December 2-3, 2025 l Free CX Network Webinar Series
Day One
10:00 am - 10:30 am
EST
CX by 2030: The future of human and digital experiences
Jorie Sax -
Head of Innovation lab & Advisory Board Member,
United Airlines & CX Network
Oliver Priestman - Global Head of Client Experience, Air Charter Service
As we look ahead to 2030, the focus of customer experience will shift away from any single channel or interface and towards how seamlessly brands can meet expectations across them. Personalization, speed and consistency will be key but how those experiences are delivered will depend on context. In some cases, customers will welcome tech-driven convenience and instant support. In others, especially those built on human connection, the personal touch will continue to be the ultimate differentiator.
What is clear is that trust and transparency will be critical in every interaction. CX Network research found that 38 percent of CX practitioners agreed that customer awareness of how AI uses their data was a key variable impacting planning in 2025. As technology becomes more widely adopted, brands that communicate the value of data sharing, and ensuring customers still feel seen and understood, will have the upper hand.
In this panel discussion, Jorie Sax of United Airlines and Oliver Priestman of Air Charter Service bring together two very different perspectives on what “experience” will mean by 2030. One operates in a high-volume, tech-driven environment serving the general population; the other in an ultra-personalized, relationship-based industry where every client has a dedicated point of contact. Together, they will explore how human and digital experiences can co-exist. We will explore how brands can balance efficiency with empathy, and how trust and transparency will remain central to CX success regardless of scale.
Attendees will learn:
• Why personalization and consistency will become the defining measures of CX success by 2030 whether experiences are human or AI-led.
• How industries with broad versus narrow customer bases can prepare for increasingly blended, connected experiences.
• The data challenges that brands will have to face to stay ahead of the curve and deliver superior experiences.
10:30 am - 11:00 am
EST
Harnessing the most powerful CX AI trends for 2026
Heather Hughes -
Director, Product Marketing AI Platform,
NiCE
We’re living in exciting times as CX professionals. AI innovations are driving rapid change for dramatic CX improvements. What’s coming? Agentic AI, AI agents, AI observability, and more. But how can you harness the power of these AI-first trends to cut costs, improve CX, and achieve ROI?
If you’re looking to take advantage of dramatic breakthroughs in CX AI, join this session. You’ll get a clear and practical view of the most impactful AI-first trends on our horizon and see how leading brands like Marriott and Lufthansa are achieving what we may have thought unachievable just 5 years ago.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are at an inflection point for CX, a time when everything is changing, while one thing remains constant: customers expect only the very best. Always. An AI-first approach can help you deliver the very best experiences, every time.
Attendees will learn:
- What it means to be AI-first (and it’s not AI-only!)
- What’s fueling contextually accurate real-time insights for agentic systems
- How AI agents are collapsing silos between the front and back office
- What’s capability is absolutely mandatory for C-suite buy-in
Sponsored by: NICE
11:00 am - 11:30 am
EST
From hold music to agentic AI: Reimagining customer communication
John Work -
Head of Sales Engineering EMEA,
Dialpad
Today’s customers expect immediate resolution, not just answers. In this session, learn why leading contact centres deploy agentic AI: autonomous systems that resolve issues end-to-end. Discover proven strategies, common pitfalls, and responsible practices for transforming your contact centre into a competitive advantage.
- Discover the new rules of customer service automation
- Understand the agentic advantage
- Learn how to balance innovation with risk
Sponsored by: Dialpad
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
EST
What do your customers really think? Social listening and the future of customer insights
Traditional customer feedback methods such as surveys, NPS and focus groups only capture a fraction of what customers truly feel. Increasingly, the richest insights lie in what customers are saying when they don’t know they’re being asked. The social listening market is expected to almost double by 2030, and for good reason. Social listening tools, powered by AI and advanced analytics, are opening a new window into customer sentiment and expectations. By tracking conversations across social platforms and reviews, organizations can access unfiltered feedback to spot trends early, anticipate busy and down times and respond proactively.
The future of customer insights will depend on combining social listening with traditional customer research (such as surveys) and journey analytics to create a more detailed view of CX and illuminate the path to improvement. This session will explore how leading organizations are evolving their customer insight strategies to move toward predictive, always-on customer intelligence.
Attendees will learn:
• How social listening is transforming customer research and what makes it different from traditional VoC.
• Practical examples of how to use social listening data to inform CX design and brand strategy.
• Why the future of CX insights lies in blending AI-powered listening with ethnographic research, surveys and behavioral analytics.
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm
EST
Where is AI really taking the future of CX?
Hitesh Patel -
Global Digital Director,
IHG Hotels & Resorts
Previously, software was expected to do what it says on the tin. Businesses would invest in current and evolving functionality, providing bug fixes which tended to move at a relatively slow pace across software applications. Consequently, businesses would buy applications, plug them in, build processes and people around them and let them run, with an awareness that, in many cases, ROI could take years.
That is not the case in the current AI landscape, which is constantly evolving at breakneck speed. Compute has seen a huge uplift and, as LLMs advance in reasoning, and the techniques to connect to them evolve, the design of the data corpus driving outcomes continues to be refined. To keep up, companies must adopt an innovation first, agile mindset, continuously adapting to technological changes, business models, employee roles and CX strategies. As autonomous agents and generative AI move rapidly from pilot to full roll-out, organizations are reconsidering how they serve customers and even what CX actually is in an AI-driven future.
In this session, futurist and AI leader, Hitesh Patel, will share his personal forward-looking view of how AI will continue to reshape CX. We’ll delve into key use cases such as AI agents that can disrupt contact centre delivery, the rise of avatar-driven services in technology and smarter customer interactions based on behavioral data, exploring the opportunities and ethical implications. We will discuss how business leaders can position CX functions to be adaptive, allowed to test, fail fast and ultimately strike the balance between AI efficiency and human empathy.
Attendees will learn:
- The mindset and organizational changes business leaders need to thrive in an AI-enabled future
- How AI will continue to transform the role of customer service.
- Ethical and strategic questions around data use, empathy and automation in customer interactions.
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm
EST
Emotion AI: The next frontier in personalization and customer insights
Marc Fernandez -
Cheif Strategy & Operations Officer,
Neurologyca
Customer journeys have long been mapped through data points such as transactions, clicks, and conversion rates. But numbers alone can miss the “why” behind customer behavior. The next leap forward may come from AI systems that can interpret not just emotion, but the broader human context such as how people feel, think, and respond within specific situations, enabling organizations to design journeys that are more empathetic and adaptive.
In this session, Marc Fernandez, Chief Strategy Officer at Neurologyca, will explore how Human + Context AI expands on traditional Emotion AI by combining subtle human signals such as facial expression, vocal tone, and attention patterns with contextual data to reveal the meaning behind behavior. Adding this layer of understanding to conventional analytics can change the way brands interpret intent, personalize experiences, and build trust.
Drawing from Neurologyca’s research, we’ll look at how sectors from telemedicine to entertainment and retail are applying human-aware systems to identify friction, measure engagement, and prove ROI in ways that conventional CX data cannot.
For leaders, the opportunity is to move beyond “what customers do” and start uncovering “how customers feel and why” at scale, and with privacy and ethics at the core.
Attendees will learn:
- Why emotions and context are critical for designing the next generation of customer experiences.
- How Human + Context AI complements existing CX data to create a richer, more meaningful understanding of behavior.
- The ethical guardrails and design principles needed to ensure trust as emotional and contextual data become part of CX strategy.
1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
EST
Virtual roundtable: A look to 2030 – How will AI shape the future of CX?
AI is already reshaping customer experience, but what will this look like by 2030? With AI agents in the contact center, hyper-personalization powered by deep sentiment and predictive analytics and avatar-driven support, the future of CX will be increasingly defined by how organizations design and deploy AI. As customer expectations for speed, personalization and convenience increase, leaders must consider how AI will coexist with human touchpoints. Change management, both internal and external, will be critical to ensuring smooth transitions and successful technology deployments.
This interactive roundtable will bring together CX leaders and series attendees to share predictions and strategies for building AI-enabled experiences that keep customers at the center.
What we will discuss:
- The evolution of AI agents and their role in reshaping human and machine collaboration in CX.
- How AI will enable deeper personalization, proactive engagement and predictive service by 2030 and what this means for teams and customers.
- The cultural and ethical shifts needed to embed AI responsibly into CX strategies.
