Actionable customer experience research depends not only on gathering data for focused insight but being able to access and deploy that insight efficiently and then benchmark results. Often the barriers between technology and insight have made this a daunting task, one that Forrester and Verint Systems hope to address with a partnership announced today.
The partnership is an integration between Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CX Index) methodology, benchmark data, and engagement program with Verint Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) customer experience teams to listen to, analyze, and act on structured and unstructured customer feedback captured through targeted and personalized surveys.
The surveys will allow companies to compare the success of their customer experience efforts not only among their peers but against that of effective leaders outside their own verticals as well. The result will be a single source through which organizations will be able to act on benchmark data gathered from customer-specific surveys that will be collected and analyzed by Forrester and made available through Forrester's CX Index and then embedded into and displayed from Verint's EFM deployments.
"It's difficult for companies to gain access to information about how they are doing on CX relative to competitors with respect market differentiation" says Roxie Strohmenger, vice president of the Customer Experience Index at Forrester. "This program not allows them to see where are they are on, above, or below par on those key CX metrics that customers expect to see or whether they are eliciting the right emotions, to enhance and engender more customer loyalty to the brand. Using Verint's robust platform we are empowering companies to point a flashlight exactly on key benchmarks where their focus needs to be."
The three key benchmarks used to measure customer experience quality in the Forrester CX Index are effectiveness in how an experience delivers value to customers, the ease in which customers to get value from the experience, and the emotion customers feel about their experience.
Benchmarking capabilities are at the heart of the collaboration because they will allow businesses to determine how their customer experience efforts stack up within their respective industries. This will allow them to continually fine tune and improve their customer experience programs and drive incremental value.
Forrester's CX index is deployed across 17 industries, from financial services to retail and technology, in eight global markets. Verint offers intelligence solutions internationally, primarily to Fortune 100 clients.
Brian Koma, Verint's senior vice president of product strategy, says the partnership allows his company to fulfill a need among its customers to have access to external benchmarking data.
"We were faced with the decision to make a metric ourselves or find one that would have an immediate impact. When we looked at the marketplace we felt that Forrester had the best view on how to measure CX quality with the most stringent scientific research and methodology," says Koma, who also notes that the global nature of Forrester made them an ideal partner given Verint's international focus. "The other great thing about this platform is that it incorporates traditional metrics a company may already have in place. So if you've already adopted something like [Net Promoter Score] you don't have to give it up."