Chair Report

By the end of the day, the general vibe was that it worked with a feeling of ‘let’s do it again’. In between times, this is what happened.
Julian Poulter, Research Director from Gartner kicked off with a fascinating research overview of Marketing’s relationship with CX. Marketing is clearly involved in providing leadership, oversight and governance however this is undertaken in collaboration with colleagues as opposed sole ownership in the majority of cases. Given the nature of the topic, it is probably best that no single function dominates customer experience management.
That said Marketing outspends other teams by a factor of 2:1 on customer experience related investments. How that money gets spent is pretty evenly distributed amongst VoC, customer behaviour insights, persona development, journey mapping and individual improvement projects.
Jonathan Armstrong, Partner at Cordery then took to the stage to update us on GDPR. If you’ve ever seen him talk you know Jonathan is particularly good at cutting through all the fog and getting to the core issues. Given the level of interest from the audience after his presentation, I’d suggest that there is still a great deal of clarity required before marketers settle into the new regime with confidence.