The CX Cast

Joana de Quintanilha and first-time CX Cast guest Richard Sheahan unpack the creation and impact of the Experience Room — an immersive, hands-on learning experience debuted at Forrester's CX Summit EMEA 2025. Created to be fast-paced, emotionally engaging, and highly collaborative, the Experience Room offered participants — working together as a bank team to improve the home-buying experience — a unique, interactive way to engage customers with four key CX tools.

We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit NA conference in Nashville! This year, Forrester unveiled its new Total Experience Score framework, a new measurement that connects brand and CX to deliver a more comprehensive picture of where brands stand. We spoke to some Forrester analysts at the event to discuss the research they shared and insights they gathered.

Harley Manning, longtime Forrester analyst and author of the seminal book on CX, "Outside In," takes a break from retirement to discuss the evolution of CX over the past decade. Harley dives into the foundational principles of CX, the importance of emotion in creating customer loyalty, and how CX efforts must tie into business results. Harley also shares a wealth of anecdotes that span his decades-long career as a CX thought leader.

Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer of Zurich Insurance, spearheads the drive for customer-focused transformation through AI. She highlights how Zurich is enhancing claims processing and internal communications with empathy and transparency. Conny shares insights on building strong AI capabilities, empowering employees, and using a playful approach to encourage adoption. The discussion includes measuring AI's impact on customer satisfaction and the balance between automation and ethical considerations. Tune in to learn how Zurich revolutionizes the insurance landscape!

We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit EMEA conference in London, England. This year's summit is all about the gap between brand and customer experience and between strategy and execution with a dive deep into metrics and journeys. We capture some attendee and speaker voices discussing the research shared during the event. Featuring: Multiple speakers and attendees: Hanneke Mulder (Xerox) Shawn Stanyer (Bank of Valletta) Jorissa Neutelings (ABN AMRO) Nils Schmeling (NECXT) Magdalena Suchanek (Bank Millenium) Lovette Onunuga (FIRS) Isabella Grant and Ben Cooke (UCL students) Show Notes: We come to you live this week from Forrester’s annual CX Summit EMEA conference in London, England. This year's summit is all about the gap between brand and customer experience and between strategy and execution with a dive deep into metrics and journeys. We capture some attendee and speaker voices discussing the research shared during the event. You’ll hear:  About attendees' event highlights and takeaways. What's top-of-mind for CX practitioners.   Learn more about Forrester’s CX events here. And check out Martin's post about the Experience Room to get an impression of the props and stations.

Frontier Communications emerged from bankruptcy in 2021. That bankrupcy was the result of a broken customer experience sitting on terribly broken and outdated systems. It's new CEO launched four priorities to refocus the organization: Build fiber, sell fiber, improve customer service, become operationally efficient. Frontier's Chief Customer Operations officer, Charlon McIntosh tells the CX transformation story, with winning examples of stakeholder collaboration and guerilla CX.

Angelina and Martin are joined by returning guests Maxie Schmidt and Dipanjan Chatterjee to explore the fascinating psychology and data behind consumer purchasing decisions. Drawing from their latest Forrester research, we unpack why people say they buy versus why they actually do—and how brands can use this knowledge to better serve their customers. We discuss: Why traditional surveys fall short and how to uncover real motivations How the MaxDiff method can be used to identify primary, secondary & situational purchase drivers Cross-country and category insights and the four buyer segments   To illustrate, purchase driver rankings for cosmetics and beauty and purchase driver importance for cosmetics/beauty in France are shown below. Purchase Driver Ranking In Eight Countries: Cosmetics/Beauty Purchase Driver Importance For Cosmetics/Beauty in France

Originally episode 147, this recording kicked off a theme we've continued to cover: employee CX. Show Notes: Originally episode 147, this recording kicked off a theme we've continued to cover: employee CX. VP, Principal Analyst Maxie Schmidt and former CX Cast host Sam Stern dive into how incentivizing better CX scores encourages unintended behaviors, stepping into the shoes of employees who “game the system." The lesson: design the system carefully in the first place to encourage the right behaviors for better CX. Related content: 332: How To Set CX Metrics Goals - Forrester 147: Paying Employees For CX Is A Bad Idea (Part 1) - Forrester 148: Paying Employees For CX Is A Bad Idea (Part 2) - Forrester

This week, Principal Analyst Max Ball joins to explain the history and current state of AI in the contact center. Max highlights the immediate improvements brought on by AI and outlines areas where AI still has far to go. We also touch on the challenges faced by human agents and the confusion around terminology like "agentic" and "agents."

High-Tech firms operate in fiercely competitive and price-sensitive industries, making CX a potentially transformative differentiator — if implemented effectively. Principal Analyst Su Doyle joins us to share practical CX strategies tailored for high-tech firms, emphasizing the importance of aligning CX with business objectives, leveraging customer success programs, and adopting performance-focused approaches to drive growth and improve customer relationships.