This is Momentous: NOW CX is Here

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM PT

The on-demand digital economy and the higher than high standard set by companies like Amazon and Zappos have created a new kind of consumer—the NOW customer who is always on (and always online) and expects rapid resolutions and engaged interactions from brands at all times and across every touchpoint. Anything short of meeting the NOW customer in *their* moment amounts to customer neglect.

Kick off MOMENTOUS 2021 with an energizing discussion about the incredible opportunities customer service, support, marketing and eCommerce professionals have to meet customers in their moment and embrace a NOW approach to CX. This session will set the tone for the rest of the conference by detailing how brands can and should be evolving their approach to meet and exceed the expectations of the NOW Customer, with what we call NOW CX.  
 

What We Learned from Mystery Shopping 1,000+ Brands Last Year

10:00 AM - 10:45 AM PT

Simplr mystery shopped over 1,000 brands in 2020 to learn more about where brands and retailers are excelling and falling short in meeting the CX expectations of today’s NOW customer. What we found was that many companies  have costly gaps in their online CX, and that customer neglect is a problem that’s being, well, neglected by a lot of brands. . But not all brands struggled… We also found examples of exceptional CX, with a number of companies excelling with responsiveness, reliability, and relatability across multiple channels. 

In this session, you’ll get an inside look at our key findings from our 2020 mystery shop efforts and hear from CXers at brands that earned top scores for  delivering exceptional experiences for their customers. 
 

What's NOW and Next for Social Media and Customer Care

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM PT

Today’s consumer is always online, and more specifically, always on social media. They’re interacting with your company’s ads, your brand’s page, and your business’s employees. They’re also having conversations about you and your competitors (which could be good or bad). If you’re not fully engaged with what your customers are doing and saying on social media, you could be missing a significant amount of the customers looking to connect with you. 

In this session, you’ll hear from experts at the cross-section of social media and customer care to learn the most effective strategies to manage your customer community on social media, and to provide the best end-to-end customer experiences possible across every channel where your customers are ready to engage.  

Evolving Your CX KPIs for an Evolving Customer 

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM PT

NPS, CSAT, and FRT… all the traditional metrics we’re used to keeping a close eye on when evaluating the health and success of our customer experience and customer service efforts. But how do you truly quantify CX’s impact on your business? While NPS and CSAT are great leading indicators, CX teams need to be aligned with strategic business imperatives and track their success in influencing them.  

In this panel, you’ll learn from CX practitioners and CX technology leaders about how they see the future of CX measurement, and what you can be doing to implement that approach today.  
 

How To Become a Chief Customer Officer: Sponsored by CXLife

1:00 PM - 12:45 PM PT

Customer experience starts at the very first interaction a person has with your brand and spans the full lifetime of the customer. To manage that lifecycle, and to ensure the business is aligned around delivering consistently exceptional experiences to every customer, the Chief Customer Officer role was born.  

The number of Chief Customer Officers is growing every year, and the people appointed to these roles come from a variety of backgrounds: customer service, customer experience, sales, marketing, digital, and more.  

Join this session to learn from a panel of experienced Chief Customer Officers about their journey to the CCO role, from how their backgrounds and experiences influenced their career paths and  how you can chart your course to a CCO role as well.  

How We Increased Conversions and Ended Backlogs by Rethinking Our CX Model

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM PT

Two major speedbumps plague the eCommerce and retail bottom lines today: missing out on potential revenue by not converting enough site visitors, and losing customer loyalty due to significant wait times for customer support. You’re likely feeling one if not both of those pains right now. And you probably go through cycles of feeling at least one or the other throughout the year.  

In this session, you’ll hear from two customer experience managers who solved these challenges by making fundamental changes to their CX and support model. You’ll get insights on how making this shift not only increased conversions and helped to end backlogs, but allowed their businesses to be more flexible and adaptable in the NOW CX era.  
 

Which Pandemic Consumer Trends Are Here to Stay?

10:00 AM - 10:45 AM PT

Safe to say the past year was a doozy. The pandemic forced the world to think outside of conventional norms in every industry, and we’ve all had to respond, evolve, and adjust quickly in ways that pushed our limits.  

But the truth is there’s never going to be a switch that gets flipped that takes us back to the way things were. The pandemic has caused shifts in buying behavior and consumer expectations that aren’t going to change anytime soon —or ever.  In a way, the pandemic only accelerated some trends that were already in motion. And brands that don’t respond to those trends NOW, will likely be left behind, losing business to the brands who do.  

In this session, you’ll hear from our panel of speakers who are on the leading edge of eCommerce and customer experience to learn about how they’re adapting and proactively getting ahead of these trends to help accelerate growth.  
 

How to Meet the Expectations of the Gen-Z Customer

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM PT

Gen-Zers are part of the first completely digital generation who grew up expecting instant gratification. These are the consumers who have an inherent demand that their brands will provide convenience, speed, and availability across the entire experience they deliver, because that’s all they’ve ever known. 

These expectations are by no means exclusive to this generation of consumers. While these expectations have permeated every generation, Gen-Z epitomizes the type of customer that brands must ensure they understand and are equipped to engage.  

In this panel session, learn from speakers across eCommerce, marketing, and CX who will lend their voice to how brands can increase loyalty and create fans by catering to the Gen-Z consumer.  
 

Cracking the Code on Live Chat

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM PT

So many companies struggle with how to make live chat work as a viable channel for their business.Maybe you’ve heard colleagues ask, “Why is live chat important?” Maybe you’ve wondered, “How am I supposed to staff live chat?” Maybe you’ve pondered, “When should we use live chat vs. a bot?” And… you probably haven’t come up with very satisfying answers.  

Join this session to learn how you can crack the code on live chat to have faster and more personal interactions with all of your customers to reduce friction, and to increase revenue. 
 

Why CX Leadership Starts with EX: Building an Exceptional Employee Experience for All 

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM PT

It’s easy for all of us to get caught up in the day-to-day operations of our work. We all have KPIs and goals we’re trying to achieve. But we often overlook the very fabric of the CX organization, and the most important asset we have available to us: our people.  

Exceptional employee experience is not about giving employees a fancy espresso machine in the breakroom or happy hours on Thursday afternoons—it’s about cultivating an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming workplace that gives every employee a set of options that will set each of them up to achieve their full potential and drive business value.

In this session, you’ll learn from our panel of CX and EX leaders who have developed these types of environments for their employees, and who have seen the extraordinary results that follow.  
 

How CX Can Speak the Language of the C-Suite

10:00 AM - 10:45 AM PT

For every department in an organization, it’s important to ask: how do we contribute to the overall strategy and goals of the business? Especially for CX teams, you’re responsible for the most prized part of your business: your customers. Without having a fundamental alignment to the C-Suite and the objectives and metrics they care about, you’re not positioning your team or yourself as a strategic driver of your business.  

In this session, you’ll get perspectives from experienced C-Suite leaders where you’ll learn exactly what they care about, what they expect from their customer-facing teams, and how CX organizations can operate and manage their function to become a more strategic driver of revenue and growth.  
 

Reimagining the Customer Service RFP

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM PT

When you choose to get help outside your internal team for customer service, are you looking to check a box? To deliver “good enough” customer service for your brand? Or are you looking for a solution that you can be confident will leave your customers in exceptional hands, and ensure no opportunity is wasted in CX?

The truth is, the traditional RFP issued for customer service providers hasn’t been cutting it. It’s not only painful, but leads to subpar solutions based on answers that have been copied and pasted for years. It’s made for a different age of customer, and a different model than what you need to truly solve your customer service challenges.

In this session, we’ll walk you through why the traditional outsourced customer service RFP is out of touch and leads to subpar business results, how to reframe your RFP to align to your business goals, which questions to ask to ensure you get to the best solution possible, and what to look out for and be wary of in an RFP response.

The Next Evolution of the Contact Center

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM PT

It’s no secret that customer service and CX leaders are constantly frustrated by the constraints the traditional contact center model puts on their strategy. Front-line CX workers aren’t so thrilled about the model either.  

We’ve all been saddled with a contact center model that has been managed as a cost-center: built around fixed headcount, imprecise staffing and forecasting, scheduled shifts, arduous training, and operational inefficiencies which force us to make costly compromises on our customer experience, all which limit service hours, limit channels, and slow down response times. It’s also resulted in an undesirable working environment for top-tier front-line CX talent, who increasingly desire a more flexible and amenable work-life.    

But, there is a better way.  

In this session you’ll hear from experienced leaders in CX, contact centers, and workforce management to learn how the best CX teams are transforming their CX model from a rigid cost-center into one that is more flexible, allows us to actually put customers first, is more directly aligned to revenue and growth, and is ultimately necessary to evolve with the future of work.  

Fear, Growth, and Transformation with Celebrity Chef Carla Hall

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM PT

Carla Hall does…..comedy? Okay, maybe the beloved host of “The Chew” is better known for her mouth-watering Southern cooking and warm personality, but performing stand-up is only the latest in a long line of fears she has faced, simply to challenge herself.  Why? Because facing fears spurs growth and inspires transformation -- both things that have, ultimately, driven the success of this two-time “Top Chef” finalist who won over audiences to become Fan Favorite. Fear of failure threatened to keep Carla from achieving goals such as interviewing her childhood idol, Carol Burnett, or from serving the dish that won her the most praise as a “Top Chef” competitor.  But the practice of repeatedly doing things that are scary has allowed her to stockpile an array of tools which she draws from during difficult times, stimulating personal growth and professional success. Audiences will witness Carla scare herself—live—with a comedy set and learn ways to map out their own fear-facing adventures.