Megan Burns
VP, Principal Analyst
Author Insights
Blog
You Can’t Afford to Overlook Your Customers’ Emotional Experience
In 2014, Forrester analyzed CX Index data to see which of the three dimensions of CX quality matters most to customer loyalty – effectiveness, ease, or emotion. We found that emotion, how an experience makes the customer feel, has a bigger influence on their loyalty to a brand than either of the other two factors. […]
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Don’t Just Ask What CX Leaders Do; Ask Why It Works For Them
Last week, I stayed in two different hotels in the greater Atlanta area. One was a Ritz-Carlton, and the other a Marriott.* Hearing those two brand names, you might be tempted to assume that the guest experience at the Ritz was far better than the one at the Marriott. But it wasn’t — at least not […]
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Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, Spring 2015: The Start of A Whole New Ball Game
One week ago today, we Bostonians enjoyed a picture-perfect opening day at Fenway Park. The sun was shining, temps finally warmed up after an abysmal winter, opening ceremonies paid tribute to local heroes like the Richard and Frates families,* and our beloved Red Sox beat the Washington Nationals 9 to 4. What I love about […]
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Help Us Benchmark The State Of CX Maturity In 2014 (And Get A Free Copy Of The Results)
In 2007, I wrote a report about how to measure customer experience (CX) across an entire enterprise. At the time, I could find just three companies — three! — that were actually measuring CX this way. Everyone else I talked to said that their companies had no CX measurement or that they measured CX in a […]
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Throwback Thursday: Getting Executives Engaged In The CX Transformation
One of the most common questions I get from CX professionals is this: “How do I get my executives to support the work I’m trying to do?” In 2009, when the CX space was just starting to gain traction at the C-level, I wrote a report on that topic. I pulled that report up earlier […]
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Introducing Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, 2014
It’s January again, which means it’s time to reveal the results of our seventh annual Forrester Customer Experience Index (CXi). This year’s report benchmarks the quality of the customer experience (CX) at 175 US firms in 14 industries as rated by the only people whose opinion really matters — their customers. The top spot this year went […]
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How Marshalls, Courtyard By Marriott, And Lowe’s Meet Customer Needs
Earlier this week, someone asked me which firms in the CXi do the best job at meeting customer needs. The three top scorers on that criterion were: Marshalls (93%) Courtyard by Marriott (92%) Lowe's (92%) Interestingly, all three of these companies saw big jumps in their "meets needs" scores versus 2012. Marshall's went up 10 […]
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Q&A From Last Week’s Customer Experience Index Webinar
Last week, I did a webinar on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, 2013. We didn’t have time to answer everyone’s questions, so I thought I’d post answers to those we didn't get to. "Can consumers respond to having an experience with multiple companies?" In some cases, yes, and in some cases, no. In the bank, […]
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New For 2013 — The Forrester Customer Experience Index Award Of Excellence
Last week, we released our sixth annual Forrester Customer Experience Index. This week, we’re introducing something new to go along with the benchmark — an award. From now on, any brand that scores an 85 or above in our Customer Experience Index (CXi) will receive both a physical award and a badge for its website […]
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The Customer Experience Index, 2013
Just moments ago we released the sixth annual Forrester Customer Experience Index (CXi), our yearly benchmark of customer experience quality as judged by the only people whose opinion matters — customers. The 2013 CXi is based on research we did in Q4 2012. It reflects how consumers perceived their experiences with 154 brands across 14 […]
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It’s Time To Exercise Your Customer Experience Muscles
I was talking to a client the other day who was very frustrated. She told me that her executives talk about customer experience all the time; they seem “bought in” to the idea that it matters. But when push comes to shove, none of them have done anything to drive real improvement. She asked me […]
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Introducing The Experience-Driven Organization Playbook
If you are trolling around our website, you may have seen that we’ve introduced a new way to organize our research, something that we call playbooks. We made this change because for years we’ve been producing reports that connect to each other in many ways. The connections are obvious to those of us who create […]
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Customer Experience Programs Need To Move From Talk To Action
Last week, I released an update to a very popular report titled “The State Of Customer Experience, 2012.” The research is based on a survey of customer experience pros about their plans for this year. The data mirrored what we hear anecdotally when talking with clients every day and should help you answer the perennial […]
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Our Data Once Again Shows That Better Customer Experience Yields Millions In Revenue Benefit
I just published Forrester’s fourth annual report “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2012” using updated data from the 2012 Customer Experience Index. Once again, the news is good for companies hoping to get a financial boost from their efforts to improve customer experience. In the industries we modeled, the revenue benefits of a better […]
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Three Ways To Use CXi Data To Inform Customer Experience Improvement Efforts
In the two months since I published "The Customer Experience Index, 2012," the number of companies requesting a deeper look at the data has been quite high. Many have asked me to suggest ways to use the information that’s available, so I thought I’d share the analyses I've found most interesting so far: Compare Customer […]
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Enjoyable Experiences Are The First Step To Creating Emotional Connections With Customers
The Holy Grail of customer experience for many firms goes beyond useful and easy to interactions that create an emotional connection with the customer. That’s not easy to do, but step 1 is creating an experience that is at least enjoyable. Now, before you object . . . I’m not talking Disney-level enjoyable here — […]
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It’s Not Easy Being Easy
Thanks for all your thoughtful responses to last week’s post about why companies fail to meet customer needs. Clearly there’s more work to be done in that department, but for now, I want to move on to the next Customer Experience Index (CXi) criteria: “easy.” Many firms claim to be easy to do business with, but […]
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Customer Experience Leaders Obsess Over Customer Needs
Last week, I took you through the top scorers in this year’s Customer Experience Index by industry. But 13% of customer experience professionals said that they aim to differentiate across all industries. Which brands do they need to beat to reach that goal? Let’s start with the “meets needs” category (I’ll cover the other two in […]
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Watch Out…Customer Experience Innovations Can Come From Where You Least Expect Them
Last week I posted some of the most frequently asked questions we get about the Customer Experience Index, 2012. One question I didn’t include but should have is “Who got the highest score in my industry?” I scanned the list of industry high scores and wasn’t surprised to see names like USAA (banks, credit card […]
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Frequently Asked Questions About Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, 2012
Since publishing our Customer Experience Index, 2012 last week, we've gotten a flood of questions about the research, methodology, and results. I'm putting the finishing touches on a full Forrester report that answers the ten most common questions but thought I'd give everyone a sneak preview with a blog post summarizing a few of the […]
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