Customer Experience Matters

For the 10th straight quarter (a span of 2.5 years), I’ve been the most-read analyst at Forrester. In Q2, my readership was 75% higher than the next analyst. So, needless to say, customer experience remains a hot topic — even in the downturn.

To get a better sense of what’s hot, I’ve listed my 15 most-read research reports in Q2 2009 along with their publication dates (unfortunately, only Forrester clients can get full access to these reports):

1. The State Of Customer Experience, 2009 (4/24/09)
2. The Experiences That Satisfy Consumers, 2009 (4/14/09)
3. Engage Gen Y Online With Social Interactivity (6/2/09)*
4. How Customer Experience Drives Word Of Mouth (5/28/09)
5. Voice Of The Customer: The Next Generation (2/26/09)
6. The Customer Experience Journey (9/17/08)**
7. Customer Service Trumps Price (5/15/09)
8. Customer Experience Boosts Revenue (6/22/09)*
9. How Loyal Are Consumers? Not Very (5/18/09)
10. Customer Experience And Loyalty: A Closer Look (3/6/09)
11. Customer Experience Correlates To Loyalty (2/17/09)
12. Executive Q&A: Net Promoter Score (5/19/09)
13. Obstacles To Customer Experience Success, 2009 (2/20/09)
14. The Customer Experience Index, 2008 (12/12/08)**
15. Customer Experience Index 2008 Snapshot: Credit Card Providers (5/22/09)

Notes:
*Published in June; a lot of readership in a short period of time
**Published in 2008; they remain very popular

What’s coming next?

I will continue to dig deep into the customer experience efforts at large organizations, concentrating specifically on how companies move up the maturity scale in areas like culture, voice of the customer programs, metrics, and organizational alignment. In addition, I plan to expose some of the best practices and tools that companies are using to successfully navigate their customer experience journeys.

I am also analyzing how consumers view price and service in their evaluation of companies across industries. I hope to publish some research that dissects price-sensitive and service-sensistive cohorts. 

In the short-term, I will be publishing a research report that looks at the cross-channel best (and worst) practices in the auto insurance industry and a doc about best practices for customer experience in the downturn (from my keynote speech at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum).

The bottom line: Keep reading and I’ll keep researching and writing.