Customer Engagement Transformation Conference 2018

Another conference in the bag. The topic was the transformation of customer engagement. This one
seemed to not only satisfy but also delight. Clearly organisations are starting to do a great job. As usual, it was my pleasure to co-chair the event. I focussed on the plenary sessions and Hall One. This is what went down.
Andy Bryan from Henley Business School offered us a handy definition of the conference topic to get things started.
“Customer Engagement is an interaction between an individual and an organisation or brand. Experience can be passive but engagement is active and bi-lateral”
He went on to focus on our inherent aversion to making decisions as consumers (‘cognitive misers’) with retail studies showing fewer choices can drive greater revenues. This often quoted insight does make me wonder though why Amazon then manages to do so well with the largest online inventory of all!
Next up was the wonderful Jyllene Miller, SVP of Marketing and Client Engagement Strategy at Concentrix. She had a simple tale to tell. If you don’t listen to what your customers are saying, you have a short future in today’s world.
Her featured client was in high street fashion. The engagement channel was social. The complaints were legion across many categories. Concentrix helped them listen, act and improve. And guess what? Negative sentiment was halved, customer service responsiveness improved massively. Lesson? Even the laggards are learning!
The Wall Street Journal began in 1935. Since then they have grown at around 30%, plus or minus the occasional plateau. However, growth since 2017 has a different trajectory. Positively turbo charged in fact. The secret lies in their growing competency in personalised campaigns and content and the killer
combination of offers that generates effective engagement. It’s all down to getting their data in shape and learning the power of predictive analytics. This is a lesson the rest of us need to learn fast or risk being left behind.