Who is Bruce?

Email: bruce@temkingroup.com
Twitter: @btemkin

I am proud to be the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping customer experience professionals learn, grow, and succeed.

My primary work is as a customer experience transformist; helping large organizations improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. As part of this focus, I examine strategy, marketing, interaction design, customer service, and leadership practices. I am also a fanatical student of business, so this blog provides an outlet for sharing insights from my ongoing educational journey.

Simply put, I am passionate about spotting emerging best practices and helping companies master them. And, as many people know, I love to speak about these topics in almost any forum.

My “title” is Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm that helps organizations become more customer-centric. Our goal is simple: accelerate the path to delighting customers. We founded the company based on four beliefs:

  1. Customer experience drives loyalty. Our research and work with clients has shown that interactions with customers influences how much business they’ll do with you in the future and how often they recommend you to friends and colleagues.
  2. Improvement requires systemic change. Companies can improve customer interactions in isolated areas, but they can’t develop competitive advantage until customer experience is embedded in their operating fabric.
  3. It’s a journey, not a project. Building the capabilities to consistently delight customers doesn’t happen overnight. Companies need to plan for a multi-year corporate change initiative.
  4. We can help you make a difference. Transformation efforts aren’t easy, but leading your company to be more customer-centric is worth the effort. We are committed to helping our clients accelerate their results and avoid many of the bumps along the way.

Prior to founding the Temkin Group, I was Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research focusing on customer experience. For my last few years at Forrester, I was the company’s most-read analyst for 13 consecutive quarters. During my nearly 12 year tenure at Forrester, I managed several of the firm’s practice areas including customer experience, financial services, eBusiness, and B2B.

I published many of Forrester’s most popular research reports on customer experience including “Experience-Based Differentiation,” “The Customer Experience Journey,” “Customer Experience Boosts Revenue.” In addition, I created Forrester’s Customer Experience Index that ranks more than 100 US companies and created Forrester’s “Voice Of The Customer Award.” I also created or managed the creation of many of Forrester’s customer experience evaluation methodologies and workshops.

The following posts summarize my perspective on customer experience:

My customer experience days started in earnest after I received my MBA from MIT Sloan School — when I went to work as an internal consultant at GE focused on marketing and customer service programs. My projects included reengineering the customer-facing processes at GE Power Generation and redefining a go-to-market strategy for a line of electrical gear. Those efforts highlighted to me a couple of things: 1) there’s huge opportunities to rethink how we deal with customers; and 2) success requires challenging the status-quo within firms. Those insights have guided me throughout my career.

I did a few things between GE and Forrester — including product management with Stratus Computers, building electronic channels for Fidelity Investments, and running a couple of start-ups.

Hopefully my thoughts in this blog will spur a dialogue that will help companies improve their approach to customer experience. The good news: There’s a lot of opportunity to improve!