About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Paul serves Customer Experience Professionals who are leading enterprise-wide customer experience efforts. His research focuses on customer experience strategy (B2C and B2B), organizational culture, and customer experience leadership structures including the Chief Customer Officer position. Secondary areas of research include CRM, voice of the customer, and customer experience measurement.
This is Paul’s second stint at Forrester. In between, Paul ran his own consulting organization focused on technology and business strategy, focused mostly on CRM. Paul held previous positions at Accenture, BBN Technologies, and Teach For America.
Paul holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University, where his area of concentration was educational technology and online learning. He also holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Stanford University.
I’m moderating the “Trends in Customer Experience” panel at the upcoming “Customer Experience Forum” in New York on June 29th and 30th… and couldn’t be...
I’m delighted to return to Forrester and its Customer Experience team after eight years of running my own business and technology strategy consulting practice. I’m returning...
While I write frequently about the rise of the chief customer officer within firms advanced enough in their customer experience efforts to consider this kind of executive position, I often get...
Listening to customers through a well-established voice of the customer (VOC) program is critical. However, without a customer experience strategy rooted in a company strategy, it’s easy for a...
I came across a recent Fortune article describing the activities behind Trader Joe’s experience, which illustrate well many aspects I talk about for Cost Leaders in my latest customer...
Many different types of firms have channel partners or others that control a significant part of the actual experience with customers. Automobile companies have dealers, insurance and real estate...
“Customer experience is everyone’s business” is a mantra that I often hear from customer experience leaders. Of course, it’s true. The entire purpose of a company as an entity...
Michael Porter famously wrote that companies differentiate themselves by performing a unique set of activities from their competitors' or by performing the same activities differently. Here...
One of my favorite customer experience graphics here at Forrester speaks to companies “making promises” through marketing and branding channels, while “keeping promises” by...
The way that firms can deliver value to clients has massively changed. Firms can interact with customers in the context of using products (e.g., think Rosetta Stone and language coaches). In fact,...
I recently talked to a business analyst at Gaylord Hotels who shared how the company is changing its customer interactions using sentiment analysis derived from its Clarabridge...
It’s hard to find a firm that says: 1) We don’t care about customers, and 2) we don’t care about being good corporate citizens. That said, it’s astounding to see companies on...
Even companies that make customer experience a strategic priority struggle to implement major long-lasting improvements. That's because they fail to connect behind-the-scenes activities to...
Most companies have the intention of providing excellent customer experiences. However, most find it difficult to translate those intentions into the cultural fabric of their companies. I like to...
Around 51% of customer experience leaders say that the lack of a customer experience strategy is their biggest barrier to their efforts. That's like being a music conductor who tells...
Over the past five years, Forrester has observed an increase in the number of companies that have a single executive leading customer experience efforts across a business unit or an entire company....
The only way your company will differentiate based on customer experience is if the culture of your organization aligns closely with the brand promise to customers. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh puts it in...
“Customer experience (CX) maturity” was the topic of Forrester’s recent chief customer officer (CCO) roundtable meeting. Based on a recent report by Megan Burns called...
You identify three different types of CCO authority models: advisory, matrixed, and operational. Could you give more detail on the specific types of decisions that the CCO will have the authority to...
The customer experience for companies doing business with other companies stinks. Three independent studies that Forrester Research has conducted over the past year indicate that the...
Building a customer-centric culture is occupying the minds and activities of a lot of companies that I’m talking with lately. This is great, because culture is the difference between going...
Like it or not, government services face many of the same pressures that companies face. Companies like Amazon.com, USAA, Disney, and Zappos.com raise customer expectations when they deliver stellar...
In our continuing research on the emerging role of the chief customer officer (CCO), we recently looked at the kinds of authority their firms vest in them to drive change across the organization....
I recently updated our research on enterprisewide customer experience leaders, who we refer to as “chief customer officers” or CCOs. While they often don’t have that exact title, we...
What is the right customer experience strategy? My new report on customer experience strategy investigates this question. To give it some context, consider customers’ expectations of...