The CX Cast

Sam Stern, Senior Manager of CX at LinkedIn, returns for a discussion on customer-centric culture. Along with a candid assessment of the current state of customer-centric culture at LinkedIn, he offers his perspective as a former Forrester analyst-turned-practitioner.

Sam Stern, founding CX Cast host, returns to the podcast to share his experiences as Senior Manager of CX at LinkedIn. Sam and Angelina talk about the importance of maintaining trust and confidence by improving customer experiences.

It’s time B2B organizations get our full attention! VP, Research Director Dave Frankland gives a survey of the research that will be showcased at Forrester’s B2B Summit, diving into insights shared on orchestrating comprehensive buyer and customer experiences.

CX teams can take many paths to grow their capabilities and influence. Figuring out where to start and what’s most important can be paralyzing. Senior Analysts Su Doyle and AJ Joplin developed tools to help clients reconnect with their purpose as CX teams and plan a path forward. Featuring: Su Doyle, Sr Analyst AJ Joplin, Sr Analyst Show Notes: CX teams can take many paths to grow their capabilities and influence. Figuring out where to start and what’s most important can be paralyzing. Senior Analysts Su Doyle and AJ Joplin developed tools to help clients reconnect with their purpose as CX teams and plan a path forward. We discuss: How can we identify the capabilities a CX team needs to achieve its unique goals? What is the impact of using a standard tool, built on market research, to support decision-making? CX doesn't own everything — and sometimes owns nothing. How can CX teams be orchestrators of CX activities? For more, see The Forrester CX Capability Inventory and CX Activity Maps.

Demonstrating empathy in digital experiences helps brands build trust and loyalty, yet many brands struggle to reflect customer understanding in the experiences they create and miss out on opportunities to make customers feel heard and understood. Forrester Analyst Senem Biyikli and Principal Analyst Gina Bhawalkar offer best practices to design for empathy. Featuring: Gina Bhawalkar, Principal Analyst Senem Guler Biyikli, UX Analyst Show Notes: Demonstrating empathy in digital experiences helps brands build trust and loyalty, yet many brands struggle to reflect customer understanding in the experiences they create and miss out on opportunities to make customers feel heard and understood. Forrester Analyst Senem Biyikli and Principal Analyst Gina Bhawalkar offer best practices to design for empathy. We discuss: What’s “design for empathy”? Why does it matter? What are the challenges brands face when it comes to empathy? You discuss five best practices in your report. Can you tell us about those? Is AI going to make things better or worse here? Can AI help us design for empathy? How can brands start applying those best practices? Where should they start from? To learn more see the Forrester report, Five Best Practices To Design For Empathy In Digital Experiences.

You’ve identified dozens of journeys and hundreds of moments of truth that matter to your customers. But where do you start your journey mapping, journey measurement and journey improvement actions? How do you prioritize where you will drive the most impact? Forrester VP and Principal Analysts Maxie Schmidt and Joana de Quintanilha join us to explain how to bring rigor and process to the task. Featuring: Maxie Schmidt, VP, Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: You’ve identified dozens of journeys and hundreds of moments of truth that matter to your customers. But where do you start your journey mapping, journey measurement and journey improvement actions? How do you prioritize where you will drive the most impact? Forrester VP and Principal Analysts Maxie Schmidt and Joana de Quintanilha join us to explain how to bring rigor and process to the task. We discuss: Why is it important to prioritize journeys? How can CX leaders go about it? What are the ideal outputs of a journey prioritization exercise? What inputs do we need? What mistakes should CX leaders avoid? How can companies get started that aren’t very mature in their journey work? How does journey prioritization fit in the larger road to increasing journey centricity maturity? To learn more, take a look at How To Prioritize Customer Journeys | Forrester Europe

In our second episode showcasing E.ON’s journey toward customer centricity, we talk to Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha and Keith Fletcher, International Customer Experience Manager at E.ON, to examine the inner workings of journeys at E.ON.

Since 2008, E.ON has been on a path to use journeys, not processes, as the building blocks for sustainable growth. Its customer journeys are key to giving over 47 million customers access to a sustainable supply of electricity and heat, with the aim of becoming climate neutral by 2040. Effectively leading a journey-centric transformation requires pulling six operational levers — structure, culture, talent, metrics, processes, and technology — in concert. In today’s episode, we talk to Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha and Keith Fletcher, International Customer Experience Manager at E.ON, about E.ON's journey with journey centricity.

Most large organizations operate across lines of business, products, segments, brands, and/or countries. CX leaders who want to scale their CX measurement program across such an organization must balance the need for efficient and consistent CX measurement with an appropriate level of autonomy for organizational units. VP and Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt answers common questions on scaling measurement management programs, illustrated through case studies.

What do CX pros need to know about the promises and perils of generative AI? Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Martha Bennett explains the statistical complexity in layman’s terms and offers recent CX examples to illustrate the new paradigm.

Product managers and CX pros have a lot of overlapping skills and responsibilities. What are they, and how can they lead to powerful collaboration? Principal Analyst Sam Somashekar gives an initial overview of what it means to be a product manager, revealing some exciting opportunities for both functions to be stronger together. Featuring: Sam Somashekar, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Product managers and CX pros have a lot of overlapping skills and responsibilities. What are they, and how can they lead to powerful collaboration? Principal Analyst Sam Somashekar gives an initial overview of what it means to be a product manager, revealing some exciting opportunities for both functions to be stronger together. We cover: What is product management? What is the typical background of a product manager? What key responsibilities does a product management team focus on? Where does overlap exist between CX and product management responsibilities? How can CX and product management collaborate in these overlapping areas?

Revenue operations teams and CX teams have overlapping interests when it comes to understanding the customer and improving the buying experience. Principal Analyst Anthony McPartlin gives us an initial overview of RevOps, revealing some exciting opportunities for both functions to be stronger together.

CX leaders must invest to drive customer-focused action. This means investing more in tech to create and improve experiences, critical employee skills, unstructured feedback, and predictive modeling. Principal Analyst Pete Jacques walks us through Forrester's 2024 CX Planning guide and pragmatic budgeting advice to meet the emergent needs of customers.

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies and technologies. In this episode, VP, Research Directors Oliwia Berdak and David Hoffman join us to talk about where they see the financial services industry heading in 2024.

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies, and technologies. In this episode, Judy Weader and Shannon Germain Farraher get into the CX implications of the biggest predictions in healthcare. Tune in for insight on smart tech in hospitals, nontraditional benefits in plan designs, medical deserts, and other topics.

Every year Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies and technologies. In this episode Principal Analyst Riccardo Pasto joins us to talk about where he sees Government CX heading in 2024. We cover generative AI, open government, cross-agency collaboration and more as we discuss the state of CX in government and its path in 2024.

Forrester predictions are grounded in the previous year’s trends. To that end, VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali and VP, Research Director Fiona Swerdlow offer CX pros insight into 2024’s biggest changes in retail experience by first outlining 2023 trends and forecast data. They note the influence of digital and systemic risk on the biggest predictions. Featuring: Sucharita Kodali, VP, Principal Analyst Fiona Swerdlow, VP, Research Director Show Notes: Forrester predictions are grounded in the previous year’s trends. To that end, VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali and VP, Research Director Fiona Swerdlow offer CX pros insight into 2024’s biggest changes in retail experience by first outlining 2023 trends and forecast data. They note the influence of digital and systemic risk on the biggest predictions. We cover: How is the cross-channel experience evolving? What are implications for the associate experience? What trends did we see in 2023 that will continue in 2024? Where have trends reversed? What are some global phenomena that are negatively affecting the customer experience? To learn more, see the Forrester report, Predictions 2024: Retail.

Though we’re out for the holidays this week, we’re dropping in with a short preview of what we have planned for the CX Cast in 2024. Tune in to hear what’s to come, including: Our annual series on Forrester’s 2024 predictions, airing throughout January. A preview of Forrester’s 2024 events theme, “Human + AI,” and what it means for the customer lifecycle. And more content from Forrester analysts throughout the year.

Forrester’s culture energy data reveals that culture varies across organizations, including within an individual company. In this episode, Martin interviews Angelina on her findings regarding customer-facing employees’ unique culture within an organization. Angelina shares her findings from other interviews with other culture experts, who helped her explain the data.

Journey maps are wildly popular, and for good reason: Done right, they can transform your company’s customer experience and even alter its culture. But producing journey maps won’t change anything unless CX professionals think ahead about purpose, goals, and potential broader impact and follow the seven key steps of effective journey mapping. Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha joins to discuss how to align your journey mapping efforts with your overall CX strategy. Listen as we run through seven steps to do journey mapping right — whether to design customer-centric experiences, or align employees and cultures to customer needs.