Building The Human Foundation For AI At CX Forum East

2026-06-17 · Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester · Field: Business & Management — Corporate Strategy & Leadership, Human Resources & Workforce Development, Project & Product Management · Depth: Intermediate, short

Summary

CX Forum East, held in New York City, focused on "Build The Experience AI Can't," emphasizing the critical need for a strong human foundation to ensure successful AI experiences. The event unveiled the next iteration of Forrester's Total Experience Score, now incorporating the new Employee Experience Index (EX Index™) to quantify employee experience's role in consistent brand and customer experiences. Key discussions centered on foundational building blocks for AI success: establishing trust through clear data usage and fair outcomes, developing a human-centric AI strategy, improving data quality and completeness, and fostering workforce readiness through AIQ workshops. Guest speaker Duncan Wardle encouraged expansive thinking about AI's potential to enhance human capabilities like creativity and empathy. The forum also introduced the first Future Leaders cohort, highlighting evolving perspectives in the CX discipline, and announced CX Forum West on June 29–30.

Key takeaway

For AI Product Managers and Directors of AI/ML prioritizing new initiatives, you must first establish a robust human foundation. Focus on building customer trust, refining your AI strategy, ensuring high-quality data, and preparing your workforce. Neglecting these fundamentals risks scaling existing problems and undermining AI's potential. Prioritize this foundational work to achieve distinctive and durable AI-driven experiences.

Key insights

Successful AI experiences require a strong human foundation built on trust, strategy, data, and workforce readiness.

Principles

• Experience quality drives AI success.
• AI strategy is human strategy.
• Distrust is consumers' default for AI.

In practice

• Improve data quality before scaling AI.
• Build lasting AI capability across teams.
• Align brand, customer, and employee experience.

Topics

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• AI Strategy
• Data Quality
• Workforce Readiness
• Trust in AI

Best for: Executive, Product Manager, Director of AI/ML, AI Product Manager, Consultant

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Featured Blogs - Forrester.