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Ted serves CIOs. He has 24 years of experience in the technology industry, focusing on the effects of disruptive technologies on the workforce and workforce productivity. His research focuses on workforce technologies and the programs that support them, including smartphones, tablets, and their impact on productivity; social business and collaboration tools; cloud email and collaboration tools; and the consumerization of IT.
Ted is the co-author of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2010). Social, mobile, video, and cloud Internet services give consumers and business customers more information power than ever before. To win customer trust and business, companies must empower their employees to directly engage with and solve the problems of empowered customers using these same technologies.
It is through this empowered lens that the consumerization of IT makes sense: employees solving customer and business problems using readily available technology that they master first at home — social, mobile, video, and cloud. This management book helps CIOs and IT organizations engage directly with business managers and employees to build an empowered strategy: understanding which employees are workforce "HEROes" — highly empowered and resourceful operatives — implementing empowering collaboration and innovation programs, creating a new empowered security architecture, and supporting HEROes with the right technology platforms.
In 2009, Ted launched Forrester's Workforce Technology Assessment, the industry's first benchmark survey of workforce technology adoption. This quantitative approach helps professionals and the teams they work with have a fact-based conversation about employees' technology adoption and requirements.
Prior to joining Forrester in April 1997, Ted was a cofounder of Phios, an MIT spinoff. Before that, Ted worked for eight years as CTO and director of engineering for a software company serving the healthcare industry. Early in his career, Ted was a singer and bass player for Crash Davenport, a successful Maryland-based rock-and-roll band.
Ted has a master's degree in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. with honors in physics from Swarthmore College.
Recently I was on a panel about the impact of cultural change on customer experience. My fellow panelists included Meltem Uysaler, a senior vice president of customer experience for Citi, and...
Business Case: The Customer Experience Ecosystem Playbook
This report is an update to "Why Customer Experience? Why Now?" originally published on October 4, 2011. We've entered the age of the customer — an era where a focus on customers matters more...
Every year, the Voice of the Customer (VoC) Awards process gives my fellow judges and me the opportunity to explore the inner workings of the day’s best VoC programs. I’ve already...

Who at Forrester leads the practice around multichannel integration and personalization? Specifically, I'm looking for help with two things: 1) a case study on someone who does phone and Web...
VoC Programs Are Developing But Still Don't Deliver Enough Value
Companies use voice of the customer (VoC) programs to collect and analyze customer feedback, make customer experience improvements, and track the results of those improvements. In order to assess how...

At this year's Forrester Customer Experience Forum, Zach Hofer-Shall discussed the importance of social media in today's world and how it's reached a point where it can no longer be ignored - even by...
What (current and potential) features do patients/providers want to have in a patient-provider portal? How are these features ranked? What do patients/providers look for in their...
At this year’s Forrester Customer Experience Forum Jim Bush at American Express spoke about the importance of empowering your employees and providing them with the necessary tools and information...
In October, Ron Rogowski provided a couple of excerpts from one of our colleague's online chat with her cable and Internet provider. But this chat session was so bad that I couldn't resist...
Landscape: The Digital Customer Experience Improvement Playbook
Digital touchpoints support an increasingly large percentage of the overall customer experience. 2012 saw the emergence of several important digital customer experience trends that will gain momentum...

I think within the constraints of the format, this paper does as much as it can. One question I would have is around site changes that have an adverse affect on numbers - this is possibly data that...
We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations led by my colleague Sean Corcoran. Why is this important? Well,...
We have a question about voice of the employee as it relates to customer experience: When a company has more than 1,000 customer support staff members, what is the best method for collecting the high...
Why Customer Experience Professionals Need To Have A Seat At The Table When Their Companies Make Pricing Decisions
Customers consciously or unconsciously judge pricing as part of their experiences with a company. Pricing both sets expectations for an experience and affects perceptions and recollections of that...

No offense meant to any of the other great speakers at Forrester’s recent Customer Experience Forum 2011, but I have to admit that I had a favorite: Kevin Peters, Office Depot’s...
Last week my son, Alex, had reconstructive surgery to repair his torn ACL (the ligament that holds the inside of a knee together). He’s 11 years old. I have to admit that this procedure worried...
A Report From Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2010
American Express listens to its employees. At Forrester's Customer Experience Forum 2010, Reena Panikar, vice president and business leader of American Express' Customer Service Center in Fort...
If you attended Forrester's Customer Experience Forum earlier this week, you may have attended a track session called "Fundamentals Of Digital Customer Experience Strategy" where we offered a point...
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...
Forrester Applies Its Website User Experience Review Methodology To Australia's Five Largest Mobile Phone Carriers
To test how well Australia's wireless carriers serve potential customers through their websites, Forrester tested the online user experience of the five largest: 3, Optus, Telstra, Virgin Mobile, and...
Our book giveaway contest is over and our 10 randomly selected winners are: Holly S. from Fannie Mae Arshad F. from Mobrise Thomas Z. from CIO2020.com Juha-Pekka H. from P&C Insurance...
How should you measure customer experience? Is it even possible to measure something that feels as squishy as customer experience? As it turns out, you can measure it, you should measure it, and you...
What is Forrester's take on how healthcare companies have responded to the rise of social media? How will healthcare companies gain traction in the social media space? What are good and the bad...