Highlights from InMoment’s CXE 2016 European conference

Earlier this month, CX professionals from across the UK and Europe descended on Birmingham for InMoment’s annual European Customer Experience Elevated conference. Hosted at Aston University Business School, the conference attracted nearly double the number of attendees as the previous year.  They keynote session featured a senior Forrester analyst, with brand representatives from Post Office, New Look, Genting Casinos, iNTERTAIN – operators of Australian-themed bar Walkabout, Zizzi, and more also speaking. VP, Head of Customer Services and UK Country Head James Bolle looks back at some of his highlights from the conference.

“This year’s conference reflected both the rise of customer experience as a defining business strategy, and our company’s continued growth on the global stage. The calibre of CX leaders coming together to share best practices, explore innovative technologies and find new ways to elevate their own programmes was impressive. Once again we welcomed CX professionals from both the UK and Europe, and they shared best practices in customer experience in general, and in specific sectors including retail, hospitality and utilities.”

“This year we mixed things up a little and introduced roundtable sessions throughout the day. The roundtables drew fascinating parallels across all topics, and the big ‘a ha’ was the need to focus more on the stories customers share and the intelligence inside these , and less on performance scores in isolation. 

“These customer "stories" emerge by taking a holistic view of customer data, including: scores; other metrics like transaction amount, frequency, etc.; and most importantly unstructured data such as written and voice comments, social reviews and even videos. Stories tell a brand why their score is what it is, how to fix problems, and why customers value them. In fact, stories can reveal a myriad of other insights as well — from vendor underperformance to whether a marketing campaign is resonating. to what new services customers would like to see.”

 “Our keynote speakers this year brought two very different views of the customer experience. Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha, Senior Analyst at Forrester, spoke about mapping the customer journey at every touchpoint, and then monitoring those points continually to ensure a real-time, holistic understanding of the customer experience. Laura Chamberlain, Lecturer in CX & Consumer Behaviour at Aston Business School, reviewed findings in her research on consumer behaviour, highlighting the difference between habit and loyalty. Both speakers stimulated plenty of new ideas.”

“It was an honour to host such a distinguished group and we look forward to welcoming everyone back for our conference next year.”