The data foundation for AI ROI
15 - 16 September 2026
| Free CX Network Webinar Series
15th September, 2026
10:00 am - 10:30 am
Panel | The AI revolution in customer insights - and what this means for CX teams
There is a tension in the CX and insights market. CX Network found that agentic AI and AI agents are the second most impactful trend in 2026 (behind only AI for operations). The potential for AI to transform insights is clear, with several high-profile case studies of forward-thinking organizations leveraging combining operational and behavioral data with different types of AI to massively increase efficiency and proactivity in CX. Use cases around experimentation and turning insights into action automatically have so far been impressive. Advances in AI and synthetic data technology is allowing teams to do more research, faster, while avoiding security risks, while agentic systems are using the insights generated by teams to improve predictions and carry out proactive service.
Yet, Gartner found that over 40 percent of agentic AI projects are forecast to be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to unforeseen costs, unclear value and increasing security concerns. Businesses remain wary of sharing data with solutions providers due to uncertainty in the vendor market, and customers hold an ever-tighter grip on their personal data, not wanting it to be used for marketing or training AI. Questions have arisen around data ownership and governance, insight volumes versus action taken, and surveys versus signals. There remains a skills gap, with CX Network research finding that a need to upskill teams is the biggest predicted change that AI will bring to organizations.
Our opening panel discussion will explore this apparent dichotomy and look at what this means for the role of CX and insights teams. We'll delve into how tech can be leveraged to uncover the "why" behind the sentiment scoring and surveys, and democratize insights throughout the organization. We'll take a practical view on how CX and insights leaders can navigate the evolving VOC and AI tech landscapes, and keep up with shifting expectations in the boardroom.
Attendees will learn:
- What is truly driving the gap between AI hype and AI results in insight, and how to know what skills and tools to invest in to keep up with shifting expectations.
- Navigating the AI and VOC solutions landscape and evaluating security and longevity concerns.
- Understanding where insights can modernize for the better, and how to make the most out of ever-increasing volumes of customer data.
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Masterclass | Why unified customer data is the most important AI investment
While AI adoption is widespread, AI value is still rare, with nearly two-thirds of enterprises having experimented with agentic AI but less than 10 percent having scaled to deliver tangible value, according to McKinsey. AI agents need complete, real-time customer profiles to be impactful. AI-ready data is aligned to specific use cases and actively governed with continuous quality assurance. Companies find themselves bottlenecked not by models but by data, after years of building data infrastructure channel by channel and function by function. The differentiator now is: does customer, operational and behavioral data sit in one governed, accessible place? Data unification, in this sense, is the essential precondition for successful AI deployment.
In this session, we'll explain why data unification is an essential prerequisite for AI deployment, what it actually takes to do so, and the consequences of skipping this step. We'll look at realistic timelines for unification and walk through the process step-by-step. By the end of the session, attendees will be set up to begin their AI implementation journeys at the most critical starting point.
Attendees will learn:
- What does unified customer data look like in practice, and where can you get started?
- Why unified data is an essential pre-requisite for AI deployment, and what can happen without it.
- Who should own data unification and why is it relevant for CX.
11:00 am - 11:30 am
Unlocking scale in customer insights with agentic twins: The future of customer insights
Deep customer insights direct business and customer strategy and illuminate areas for CX improvement and investment. But there's a problem. Insights teams are typically stretched, without the time required for true deep diving into huge quantities of customer data.
Agentic twins are emerging as a solution to this. The technology leverages AI and data from consenting individuals representing distinct demographics and enabling busy insights teams to access detailed insights in real time and to run extensive tests – at scale, quickly. While a traditional insights team might run a few hundred tests in a six-month period, one using agentic twins can run several thousand.
In this session, we'll introduce agentic twins, uncovering how insights and CX teams can leverage this emerging tech to massively increase efficiency and productivity and amplify customer voices, especially those in harder-to-reach populations.
Attendees will learn:
- What are agentic twins, how do they work and where is their value for CX teams.
- Key use cases and success stories from early adopters.
- How agentic twins protect consumer trust and enable more agility in CX strategy.
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
The next evolution in VOC: CX orchestration for real-time decision making
CX Horizons found that over half of practitioners say ROI pressure is increasing; Teams that connect customer feedback to measurable business outcomes justify their cost and work, teams that are focused on reporting only do not. VOC as a discipline is facing a shift in expectations from reactive to proactive. Static reporting via ubiquitous dashboards is no longer good enough, and more is required of CX and VOC teams (and platforms). Access to real-time data that can be harnessed in predictive modelling is increasingly a base expectation, and the days of waiting for customers to reach out before acting are gradually coming to an end.
CX orchestration layers, that go further than dashboard reporting to proactively recommend, route, and execute, emerge as a way for teams to make a deeper impact. An orchestration engine can anticipate customer issues before they arrive based on previous data, and intervene proactively. In practice, this looks like conversational analytics, intent mining, embedded decisioning and agentic issue resolution. In this session, we'll explain how to move beyond dashboards towards proactive CX based on an orchestration layer. We'll look at how to make the most of VOC data and prove ROI to the C-level.
Attendees will learn:
- How CX and insights teams can leverage the orchestration layer to maximize value and ensure VOC data leads to measurable outcomes.
- Measuring the outcomes of VOC research and proving ROI to the C-suite.
- How an agentic orchestration layer works in practice, and change management during implementation.
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
The ROI of UX and CX, and the business value of user-centred design
Paul Weaver -
VP, Digital Design,
Hyatt Hotels
For all the talk of customer-centricity, proving that investment in CX and UX actually pays off remains one of the hardest parts of the job, as uncovered by CX Network's CX Horizons: The State of CX 2026 report, in which 52 percent of practitioners reported that pressure to prove ROI is increasing. Even as many organizations are pouring money into new tech, many still treat user experience as merely cosmetic rather than a key driver of conversion and retention – and therefore of revenue. This can leave practitioners defending every design decision to stakeholders who are only interested in the numbers. The result is that teams can end up scaling the wrong thing before its been validated, and experience can stagnate.
In this session, Paul Weaver, VP of Design at Hyatt Hotels Corporation will reframe UX and CX as a discipline for understanding customers and validating ideas before investing in delivery. He'll draw on cautionary tales and real-world case studies to show the true value of user-centred design, and what it looks like when its measured in commercial outcomes rather than aesthetics.
Attendees will learn:
- How to quantify the cost of getting CX and UX wrong, and the value of validating early.
- How to connect design maturity to meaurable business outcomes, using Hyatt's journey as the model.
- How to translate user research into the operational and revenue metrics leaders will act on.
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
Turning customer journey maps into a living source of insight
While many organizations may know how to map a journey, not many keep those maps alive once they've been drawn. As Louise Williams, Customer Lifecycle Management Lead at Lloyd's Bank says, many teams "map it, put it in a drawer and forget about it". True value, however, comes from treating journey management as a circular and ongoing process, layering key metrics and insights to expose pain points and regularly reviewing to monitor progress.
Williams is building this capability at Lloyds Banking Group on an unusually large scale, encompassing all of the brands under the umbrella and across every product. A key part of keeping maps genuinely live is measurement, and in this session, Williams will share the framework and metrics she uses, and how metrics are agreed upon among disparate teams and for individual products. She'll explain how to combine experience, behavior, value and inclusivity to guide the most effective journey measurement and mapping.
Attendees will learn:
- How to move from one-off journey mapping to a live management loop, keeping maps current and tied to delivery.
- How to build a measurement framework that balances cross- and individual- journey metrics to prove the effectiveness of CX design.
- Implementing journey management and live maps at scale across multiple brands and product lines.
