The announcement moves the company from pure consultancy into service provider.
Last year (2018) Forrester acquired a company called FeedbackNow and its very nifty CX tracking technology. Last week Forrester announced the debut of what its calling FeedbackNow 2.0. The idea is that the platform enables companies to monitor and improve customer and employee experiences in real time.
I spoke with two of Forrester’s directors about the new platform and they’re expectations for it and got candid with them on what this announcement means for the broader marketplace. 
But first let’s talk strategy. Forrester’s intent here is give companies the ability to align everyone along the same brand “songbook”, so to speak. That idea isn’t really a new one. What is new however, is that FeedbackNow 2.0 effectively creates dialogue between the brand and the customer – and between brand and employee in real time – as it’s happening.
According to their U.S. CX Index 2019, customer experience quality remains flat with 81% majority of brand scores stagnated so that kind of brand alignment can be a very powerful thing.
“In today’s age of the customer, experiences need to be monitored and improved in real time,” said George F. Colony, Forrester’s CEO. “It’s no longer enough to survey customers and fix problems days or weeks after the fact. And today’s CX measurement tools aren’t sufficient. Companies are lacking two things: true, in-the-moment feedback and proactive, actionable guidance. That’s why Forrester developed FeedbackNow 2.0 — so that companies can listen and respond to feedback immediately and understand which CX investments will have the biggest impact on their business.”
As they describe it, “Organizations have traditionally approached CX as a standalone program, built on historical data and retrospective feedback. Subsequently, efforts to improve experience became static, siloed from the business, and slow to respond to changes in customer expectations and needs. FeedbackNow 2.0 addresses these issues by capturing real-time, relevant, and contextual feedback; overcoming the longstanding division between digital and physical experiences; and providing clear and immediate guidance on which experiences should change.”
But maybe more important than the platform announcement is the fact that it takes Forrester from pure consultancy to technology provider and in doing so, potentially shakes up an already volatile market space.
Forrester, for their part, is very circumspect on the announcement. The company already possesses and processes a huge amount of data on CX topics. By leveraging FeedbackNow 2.0, they now have the ability to activate that knowledge on behalf of a massive client base. Forrester sees it as a natural extension of their existing offerings.
Photo by Icons8 team on Unsplash.
