Rich Hein

In this opening keynote address, Americus Reed discusses the “Identity Loyalty Imperative” - the business case for customer relationships that create deeply emotional and lifelong connections with customers, by internalizing your product, brand, service, or organization as part of who they are. 

Reed will describe how to create identity loyalty from scratch. How to monitor and nurture it over time and how to make sure that the brand can, through word of mouth and advocacy, create a community of fierce loyalists who will protect the brand, defend it and do its marketing for free.

The concept of Identity Loyalty is a powerful tool to utilize the psychology of affiliation, tribalism, and belonging to create a connection that becomes virtually impossible to sever. 

In this keynote you will:

• Hear Reed describe the process of creating “Identity Loyalty”
• Consider brand identity and consumerism as it applies to building customer trust at any stage of the customer lifecycle
• Discover ways to make your product, service or organization more resilient

Do you have the keys to drive your customer’s digital behavior? With data in hand, businesses require a well-designed plan to activate insights from data and increase customer activity. Organizations that were prepared to leverage customer data in 2020 had an upper hand in surviving an economically tumultuous year. With the World Economic Forum anticipating the global recession will last through 2022, businesses who re-up their customer journeys using customer activity data effectively will have an upper hand in thriving through the recovery.

In this discussion, panelists will share:

• How their data activation methods succeeded in supporting their success in 2020
• How the last year changed the customer journey and the critical role that Voice of the Customer programs played in providing real, actionable insights
• The business and economic trends they’re monitoring as potential customer activity influencers 
• How leveraging customer data effectively helped them change on a dime to meet customers where they were at

Kara Swisher is widely considered to be the top reporter in the tech game. During this exciting opening keynote, she will lay out the big picture on how technology can empower teams, agility and growth, with best-in-class industry examples unique to her personal insights from deep within the industry.

We all know that creating customer experiences is important. But incremental efforts to bridge the gulf between customer expectations and organizations' ability to meet them means that we are steadily and inexorably falling behind. What’s needed is a disruptive transformation that goes beyond making sure that the customer journey is smooth, and instead, invests in next-generation experiences that build movements, transformation relationships, and result in exponential growth. We'll share what it takes to systematically build a strategy, leadership, and culture that keeps customers at the center of everything that every employee does every single day.

How does AI best increase your relevance to your customer and advance an orchestrated journey?  In this discussion, panelists will share where their organizations use AI most effectively, from virtual service agents to individualized content streams. They’ll discuss market trends most impacting their industries, their logic in tool selection - from automation to more sophisticated tools, and their thoughts on prioritizing AI in your CX initiatives when budgets are restricted. This discussion will include how their businesses measure AI performance and ROI, and where their organizations are heading with future AI utilization to support excellent, personalized customer experiences.

It’s one of the most polarizing pieces of advice that we hear: “Go with your gut.” In this talk, Laura Huang discusses her research on decision-making in organizations, and why the question shouldn’t be about data-driven decisions versus gut feel-based decisions. Instead, effective organizational outcomes are the result of understanding the set of rules that are inherent in any complex decision—which dictate whether more data actually helps us make better decisions.

Opening keynote by Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, Deputy CEO at Smart Eye. Rana will share the possibility of AI to redefine our customers’ relationships with technology, to truly make their digital experiences emotional, inclusive, and more human. The keynote will give a moonshot look of how technology is, and will be, capable of connecting us as humans, thus transforming how we interact with each other. Rana will share this vision in a concrete way that connects each future vision to today’s capabilities, and will address the business case for making the leap to Emotion AI (and what exactly it is), and other innovative technology — that can drive progress in industry and progress in human connection through digital technologies.

Attendees will start a day that is focused on culture, insights, experimentation, and finding the ROI of these, with this keynote that is both visionary and real, that is both futuristic and providing tangible (and intentional) business takeaways that can be applied today.

Can you trust your AI? Can your customers? As organizations incorporate AI to drive business impact, they must build transparency, confidence and accountability into the complex decisioning AI makes possible. AI is by nature a complex subject with many facets. In fact, some may consider it a “black box”. However, that is not good for business.

In this panel discussion, we’ll talk with those who are working to unravel the AI black box. Panelists will help define explainable AI, share use cases, discuss data protection and privacy and delve into why organizations need to consider explainable AI in their overall AI strategy.

Join our opening keynote speaker, Rana el Kaliouby, emotion AI pioneer and author of Girl, Decoded - along with your peers, speakers and sponsor guests in The Lounge for virtual networking.  Discuss the day's sessions, ask questions, and make connections across industries -- and even across the globe.

How does it work?  Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

*Note that each discussion circle is limited to 15 participants. The discussion circle with Rana el Kaliouby is first-come, first-served, so join early if you're interested in Q&A with this speaker.*