms just can’t get enough of it. You’re probably thinking that fintech has been hyped for years now, but Q2 2018 turned out to be the largest quarter of private investment dollars we’ve seen in this category — EVER. Fintech is a parent category of technology that includes […]

Fintech is white-hot. Venture capital and private equity firms just can’t get enough of it. You’re probably thinking that fintech has been hyped for years now, but Q2 2018 turned out to be the largest quarter of private investment dollars we’ve seen in this category — EVER. Fintech is a parent category of technology that includes […]

Eighty-six percent of CX professionals we recently surveyed say that the ROI of CX isn’t well established in their firm. Yikes! To be fair, building a CX business case can be hard. And even when you’ve built one, you may discover that it’s not compelling enough and therefore you miss out on the funding you […]

In 2011, I published a report titled “How To Market Security To Gain Influence And Secure Budget.” I am now going through the process of refreshing this report, and it got me thinking: What has changed in the space of security communications and influence since 2011? Do I still need to write about the importance […]

A few weeks ago, I opened my inbox to find an email from The New York Times telling me it had updated its homepage, saying it wanted to give its subscribers a “seamless experience: Whether you visit on your phone, tablet or computer, you’ll now see the same groups of stories across all of your […]

Back in 2012, I attended Forrester’s CX Europe event for the first time — at the time, as a Forrester client. This November, six years later, I’m delighted that I’ll be hosting the event. Personally and professionally, hosting CX Europe 2018 falls under the category of BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I can’t begin to tell you how excited […]

Companies are recognizing the difference that good experience design (XD) makes to winning and retaining customers. And experience design pros — the makers of these experiences, defining and refining them based on customer understanding — know that having the right technology in place can multiply their impact. We know this because my Forrester colleagues and I field […]

Talk to 10 different customer experience (CX) professionals, and you may get 10 different definitions of what a CX strategy is and what it does. One CX professional from a company with more than $65 billion of funds under management confided in us, “[When we started], we didn’t even know what a CX strategy was […]

Chipotle, Starbucks, Uber, Wells Fargo . . . the list of companies that have found themselves pounded by controversy is long — in fact, 50% of the Fortune 100 have had to deal with a crisis in the past three years. Check out this short overview of the new report Emily Collins and I coauthored . […]