Although the Manhattan weather was grey and drizzly, bright discussion abounded late last month inside the Hyatt Grand Hotel, where I got the chance to attend the 2009 Forrester Customer Experience Forum.

I’ve whittled a week of great insights down to a few top takeaways about the state of customer experience today.

• The pendulum is swinging. The correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty has always been high, but has increased in recent months. Studies show that consumers crave human connection now more than ever. Companies who treat their customers like just a number may not realize that it is reflected, somewhat ironically, in their numbers. Bruce Tempkin, Vice President at Forrester, shared this slide, which shows the jaw-dropping revenue potential that modest customer experience improvements could bring to a $10 billion company.*

• You do know who I am, right? Smart companies realize that consolidated customer interaction data across all touch-points (phone number, e-mail address, physical address) is necessary to provide convenience and personalization that tomorrow’s customers will expect.
• Heed the voice of the consumer. Companies who think they already know what their customers need are often sorely mistaken. And there is a growing variety of ways to uncover your customer’s unmet needs. Popular “listening posts” include call center data, sales reps, user surveys, usability tests, and error reports, but monitoring the social web introduces new listening opportunities. David Cush, CEO of Virgin America reported that customers who tweet from the air about bad experiences are often met at the gate by representatives empowered to resolve the situation. Follow @VirginAmerica to see Virgin’s Twitter account in action.
• Authenticity precedes love. Just like in the dating world, pretending to be who you think your prospect wants you to be is a big, fat turnoff. Only through identifying exactly who your organization actually is and being true to that identity can your company create authentic connections, which are rare and highly desired by the consumer.
• What’s rewarded is accomplished. Achieving a better customer experience requires a clear shared vision and accountability throughout the organization. Hiring mechanisms that help the company identify the most passionate, engaged employees is one part of achieving this. Setting project metrics and employee goals around customer experience are also great ways to cultivate internal ownership. T. Michael Roberts successfully lobbied to get new deliverables into required project documentation at JP Morgan so that the customer experience is better protected as new initiatives roll out. He also requires his employees to put in time monthly to listen to customer service calls. After all, he says, every service call reflects an unmet customer need.

A big thanks Forrester for an insightful week in NY.

See pictures from the event on Flickr.

*Prediction based on data from the North American Technographics® Customer Experience Online Survey conducted in Q4 2008.