Last week the USMAART team had the distinct pleasure of attending the CX Retail Symposium hosted by the Customer Experience Foundation and Keith Gait. What a day it was! The event was an invaluable opportunity to explore a range of insightful and trending topics that are currently dominating the CX landscape.

Martin Newman was the first speaker of the day who presented ‘What really matters to consumers – how to guarantee future success’. He stated that “the last best experience a consumer had becomes the expectation for future interactions not only from that company, but other companies too,”. Martin shared some of his own positive interactions with brands and how they impacted his own purchasing history. He explained, how one negative interaction with a brand who he had bought from for years, changed his whole future purchasing behaviour and destroyed his loyalty to that brand.

Martin also discussed how critical it was for employees to be engaged in the workplace in order to deliver those positive experiences to customers, saying “Only 8% of UK employees are engaged in the workplace – culture is everything,”. This statistic gave the audience a lot of food for thought.

The topic of brands becoming sustainable and aware of the impact the production of their products has is becoming increasingly important, Martin explored the area of brands with a mission of being sustainable and the impact a sustainable brand can have on a consumer stating, “66% of consumers seek eco-friendly brands and 55% would pay more for sustainable brands,”.  He summarised his presentation by saying “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates other customers,”.

This was then followed by a panel with members from Arvato Connect, Xpertrule and Vivo Bare Foot discussing ‘The need for speed: racing to meet the 0 consumer’. This was a highly insightful discussion exploring all elements of how different tech implementation can help ‘meet the 0 consumer’. The question ‘Where is tech helping with returns policies?’ was answered by Deepak from Xpertrule where he said “Customers want something seamless when it comes to returns policies. For example, asking the customer to take a photo to prove the product is damaged will require less friction in the process and less resource will be required from humans,”.

When the panel were asked what their key takeaways were from the session, Tom from Vivo Bare Foot said “Be open and honest. If you’re not an expert in a particular field, work with partners you trust and have open conversations about what you want to achieve,”.

Shamas Aziz formerly Selfridges, Ocado and Matches Fashion took to the stage next to present ‘Unveiling the Customer Service Odyssey: Past, Present and Future’. Shamas told some amazing stories about his past experiences working for Ocado and Selfridges and how he navigated the feeling of “Taking 2 steps backwards and then suddenly 5 forwards,”. He gave us the past, present and future of his career journey and shared the fact that story telling is how he won investments from multiple boards over the years, backed by good data of course. Shamas had the audience questioning whether his skills only lay in customer experience or stand-up comedy as well.

Shamas wrapped up the presentation by making a prediction about the future of customer service by stating, “I predict there will be an insane rise of the virtual connected assistant, I don’t think we are too far from Alexa for example, having deeper integrations and connections so that we no longer have to deal with the mundane, and with the time we gain back we could and should be spending it doing more of what we love,”.

Shamas then moderated a panel with Benji Stone from Digital Genuis, Ben Smith from Route 101 and Maria Madonna from All Saints on ‘Conversational Commerce: Retail AI Evolution’. This was a highly insightful debate with a lot of conversation surrounding AI. One question that Shamas asked the panel was “How do you keep human touch with the implementation of AI?” and Maria from All Saints had an excellent answer to this, “Last year, we implemented AI with the help of Digital Genuis and what this has allowed us to do is free up our internal teams time and therefore use their skill set in a better way to allow them to focus more on complex cases,”.

We then spent the next hour in a networking lunch where we had a selection of delicious dishes while also mingling with colleagues from across the industry and meeting new people. This event overall provided a fantastic platform to have enlightening discussions about the hot topics within Customer Service right now!

We returned from lunch to a wonderful presentation delivered by Marc Caulfield on ‘The Art and Science of Effective Collaboration – Leaving your Ego at the Door’. Marc spoke a lot about the neuroscience behind types of collaboration styles and the different reactions certain types of collaboration styles get. He said that collaboration in business was critical for 4 main reasons: efficiency, speed to market, teamwork and voice. Marc also made an interesting point in saying, “Relentless business pressure rarely drives good behaviour. Poor behaviour like this generally drives poor performance,”. This statement left the audience with a lot of food for thought.

There were some interesting statistics from Marc including that, “95% of our decisions are made non consciously,” meaning they are made due to certain experiences and behaviours we have learnt over time. We also learnt from Marc that it was generally softer skills such as authenticity, tolerance and reliability that made for greater collaborations. He wrapped up with a thought-provoking quote from Robin S Sharma “Addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production,”.

We then saw the first all-female panel of the day delivered by Jasmine Chattwal from Kantar with guests Kathryn Malloch and Hannah Beasant from Halfords on ‘How Halfords Achieved Record Sales Growth and NPS Performance By Transforming Their Online Experience with Kantar and UX Management’.

There were some highly insightful points shared from these ladies and some incredible statistics from the implementation of their digital transformation including achieving record sales performance on Halfords.com and a 4% increase in year on year NPS uplift. They also shared just how impactful changing the online experience had been for them as they had a 3.6% ease of checkout score uplift, simply by being able to watch customers experiences as they checkout and find exactly what it was they were struggling with, whether that be with product location or the checkout process itself.

After a short break, we settled back down for the final panel of the day, which also happened to be the second all women’s panel. This was to discuss ‘Transforming Luxury Retail: Navigating New Frontiers in Customer Experience and Technology’ with guests Chandni Bhatt, Sara Cohen and Lara Hanrahan. This was incredible opportunity to get some insights from industry leaders who had a wealth of experience in a variety of organisations.

Our key takeaways from the event and the menagerie of presentations and panels we got to watch were:

• Retailers are refining their operations by collaborating with partners and utilising data from diverse sources to anticipate future trends and make each shopping experience bespoke for the consumer. This data is enabling them to zone in on their consumers pain points and offer timely nudges and prompts during critical moments in the customer journey. The trend of collaborating with partners to uncover insights and data to then model their effects is becoming increasingly prevalent.
• AI will not replace human agents; the need for human interaction, especially in complex cases, remains essential. Instead, many retailers are incorporating conversational AI bots in IVR systems to resolve issues or efficiently route customers to the appropriate agents.
• People remain central to our operations. While digital and self-service models are crucial for delivering a great customer experience, empowered employees are indispensable for managing complex inquiries. A human agent who can engage in a friendly, informed discussion and convey the right emotions is invaluable.

We would like to thank all of the industry leaders for giving us an incredible insight in to their strategies and experiences in navigating the CX landscape through the presentations and panel discussions we got to watch, and of course The Customer Experience Foundation for enabling us all to be in the same space to collaborate and share ideas; this was truly a fantastic event and we already can’t wait for the next one!