Forrester report: Digital CX more about understanding humans than technology

Analyst firm Forrester recently published a powerful report on Digital CX Trends, 2018 by CX analysts Andrew Hogan, Jennifer Wise, and Kelly Price. Overall, the analysts found that the digital CX gap is widening. Most companies still lack the expertise to follow through on tech aspirations, such as AI, intelligent agents, and chatbots; however, there are a few CX outliers “innovating the way forward.”

Being human remains the most important part of digital CX

The key takeaway for me was that “digital CX continues to be more about understanding human behavior and finding design talent than it is about technology.” Forrester explains that just launching an Alexa skill doesn’t improve CX, and an algorithm can actually make things worse for customers instead of better. In order to fuel this deep understanding of human behavior for CX success in 2017, Forrester found enterprises spread customer-centric innovation practices throughout the workforce, and those exceptional CX innovators focused on understanding the customer beyond the numbers.

• Nestlé’s innovation teams trained large numbers of employees throughout the firm to apply software principles of agility and human-centricity.
• Microsoft Office division democratized user testing and usability studies by training 200 of its product managers and designers in how to conduct these studies via UserTesting—allowing researchers to turn to more strategic projects.
• Amazon’s Jeff Bezos underscored this in his annual letter to shareholders: “Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys.”