Explore every episode of the podcast The CX Cast

Frontier Communications emerged from bankruptcy in 2021. That bankrupcy was the result of a broken customer experience sitting on terribly broken and outdated systems. It's new CEO launched four priorities to refocus the organization: Build fiber, sell fiber, improve customer service, become operationally efficient. Frontier's Chief Customer Operations officer, Charlon McIntosh tells the CX transformation story, with winning examples of stakeholder collaboration and guerilla CX.

Angelina and Martin are joined by returning guests Maxie Schmidt and Dipanjan Chatterjee to explore the fascinating psychology and data behind consumer purchasing decisions. Drawing from their latest Forrester research, we unpack why people say they buy versus why they actually do—and how brands can use this knowledge to better serve their customers. We discuss: Why traditional surveys fall short and how to uncover real motivations How the MaxDiff method can be used to identify primary, secondary & situational purchase drivers Cross-country and category insights and the four buyer segments   To illustrate, purchase driver rankings for cosmetics and beauty and purchase driver importance for cosmetics/beauty in France are shown below. Purchase Driver Ranking In Eight Countries: Cosmetics/Beauty Purchase Driver Importance For Cosmetics/Beauty in France

Originally episode 147, this recording kicked off a theme we've continued to cover: employee CX. Show Notes: Originally episode 147, this recording kicked off a theme we've continued to cover: employee CX. VP, Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt and former CX Cast host Sam Stern dive into how incentivizing better CX scores encourages unintended behaviors, stepping into the shoes of employees who “game the system." The lesson: design the system carefully in the first place to encourage the right behaviors for better CX. Related content: 332: How To Set CX Metrics Goals - Forrester 147: Paying Employees For CX Is A Bad Idea (Part 1) - Forrester 148: Paying Employees For CX Is A Bad Idea (Part 2) - Forrester

This week, Principal Analyst Max Ball joins to explain the history and current state of AI in the contact center. Max highlights the immediate improvements brought on by AI and outlines areas where AI still has far to go. We also touch on the challenges faced by human agents and the confusion around terminology like "agentic" and "agents."

High-Tech firms operate in fiercely competitive and price-sensitive industries, making CX a potentially transformative differentiator — if implemented effectively. Principal Analyst Su Doyle joins us to share practical CX strategies tailored for high-tech firms, emphasizing the importance of aligning CX with business objectives, leveraging customer success programs, and adopting performance-focused approaches to drive growth and improve customer relationships.

All those reasons why customer obsession is too hard don’t matter. Customer experience wins business. VP, Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk explains how customer obsession is not just a goal, but a continuous practice that can lead to significant improvements in customer experience and business efficiency. She shares real world examples, challenges in measuring customer obsession, and future directions for the research. We discuss:  How customer obsession aligns with business strategy and operations  How mindsets need to shift for continuous practice  How to assess a firm’s customer obsession  Where to find insight to improve customer obsession practices  To learn more, join Shar for her keynote and much more interactive content at CX Summit North America.  

Does a CX team’s position in the organization affect its influence? Principal Analyst Judy Weader shares insights from recent survey data and qualitative research, revealing that there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. The placement of CX teams varies widely across different companies and industries, but organizational dynamics go beyond the org chart. The burden is on the CX leader to drive influence and flex with the nonlinear nature of CX maturity. Judy offers a decision-making framework to help organizations determine the best placement for their CX functions, emphasizing the role of executive sponsorship and the necessity for CX leaders to be proactive in their roles.

You don’t just manage, you lead. Managing the details of CX – execution, measurement, strategy – is crucial, but for you to truly succeed, you must lead your people to become customer-obsessed, empowered workers who understand and care about your customer’s outcomes.

Why should CX professionals care about brand experience (BX)? Forrester VP, Principal Analysts Dipanjan Chatterjee and Thomas Husson join the podcast to discuss the challenges organizations face in delivering a total experience and shed light on how BX can help drive growth.

CX transformation requires leaders to determine the specific employee behaviors that drive customer loyalty and shape the conditions that enable them to activate the entire workforce to demonstrate customer focus. In this episode, Angelina introduces a blueprint consisting of three key steps: 1) describing current and ideal culture; 2) assessing the current culture; and 3) leading culture change.

Employee feedback is part of a virtuous cycle of improving customer experience (CX) through employee empowerment and enablement that builds customer trust. But if you’re not building your CX strategy using this loop, you’re in a reactive cycle of EX-blind customer focus instead. Breaking the cycle begins with an effective employee listening strategy, followed by accountability at the leadership level to ensure that employee voice leads to appropriate action. Forrester Principal Analyst David Brodeur-Johnson joins us to discuss.

Most CX teams are too reliant on feedback (survey) data, leading to limited insights and even misinformed action. Forrester senior analyst Rich Saunders joins us to make the case for advanced analytics. He outlines the path forward – even for those intimidated by advanced analytics.

How should CX professionals use generative AI? Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Martha Bennett joins for a follow-up discussion to chat about the evolution and current state of genAI, busting myths and addressing real-world CX applications. 

Guerilla CX is “swift, creative, and often low-cost tactics that make the most of rightsized data and foster experimentation and learning to create memorable moments that act as a catalyst for CX and EX transformation.” VP, Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha returns to explain why guerilla CX tactics need to be in every CX practitioner’s back pocket, as well as how deploying these tactics might lead to big impact on CX and internal customer-focused culture.

Since 2018, Nissan has been on a path to transform its legacy systems and operating model to make customer journeys the center of value creation and create a best-in-class integrated customer journey. Jivesh Juneja, Customer Journey Director at Nissan, joins the CX Cast to discuss Nissan’s journey from embracing customer journey mapping to scaling out journey management and adopting a journey-centric operating model.

Forrester identifies the firms that are helping businesses diagnose customer problems, develop a plan to solve those issues, and build the infrastructure needed to execute a CX transformation. That effort is led by Principal Analyst Judy Weader, who joins us to unpack her recent evaluation of the CX strategy consulting services market.

In her recent evaluation of CX strategy consulting services providers, Forrester Principal Analyst Judy Weader identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. Judy joins us to unpick the CX strategy consulting services market.

In this episode of the CX Cast, Forrester Senior Analyst Colleen Fazio shares the findings of her report,  The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Solutions, Q4 2024. We talk about the importance of vendor services to help CX leaders leverage increasingly complex platforms, how to think about your organizational readiness, and the promise of GenAI.

In this episode of the CX Cast, Chris Lipman, Chief Customer Officer at E&, returns to discuss the innovative approach E& takes toward CX improvement through their "CX Change Factory." We discuss:   How does E& identify and prioritize CX issues for resolution?  What role does the "CX Change Factory" play in improving E&'s CX?  How does E& measure the impact of the CX improvements on customer satisfaction and business outcomes?  Listen to the full episode to hear more about “CX Change Factory's” role in improving CX and its impact on customer satisfaction and business results.  See the Forrester report: Take A Strategic Approach To Prioritizing Customer... | Forrester   

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies, and technologies. In this episode, Forrester analysts Arielle Trzcinski and Shannon Germain Farraher team up with host Martin Gill to dive into Forrester’s 2025 healthcare predictions.  

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies, and technologies. In this episode, Martin is joined by Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali to discuss how Forrester’s 2025 retail predictions came together.

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies and technologies. This week, Forrester analysts Riccardo Pasto and Colleen Fazio join CX Cast host Martin Gill to discuss how Forrester’s 2025 Government predictions came together, and upcoming challenges to government CX.

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies and technologies. In this episode, Forrester Research Directors David Hoffman, Oliwia Berdak, and CX Cast host Martin Gill team up to go over Forrester’s 2025 Financial Services predictions.

Every year, Forrester looks to the future to predict what we think will happen across industries, geographies, and technologies. In this episode, Senior Analyst Christina McAllister and CX Cast host Martin Gill team up to explain how Forrester’s 2025 CX predictions came together.

Martin and Angelina reflect on CX Cast successes in 2024 and give a glimpse into the exciting lineup for 2025. 

Philips Healthcare is at the forefront of a dynamic market. Telemedicine, the lasting impact of the pandemic, the aging population, consumer access to healthcare data, and other factors are challenging old business models. Tina Lilje, Global Head of CX at Phillips Healthcare joins us to share how she and her team are embracing AI to enhance CX.

Ben Phillips, Head of Fujitsu Europe’s Customer Experience Performance Center, joins the CX Cast to share how Fujitsu Europe has scaled its CX program in a complex, account-driven B2B services organization.

As Verizon consumer group’s first-ever Chief Customer Experience Officer, Brian Higgins accomplished a lot in just over a year. He joins the CX Cast to discuss his strategy to deliver best-in-class experiences across all consumer touch points while more efficiently serving customers.

This is the final episode in our 4-part deep-dive on journey mapping with Forrester’s journey mapping expert, Joana de Quintanilha. In this installment, Martin, Angelina, and Joana delve into the final stages of journey mapping: focusing on demonstrating short-term wins and consolidating improvements. Joana highlights the importance of turning journey maps into dynamic tools that evolve over time and drive action. 

This is the third episode in a 4-part deep-dive on journey mapping with Forrester’s journey mapping expert, Joana de Quintanilha. In this installment, Martin, Angelina, and Joana discuss how to validate your journey map and gain stakeholder buy-in. Next week, we’ll conclude by diving into how we use these journey maps to drive and implement change in the business.

This is the second episode in a 4-part deep-dive on journey mapping with Forrester’s journey mapping expert, Joana de Quintanilha. In this installment, Joana digs into the journey map creation process, discussing the importance of planning journey mapping workshops and breaking down common challenges and best practices.

This is the first in a 4-episode deep-dive on journey mapping with our journey mapping expert, Joana de Quintanilha. In this episode, Joana gives an overview of the journey mapping effort, from scoping through to improving the customer experience itself.

We continue our series on Prudential’s CX transformation by interviewing John Sciacchitano, VP, Head of Journey Management. He describes a framework of journey management that's sensitive to stakeholder and customer mindsets.

Eighty percent of UK consumers believe that firms should always disclose when they use AI, yet only 48% believe that AI powers self-driving cars. With such a mismatch between consumer expectations and knowledge, Enza Iannopollo, Forrester Principal Analyst, joins us to discuss how to use emerging EU legislation as a foundation to build trusted AI. 

CX leaders at large global organizations are developing new strategies to achieve better CX with AI while maintaining the well-being of frontline talent. Derek Allgood, Vice President of Global Customer Experience at eBay, joins us to elaborate on eBay’s CX capabilities, how he leverages a strong stakeholder network to solve CX problems at speed, and how he balances AI opportunities with care for employees.

In this episode of CX Cast, we sit down with Chris Lipman, Chief Customer Experience Officer at e&. Together, we delve into the nuances of leveraging Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) to not only measure customer satisfaction but also drive meaningful business results.

Brands want customer feedback, and Forrester research shows that customers are willing to give it—when asked properly. But too often, brands will send out a never-ending stream of ill-timed, poorly designed surveys that even the most helpful customer declines to answer. Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt joins the podcast to argue the case for treating feedback as a customer touchpoint. Featuring: Maxie Schmidt, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Brands want customer feedback, and Forrester research shows that customers are willing to give it—when asked properly. But too often, brands will send out a never-ending stream of ill-timed, poorly designed surveys that even the most helpful customer declines to answer. Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt joins the podcast to argue the case for treating feedback as a customer touchpoint. We discuss: What types of questions should brands ask customers--and which should they avoid? How do surveys reflect the relationship that brands want with their customers? What do customers want out of surveys? How can brands design better surveys? Additional Resources Why And How To Pretest Surveys With Customers Companies have our data. Why do they keep asking if we like them?

Forrester's CX Index measures customers' perceptions of how well companies deliver customer experiences to ultimately build or sustain loyalty. It assesses CX quality based on ease, effectiveness and emotion. VP, Research Director Oliwia Berdak and Researcher Jana Gül share their analysis of 2024 CX Index performance in Europe, diving into insights that explain the scores specific to banking within and across several countries.

Personas are a foundational, seemingly simple tool—yet they’re deceptively challenging. That’s the premise of the latest research by Audrey Chee-Read and Gina Bhawalkar, which includes best practice reports and persona builder tools. They offer examples of effective and ineffective personas to increase the ROI of your efforts.

Culture change is necessary for an organization to be more customer obsessed and deliver better customer experiences. That culture change requires specifying the customer-focused behaviors that lead to customer loyalty. CX Cast co-host Angelina describes the process to determine and assess your organization’s ideal behaviors and drive adoption of targeted behavior change to align with customer and business priorities.

Forrester's annual Budget Planning Guide for Customer Experience offers data-driven guidance on where to increase, decrease, or experiment with your budget for 2025. Co-authors Principal Analyst Riccardo Pasto and VP, Executive Partner Katy Cobian explain the research process for creating the recommendations and how CX pros should use the budget planning guide.

CX Day is an annual event for a lot of organizations, usually occurring the first week of October. Successful CX Days require planning to ensure momentum is built before the event and excitement for CX is sustained after the event. With a great theme and employee-focused planning, you can use CX Day as a moment to educate and celebrate employees, and drive a customer-focused culture. Featuring: Martin Gill, VP, Research Director Angelina Gennis, Senior Analyst Show Notes: CX Day is an annual event for a lot of organizations, usually occurring the first week of October. Successful CX Days require planning to ensure momentum is built before the event and excitement for CX is sustained after the event. With a great theme and employee-focused planning, you can use CX Day as a moment to educate and celebrate employees, and drive a customer-focused culture. This week, Angelina and Martin answer:  What is CX Day? Why do CX teams organize it?  What sorts of activities happen on CX Day? How do you drive engagement?  What are the success indicators of the event?  Where should you start if you're planning your first CX day?  Where can you find inspiration?

How can CX leaders apply generative AI to creating customer experiences or transforming their work? Listen to learn how CX leaders can run genAI hackathons to help Forrester teams and clients experiment with genAI tools in a safe, fun, and engaging environment.

Every year, Forrester conducts a global survey of voice-of-the-customer (VoC) and customer experience (CX) measurement practices. Leaders of CX measurement programs are reporting improvements in 2024 compared to 2023. Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt explains why there are persistent gaps in what CX measurement programs can do compared to current maturity.

Culture work underpins every successful customer experience (CX) transformation. Martin and Angelina discuss Forrester’s collection of case studies that capture diverse efforts to build a customer-focused culture change to ultimately improve the customer experience.

Mental models operate throughout your organization. They determine what we believe will occur and create expectations, predictions, and decisions — for customers, executives, and employees. VP and Principal Analyst Joana de Quintanilha explains harnessing mental models and applies it to CX pros’ biggest business challenges.

CX event season may be over, but we're not done with it on the CX Cast yet! VP, Research Director Rick Parrish joins us this week to compare and contrast his experience hosting CX North America with Martin's experience hosting CX EMEA this year.

We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit EMEA conference in London, England. This year, sessions will focus on blending generative AI with human capabilities, plus how this will impact CX, marketing, and digital. We capture some familiar (and new!) voices discussing the research they’ll be sharing throughout the event. Featuring: Multiple speakers and attendees Show Notes: We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit EMEA conference in London, England. This year, sessions will focus on blending generative AI with human capabilities, plus how this will impact CX, marketing, and digital. We capture some familiar (and new!) voices discussing the research they’ll be sharing throughout the event. You’ll hear:  What Forrester analysts are most excited to share this year.  What's top-of-mind for CX practitioners.   Learn more about Forrester’s CX events here.  

We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit North America conference in Nashville, Tennessee. This year, sessions will focus on blending generative AI with human capabilities, plus how this will impact CX, marketing, and digital. We capture some familiar voices discussing the research they’ll be sharing throughout the event.

Julian Aldeco, VP, Head of Customer Voice and Obsession at Prudential Financial, gives a candid retelling of Prudential's CX transformation thus far. Aldeco offers details to guide other practitioners in varied topics, from CX strategy to measurement to culture.