Harley serves Customer Experience Professionals. He is a research director in the Customer Experience practice at Forrester, and the coauthor of Outside In: The Power of Putting Your Customers at the Center of Your Business. The book is a comprehensive study of why customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. It explores the six disciplines companies need to master in order to compete effectively in a world where their customers can leave them more easily than ever.
Harley's research, analysis, and opinions have appeared in The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Economist, FT.com, Fast Company, Investor's Business Daily, and Direct Marketing News. He is a regular contributor to the 1to1 media blog. An accomplished speaker, Harley has keynoted major business conferences around the world.
Harley founded Forrester's Customer Experience research coverage when he joined the firm in 1998. For his first report, he created a website review methodology that's now been used to evaluate the online customer experience of more than 1,500 sites for both research and consulting purposes. The methodology forms the basis for a popular series of workshops that have been delivered across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. It has since been extended to cover cross-channel customer interactions that span touchpoints ranging from voice-response systems to mobile apps.
Harley also founded Forrester's annual Customer Experience Forum, the company's largest event. In addition to its original location in New York, the Forum also takes place in Los Angeles and London. Harley hosts and moderates the forum in all three locations and leads speaker recruitment for the event.
Previous Work Experience
Harley came to Forrester in 1998 after spending 18 years designing and building interactive services for companies such as Dow Jones, AT&T, MCI, Prodigy, and Sears. While at AT&T he worked for a time in the former Bell Labs, where he collaborated with scientists conducting research in the field of applied artificial intelligence (two patents awarded).
EducationHarley holds a Master of Science degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, Urbana.
