We have been blown away by the passion and enthusiasm of the 1200-plus attendees at this year's Customer Experience Forum! I have heard especially positive feedback on the keynote presentations by Kevin Peters of Office Depot and Wayne Peacock of USAA. Our first external speaker tomorrow morning is Jim Bush of American Express. As executive vice president of world service, Jim leads the company’s global customer servicing operation. His organization includes tens of thousands of customer care professionals who provide service to more than 63 million customers. In advance of his presentation, we asked Jim a few questions about the changes he is spearheading at American Express. 

VB: How would you describe the experience that you want American Express customers to have?

JB: We want our customers to come away from their service experience, whether it’s on the phone, on the Web, or through email, recognizing that American Express truly cares about helping them resolve their issues.  It’s important to us they know that we’re committed to building relationships with them and creating a personal connection and that we view their interaction with us as much more than a rote transaction. It’s our goal that ultimately, as a result of their service experience, our customers will be willing to recommend American Express to their friends.

VB: How do you align the culture at American Express so that it’s customer-centric?

Many of our most passionate customer experience clients are at business-to-business organizations, and many of our speakers at next week’s Customer Experience Forum will be from B2B companies, including Boeing, Cisco, IBM, and Oracle. During the first day of the Forum, Jeff Harvey of SAP will be joining a mainstage panel of Chief Customer Officers.  Jeff served as SVP and Chief Customer Officer for SAP North America before being promoted into a global role for SAP AG.  In between trips to Germany, Jeff answered some questions about the experience SAP provides for its customers. 

VB:   How would you describe the experience that you want SAP customer to have?

JH:  Our mission at SAP is to help the world run better and to enable every customer be a ‘best run’ business.  The key to achieving this mission is a devout focus on customer success – one customer at a time.  We want our customers to love our software, to love the experience of partnering with SAP, and perhaps most importantly, to be able to quantify the bottom-line value they realize from our solutions.   

VB:  What are one or two of the most critical activities your organization performs that enable you to deliver a great customer experience?

Forrester is hosting its ever-popular Customer Experience Forum in New York later this month, and our amazing speaker lineup includes the multitalented David Dentry, a former professional photographer who is now a customer experience executive at Nikon. In his role as general manager, customer relations, David oversees Nikon’s website, call center, outbound email marketing programs, and CRM system. In advance of his keynote speech, David answered a few questions about how he and his team manage the customer experience at Nikon. 

VB: How would you describe the experience that you want Nikon’s customers to have?

DD: At Nikon, our customer experience strategy is actually pretty simple:

• Provide the very best customer experiences across all touchpoints, worldwide.
• Continuously capture high-value market insight.
• Keep costs under control.

People who are passionate about customer experience have a new way to get answers to their most pressing questions. Drum roll, please! Forrester has launched a new online community for customer experience professionals. The community is a forum for exchanging ideas and sharing real-world solutions to common challenges. In response to popular demand, Forrester analysts will participate in the community, facilitating discussions and sharing perspectives. 

The community is open to anyone who is responsible for improving the customer experience at his or her organization. The community provides:

• A forum for posing questions and asking advice.
• Insight from our analysts based on their research coverage areas.
• Real-world stories from peers in other companies.
• Content from Forrester and other thought leaders on emerging trends.

 Here’s how you can become part of the community:

• Ask a question about your most-pressing business challenge.
• Start a discussion on an emerging trend that is affecting your business.
• Contribute to an existing discussion thread from another community member.
• Suggest topics for upcoming Forrester research reports.
• Create a community profile.
• Share your perspective with others.

Click here to go to the community for customer experience professionals and bookmark it for easy reference. 

The Customer Experience Council is hosting its largest-ever member meeting tomorrow in New York.  During the morning session, council members will visit Manhattan-based companies for interactive experiences that illustrate best practices and address specific business challenges.  Five separate groups will be visiting the New York Times, Sachs Insights, TD Bank, Razorfish, and R/GA.  Here are some of the questions that will be addressed during these onsite visits:

• How can you use usability testing to bolster your customer experience business case?
• How do you embed social media into the customer experience?
• How do you drive customer experience innovation?
• How can you incorporate customer-centric culture into your in-branch experience?
• How do you create integrated multi-channel experiences?