Rockstar Insights:

Freddie Berberena
Senior Director, Service Center Strategy and Operations
Empyrean Benefit Solutions, Inc.
Customer Engagement Leadership Council Member
 
Why You Should Listen to Freddie:
Recognized as an expert in the area of Operational Process Improvement, Freddie has spent his career focusing on the customer experience by improving how internal teams function and interact with each other. This has led to a diverse career working in areas from Product Development to IT and Operations at companies large and small from UnitedHealth Group to Bloom Health ultimately landing at Empyrean Benefit Solutions.

Key Take-Aways:

• Practical approach to develop a CX strategy that aligns with your vision
• Methodology to create organizational capabilities that aligns with the strategy
• Essential components to lead a CX function for sustained performance

Headliner:

Vinod Varma
Senior Vice President, Patient Experience and Service Operations
Oak Street Health
 
Why You Should Listen to Vinod:
Vin is a customer experience and operations leader with a track record of driving transformational results across industries. He is passionate about integrating human centered design with technology and operations to create world class customer experiences. His current responsibilities include leading patient experience and service operations across channels for Oak St. Health.

Key Take-Aways:

• The key data sources beyond sales that give insight into your customers: behavior, intent, and sentiment
• A practical framework to integrate multiple data sources and generate actionable information
• Getting stakeholder buy-in on a customer-centered experience engine and responding in real time to what it’s telling you.

Rockstar Insights:

Waseem Kawaf
Global Vice President of Digital Experience
STANLEY Security
 
Why You Should Listen to Waseem:
Waseem has spent his career thinking about how the marketing tech stack can bring businesses closer to their customers. Over the last 2+ years as VP of Global Digital Experience at STANLEY Security, he has ideated and built a structured CX process that has delivered tangible business results and fostered positive, customer-focused change across the organization.

Abstract:
Customer experience is a journey — and no matter how far along you think you are, your customers expect you to be farther. Recent research shows the gaps between consumers’ and companies’ priorities, as well as how CX leaders close them; for example, 90% of leaders use AI to understand pain points in the customer journey. What actions can you take to optimize CX? This discussion will illuminate your path forward.

Key Take-Aways:

• Framework to close gaps between consumers’ and companies’ priorities to improve satisfaction and lifetime value — and build internal momentum for CX
• Insights on collaborating cross-functionally to deliver cohesive, fluid
  customer experiences
• Best practices for aligning CX metrics and strategy with business goals and
  customer expectations

Fab Facilitator:

Ginger Conlon
Thought Leadership Director
Genesys
 

Why You Should Listen to Ginger:
An award winning editorial leader, Ginger is currently thought leadership director at Genesys, where she co-creates expansive research led reports on customer experience. In her prior roles as chief editor of Direct Marketing News, 1to1, and CRM magazines, she set the editorial vision and strategy, which led to increased readership, reader engagement, and revenue.

Abstract:
Service used to mean the business and agent had all the control. By 2025, customers will drive all service, it will totally be on their terms. When you have the right insight from the right data AND at the right time, this is when you can give a customer a truly personalized, incredible experience. Join this interactive discussion for insights into what the future of CX will look like and to ensure your CX strategy is set up for long term success.

Key Take-Aways:

• Best practices to ensure CX strategy and investments align with future trends
• Understand the shift from traditional, transactional service interactions to those that are more conversational
• Blueprint to drive business growth with AI, automation,
  and conversational service
• Framework to use the right data to deliver a truly personalized
  customer experience

Fab Facilitator:

Ryan Smith
Senior Manager, Sales Consulting
Zendesk
 

Why You Should Listen to Ryan:
A data, and process-driven leader, Ryan has spent 20 years implementing and designing solutions for Fortune 100 companies striving to provide the best possible service to their customers with ROI-driven outcomes. In his current role leading Enterprise Solutions for the Central US, he is focused on digital-first initiatives driving richer engagement and new revenue opportunities for his clients.

Abstract:
Getting past “So what?” can be the difference between success and failure for a CX program. In a business environment where resources and attention are scarce, you need to be able to connect customer experience metrics with business goals and show impact.

Key Take-Aways:

• Fresh perspectives and insights from your peers about how to make the connection between improved CX metrics and business outcomes
• Analytic methods to prove the link between customer experience and profitability
• Lessons learned about what worked—or didn’t work—to persuade skeptical stakeholders

Fab Facilitator:

Peter Leppik
Assistant Vice President, Voice of the Customer
U.S. Bank
 

Why You Should Listen to Peter:
As a Customer Experience leader with over 20 years experience, Peter brings a scientific approach to solving business problems, and helps people, process, and technology work together. In his current role at U.S. Bank, he leads the Contact Center Voice of the Customer program and the Customer Value Tracking initiative.

Abstract:
The pandemic has sped up the use of data and changed customer expectations. Data has allowed companies to know their customers beyond previous abilities.

Key Take-Aways:

• Insight on maximizing the power of customer data to drive profitable business growth
• Best practices to incubate and cultivate a culture of data-driven decision-making
• Framework to leverage AI, ML and NLP for customization

Fab Facilitator:

Stacey Dove
Senior Vice President of Customer Experience
UnitedHealth Group
 

Why You Should Listen to Stacey:
Stacey has a relentless passion to improve customer experience across the largest health care enterprise in the U.S. She believes that we all need to do better and be better in the healthcare space; customers are demanding it, begging for it. In her free time, Stacey hosts the Optum podcast, “Until It’s Fixed”, focusing on pressing health care topics in the U.S. She’s also a mom of four teenagers and a basketball coach.

Abstract:
Connecting the enterprise with your customers’ experience can be challenging; building and keeping a tight ecosystem with employees in marketing, sales, service, and technology teams is the key. In this session, hear from executives that have learned to identify and prioritize CX needs across the organization, by breaking down silos and engaging employees to drive quality customer experiences.

Key Take-Aways:

• Benchmark your organization’s strategy for a cross-departmental omnichannel experience
• Framework to establish clear success measures that demonstrate ROI through your brand experience ROI
• Tactics to build buy-in and partnership across your organization

Moderator:

Erin McMillan
Associate Vice President Client Operations
Cox Automotive
 

Why You Should Listen to Erin:
Erin leads a diverse team with equally diverse functions spanning order fulfillment, customer care, even graphic design. Since joining the organization in 2002 as a Customer Support Rep, Erin has been focused on developing strong leaders and engaged employees that can deliver the ultimate customer experience.

Panelists Include:

Christina Baune
Director of Digital Product
Sleep Number Corporation
 

Why You Should Listen to Christina:
Christina’s work focuses on Digital Product Management and strategic communication-and everything in between as it relates to solving customer problems. When she isn’t building PowerPoint slides in her head, she can be found enjoying the sunshine with her daughter Alyssa (17), son Niklas (14), and husband Dan, and their dog Kody.

 
Patrick Forsland
Senior Director, Guest Experience
Minnesota Twins Baseball Club
 

Why You Should Listen to Patrick:
Patrick has worked in Customer Service for the Minnesota Twins for 24 years. For the first 11 years of his career, he worked as part of the Ticket Operations department, managing the Twins Call Center and developing and supervising an Inside Sales program. Patrick’s current role as head of the Twins Guest Services department was created with the opening of Target Field in 2010.

 
Stacy McGranor
Customer Experience Program Director
San Jose Sharks
 

Why You Should Listen to Stacy:
Part artist, part scientist, Stacy continues to fuel her passion for sports, entertainment, and their consumers by serving as the voice of the customer and overseeing all qualitative and quantitative research efforts for the Sharks Sports & Entertainment properties, including the San Jose Sharks, San Jose Barracuda, SAP Center at San Jose, and the Sharks Ice Family of Rinks.

 
Erik Wakefield
Vice President Customer Experience
Flagstar Bank
 

Why You Should Listen to Erik:
With expertise in multiple industries and disciplines, Erik isn’t thriving unless he is tackling thorny, ambiguous challenges and supporting the development of his fellow team members in the process. He believes in a humanized, data-driven approach to drive profitability through customer loyalty and that innovation is only successful with robust change management.

Abstract:
All too often it is the CUSTOMER who is left out of the Customer Experience process. How might we explore best practices for keeping the voice of the customer at the center of everything we do, using familiar Design Thinking techniques in new ways.

Key Take-Aways:

• Simple tools for everyday use
• Best practices for rapid testing
• Making the process fun

Rockstar Insights:

Cal Austin
Innovative Customer Experience Lead – Emerging Markets
Pfizer
 

Why You Should Listen to Cal:
The common thread throughout Cal’s career has been a focus on creative problem solving. Using Design Thinking, Agile, Open Space Technology, Gallup StrengthsFinder, and other tools, he has helped teams find solutions to their most challenging business pursuits while improving the Customer Experience.

Abstract:
In their efforts to build high performing teams, most organizations focus exclusively on building the skills of their individual members, but do talented individuals guarantee you’ll have a cohesive team? In this session, we’ll discuss the “stuff” – the intangibles – that transform a collection of talented individuals into extraordinary teams; how leaders connect the passion of each team member to the achievement of the team’s common goal; and helping team members understand their responsibility as curators of the organization’s culture.

Key Take-Aways:

• An understanding of the necessity for team members to make individual sacrifices in order to achieve the team’s common goal/shared vision
• Best practices for communicating openly and honestly to foster a culture of trust
• Insight into leveraging daily, focused discipline to develop machine-like consistency

Rockstar Insights:

Lee Rubin
Former Captain of the Penn State Football team and Corporate Human Resources Professional
 

Why You Should Listen to Lee:
For 30 years, Lee has been building high performance teams in both corporate America and the collegiate sports world, setting the foundational cornerstone for a leadership and culture-building mindset focusing on the key components that create extraordinary teams.

Abstract:
Culture is imperative to successful customer experience. Placing employee engagement at the heart of the CX strategy, especially in a crisis but at all times. Hear how creating a culture defined by empathy and care will improve employee morale and customer satisfaction.

Key Take-Aways:

• Fresh perspective on engagement, wellness and emotional support for customers
  and employees
• Framework to optimize experiences through effective communication empathy
  and compassion
• Best practices to leverage data
• Define the core values for your organizational culture

Headliner:

David Weisman, PhD, CPXP
Chief Experience Officer
NYC Health + Hospitals
 

Why You Should Listen to David:
David has spent the majority of his 20 year career in customer/care experience. He has a unique set of skills that have allowed him to create a culture of empathy focused on customer experience and exceed the expectations of all his customers, including patients and their loved ones, employees and the community.

Abstract:
Customer journey mapping was first introduced by Oxford Corporate Consultants in 1998. This innovative process is almost 25 years old. Over those years, technology has enhanced our ability to understand more about customer sentiment, preferred channels, and the real drivers of loyalty. We now have enough data and insight to quit simply managing customers’ experiences. We have the ability to lift them off the ground.

Key Take-Aways:

• Guide to capture the “voice of the customer” through engagement and data
• Framework to differentiate between a true journey map and a “hypothesis map”
• Identify touchpoints across the entire experience chain
• Proven ways to build listening paths that allow for constant process improvement
• Blueprint to drive choices regarding people, processes and technologies across the organization

Fab Facilitator:

Sean Wisdom
Senior Vice President of Global Marketing
Arise Virtual Solutions
 

Why You Should Listen to Sean:
Sean has been a driving force in bringing cutting-edge technologies to businesses worldwide for over 20 years. With extensive experience in sales, sales management, and all facets of marketing, he has started successful global business solutions programs for Verizon and Dell. In his current role, Sean transformed the GTM strategy for Office Depot including segmentation, strategic messaging, and digital demand generation strategies.

Hosted By:

Stacy McGranor
Customer Experience Program Director
San Jose Sharks
 

Why You Should Listen to Stacy:
Part artist, part scientist, Stacy continues to fuel her passion for sports, entertainment, and their consumers by serving as the voice of the customer and overseeing all qualitative and quantitative research efforts for the Sharks Sports & Entertainment properties, including the San Jose Sharks, San Jose Barracuda, SAP Center at San Jose, and the Sharks Ice Family of Rinks.

Hosted By:

Marilyn McDonald
Senior Vice President, Customer Interoperability
Mastercard
 

Why You Should Listen to Marilyn:
In her role Marilyn, leads the product, design, and engineering teams responsible for delivering experience improvements through Connect – the interface that customers use to manage and grow their business with Mastercard, bringing one view of Mastercard to our customers. In her spare time, she is the leader of the Product Management – Technical Guild for Mastercard globally.

Hosted By:

Waseem Kawaf
Global Vice President of Digital Experience
STANLEY Security
 
Why You Should Listen to Waseem:
Waseem has spent his career thinking about how the marketing tech stack can bring businesses closer to their customers. Over the last 2+ years as VP of Global Digital Experience at STANLEY Security, he has ideated and built a structured CX process that has delivered tangible business results and fostered positive, customer-focused change across the organization.

Abstract:
Moving the needle and sustaining wins for the customer and the company creates a deep competitive advantage. Hear from customer experience leaders about overcoming organizational challenges, amplifying CX best practices, and how to  align opportunities to business pressures and consistently execute on effective market and organizational strategies.

Key Take-Aways:

• Framework to align culture and engage employees to deliver
  exceptional experiences
• Best practices for addressing internal challenges and determining
  successful metrics
• Identifying solution sets to resolve problems in strategic CX initiatives
• Success factors in defining CX ROI to secure funding for new initiatives

Moderator:

John Bord
Manager, Customer Experience
Tucson Electric Power (TEP)
 

Why You Should Listen to John:
John is an accomplished subject matter expert with an extensive career spearheading creation and execution of marketing, research and customer experience strategies across multiple industries. Focused on creating actionable research to maximize CX initiatives and brand management, he is passionate about driving customer value while achieving strategic business objectives and growth.

Panelists Include:

Ishraf Ahmad
Head of Clinical Product
Virta Health
 

Why You Should Listen to Ishraf:
Ishraf has spent more than a decade in leading product and experience teams across Healthcare and Retail industries to enable growth and deliver valuable, delightful, and impactful customer experiences. Currently, he is leading a team of designers to identify opportunities and implement experience improvement initiatives.

 
Wendy Cutting
Vice President, Optum Digital
Optum
 

Why You Should Listen to Wendy:
Bio is forthcoming.

 
 
Stacey Dove
Senior Vice President of Customer Experience
UnitedHealth Group
 

Why You Should Listen to Stacey:
Stacey has a relentless passion to improve customer experience across the largest health care enterprise in the U.S. She believes that we all need to do better and be better in the healthcare space; customers are demanding it, begging for it. In her free time, Stacey hosts the Optum podcast, “Until It’s Fixed”, focusing on pressing health care topics in the U.S. She’s also a mom of four teenagers and a basketball coach.

 
Marilyn McDonald
Senior Vice President, Customer Interoperability
Mastercard
 

Why You Should Listen to Marilyn:
In her role Marilyn, leads the product, design, and engineering teams responsible for delivering experience improvements through Connect – the interface that customers use to manage and grow their business with Mastercard, bringing one view of Mastercard to our customers. In her spare time, she is the leader of the Product Management – Technical Guild for Mastercard globally.

 
Tara Townsend
Director of Customer Experience
AARP
 

Why You Should Listen to Tara:
Guess who has the easiest job in the room… the person who doesn’t need to have all the answers. Tara has made a career of delivering excellent CX by simply letting consumers tell her what they want. Leveraging consumer research, voice of the customer, and an M.S. in Behavioral Economics, Tara susses out consumer needs and helps organizations deliver on them.

Abstract:
Participants at each Customer Experience Ecosystem Executive MindXchange come away with a wealth of key learnings and it can be a challenge to take it all in. During this interactive session, members of the Customer Experience community will highlight the most important themes, key take-aways and lessons learned they can be readily operationalized once you are back in the office.

Moderator:

Erin Ghere
Director of Consumer Experience Management
HealthPartners
 

Why You Should Listen to Erin:
Bringing nearly two decades of health care experience, Erin leads HealthPartners’ consumer engagement strategies designed to make health care simple and more affordable. They create outreach and experiences that delight health plan members and care group patients by successfully guiding them to their next best action with relevant and relatable content.

Panelists Include:

Eric Caron
Senior Director of Digital Experience
Caribou Coffee
 

Why You Should Listen to Eric:
Eric’s work focuses on meeting the customer’s digital needs through streamlining the app and online order experience while expanding the brand nationwide. When he isn’t talking about product management, agile methods, websites, apps or APIs, you’ll find him with his family in Eden Prairie (attempting to teach his children the difference between a French press, Aeropress & ChemEx).

 
Peter Lippek
Assistant Vice President, Voice of the Customer
U.S. Bank
 

Why You Should Listen to Peter:
As a Customer Experience leader with over 20 years experience, Peter brings a scientific approach to solving business problems, and helps people, process, and technology work together. In his current role at U.S. Bank, he leads the Contact Center Voice of the Customer program and the Customer Value Tracking initiative.

 
Erin McMillan
Associate Vice President Client Operations
Cox Automotive
 

Why You Should Listen to Erin:
Erin leads a diverse team with equally diverse functions spanning order fulfillment, customer care, even graphic design. Since joining the organization in 2002 as a Customer Support Rep, Erin has been focused on developing strong leaders and engaged employees that can deliver the ultimate customer experience.

Abstract:
What can I learn about customer experience from a baseball stadium, you ask? Isn’t this a bit of a “change up”? Exactly! Join us on this non-traditional customer experience tour and explore customer experience excellence from a new perspective! Rated a Top 10 MLB Stadium Experience by ESPN the Magazine! This is your backstage pass to the home of the Minnesota Twins, giving you behind-the-scenes access to a state-of-the-art venue that was designed to enhance the game day experience and so much more.

Key Take-Aways:

• Insight on how the experience for premium club and suite guests is elevated above the “average Joe” ticket holder
• Examples of innovative technologies that are used to boost the guest experience
• Best practices for keeping 40,000 fans happy during each event and throughout the year