Our high-tech manufacturer client understood the importance of measuring and improving customer engagement. Through in-depth interviews, Forrester identified several challenges within our client's organization:

• It was a sales-centric organization in which data wasn't available consistently and metrics were sales-focused, not customer-focused
• Its distribution channels made data collection challenging and few initiatives were in place to collect data directly from customers
• It needed to prove the "value" of marketing and extend analytics and measurement capabilities across the organization
• Its campaign goals weren't clearly defined, and its Web properties weren't designed with measurement in mind

Our client was interested in working with an objective third party to baseline its current level of customer engagement and provide short-term recommendations and a long-term strategy.

As an independent, objective third party with a rigorous engagement methodology, Forrester offered to deliver a tailored solution following three major steps:

1. Understand and assess the existing marketing approaches and measurement criteria used within our client's organization.
2. Identify and validate potential new approaches and criteria based on best practices and research with peer firms.
3. Deliver a research-based customer engagement taxonomy that identified, described, defined necessary inputs, and identified calculation methods for specific engagement criteria.