4 key insights from CXSF 2018

Earlier this month, I joined hundreds of other CX professionals and innovators at Forrester’s annual CXSF conference in San Francisco. As one would expect from anything produced by Forrester, the event was packed with smart, insightful CX leaders and we walked away with an even better understanding of the CX landscape. This year’s theme was all about how to deliver a seamless experience across devices and channels, both digitally, and in-person. After attending sessions throughout the two-day event, I came away with four key insights.

1. Know thy customer well

The days of understanding customers based on a few data points are over. Just as companies see their organization and brand as a complete entity, so do customers see themselves. Teams across the organization need to share both qualitative and quantitative insights to create a holistic view of every customer. Providing a seamless experience in today’s landscape means understanding customers in every dimension possible and delivering an experience that caters to the customer as a whole.

2. Personalization is crucial—and tricky

Personalization is becoming increasingly more important to customers, but it seems that no one has cracked the code on this. Many organizations are developing and utilizing algorithms to predict customer behavior to proactively surface personalized experiences. Forrester's take is that we’re at a pivotal point with algorithms. If a company fails to implement a great experience utilizing an algorithm, the price of failing will be monumental (more so than seen in the past given customers' rising expectations).

3. The survey is dead, long live customer research!

OK, so maybe the survey isn’t really dead, but its no longer the primary method customer-centered teams rely on to gather insights. While no one said it outright, the general feeling amongst CX professionals was that there were better ways to connect with customers and that unstructured feedback, such as social media activity, or customer interviews, was a much better way to evaluate qualitative feedback, and find ways to assign quantitative values to it so that everyone in the organization can understand the impact.

4. Go beyond the data

Although most organizations are still very much metric based on their business decisions, this is shifting. Companies who are focusing on and delivering the best experiences are having a conversation with their customers (via surveys, interviews, social media channels, etc.) to truly understand their needs, desires, and likes / dislikes as it relates to their brand

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