Today, Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) honored the winners of the inaugural Forrester Outside In Awards for excellence in the practices needed for planning, creating, and managing a great customer experience. The seven winners were announced at Forrester’s Forum For Customer Experience Professionals East in New York. The awards support and recognize the principles outlined in the Forrester book Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business (Amazon Publishing/New Harvest, 2012).

“The Outside In Awards recognize organizations that don’t just talk about customer experience, but take a disciplined approach to improving it,” said Harley Manning, co-author of Outside In and Forrester vice president and research director. “Their efforts stand out from among those of their peers by being systematic and by demonstrating results for both their business and their customers. Our research shows that when organizations do take a disciplined approach, as our winners have, they can expect business benefits ranging from more revenue from increasingly loyal customers, to more and better word of mouth from happier customers.”

Winners of the Forrester Outside In Awards were selected across a range of categories representing the strategic disciplines that Forrester advises organizations to master in order to achieve the full business potential of customer experience. These disciplines include: Strategy, Customer Understanding, Design, Measurement, Governance, and Customer-Centric Culture. Forrester used five criteria to judge the winning entries: clarity of approach, business value to the organization, positive impact on customer experience, innovation, and potential for other companies to repeat the practice.

Here are the winners of the 2013 Forrester Outside In Awards: 

  • Customer Understanding: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
  • Design: Ally Bank
  • Design: PwC Australia
  • Measurement: American Cancer Society
  • Measurement: Pitney Bowes
  • Measurement: The Lego Group
  • Customer-Centric Culture: Safelite AutoGlass

Forrester’s 2013 Forum For Customer Experience Professionals East

More than 1,400 people attended Forrester’s 2013 Forum For Customer Experience Professionals East in New York, which offered customer experience leaders practical advice on how to boost their organizations’ customer experience to the next level. New research presented at the forum illustrated how companies can design, implement, manage, and innovate around the customer experience in a disciplined way, driving differentiation and long-term business value. Customer Experience Professionals can use the examples and analysis in the reports “The Path To Customer Experience Maturity” and “Customer Experience Innovation Demystified” to drive ROI from a differentiated customer experience.