What It Means: A Forrester Podcast
Each week, the What It Means podcast invites Forrester analysts to discuss the latest trends and challenges to help business and technology leaders make bold decisions and become truly customer-obsessed.
Podcast
SolarWinds’ Lessons For CISOs, AI In B2B Sales, Shopping In Answer Engines
The holiday season is in full swing, and as retailers vie for consumer dollars, some of the biggest ones are branching out to answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. In this episode, we describe what that experience looks like now and what brands should do in response. We also look at the lasting implications of a high-profile legal case for CISOs and the state of AI in B2B sales.
Podcast
Predictions 2026: Breaking Down Three Of Our Boldest Predictions
It’s Predictions season here at Forrester. We recently published our 2026 predictions across a variety of business functions, industries, and geographies. In this episode, we take a detailed look at three of our boldest calls for the coming year.
Podcast
AWS Outage, Safety On Meta, ChatGPT’s AI-First Browser
Recently, a very bad day for AWS became everyone else’s very annoying day. And while the disruption was fairly short-lived, there are longer-term lessons to be learned. In this episode, we look at the lessons from the recent AWS outage as well as an overdue step by a social media giant and a reimagining of how we access information on the web.
Podcast
California’s New AI Law, Anthropic’s Latest Model, B2C Advertising Options
Principal Analyst Alla Valente breaks down California’s new AI law, VP and Research Director Chris Gardner discusses the impact of AI models on software development roles, and Principal Analyst Nikhil Lai reviews Best Buy’s “in-store takeover” advertising offering.
The CX Cast
Research-based guidance on how to manage customer experience (CX) at any organization — an imperative that Forrester has been researching for over 20 years. Each week, Forrester analysts discuss key findings from their latest research on CX; analyze relevant topics in the news; or chat with CX professionals about how they’ve overcome prevalent challenges managing CX in their organizations.
Podcast
432: Practitioner Stories: Coastline Academy Transforms Customer Support From Firefighters To Architects
Charles Sustaita, Director of Customer Support at Coastline Academy, joins Angelina and Martin to discuss the imperative for AI leaders to fully embrace AI as a transformative technology for business efficiency and connectivity. The discussion highlights the importance of analytics, translation, and the concept of agentic work in leveraging AI for enhanced performance.
Podcast
431: Metrics Obsession – Fixing Dysfunctional CX Measurement
Angelina is joined by VP, principal analyst Maxie Schmidt to dive deep into the phenomenon of metrics obsession in organizations, exploring why it happens, its symptoms, and how CX leaders can move from dysfunctional measurement practices to a culture of measurement mastery. Drawing on their keynote experiences and research, they discuss the impact of metrics on employee experience, organizational culture, and customer outcomes.
Podcast
430: How To Select A Journey Management Platform
Hot off the back of the recent publication of Forrester’s Customer Journey Management (CJM) Wave™, VP, principal analyst Joana de Quintanilla joins Martin Gill to talk all things CJM. We shifted the category name this time round from “journey mapping” to “journey management,” which reflects some tangible trends we’ve been seeing in the market.
Podcast
429: Practitioner Stories: Balancing Innovation And Trust With Forrester’s Izola AI
This week, Doug Washburn — Forrester's VP of product management — joins Angelina and Martin for a deep dive into how he helped launch Forrester’s Izola AI chatbot. Doug shares the organizational mindset, executive commitment, and rapid development cycles that helped Forrester bring a generative AI solution to market ahead of other research organizations. Doug shares candid insights on balancing speed with accuracy, the importance of grounding AI responses in trusted research, and the ongoing challenges of collaboration and client engagement.