Join us for an interactive chat with many of CRM’s leading influencers. What is driving customers? What are leading-edge technologies? What about hype versus reality on artificial intelligence? This is an excellent opportunity to hear from the people driving the industry in an uncensored, unfiltered format. All of your questions are fair game, and will be answered to the best of our ability. Enjoy a light continental breakfast, good conversation, and the networking with top leaders in the field. This is a truly unique opportunity and conference highlight.

Conversational interfaces, or intelligent “chatbots,” are defining entirely new categories of products and services. Deep learning technologies are empowering businesses to gain critical insights from unstructured text in transcribed calls, chats, and social media. Contact centers have been early adopters of these artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Customers can seamlessly communicate across channels with automated assistants that delight customers, providing them faster and better service. AWS is making AI more accessible, available, and easy to use, enabling customers to accelerate their usage of AI in contact center workflows. Learn how AI-powered applications are providing business value by rethinking traditional applications and transforming customer experiences, and how to leverage these innovations in your workflows instantly.

This session, based on ThinkJar’s seventh customer service study, draws from more than 120 interviews of customer service practitioners to uncover the state of customer service today and where it is heading in the future. It covers what is working and not working in customer service, using qualitative findings rather than quantitative research. The session provides a framework to help attendees analyze their current setups, compare them to the larger universe of customer service practitioners, and plan for the future after digital transformation projects have been implemented.

From change management to channel management, what do CRM leaders wish they had known before they embarked on a new initiative? Drawing on hundreds of case studies of successful CRM service deployments with most of the major vendors, Wettemann explains the pitfalls to avoid, provides a checklist to manage a successful project, and shares the five key factors to ensure measurable value from your next initiative.

According to Forrester Research, nearly half of consumers already engage in automated conversations with intelligent assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. Keyboards, screens, and remote controls are being replaced by more intuitive ways of interacting with devices—most notably, voice communications. This presentation provides fresh insights into how you can use voice and AI to deliver differentiated customer experiences, streamline operations, and take advantage of new revenue streams.

Improving customer experience has become a major priority for businesses trying to differentiate themselves and create a competitive edge, but accurate and reliable customer experience metrics can be difficult to calculate. This session discusses emerging methodologies, how to set reasonable objectives, and practical insights from four real-world case studies. It identifies the current leading CX methodologies, their pros and cons, and their degree of global acceptance and discusses how the right measurement and CX strategy can increase revenue, retention, and user satisfaction.

Open to all conference attendees and Networking Pass holders, solution sessions are presented by conference sponsors. The sessions are educational, and the presentations typically focus on solving real-world problems using case study examples, with a question-and-answer period that follows. Check back for session details or follow #SmartCS on Twitter for updates.

More information coming soon.

Thanks to social media, you no longer own your brand. Your customers do. With the click of a mouse or the tap of a finger, customers can tell the world about their experiences, and strangers will use that information to make decisions about whether to buy from you. In this session, attendees learn just what customers are saying, whether social media is scaring away your customers, and how to change the stories your customers are telling.

Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce, and they are quickly becoming the most influential. As Digital Natives, they can provide valuable feedback on product design and user experience that a Traditionalist or Boomer might overlook. They can serve as reverse mentors, forcing older workers to keep their skills current. To create a Millennial-friendly workplace, there are a few things to understand first. This session examines what Millennials expect in an office, how they believe relationships between employers and employees should be structured, and how everyone can become more fluent in the languages and habits of these Digital Natives.

Compensating and incenting call center reps working in accounts receivable departments is a challenge. Basing bonuses or incentives on the reviews of a small sample of manually scored, bias-prone phone calls or over-weighting compensation on recovery sums not only leaves a large margin of error but can dilute your call objective success and even put your organization at risk of regulatory scrutiny. Speech analytics has now advanced to where it can analyze agent performance on 100% of calls to measure agent conduct and evaluate skill sets, which can then be used to drive agent compensation models. In this session, attendees learn how State Collection Service leveraged speech analytics and tied it to key performance indicators to overhaul how agents are evaluated and compensated.

According to Forrester Research, nearly half of consumers already engage in automated conversations with intelligent assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. Keyboards, screens, and remote controls are being replaced by more intuitive ways of interacting with devices—most notably, voice communications. This presentation provides fresh insights into how you can use voice and AI to deliver differentiated customer experiences, streamline operations, and take advantage of new revenue streams.

An engaged customer service team delivers double the benefits: Customer connections are deeper, and agent job satisfaction rises. Building that kind of a team requires a workplace that fosters genuine, ongoing enthusiasm. This session looks at how SaviLinx used data and metrics to develop a pay-for-performance program and is now helping its team grow personally and professionally while strengthening customer connectivity and satisfaction. Attendees learn how to develop win-win targets, not bribes; use data to align incentives with goals; build a transparent, measurable process that keeps agents engaged; and, make it work within budget while delivering a compelling ROI.

Having satisfied customers is no longer good enough to compete and sustain your business. To remain competitive and be a market leader, you have to go beyond customer satisfaction. You have to create customer advocates. Unfortunately, most organizations are missing the mark because they fail to first create an organizational framework for customer awareness. This solution-oriented session explores the strategies leaders can implement to create organizations built around delivering exceptional customer service. Attendees discover the three “Points of Connection” that impact customers emotionally and why these points are key to creating customers who are willing to recommend your company to others.