The CX Cast

Five years and 209 episodes later, we say goodbye to Sam Stern as he makes the move from The CX Cast co-host to a CX practitioner and listener. In Sam’s last episode, we discuss his time at Forrester, key lessons learned, and both what he looks forward to and what challenges he anticipates as a CX leader. We look forward to his return as a guest!

For our bicentennial, we’re reflecting on the biggest themes of the podcast. We discuss the evolution of customer and user experience practices; the greatest challenges that persist; and we lay out the strategic work that firms have yet to master.

A wave of so-called digitally native direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups, like Casper and Dollar Shave Club, have burst on the scene, gaining market share and media attention. Long-standing brands are scrambling to respond with their own direct strategies. But without understanding why consumers are trying these new brands and how their expectations are evolving, traditional organizations’ eff...

This year Forrester fielded a survey to hundreds of customer experience (CX) professionals across the globe. We received feedback on what CX professionals are responsible for, where they report in their organizations, the size of their budgets and much more. In this episode, Forrester analyst Angelina Gennis discusses the data and trends for the state of CX teams.

Companies strive to innovate but their attempts often fizzle. Two root causes of this failure are 1) lack of organizational buy-in for the innovation function and 2) a company culture that puts too much of the risk on the shoulders of individual employees. In this episode, we discuss the best practices for CX Pros and their colleagues to apply in order to ideate, incubate, and launch winning innov...

When it comes to customer experience (CX) predictions, there’s an elephant in the room that’s dominating our thinking this year: money. Why? Because proving that CX delivers business results has turned into a career-defining issue for people who work in this field. Unfortunately, many CX professionals who can’t tie experiences to dollars will find themselves in the unemployment l...

CX pros often feel trapped by their voice-of-the-customer (VoC) vendor — even when the vendor falls short on meeting basic expectations. That’s because the complexity associated with switching vendors makes customer experience (CX) pros struggle to accept that a change is essential to achieving their CX transformation goals. To help CX pros be more confident in identifying technology and ser...

Employee experience (EX) is becoming ever more important due to an increasingly educated workforce, incredibly low unemployment rate, pervasive AI/automation, and workplaces beset by multiple transformation initiatives. Contrary to common perception, the ROI of EX is quantifiable, and investments in EX will manifest in unexpectedly large returns. So Forrester built a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) m...

Many product management teams struggle to connect design and development. The siloed model doesn’t yield high-quality software or pleasurable customer experiences. In this episode, we discuss what Forrester means by product management, how companies can do this effectively, and where we see the future of the role. Click the titles below to learn more: * Adopt Product Management To Connect De...

Companies increasingly have to align their value with stakeholders for business success. The evidence is clear and strong: Data shows a company’s approach to moral, social, and political values matters to both its consumers and employees. Senior analyst, Anjali Lai, discusses this trend and how companies can live their values. Click the titles below to learn more: * Live Your Values To Grow...

Design thinking has historically enjoyed “blind support” among executive leaders based on its perceived value. However, many of these same leaders now find themselves under mounting pressure to show the return on their investments (ROI) in the practice. So Forrester built a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) model to help. It quantifies the value of design thinking and empowers practitioners to form a c...

Many customer experience (CX) pros believe customer success management (CSM) only applies to a subset of businesses (e.g., SaaS). This is not true. CSM’s mission — ensure the customer gets value — is important to all businesses. In this episode, Principal Analyst TJ Keitt explains the basic tenets of the discipline and how to apply them to any business. Click the title below to read more: *...

Prioritizing inclusive design helps companies win and retain more customers, break into new markets, and get employees more engaged. But what does inclusive design look like in practice? In this episode, Principal Analyst Gina Bhawalkar discusses best practices for infusing accessibility into research and design practices — a topic she’ll be covering in greater depth today at Forrester&#8217...

Perception, with all its nuances, is often misunderstood. And yet, it’s core to the very definition of “customer experience” — customers’ perceptions of their interactions with a company. In this episode, Forrester Analyst Kelly Price helps us understand the dynamics of customers’ perceptions and how to account for their complexity in structuring customer research — a glimp...

For our bicentennial, we’re reflecting on the biggest themes of the podcast. We discuss the evolution of customer and user experience practices; the greatest challenges that persist; and we lay out the strategic work that firms have yet to master.

Companies depend on their employees to deliver high-quality customer experience (CX). And employees depend on companies to provide tools and design processes that enable them to effectively serve customers. In this episode, we lay out the organizational, managerial, and technological changes that must happen to enable workers to deliver the business’ intended CX. Click the title below to rea...

Customers interacting with your company right now are forming perceptions that will determine whether they engage with you again. But do you know how those interactions shape perceptions? You’d better, if you want your design efforts to advance your business goals. It’s not enough to spot a market need, roll out innovations, and move product. You need to master the inner workings of the total expe...

For most organizations, there are many more potential customers than they realize in their target market whose needs are different from those of their imagined “average” customer. Firms that design for that diversity can reach more of their target market, access new ones, avoid legal troubles, and cut costs — by shifting to inclusive design, which Forrester defines as: “Designing experiences...

Companies are starting to combine data science and design to create data-fueled products based on pattern-finding algorithms. But it’s not going well: Many companies are hurting their customers and therefore the business. So we researched how to do it right, and in this episode, Principal Analyst Andrew Hogan previews his findings. Click the title below to read more: * Data-Fueled Products:...

CX pros often feel trapped by their voice-of-the-customer (VoC) vendor — even when the vendor falls short on meeting basic expectations. That’s because the complexity associated with switching vendors makes customer experience (CX) pros struggle to accept that a change is essential to achieving their CX transformation goals. To help CX pros be more confident in identifying technology and ser...

A wave of so-called digitally native direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups, like Casper and Dollar Shave Club, have burst on the scene, gaining market share and media attention. Long-standing brands are scrambling to respond with their own direct strategies. But without understanding why consumers are trying these new brands and how their expectations are evolving, traditional organizations’ eff...

This is the second half of our conversation with Jeff Gothelf, co-author of both Lean UX and Sense & Respond, in which we discuss: what it means for organizations to gather and respond to feedback in realtime, why that even matters, how employees will have to work differently to support that model, and how it all fails if managers don’t take key steps to enable their employees to work di...

In this two-part series with Jeff Gothelf, co-author of both Lean UX and Sense & Respond, we discuss: what it means for organizations to gather and respond to feedback in realtime, why that even matters, how employees will have to work differently to support that model, and how it all fails if managers don’t take key steps to enable their employees to work differently. To read more on th...

To get beyond stagnating CX quality, organizations need to modernize how they do customer research — using it to guide better tactical and strategic decisions across the firm. But even those that have managed to spread an appetite for better research often struggle. In this episode, Forrester analyst Kelly Price explains how to overcome the hurdles, so your research program achieves the impact it...

The debate about the importance of employee experience (EX) is moving into a new phase. It’s no longer a question of whether EX is important. Now the debate is about which EX elements matter most. To answer that question, Forrester deployed a new survey to 13,800 global workforce employees in seven countries over two years, across several industries, including the public sector. Our findings...