Back by Popular Demand!
Derek Williams, Executive MindXchange Co-Chairman, Author and Creator of The WOW Awards, The WOW! Group

Brian Fitzpatrick, Executive MindXchange Co-Chairman, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Events Division, Frost & Sullivan

Delivering Happiness: The Zappos Customer Service Story

Jamie Naughton, Speaker of the House & Chief Culture Ambassador, Zappos.com, Inc.

Empowering your team - by giving them the power to do their job and decide on what needs to be done in assisting customers - and you will inspire a culture of happiness and satisfaction that will transfer to your customers.

Key Take-Aways:

• Insight on how to lead by building open and honest relationships
• Best practices for actively managing your culture to a set of core values
• Framework to elevate expectations and accountability at all levels

Creating Advocates:  How the Contact Centre Can Make the Difference in becoming More Efficient, Effective, and Competitive

Jason Scott Livingston, Managing Director - GM - CIS/Russia, Riot Games

Don't just improve the standing of your customer care organization within your company - turn it around!  Customer Support and engagement should be seen as an investment, not a cost.  Enterprises that focus on creating customer advocacy are winning.  By turning the perception of customer contacts from cost drivers into loyalty opportunities, customer care will take the very real difference in your organizations success and reception in the market.
 
Key Take-Aways:

• A framework for a customer care turn-around from a cost center to a loyalty driver
• Success factors and metrics to drive in order to create a successful transition plan for your care organization
• Lessons learned, pitfalls and outcomes from a successful implementation of this approach

Networking, Refreshment, and Exhibition Break
 
Solutions Showcase Hosted By: VoltDelta

ROUNDTABLE Breakout Sessions - Create, Communicate, and Connect

Participant-driven discussions focusing on your key challenges and concerns.

Choose one of the following:

RT1. Making Every Interaction Count More by Operationalising Service-to-Sales

FACILITATOR:

Audelia Boker, Director, Solution Marketing Real-Time Solutions, NICE

You do everything you can to meet customer expectations, reach the resolution point, and optimize your operational efficiency, all at the same time.  Still, there’s room for improvement.  Have you found it hard to exceed customer expectations and reach beyond the resolution point?  Well, you’re not alone.  In this interactive session, we will explore the new frontier of customer service, redefine Service at 100% and discuss challenges and best practices of managing real-time interactions to proactively connect and engage with customers, help agents sell in real-time and transform contact centers into a revenue source.

Key Take-Aways:

• Insight on connecting and getting closer to your customers
• Best practices for taking action within the context of the interaction to impact decisive moments
• Framework for continuously improving and adapting processes

RT2. Why Didn't I Think of That? 15 Great Ideas to Boost Efficiency and Effectiveness

CO-FACILITATORS:

John Broderick, Chief Executive Officer, Cicero, Inc.

Tom Aiello, Senior Vice President of Sales, Cicero, Inc.

No matter how the economy changes or what the latest trends in customer contact may be, one thing is consistent in our jobs: we are constantly being challenged to deliver better results and with less. Margins and headcounts are being squeezed, and as a result, we need to find new, creative ways to boost efficiency and effectiveness that we have not considered before.

• Lessons learned from focusing on efficiency and effectiveness
• Steps that you can take to drive efficiency and effectiveness
• Guide to selling your plan to management!

RT3. Home Based Agents Increase Experience and Decrease Total Cost of Doing Business

Facilitator:

Joe Doyle, Vice President, Global Marketing, Sitel

Home based agents are changing the way contact centres access labour, staff for seasonal peaks, and integrate specialty skills into their capability. Advances in technology are improving security and span of control commonly thought to be a barrier to taking complex processes out of the bricks-and-mortar centres. In this roundtable session discuss with your peers best practices and concepts for deploying home based agents to improve your customer experience while decreasing the operating cost of your business.

• Recommended approaches for blending home agents with centre based agents
• Ideas and case examples for decreasing operating cost
• Compare organizational approaches and structures for building a home based management team

 
Choose one of the following:
 

 
Solutions Wheel

Play the “wheel” and join a series of rapid-fire, one-on-one meetings with leading solution providers.

OR

COLLABORATION CENTRE – Delivering Legendary, Proactive Customer Care

MODERATOR:

Peter Sinden, Director of Sales and Service, LV= Liverpool Victoria

Panelists Include:

Yves-André Leroux, Customer Service Director for Residential Customers, Orange France

Rod Grainger, Head of Customer Support, Marston's Beer Company

Ruud Meijer, Manager Service, ATAG Nederland

Ashish Taneja, Senior Director - Operations, ebookers.com (Part of Orbitz Worldwide)

Don’t miss this remarkable turnaround story and the interactive panel that follows!

LV was losing 10,000 customers per month; the brand was not recognizable and it was seen as a “sleepy place.” In less than 4 years, the company transformed itself from the 12th largest to the 4th largest car insurer, skyrocketed from 1 to 17 offices, and in the process earned itself some impressive business awards.  This session will address the company’s “virtuous circle” that turned things upside down by putting people first, achieving operational excellence by focussing on the Customer.
 
Key Take-Aways:

• Framework for putting people at the heart of your business by developing their talent to deliver pro-active care
• Examples of employing lean and continuous improvement principles
• Best practices for realizing cost savings and enhanced customer loyalty, retention and satisfaction

MINDSHARE Breakout Sessions - Create, Communicate, and Connect

Participant- driven discussions focusing on your key challenges and concerns.

Choose one of the following:

MS1. Exceeding Customers Expectations in an Online World

MODERATOR:

Phil Gray, Executive Vice President, Business Development, Interactions Corporation

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

Angelique de Koning, Manager Customer Service, Sundio Group

Ene Raja, Head of Customer Service Division, G4S Eesti AS

Ashish Taneja, Senior Director - Operations, ebookers.com (Part of Orbitz Worldwide)

Ed Romson, Senior Director, Global Customer Care, Plantronics

Self-service plays a key role in contact center delivery.  However self-service often falls short in meeting the demands of today’s consumers.  Innovative companies however, are adapting their self-service strategies to meet changing consumer behaviors.  During this session we will learn about approaches innovative companies are utilizing to provide an effective self-service experience.  We also will discuss technology innovations that can positively impact the self-service experience.

Key Take-Aways:

• Insights into trends that are impacting the effectiveness or creating new opportunities for self-service
• Best practices for increasing self-service adoption through technology innovations such as natural language understanding, virtual assistants, co-browsing, knowledge bases, and social media
• Lessons learned on how to successfully introduce new self-service tools to customers

MS2. Using CSAT for Organizational Impact and Change

MODERATOR:

Charlene Kane, Customer Services Director, Monarch Airlines

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

Leticia García Vergara, International Customer Experience Manager – Global NPS Center of Excellence, E.ON

Radu Ciocan, Group Director Customer Care, Qatar Telecom

Steve Barrey, Former Head of Customer Experience, Hastings Direct

Filipa Torres, Iberian Customer Service Manager & Iberian Restructure Loans Leader, GE Money Iberia

The interactive panel will discuss the benefits that the constructive use of customer satisfaction surveys can bring to the organisation through the application of best practices learnt from feedback.  Organisations which undertake satisfaction surveys are better placed to deliver excellent customer service.  Those that learn from its findings are even stronger – or are they?

Key Take-Aways:

• Examples of best practices learned from feedback
• Framework for implementing effective CSAT surveys
• Case History of thought leadership organisations
• Insights on CSAT latest thinking

Networking, Refreshment, and Exhibition Break

Solutions Showcase Hosted By: Cicero

• Best practices for aligning social media processes with the contact centre
• Lessons learned from the trenches: Do’s and don’ts, as seen from the contact centre perspective
• The make or break success factors
• The pitfalls to watch out for
• A new perspective: Challenge the way you think about social media

 
Ask the Experts! Panel Discussion

Proven Ways to Link Customer Contact Metrics to Business Outcomes

MODERATOR:

Olivier Arnoux, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Pullman Hotels and Resorts

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

Michaela Marcham, Customer Service Manager, Blinds2go

Daniel Curzon, Head of Customer Experience, Shop Direct Group

Amanda Cochrane, Head of Operations, AXA Business Insurance

Anja Hulsenboom, Chief Customer Officer, School for Customer Management

Rebecca Rohrmann, Customer Service Manager, Europe & India, Almatis

Joanna Wcislo, Head of Customer Care, Netia SA

This esteemed panel will challenge conventional thought on best practices in resolving customer service problems, and present a more effective and efficient process for performance improvement. Panelists will also share their real world experiences in using data to improve customer experience in their own organisations.

• Keys to align with and be driven by organizational priorities
• A concrete approach to closing the gaps between where you are and where you need to be, rather than just "get better" or "improve"
• Structuring processes so that they are driven by a cause analysis (so you address the real problem and not a symptom)
• Real measurements (so you can determine how much you closed the gap)
• Ways to generating real results (rather than just activity)

Networking Reception

Meet in Hotel Lobby for Wine & Dine Departure

The networking never ends... Join your colleagues at L'Antidote Restaurant to kick back, relax, and enjoy a meal with new found friends, another great opportunity to further business relationships.

Continental Breakfast and Exhibition

Derek Williams, Executive MindXchange Co-Chairman, Author and Creator of The WOW Awards, The WOW! Group

Brian Fitzpatrick, Executive MindXchange Co-Chairman, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Events Division, Frost & Sullivan

 
Easy Does It: Serving Autonomous Customers

Dr. Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist, BT

With customers increasingly serving themselves online, how do organisations differentiate themselves in a world where loyalty is largely dead?

Key Take-Aways:

• Based on new global research into consumer behaviours, find out on what autonomous customers want from organisations in terms of their contact strategies
• What channels are being prioritised by customers now and into the future? How do social and mobile channels fit into the mix?
• Is ease of doing business the new loyalty?

 
A Contact Centre Transformational Initiative

Jonathan Reid, Head of Contact Delivery, Strategy & Planning, EE

Following the joint venture in the UK market between France Telecom & Deutsche Telecom, Everything Everywhere faced a serious challenge: To maintain its number 1 market position whilst also delivering a programme of transformation which would ensure the new company's long term profitability in one of the toughest telecoms markets in the world.

IVR was unquestionably our customers' interaction channel of choice, and therefore a key opportunity to differentiate our brand from that of our competition. IVR also offered us the ability to deliver against some of our cost saving targets through leveraging our new economies of scale.

Key Take-Aways:

• The pitfalls to be avoided when undertaking transformational initiatives
• Insight into how to successfully deliver large scale change when the landscape is constantly changing
• An appreciation of the importance of the right operating environment to let the technology flourish
• Steps you can take to develop a successful multi channel contact strategy which both reduces customer effort and leverages your existing assets

Networking, Refreshment, and Exhibition Break

THINK TANK Breakout Sessions - Create, Communicate, and Connect

Participant - driven discussions focusing on your key challenges and concerns.

Choose one of the following:

TT1. Next Gen Chat in the Contact Centre

FACILITATOR:

Philip Burton, Director, Enterprise Business, Volt Delta International

This highly interactive session will focus on the role of next generation web chat in driving successful business outcomes. Discussions will address how the web chat communications channel can help Acquire, Serve and Retain customers.

• Best practices in supporting the customer journey
• Metrics to measure success
• A roadmap for developing next gen web chat

TT2. Operationalising Multichannel Integration in the Contact Centre

FACILITATOR:

Ashif Dhanani, Vice President Marketing, Voxeo

Businesses are interacting with customers every day through many channels, like live agents, web forms, emails, and chats, but are companies delivering the same consistent customer experience through each channel? Today enterprises in all verticals are adding multiple channels of interaction to their contact centres to increase automation and improve customer satisfaction, while reducing the cost to serve.

In this interactive session, you will learn how multichannel contact centre assist agents while serving customers and improve the customer experience

• Examples on why adding multichannel capabilities increase contact center efficiency
• Best Practices for an un-siloed customer experience

 
Finding and Developing Top Level Talent Within Contact Centers

Peter McKenzie, Site Director, Barcelona Service Center, Citi
 
Contact Centres can be a great feeder of fresh talent into the rest of the organization.  Conversely they can also be areas where attrition is high and employee engagement is low.  This session will explore how to identify talent and support and coach people for success.
 
Key Take-Aways:

• Lessons learned on the importance of new supervisor and manager training - the first turn on the leadership pipeline is the most important and often most neglected
• Management vs Leadership - allowing talent to learn and develop leadership skills as well as managing via key performance indicators
• Ways to indentify talent from within your organisation - SUSO - "stand up speak out"

Radu Ciocan, Group Director Customer Care, Qatar Telecom

Customer Service oft is considered the "lost luggage" department, oft send out of the head-office in cheaper buildings or regions.  In this interactive session we will discuss best practices and innovative ideas on how to raise the profile of customer service.

Key Take-Aways:

• How to transform customer service from a call centre department to a multi-channel customer service department 
• How to transform customer service from a cost centre into a profit centre, how to rise customer service profile towards a sales channel with significant revenue generating impacts for the business
• How to transform customer service from a complaint resolution department to the "voice of the customer" department, how to raise customer service profile towards the leading department managing the overall customer experience
• How to transform the customer service from an outsourced department into an outsourcer new business
• Many, many other great ideas expected from you ….

Moderator:

Ed Romson, Senior Director, Global Customer Care, Plantronics

Customer Care Leaders are always looking for ways to continuously improve both the service we offer to our customers and the tools our agents use to deliver that high quality service.  Many of us have legacy systems that have seen better times and have not kept up with advances in technology or the changing customer environment.  In a time of economic uncertainty, radical systems changes like replacing a legacy system with the newest and greatest technology may not be possible.  What are the best practices that will get the most out of our legacy systems while responding to changing customer needs?

Key Take-Aways:

• Best practices for coping with limitations of legacy systems forced by changing customer expectations
• Ideas regarding integration between legacy systems to get more by combining features
• Best practices in System Governance of changes (who approves/changes what?) to get the most of enhancements

Networking, Refreshment, and Exhibition Break

• What is happening with today's empowered consumer?
• The pursuit of the omni-channel world - where are we?
• From mobile apps to devices - can companies keep up?

2013 European Contact Centre Benchmarks

• Insight into contact centre growth paths and evolution process
• Analysis of the convergence of mature markets, and a look into the countries and sectors with strong growth potential
• Implications of the mobility of contact centre operations, a paradigmatic case of the globalization of service work
• A look at the similarities of contact centres across countries in terms of its markets, service offerings, and organizational features
• An understanding of contact centres' unique characters, based on distinct laws, customs, institutions, and norms of countries and regions

 
Top Take Aways Panel – Weighing In on the Golden Nuggets from the 7th Annual Customer Contact 2013, Europe Executive MindXchange

MODERATOR:

Derek Williams, Author and Creator of The WOW Awards, The WOW! Group

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

Jason Stanton, Head of Designing Excellence, BSkyB

Jonathan George, Operations Director, WhiteConcierge

Participants at each Customer Contact Executive MindXchange come away with a wealth of key learnings and it can be a challenge to take it all in so during this session our panelists will highlight the most important themes, take-aways and lessons learned as a capstone for the event.