The Best Yet

Customer Engagement Summit 2018 was the best yet. Great insight and networking, now extended over one and a half days. The central theme was the importance of the human touch in our increasingly automated world and how the human and digital workforces compliment each other.
Day one began with motivational speaker Gavin Ingham who got everyone in the right mindset focusing us on being the very best version of who we can be.
M&S shared their progress using chatbots to cover high volume, low complexity interactions and in the process helped generate £2m in sales. If you google for more info, pretty much every headline screams M&S replaces call centre staff with bots. Yet the message on stage was much more nuanced. They are part of an integrated workforce not a replacement.
Claire Sporton from Confirmit then took to the stage with some new insights into effective CX leadership habits which covered CX goals (make them business focused), innovation (be agile) and listening (add more stakeholder voices to widen your insight).
Tim Arthur, Creative Director, Virgin Money then explained why the Virgin DNA is so formidable in terms of being a brand that people find easy to love. It’s the welltimed gifts and acts of random kindness that remain anchored as emotive memories in customers’ minds. For instance, many of their customer lounges have bowling lanes to make it easy and affordable for kids birthdays. Give some to get some as they say.
Benjamin Rand and Anna Hagen from Olympus shared their story of an increasingly common theme. Product excellence in a digital economy is not enough. It’s the experience that matters and differentiates.