CX
North America

In this session, we’ll talk to C-level marketing, customer experience, and digital leaders about their strategies for building and leading teams amid evolving work requirements and environments. We’ll dig into the methods and strategies they use for building teams with diverse and complementary skill sets, motivating and connecting with their employees, and their best advice for leadership in uncertain times.

Participating speakers to be announced soon!

Speakers:
Jen Sanning, Executive Partner , Forrester

As social awareness pervades consumer consciousness, brands are eager to understand the impact of social values on customer decisions. While consumers are increasingly vocal about their social motivations, what they say is often different from what they do. This session explores Forrester’s consumer data and analytical models to separate the myth of social motivation from reality and help brands design better-informed go-to-market strategies.

Here, you will:

• Learn how to approach sizing the customer segment that is motivated by social values.
• Explore the preferences and behaviors of this values-motivated segment.
• Understand how to ready your brand to address social shifts in the coming years.

Speakers:
Dipanjan Chatterjee, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Future experiences will be both more invisible and immersive. The “below the glass” technology that powers “above the glass” experiences will be increasingly invisible. Brands will anticipate the needs of their customers and serve them proactively. At the same time, the “on the glass” experience, when humans interact with the internet, will be increasingly immersive — perhaps becoming the promised metaverse.

In this session, digital business leaders will learn:

• Why increasingly “invisible” experiences mean that consumers will actually engage less frequently — but more meaningfully — with brands.
• How “on the glass” experiences will be increasingly immersive — and how comfortable consumers are with these experiences today.
• What brands can do today to begin or continue their journey toward future experiences.

Speakers:
Julie Ask, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

In this era of COVID-rattled customers and AI-driven self-service options leaving agents with days full of difficult calls with customers on the edge and in need of thoughtful support and empathy, if you don’t build the right environment in your contact center, your agents cannot be empathetic and you will lose customers.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to retain agents during these difficult times and through the “great resignation.”
• How to build the business case required to deliver empathetic customer care.
• How to measure success beyond traditional KPIs such as AHT and call queuing times.

Speakers:
Max Ball, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Eric Bellomo, Researcher, Forrester

The metaverse is having a moment — and for good reason: It might just trigger the next cultural paradigm shift. Touted as the next version of the internet, the metaverse connects and blends virtual and real worlds to create new ways to play, learn, work, and shop. Think of the book-turned-motion picture Ready Player One. And while brands are currently experimenting with nascent extended reality (XR) experiences and NFTs, Forrester predicts by the 2030s that the actualized metaverse will disrupt the marketing mix.

During this panel, you’ll hear from two brands innovating within the “metaverse” in order to:

• Get a read on current consumer and CMO sentiment toward the metaverse.
• Understand the potential of the metaverse and how it affects marketing strategy.
• Learn about emerging best practices when experimenting in the nascent metaverse.

Participating speakers to be announced soon!

Speakers:
Mike Proulx, VP, Research Director, Forrester

As more and more companies build and mature their design teams, what’s the state of design in 2022? With hundreds of millions in investment flowing in, is the profession even ready? This presentation will give an overview of design’s growth, pain points, and what’s coming next.

You’ll learn how to:

• Overcome growing pains with organizational changes.
• Use design tools to increase impact at scale.

Speakers:
Andrew Hogan, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Customer obsession requires employees at all levels to put the customer at the center of everything they do, but the future of work is about to transform the way employees do their jobs. As a result, leaders who want to pursue customer obsession must grasp and craft a future-of-work strategy that boosts employees’ motivation and ability to focus on customers. During this session, Vice President & Principal Analyst Rick Parrish will explore:

• Why the disruptions caused by the future of work are most acute for companies that are trying hardest to become customer-obsessed.
• What typifies people who can focus on customers in the work environments of the future.
• How to hire for, develop, and retain people with these characteristics.

Speakers:
Rick Parrish, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

The pandemic, with its related challenges such as economic downturns and supply chain issues, has forced consumer behavior to change. In addition, the rise of social activism in the last two years is changing how consumers approach brand loyalty. Companies must update their loyalty initiatives or start new ones to compete in this evolved world by retaining new customers and winning back those they lost.

By attending this session, you will:

• Discover the new concerns consumers have about loyalty and how to address them.
• Learn how Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) can help you understand loyalty more clearly.
• Obtain a guide to help brands future-proof their loyalty efforts.

Speakers:
Mary Pilecki, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Many industries operate amid increasing competition and regulatory oversight, but there aren’t many as complex as the insurance industry. Insurance companies are at the forefront of using internet-of-things-enabled devices and related technologies to both elevate the customer experience and improve their financial performance. As such, this sector is a rapidly evolving case study for commerce leaders across many sectors to learn how innovative insurers are investing in technology, people, products, processes, and partnerships to meet consumers’ growing needs and expectations for personalized and digital experiences. In this session, you will learn:

• How rising consumer expectations and increasing competition from digital-first startups are driving forward-thinking insurers to harness emerging technology and invest in connected insurance capabilities.
• How brands can leverage connected technologies to enhance digital experiences and improve corporate sustainability efforts and create a greener planet.
• How to use vendor and partner ecosystems to increase your market presence and improve your financial performance.

Speakers:
Jeffery Williams, Senior Analyst, Forrester

Companies that get it empower their agents to be at their best when it comes to empathizing with the customer and creating that connection with the customer in the moments that matter most.

In this panel session, you will learn:

• How to create the right culture for agents to thrive.
• How to empower your agents to be your brand ambassador.
• How to support your agents in today’s complex environment.

Participating speakers to be announced soon!

Speakers:
Daniel Hong, Vice President, Research Director, Forrester

The proliferation of “alternative facts” is an undercurrent that continues to rock modern society. And current brand safety measures are missing the misinformation mark. This means that today’s advertisers operate within and inadvertently fund the misinformation industry. It’s time for marketers to clean up their media plans to dismantle false information and target the truth.

In this session, you will discover:

• How to mitigate the effects of misinformation on your brand’s reputation.
• An evaluation framework to vet partners and platforms.
• Tools to avoid “misinformation media” within your media plan.

Speakers:
Kelsey Chickering, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Many brands want to create inclusive experiences for their customers but lack the tools and resources to assess how inclusive their experiences are and where they need to improve. From inclusive language to accessibility to representation in imagery, there are many components to an inclusive experience, and companies need ways to assess all these aspects of the experience for continuous improvement.

In this session, you will learn:

• The main components of inclusive experiences.
• Best practices to assess them.

Speakers:
Senem Biyikli, Researcher, Forrester
Ian Jacobs, VP, Research Director, Forrester

Do you have a high-potential program? At best, it’s a waste of time, and at worst, it’s causing actual harm in your organization. Join Principal Analyst Katy Tynan to learn where high-potential programs go wrong and what you should be doing instead to foster a culture of high performance and to engage your entire workforce.

Key takeaways:

• Understand what motivates high performance in a high-change world.
• Learn three key leader behaviors that lead to retention and engagement.

Speakers:
Katy Tynan, Principal Analyst, Forrester

From online banking to virtual meetings to remote school, many consumers have engaged through digital channels for the first time — and expect to continue some of these behaviors moving forward. The pandemic even forced the most technology-averse “digital holdouts” and “reserved resisters” to adopt new digital behaviors. As a result, the baseline for digital adoption has shifted. As the distinction between digital and offline experiences continues to vanish, more consumers will expect to see digital embedded into all customer experiences and will expect digital experiences to be seamless.

Through this session, you’ll:

• Learn how digital adoption trends are changing in the wake of the pandemic.
• Understand consumers’ evolving expectations for digital experiences.
• Identify how bold brands are meeting consumers’ evolving digital needs.

Speakers:
Anjali Lai, Senior Analyst, Forrester

Empowered customers globally demand both comfort and innovation — whether they’re shopping, banking, using telehealth services, traveling, or simply getting things done day to day. Four forces in particular have ushered in this new era of consumer buying.

In this session, you will learn how savvy commerce businesses are continually reinventing themselves as:

• Marketplaces and brands find themselves on a collision course.
• Product experiences increasingly drive consumer demand.
• Expectations of the values-based customer continue to rise.
• Developing new business models becomes imperative to growth.

Speakers:
Sucharita Kodali, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

The customer service agent today is tasked with one of the most difficult and most scrutinized jobs in the enterprise as they deal with frustrated customers, outdated performance metrics, and challenges in their own environments as many work from home. Brands need the right agent-facing digital technologies to improve the customer experience and the agent experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the latest, greatest technologies are for the agent workspace.
• How to think about the future tech stack for agent-facing technologies.
• Where to start on optimizing the employee experience for the next-gen agent workspace.

Speakers:
Christina McAllister, Senior Analyst, Forrester

The forces of data deprecation are moving the ad industry toward a more consumer-centric, privacy-first future, disrupting marketers’ tried-and-true audience and media targeting tactics. But don’t get distracted by industry hand-wringing or fall into the trap of looking for easy fixes. Now is the time for brands to hit the reset button on their assumptions around targeting and build sustainable go-forward strategies that benefit their consumers and their businesses.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How and why data deprecation is reshaping data-driven marketing and what it means for you.
• What strategic and tactical questions to ask yourself to shape your go-forward approach to targeting.
• What to look for in current and future targeting partners.

Speakers:
Joanna O'Connell, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

In truly digital firms, software is an expression of the business. This means that everything about a firm — its policies, processes, procedures, data, and know-how — turns into software, which changes as the business changes. To tackle this challenge, many firms are empowering businesspeople to develop applications using low-code platforms.

This session will discuss:

• The citizen developer trend and its connections to customer experience.
• Advice on how to incorporate CX considerations into formal citizen developer strategies.

Speakers:
John Bratincevic, Senior Analyst, Forrester

Seventy percent of companies watched marketing increase in importance during the pandemic — and for good reason. Marketing innovated new products, delivery methods, revenue models, and demand when foot traffic and supply chains halted. What can a CMO do to ensure that this new appreciation for marketing stays for good? Is the formula for a successful CMO the same for every company? What skills and competencies do people aspiring to be a CMO need?

In this session, we will profile the effective CMO, answering specifically:

• What exactly is an effective CMO?
• What does an effective CMO look like compared to other C-level executives?
• What attributes come naturally to an effective CMO? What habits should an effective CMO learn to practice?
• What career path does the effective CMO take?
• How should you chart your right course as a current or aspiring CMO?

Speakers:
Shar VanBoskirk, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Amid pandemic restrictions, consumers were willing to share more personal data in the name of convenient customer experience, such as curbside pickup. But as restrictions ease, will consumers continue to be generous with their data? This session dives into brand-new 2022 Forrester Analytics Consumer Technographics® data on consumer privacy behaviors and Forrester’s privacy segmentation. CMOs and other marketing executives will learn best practices when asking consumers to share data about themselves.

Join this session to:

• Learn about Forrester’s privacy segmentation and how privacy behaviors have changed.
• Explore how to engender trust with personas across the privacy spectrum.
• Hear tips and tricks about how to ask for zero- and first-party data.

Speakers:
Stephanie Liu, Analyst, Forrester

Price, convenience, assortment, and time are the most important considerations for consumers when they research and buy products and services. But increasingly, we see consumers weigh company values in their research and decision-making process. Fifty-eight percent of US online consumers say it’s important that companies are socially responsible. To connect effectively and authentically with values-based consumers, companies need a strategy that helps them make conscious decisions about how much to bring values into their business models and how to express those values to consumers.

In this session, you will learn:

• The values that matter most to consumers right now.
• How much values actually impact consumer purchase decisions.
• Why your current corporate social responsibility (CSR) plan isn’t enough.

Speakers:
Emily Collins, VP, Research Director, Forrester

Investments in digital-first customer service has soared over the last couple of years, but few have been able to pivot and transform their customer engagement to successfully meet the customer where they are and optimize the operational aspects of supporting digital channels.

In this session, you will learn:

• How leading brands approach digital-first customer service from a technology and operational standpoint.
• Lessons learned from digital-first customer service.
• Where these brands are innovating over the next two years when it comes to agents.

Participating speakers to be announced soon!

Speakers:
Daniel Hong, Vice President, Research Director, Forrester

The ongoing fluctuations in consumer behavior along with the changing media landscape is forcing advertisers to adopt a customer-centric approach to media strategy, disrupting traditional media measurement approaches. Brands must look beyond the simplistic media metrics of the past — reach, frequency, and impressions — to redefine successful media performance. This involves adopting new media metrics that traverse platforms, uncovering the impact of media decisions on brand and behavior outcomes, and revealing consumer preferences and consumption patterns.

Attend this session to:

• Learn about the current state of media measurement — how and why it needs to change.
• Discover new media measurement metrics and approaches to better assess media success.
• Uncover the next steps you can take to boost and future-proof your media measurement strategy.

Speakers:
Tina Moffett, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Extended reality (XR) is gaining momentum, but designing great experiences for augmented, virtual, or mixed reality (AR, VR, MR) is more challenging than for an established medium. Why? Because XR design best practices are still emerging and not widespread.

Attend this session to learn:

• The unique challenges of designing for XR.
• Essential best practices for doing it well.
• How to get started designing for XR.

Speakers:
David Truog, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Forrester’s research on burnout has shown that it is possible for people to be highly engaged and experience burnout at the same time. The fact is that some of your best, most engaged “rock star” employees are also burning out, and you won’t see it in their productivity until it’s too late. This fourth of the working population is hard to spot, because while they are burning out, they still go above and beyond for the company, are motivated intrinsically, and committed to the customer. Losing these crucial high performers is wreaking havoc across companies post-pandemic. We’ll show you how to identify the different types of burnout and how to support the people who want to be their best at work without depleting themselves.

Participants in this session will:

• Rethink what burnout is and how to identify its many causes and manifestations.
• Understand the risk of not addressing burnout and learn to work with people and managers to avoid and address it.
• Leave with examples of next steps for preventing, identifying, and redressing burnout in their teams and divisions.

Speakers:
Jonathan Roberts, Analyst, Forrester

One of the six priorities for customer-obsessed organizations is to design experiences that drive loyalty. Many organizations already have an established segment of deeply loyal customers, a group Forrester calls “devotees.” Companies that understand this segment’s strong willingness to advocate for their brand will design customer experiences that create even more devotees.

This session will teach you:

• What makes a devoted customer.
• Why they are crucial (hint: more revenue).
• How to create more of them.

Speakers:
Pete Jacques, Principal Analyst, CX Index, Forrester

As they shop online, customers want to know what’s in stock in local stores, when orders will arrive, and hear early about shipping delays. When we talk about digital experience management, front-end technologies are often in the limelight — but “back-end” technologies such as order management and post-purchase notifications are crucial to delivering the experiences that customers now expect.

In this session, digital business leaders will learn:

• What customers really want from them before and after the “buy button.”
• How to leverage the tech that they likely already have in order to positively impact that experience.
• What actionable steps to take — now — to make these incremental improvements to CX.

Speakers:
Emily Pfeiffer, Senior Analyst, Forrester

Customer experience leaders dream of a world where customers constantly share feedback about their experiences with the organization. That dream is a reality for CX leaders who know how to tap into the constant stream of customer engagement with the contact center — without sending a single survey! And yet, seven in 10 voice-of-the-customer (VoC) or CX measurement programs do not leverage this treasure trove of free insights.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why you need contact-center listening and analysis to future-proof your VoC program.
• How AI-fueled solutions such as text analytics and natural language processing can unlock insights from the contact center at scale.
• How contact center and CX teams can work together to drive improvements in both customer and employee experience.

Speakers:
Colleen Fazio, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Max Ball, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Business leaders have a new force multiplier to propel their company’s innovation, their customer’s experience, and their brand’s differentiation in the marketplace. Creativity energizes products and services and unlocks new value and opportunities for business.

By attending this session, you will:

• Gain insights for how your organization can use creativity as a business tool to spur innovation.
• Learn how to implement “creative experience development” as part of your innovation process.
• Discover a framework to coordinate creativity, design, and innovation.

Speakers:
Jay Pattisall, Principal Analyst, Forrester

What makes an agent workspace successful, and what are the big pitfalls? And what’s the impact on customers? In this session, we’ll share best practices and tips to better equip some of your most important employees for some of your most important customer interactions.

You’ll learn how to:

• Conduct research with agents.
• Co-create better workspaces.
• Use available agent software more effectively.

Speakers:
Andrew Hogan, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Christina McAllister, Senior Analyst, Forrester

CMOs and CXOs have a lot in common when it comes to championing the customer: 1) C-suite leadership; 2) collaboration and cohesion; 3) culture and custodianship; and 4) change leadership. Learn how to champion the customer using the discipline of customer experience to build a customer-obsessed culture and create more consistency in delivering value for the customer and the business.

In this session, you will learn:

• How aligning employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) to deliver brand experience (BX) unlocks growth.
• How to effectively involve and influence key stakeholders.
• What CX leaders and marketers can learn from each other and how they can accelerate each other’s success.

Speakers:
Su Doyle, CX Exec Partner & Sr Analyst, Forrester
Judy Weader, Senior Analyst, Forrester

Digitally powered behaviors such as telemedicine and online grocery shopping suddenly became habitual among consumers who resisted them before the pandemic. This widespread, accelerated embrace of digital is both disrupting and supercharging the customer experience — posing both risk and opportunity for brands.

Attend this session to learn:

• What brands must know about how this accelerated digital adoption will impact CX.
• Why the accelerated consumer will embrace conversational AI and extended reality as the next emerging technologies.
• How brands should engage their consumers by using these emerging technologies well to design great CX.

Speakers:
David Truog, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Commerce companies must elevate their capabilities to deliver the next generation of personalization: individualization. For many firms, this means fundamentally transforming their technology platforms, their digital strategies for engaging customers, and their approach to measuring success.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• Why your assortment and services alone aren’t enough as strategic competitive weapons.
• What individualization looks like — and what you need to deliver that.
• How to plan your digital business transformation, assess your organizational maturity, understand best practices to apply and pitfalls to avoid, and focus your efforts.

Speakers:
Brendan Witcher, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

More information on this session coming soon.

More information on this session coming soon.

Speakers:
Eric Haggstrom, Forecast Analyst, Forrester

User research has been a core component of product and experience design for decades. But before the pandemic, remote user research was viewed as the cheaper, “better than nothing” alternative to the in-person testing seen as the norm. How times change! From overcoming the observer effect to broadening the potential tester population, we’ve been forced to learn quite a bit about the practical and tactical benefits of remote research. Now, it is time to make remote researching an intentional part of our strategy.

In this session, we will help you:

• Understand where and when remote user research drives the best insights.
• Learn how to successfully get rapid feedback from a diverse customer population.

Speakers:
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