Sustainability should be a critical part of any company’s long-term customer strategy. Sustainability builds trust, loyalty and helps move clients from being buyers to being part of a community of like-minded customers who believe in your brand. Beyond this, sustainability is a key part of good corporate responsibility and, quite simply, is the right thing to do. Additionally, Gen Z are heavily focused around sustainability issues, so companies who don’t pay attention to this fundamental issue through their customer interactions run the very real risk of being left behind in the long run.

However, the long-term view of sustainability can mean making tough short-term decisions. These have the potential to impact the more immediate customer experience – and can, therefore have a detrimental effect on the metrics by which good CX is measured

This discussion will consider how to balance the two – sometimes competing – requirements, and reflect on:

• How can CX support & amplify your businesses' sustainability efforts, and what are the common challenges faced by CX when offering this support?
• How can a focus on sustainability and embracing the ideas of a circular economy help shape and evolve marketing / retail initiatives?
• How can a focus on storytelling ensure sustainable activities be positioned as beneficial for customers? What are the practical steps you can take to explain your actions to your customers, and how can you do so whilst avoiding the concerns over greenwashing (both legally and at a customer level)?

Dmitry Olerinskiy

Digital Strategy Programme Director
Decathlon

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Cindy Soo

Director, Global Innovation & New Business Design
IKEA

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In a world where customer experience and service strategies are constantly scrutinized for ROI and value for money, identifying where costs can potentially be saved is a key area of concern for leaders in this space. Consider automation of key services is one option to do more with less, but when there are potential periods of change on the horizon, using outsourcing to manage this uncertainty is also worth reviewing.

In this expert presentation, we will consider what you need to do when considering whether outsourcing elements of your customer service activity is worth considering – what benefits this may have for contact centre and customer service groups, where this can help you be flexible to adapt to market changes / fluctuating requirement levels, and how can you ensure service levels stay consistent while navigating change

When managing all areas of customer interaction, customer and brand experience can remain constant. You maintain control of almost all aspects of this interaction, and as such, you control the way you are perceived by your customers.

However, many brands work with third-party retailers who are outside of their ecosystem, meaning the level of control over brand and customer interaction can be limited; in a world where the delivery of a brand promise is ever-more critical, this session will explore the critical questions of how you can maintain a degree of control here, whilst still allowing partners to manage their own business processes. We will discuss:

• How can you find the right ongoing balance with third-party partnerships – trusting a cultural fit vs. the need for tight controls
• What tools are available for you to keep a check on how the partnership is progressing, and what action would you potentially take when things are not perfect?
• How can data help with the assessment of partnership success, beyond pure sales figures, and who do you share this with (internally and externally)?

Rufus Weston

Retail Data and Insight Expert
Independant

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While the concept of brand is still a critical focus for the retail sector, could the era of brand being the most important differentiator in customer purchases be coming to an end? Now there are a myriad of different ways to determine the value of a product or service, brand alone is not enough, and focus is shifting instead to product quality and development.

However, whilst the influence of brand may be changing due to a greater degree of choice and information, the power of storytelling shows no sign of waning – brand storytelling can still enhance an existing quality product and plays a very different role in the realm of CX. With this in mind the panel will consider:

• What role does brand play now, and how critical is it in today’s world of online reviews and shared information?
• How vital is it that your brand storytelling is aligned with the real-life customer experience and what is available to the customer in practice? How can you ensure this is the case?
• How can CX and brand work with product teams in the development phase, to ensure all aspects are aligned?

Katalin Fritz

Chief Customer & People Officer
Marley Spoon

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Giovanna Questioni

Chief Customer Officer / Chief Transformation Officer
Independent

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In this session, Jad Freiha will share insights from his journey of leveraging AI as a transformative force in customer experience. He'll demonstrate how adopting both structured and exploratory approaches to AI has uncovered unexpected opportunities for CX innovation.

Jad will present a case study on merging qualitative customer feedback with quantitative data to enable advanced personalization strategies that go beyond traditional segmentation. He'll illustrate how AI applications across digital and physical retail touchpoints provide deeper customer insights and enable more tailored experiences.

This session will explore:

• How an exploratory mindset toward AI uncovers CX opportunities that traditional approaches might miss
• How AI-driven feedback analysis is shaping hyper-personalised CX strategies
• Practical use cases of in-store AI to optimise customer engagement and experience
• Strategies for building an AI-ready culture

Jad Freiha

Head of Analytics & Insights
Sweaty Betty

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In recent years, expectations of customers of retail businesses have changed dramatically. Post-COVID, the in-store experience expected of many brands has been akin to that of a social event – whilst online retail demands have been for a much more practical, personalised and frictionless interaction. Likewise, in the digital space, whilst customers want a hyper-personalised omni-channel experience, data protection laws prohibit much of the use of data to make this possible.  

This is something of a perfect storm; balancing these challenging – and increasingly divergent - expectations is difficult enough, but this is against the backdrop of customers limiting their spending due to a more challenging economic environment. Andre Luis Rebelato Filomeno will give an insight into how Flying Tiger have tried to apply their learnings of recent past to enhance both online and in-store experiences across their business.

Andre Filomeno

Senior Vice President of Customer & Digital
Flying Tiger Copenhagen

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Giovanna Questioni

Chief Customer Officer / Chief Transformation Officer
Independent

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Technology can offer amazing opportunities to the world of CX. Not only does this offer the potential to deliver quicker and more effective customer solutions to simple issues, but it can also allow the CX group to move away from low-value tasks and concentrate, instead, on the activities with which they can make a greater impact.

However, customers are not a single, homogeneous, group, and all have different needs in terms of their interaction. For example, Gen Z has a heavy focus on both self-service and automated responses, members of other generations value human connection and shy away from chatbots and the like when interacting with customer contact centers.

This session will explore the importance of creating an approach which can be applied to all types of customers whilst also offering practical guidance on how to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to a genuinely all-encompassing CX strategy.

Cindy Soo

Director, Global Innovation & New Business Design
IKEA

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