The premium invitation-only event built for the most senior customer contact people from the leading industries – Customer Contact Week (CCW) Executive Exchange, was successfully held between August 12-14, 2018 at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago.
The two and a half days spent at the Exchange was an opportunity for heads of contact centers to enjoy a closed-door networking environment, allowing them to connect with their true peers and discuss market opportunities and strategies.
The CCW Executive Exchange focuses on the evolution of contact center operations. The sessions highlighted the current and future challenges in the contact center alongside many solution providers who attended.
Day One at the event started with Exchange registrations and a welcome brunch. Lance Gruner – Executive Vice President, Global Customer Care MasterCard, kick-started the day with his session – One View of the Customer – Connecting the Dots on the Customer Journey.
Gruner strongly advocated the importance of placing customer issues in the c-suite. He believes in bringing quality customer experience across all levels of clients.
Later in the day, there was an ignite challenge and included some very useful sessions. Chad Hendren, VP and GM, CX Solutions, VHT, discussed the smooth transition of customers from mobile, web and voice channel with a consistent experience.
In his session – Ending Identity Interrogation in the Call Center, Lance Hood, Chief Marketing Officer of TrustID, discussed the rise of knowledge-based authentication and the reasons it is losing importance in the current contact center space.
Julie Cardwell, Training and Quality Manager for Pacific Gas & Electric, discussed about the importance of continuous learning for the customer experience teams.
The day ended with a powerful keynote by chief experience officer at TGI Fridays – Sheriff Mityas. He discussed the key drivers behind the deployment of an always-on strategy for customer engagement.
The second day of the conference started with a keynote by Michele Watson, SVP Client Success, Indeed.com. In this, she discussed about Indeed’s mission of customer centricity. She emphasized on rising customer demand for a unified and consistent experience. She said that companies that fail to deliver on these growing expectations will soon have to shut down their businesses.
There was a master class session on – Marketing and Customer Service, a powerhouse together. It discussed how marketing and customer service can work together to build a powerhouse of customer experience.
Next, the attendees took part in an interactive round-table discussion which included sharing of ideas and best practices built around various topic of interests.
There was an interesting session led by Carla Zuniga – Allstate Insurance Company, who introduced the audience with AI powered virtual assistant. She said that a virtual assistant can help increase the accuracy of interactions with the customers. It can help in reducing duration of customer calls and enable faster access to information.
Day three:
Donald Hicks – VP of Global User Services, Twitter, opened the morning with this session on – From the Ground Up: Rebuilding the CX operations in a World with 280 – character. He emphasized on the importance of coming up with quick customer experiences to increase customer service experience from acceptable to exceptional.
The closing session was given by Teresa M. Reiger, VP, Customer Service Manager, First Merchants Banks. He discussed about building a digital bridge, to streamline operations with a platform to optimize workforce.
Apart from key sessions, the conference also had one-to-one business meetings to let industry peers sit and discuss opportunities and challenges together.
The CCW Executive Exchange was full of innovative learning which opened a door for networking opportunities. If you are interested in attending an Exchange, join us as we explore CCW Executive Exchange this December 2-4 in Miami.
