Both B2B and B2C companies are constantly exploring creative ways to differentiate products and services to deliver value for customers, consumers, suppliers, associates, and shareholders. Digital transformation has been a challenging journey for many companies as emerging digitally native companies are moving fast and taking the market share at an unprecedented pace. Hyper-personalization and disruptive technologies are at the core of this disruption but customer centricity, empathetic curiosity, failing fast by taking calculative risk, strategic change enablement, customer feedback, joint business planning and collaboration can give a competitive edge to an analog business with scale, data, and established relationships.

There is no question that trusted brands go further. Trust drives loyalty, engagement, and brand exclusivity, as well as helping to build lasting customer relationships. Whilst it has always been a hot topic, the question remains – how do we gain it, nurture it, and what are the consequences of losing it? A huge part of providing a great customer experience is making sure that CX is ongoing and focused on keeping your existing customers, rather than just attracting new ones.
Recurring customers are more valuable than new customers. Studies have found that it costs 5x as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep a new one, so it’s definitely worth putting in the effort to keep your customers happy. Loyal customers also help to increase the reputation and awareness of your brand as they’ll talk about your company and products with their friends and family. Happy customers make great (and free!) brand ambassadors and influencers. .
In order to reflect a consumer’s expectation that a brand’s product aligns with the promises the company has made, trust needs to be embedded in a company culture. According to research by Microsoft, brands that are inclusive in their marketing & consumer approach are viewed as more authentic & trustworthy.
Building authenticity into a brand’s CX means allowing the brand’s human qualities to shine through. Join this panel discussion to explore what role emotion & culture plays in the CX space, and how brands can ensure they retain that trust & authenticity to drive consumer loyalty.

Eric will discuss how early identification of good applicant behavior can help organizations offer more delightful onboarding experiences.

Customers are expecting personalization so much, it’s no longer just an option that businesses might consider. Instead, it’s fast becoming a norm, and one that’s proven to reward well. Supported by powerful marketing automation technologies and harnessing the power of data, personalization is the single most impactful CX improvement that businesses can make to see their revenues grow. This is reinforced by Slideshare (2022) - who found that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience.
And it isn't just customer support that will benefit from more personalization; the purchasing journey will, too. AI software is becoming increasingly advanced and can offer discounts based on customer profiles or times of the year, such as birthdays and holidays. Plus, by readily available data, organisations can create customer profiles and tailor experiences to suit their needs. Companies can also collect data from every step of the customer journey — via either webchat, calls, emails, social media or apps — and integrate it into future learnings.
66% of consumers expect brands to understand their individual needs (Salesforce, 2022). Ultimately, if you're not providing this level of personalization, you are losing revenue. So how do we get there?

•What does personalization mean to you in the CX space? Who is the customer and how can we actually define this? How do you develop a better understanding of your customer?
•How can you utilize personalization to increase customer loyalty and retention?
•Consumers want convenient, responsive, and personalized / contextualized interactions⁠ - what challenges are brands facing in adapting to the mobile world?
•What points during the customer journey do you see to be most critical in order to drive engagement and growth?
•How do you define what customer touchpoints are more important compared to others, in order to create an 'experience' ?
•As companies strive to put the consumer at the centre of everything they do, what are some of the insights that inform a passion-led brand strategy?
•How do you utilize consumer data in a way that's most impactful for the business and for your customers?

Customer experience is a concept that has been around for generations. Yet, organizations still struggle to master it. Research indicates that 73% of customers agree that great customer experience drives their purchasing decision AND 86% of customers say that they are ready to pay more if it means getting better customer experience. These figures are difficult to argue with.
CX is now a well-regarded and rewarding career, especially when companies integrate systems that allow for collaboration between humans and machines. Furthermore, automation is now the new normal regardless of your industry. With more micro services architecture, digital solutions, data analytics and AI, driving impactful experiences are within reach. If you don't embrace intelligent tech & automated approaches, you will likely be left behind and become irrelevant. As technology delivers more convenience to our daily lives through smart phones, virtual assistants, the Metaverse, NFTs, etc - our interactions with customers could become life changing. Take Netflix, for example – it’s no secret that its recommendations that drive our viewing experience are powered by artificial intelligence and algorithms.
Recent data reveals that 90% of companies report that they are planning to deploy AI by the end of 2022. This means that going forward into 2023, nearly 40% of all customer interactions will be automated through AI and machine learning. As technology delivers more convenience to our daily lives, virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri will continue to optimize the interactions your brand has with customers.

• How can you leverage technology to drive not only exceptional experiences but drive the growth of your business?
• How can you embrace technology like, voice, app, and chat platforms to improve the experience?
• How can you implement an automation solution that enables you to train, monitor, and manage your virtual assistant?
• Do you have a well-delivered digital channel? If not, how can consumer experience tools can help you achieve this?
• How can you make the most of an omnichannel approach when engaging with your customers?
• Where can you leverage ML and AI tools to make innovative observations about your customer's behaviour?
• What does the future look like for customer service trends, including AI, virtual agents, app-based platforms, and the metaverse?
• What are the future trends in client experiences?

Customer Experience is the most important area of differentiation for a company. While 80% of companies believe they deliver a great customer experience, only 8% of their customers feel the same. In a world of AI, automation, and new channels, what do your customers really want? In todays’ world it is imperative that the customer journey be seamless, frictionless, and engaging.
Customers are expecting these seamlessly connected experiences through an omni-channel approach , which is top of mind for many contact centres — for good reason. Leveraging your digital channels creates a significant competitive advantage. But simply being present on the channels your customers prefer isn’t enough. According to Segment research, 69% of customers want a consistent experience with a company across all physical and digital channels. Unfortunately, few companies are delivering on this desire. The key is taking a customer-centric approach and then building your strategy around your customers’ viewpoint. So how do we get there?
Furthermore, a frictionless experience comes hand in hand with a proactive approach. With statistics showing over 50% of consumers will shift to another brand if companies don't routinely anticipate their needs, there is a need for you to predict customer needs and arrest potential problems before they become major complaints. The major goal of proactive customer experience is to foresee the kind of help customers may require before they even ask.
Ultimately, CX leaders must understand their customer’s pain points and aim to deliver and exceed them. It is now vital to align touchpoints and departments internally to ensure a clear customer journey and UX.

• Define the importance of the customer journey and what does that focus mean in your organization?
• What tools can you use to create a frictionless user experience?
• What are the best approaches to understanding omnichannel customer journeys?
• How can you communicate across departments to improve UX?
• How can we ensure there is clarity in communication throughout the customer journey?
• How does this improve customer loyalty?
• How can you identify and determine repeat occurrences that impacts and hampers the customer's journey?
• What are current challenges preventing you from having a holistic view of your customer? (i.e. How do you manage, and action your data across your channels? How are you organized to successful pursue this digital transformation?)
•How has your customer journey & experience changed in the last two years, and what is the future in this space?

The buzz-term of CX is everywhere. Every industry is either talking about it, addressing it or thinking through how to make it better. But what does it really mean? What role does it play in digital transformation? Where do you start? How is this term impacting different industries? In this session, we’ll answer questions about the journey of digital transformation and the important role CX plays in that strategy.

A new era of work is here: hybrid. With a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reimagine how, when, and where we work, hybrid work has the potential to elevate agent productivity, increase agent well-being and retention, and boost overall customer satisfaction.
In order to effectively seize this new opportunity, companies will need to rethink some of the very foundations upon which their notion of work has long been built. Companies will need to rethink workplace culture, dynamics, and even workspaces themselves and the impacts it has on employees and customers.

Technology is reshaping our every day lives, including how we shop, buy, and pay. Lines are blurring between different industries and barriers to entry are getting lower. Consumers have an endless amount of choice. So the question is, how do we drive innovation in such a rapidly changing environment? What are the trends here to stay, and how do we embrace the change?

As Simon Sinek once quoted, ‘100% of customers are people, 100% of employees are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business’.
Innovation is crucial but complex, and people are the most underestimated pillar for successful tech, business and digital innovation. Technology has never offered greater potential to drive positive change; consumers aren’t just accustomed to digital experiences these days, they’re digitally savvy, whilst also wanting to align themselves with brands who match their ideals and beliefs. That leaves it up to us to meet them where they are, every step of the way. The concept of CX has been discussed and debated for many years, so why is it that so many companies still struggle to get it right every time?
Join this panel discussion to explore the importance of a customer-obsessive and human-centric approach, and how how modern innovation efforts and emerging technologies can remove friction for both customers & employees. (It is no secret that the companies with the happiest employees also have the happiest customers, proven statistically in a study by Glassdoor).
So, what is the importance of the connection between CX and EX? What steps can we take to focus on the right aspects of innovating, rather than spreading ourselves too thin? How are you keeping pace with your customers and truly understanding their key touchpoints and pain points? And the key question - how can we drive better CX by putting people at the heart of our digital transformation?

In today’s environment, organizations are being forced to reduce costs and continue to meet rising customer expectations to remain competitive. This leaves organizations to wonder whether they need to pick between the two. The truth is you can do both. In this insight break, we will look at how organizations can decrease their cost to serve AND address customer expectations for seamless service by engaging customers with easier and smarter service, empowering agents to service customers faster, and streamlining operations to resolve customer issues quickly.

Health care experiences continue to face issues with fragmentation by starting and stopping at the department level. Organizational leaders need to think through the entire customer journey and build systems and processes that will allow the company to serve customers from beginning to end. This is critical for customers to be engaged and empowered. How do we make it happen?

Outbound marketing campaign sent to you at the same time you are complaining about a defective product or other issue from the same company? Call in to respond to email notification of issue to have to repeat and explain it all to the system and/or a human?
Too often silos between channels as well as proactive and reactive systems significantly impact the ability to provide an optimal customer experience. Create significant overhead to build and support and provide disjointed customer experiences.
The current standard for many companies is to support omni-channel experiences and proactive communication systems that are independent of each other without intelligence and context.
What is emerging as the new standard is the ability for customers to switch seamlessly between channels during their customer journey with the expectation of awareness to pick up where they left off as well and the intelligence surfaced to them to avoid issues, they were not aware of.
As intelligence and real-time data options powered by AI and ML continue to evolve to support real-time personalization the importance of integration of proactive AND reactive experiences to be aware of customer preferences, behaviors, macro and micro trends are critical to keep pace.
Aaron Davis, VP Expedia Group will share his experiences in Servicing and Communications of why these patterns are critical and what the future can look like for customers and companies when this is done effectively.