Nearly 60% of CX decision-makers say that improving customer experience (CX) is the top priority for their organization’s executives, but that doesn’t mean they have to – or choose to – go it alone. In The Customer Experience Strategy Consulting Services Landscape, Q2 2024, Forrester identified 31 firms that are helping businesses diagnose customer problems, develop a plan to solve those issues, and build the infrastructure needed to execute a CX transformation.
What’s included in this report: The Landscape lists three core business scenarios and seven extended business scenarios. These cover the most common and critical services offered by CX strategy consultancies, and they’re underpinned by 15 capabilities. The three core business scenarios are vision and strategy setting, business assessment/analysis, and customer research. Extended business scenarios include things like culture transformation, CX measurement, and prioritization and roadmapping. There’s also a section of the report that provides advice for working with these providers.
What’s not included in this report: We removed from consideration any firms that focus primarily or solely on CX in a digital context (or – worse still, that conflate CX and DX). Why? Forrester defines CX as customers’ perceptions of their interactions with a brand, and not all those interactions will be via a screen. Consultancies that view customer experience through the narrow lens of digital can’t provide support that matches our definition. This would have become painfully obvious when clients reviewed the tables that show the business scenarios each firm supports or prioritizes in their engagements.
What’s changing: We’ve seen a continuation of the market incursion by traditional agencies that we originally noted in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Experience Strategy Consulting, Q4 2022. That said, as much as digitally-oriented consultancies were left off our list due to their limited scope, agencies that focus primarily on marketing, branding, and content development were also excluded. The list of firms positioning themselves as CX strategy consultancies continues to grow, but only firms that have CX strategy as a “major” made the cut.
What’s next: This Landscape is the precursor to our next Forrester Wave™ for this market, scheduled to kick off in late July 2024 and publish in late November 2024. That research will provide detailed ratings for the top providers in this market, as well as profiles that describe each service’s vision and offering.
What to do about all of this: If you’re a Forrester client who’s in the market for a consultancy to help your organization with a CX strategy or transformation, read the report and then schedule a guidance session or inquiry to explore any additional questions. If you’re a Forrester client at a consultancy and you’re trying to understand the market better, please schedule an inquiry or reach out to your Forrester sales partner to ask about advisory.
