customer experience

The feedback on Consumer Marketing 2019 is rolling in: Attendees loved our focus on the direct-to-consumer (DTC) challenger brand trend, why consumers are responding so positively, and how traditional brands can learn from these up-and-comers. In fact, the audience was so engaged with the content and speakers that questions kept coming in long after the […]

Does your company have a diversity and inclusion (D&I) program? There’s a good chance you do — D&I is currently having its moment in the spotlight. But the D&I conversation at many organizations neglects a crucial element: a process for how the company will actually fulfill its commitment to D&I in the experiences it designs […]

In 2003, Fred Reichheld, who was by then a partner at Bain & Company, introduced a way of measuring how well an organization treats its customers. This metric also assessed how well a firm generates relationships worthy of loyalty. Sixteen years later, most businesspeople recognize this metric as the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Mr. Reichheld […]

CMOs’ ability to impress and influence consumers becomes more difficult with each new technology and experience that enters the market. Despite a myriad of headlines about the awe-inspiring potential of AI or the wave of entrepreneurs dreaming up the next moonshot, consumers contend with more glitter than gold. The reality today is that: Businesses struggle […]

Hannover Messe, the leading global trade fair for everything industrial, offers a great opportunity to feel the pulse of digital momentum in the industrial context.

I went to see a concert last night that epitomizes the state of customer insights in most companies today. It was a benefit for Creative Music Studio and brought together incredible artists such as Billy Martin, Cyro Baptista, Marc Ribot, and Ingrid Sertso. While I was happy to contribute to Creative Music Studio’s cause, the […]

Apple and Goldman Sachs are partnering to deliver a new credit card. The industry seems to be quick to dismiss the partnership, especially the rewards program — but we think they’re missing the bigger picture. There’s an awful lot more at stake here than credit card rewards. The bigger concern for digital banks, traditional banks, […]

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” While Ralph Waldo Emerson may not have said these exact words, the principles remain as true as ever today. Going Beyond Improving Today’s Customer Experience If you’ve been following my blog, you may remember a post from 2016, where I introduced […]

It’s Time To Start Talking About Professional Licensing For Software Engineers It wasn’t until enough boilers blew up that mechanical engineers had to get licensed. It wasn’t until bridges and buildings started collapsing that civil engineers and architects had to get licensed. Now that airplanes are falling out of the sky due to automation (AKA, […]

Domino’s Pizza suffered a major blow recently: A federal appeals court reversed a lower court ruling* and affirmed that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does cover the Domino’s websites and mobile apps — and yours, too. The lower court will now examine the extent to which the pizza maker’s digital properties are inaccessible and […]

Department stores can enjoy a bright future — but to do so, they must change to survive and thrive in the face of fierce competition from brands’ direct-to-consumer initiatives. Synchronizing supply and demand to sell inventory at full price is one issue. But the department store’s bright future depends on enticing customers through the doors […]

In this battle between direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups — cast as the proverbial David — and their large, established brand opponents, victory is not about size or stature; it’s about skillful weaponry. In fact, if one looks at DTC startups’ long-term growth numbers, a scorecard tally suggests that today’s Goliaths will continue to dominate consumer retail […]

I just returned from MWC19 Barcelona, for which I was a judge of the GLOMO Awards. As a Forrester analyst whose research includes service design, I paid extra attention to the attendee journey. I’d like to share the top standout elements in the event’s design, which did a nice job of considering the three phases […]

Change The Game By Embracing Radical CX Innovation OK, so you’ve elevated and transformed your customer experience (CX) practices over the past five (or more) years. These practices have become more professional, more analytical, and more focused on business impact. But there’s one area where many of us still fall short: innovation. I’m not talking […]

One of our 2019 B2C marketing predictions is that enterprise marketing technology will meld with customer experience (CX) investments to deliver the relevancy and consistency that consumers crave from brands. Real-time interaction management (RTIM) provides critical capabilities that enable marketers to realize their CX ambitions. Forrester defines RTIM as: Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually […]

Forrester’s customer experience (CX) research team published more than 100 reports in 2018. I just released a report that pulls together our most important CX findings from those publications and highlights them in one place. The report is called “Forrester’s Top Customer Experience Research Findings Of 2018.” The key discoveries that I feature in my […]

Ah yes, anyone suffering from a chocolate hangover? Or an excess of corny romanticism? Let’s face it, we all love “love” — but with Valentine’s Day a week behind us, the last thing you probably want right now is more advice on relationships. Before you toss aside some of that abundant advice about personal relationships, […]

As we gear up for Forrester’s Consumer Marketing 2019 Forum, I’m chipping away at a rather large research undertaking that quantifies why direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups deliver value to consumers and how this threatens big brands. In addition to mining rich quant, qual, and behavioral data sets, our advanced analytics illuminates the key drivers that predict […]

Marketers have been using behavioral economics to understand and exploit the irrationality of consumers long before the golden age of advertising. By employing simple marketing tactics such as “buy now, pay later,” inflated value pricing, or decoy alternatives, marketers have been able to effectively steer or, in some cases, manipulate customers to buy products or […]