We’ve just wrapped up CX Forum East, and I’m still energized by all the great sessions, conversations, and experiences of the past two days. It was also great to be back in New York City after a long, successful run in Nashville. To all of our attendees, sponsors, presenters, and everyone behind the scenes who made the transition and the event so seamless: Thank you.

This year’s theme, Build The Experience AI Can’t, reflected something we’re hearing from leaders every day. As organizations push to take advantage of AI, there’s increasing pressure to move quickly — often before the fundamentals are in place. Across our keynotes, breakout sessions, workshops, and special programs, we focused on what underpins successful AI experiences and why getting that foundation right is now the critical differentiator.

Experience Quality Makes AI Succeed, Not The Other Way Around

It’s easy to get caught up in what AI can do. But customers don’t want AI — they want better experiences. Without a strong experience foundation built on human empathy and creativity, AI simply exposes and scales what’s already broken.

So it wasn’t a coincidence that we unveiled the next iteration of Forrester’s Total Experience Score and research at the Forum. We’ve long known that brand experience and customer experience — the promises companies make and the experiences they deliver — work together to drive loyalty and growth. With the addition of the new Employee Experience Index (EX Index™), we can now quantify the role that employee experience plays in delivering on those promises. EX can either enable or undermine a company’s ability to provide a consistent, differentiated experience, and that becomes even more important as AI enters the picture. One of the highlights of the Forum was presenting our inaugural Total Experience Honor for North America and learning how the honoree, The Home Depot, has aligned its brand, customer, and employee experience to create something that’s both distinctive and durable.

Getting The Fundamentals Right

We intentionally focused much of this year’s content on the building blocks of a strong foundation for AI. Without these, even the most advanced AI initiatives won’t get you very far:

  • Trust. Distrust is consumers’ default when it comes to AI — and given the glut of slop, bots, and deepfakes, it’s little wonder. Companies that earn trust can turn it into a meaningful competitive advantage. Doing so means being clear on how data is used, building experiences that are safe and reliable, and ensuring that outcomes feel fair.
  • Strategy. AI strategy is ultimately human strategy. The fundamentals — people, processes, and technology — still apply, with an even greater premium on the people making decisions about how AI is used. Our immersive experience brought this to life, showing the trade-offs that leaders must navigate as they incorporate AI into their strategies.
  • Data. As AI advances, gaps and inaccuracies in data become impossible to ignore. Before organizations can scale AI across use cases like personalization or agentic commerce, they must improve data quality and completeness. We discussed how to break down silos and create a unified, customer-focused data foundation that produces better insights and decisions.
  • Workforce readiness. To support your AI ambitions, employees need to be comfortable and conversant with AI tools. Our artificial intelligence quotient (AIQ) workshop explored what AI readiness really looks like and helped leaders think beyond training to building lasting capability across their teams.

Envisioning The Future Of Experiences

We also spent time looking ahead at what becomes possible when those fundamentals are in place. AI has the potential to enable entirely new kinds of experiences, much like mobile reshaped how customers interact with brands. But realizing that potential requires moving beyond simply layering AI onto existing systems.

Guest speaker Duncan Wardle, former head of innovation and creativity at Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Pixar, challenged us to think more expansively about how AI can free up space for the distinctly human capabilities that drive great experiences: creativity, intuition, empathy, and imagination. Discussions throughout the event grounded that vision in reality, highlighting how marketing, CX, and digital leaders are already prioritizing agentic AI use cases and adapting their teams and processes to support them.

We got a glimpse of the future in a different way, too: by welcoming our first Future Leaders cohort to a Forrester CX event. Alongside our established special programs like the Forrester Women’s Leadership Program and the Executive Leadership Exchange, this addition brought new perspectives and a sense of momentum for where the discipline is headed.

Now Comes The Hard Work

The takeaway from CX Forum East is clear: AI can accelerate progress but only if it’s built on a strong human foundation. That means getting the fundamentals right — and doing the harder, less visible work before moving ahead. The opportunities are for those who move quickly. As you progress along your journey, our CX, B2C marketing, and digital analysts are here to help.

If you joined us in New York, thank you for being part of it. And if you didn’t, we hope to see you in San Francisco at CX Forum West on June 29–30.