Check-in via the marked Registration Desk. A member of the Reuters Events team will be on hand to complete your registration and issue your badge. Head to the exhibition hall for barista made coffee & breakfast.

Kick off the conference by connecting with fellow CX leaders, innovators, and changemakers in a dynamic, interactive session designed to go beyond small talk. This isn’t just networking—it’s about discovering shared challenges, fresh perspectives, and new ideas around understanding the modern customer. Whether you're an AI explorer, a frontline expert, or a VOC strategist, this session sets the stage for deeper conversations throughout the event.

• Learn how customer experience efforts translate into tangible business outcomes, proving value for long-term dependability, and how to stay in touch with the heart of your customer.

• Discover how implementing new technologies/Gen AI can enhance your customer journey, hurdles in bringing it to market, and how to maintain customer trust throughout the process.

• Develop an actionable framework to navigate a new generation of agents and consumers through change management, upscaling your team and maintaining both colleague and customer satisfaction. 

Speaker: Gerardo Mejia, Executive Vice President - Global Servicing, Amex 
Moderator: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa

For CX leaders, the AI-fueled pace of change is leaving traditional agility gasping for air. IBM will share new research and insights into what is setting leading executives apart from their underperforming peers and how harnessing the strategies and technologies necessary to succeed is delivering expected ROI on AI projects, driving revenue growth, accelerating profitability, and expanding customer retention.

Turning these insights into actions will help you reach your CX aspirations, turning user needs and intelligence into AI-powered experiences that improve loyalty, satisfaction, and competitive advantage.

Ambhi Ganesan, Partner, IBM Consulting

• Learn proven methodologies to elevate your data from a passive resource to an active business asset, creating measurable ROI through enhanced customer insights and personalized engagement strategies.

• Master practical techniques for unifying fragmented customer data across departments, enabling predictive analytics that anticipate customer needs and drive loyalty while maintaining compliance standards.

• Discover how leading organizations are transforming raw customer data into meaningful relationships, with actionable frameworks that balance personalization with privacy to create competitive advantage in today's experience economy. 

Jaime Hodari, Chief Commercial Officer and CEO, Building operations and Experience, CBRE
Kevin Vasconi, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Papa Johns
Christina Goldschmidt, VP Product Design, Warner Music Group

Moderator: Joe Meersman, Managing Partner, Gyroscope

During the coffee break we have added a dedicated speaker Q&A in the expo hall. Here you can ask all the burning questions you had during their presentations in a candid and relaxed environment over coffee.

• Learn proven strategies from Vanguard's CX Alpha initiative to gain and sustain long-term executive support for your CX programs, even as technology rapidly evolves. 

• Discover how to effectively measure and articulate the tangible client and business value generated by your CX efforts, moving beyond traditional metrics to showcase a compelling return on investment.

• Gain actionable insights into leveraging hyper-personalization, AI, and behavioural science—grounded in core CX principles—to design interventions that deliver significant, measurable outcomes for both your clients and your organization.

Nathan Zahm, Head of Investing and Saving Digital Experience, Vanguard

Moderator: Nate Brown, Head of Education and Enablement, Metric Sherpa

AI in CX is evolving beyond automation toward genuine understanding. In this session, Parloa unveils how its Agentic AI platform enables enterprises to deliver human-level customer relationships at scale—without the typical OpEx of traditional service models. Drawing on global deployments with Fortune 500 companies, we’ll explore how managing AI agents like human teams transforms service from a cost center into a growth engine, driving measurable gains in satisfaction, efficiency, and revenue.

Daniel Nieves, Regional Vice President, Parloa

• Develop a CX team with strong emotional intelligence and empathy that enables your organization to deliver personalized, compassionate, and memorable experiences that drive loyalty and advocacy.

• Foster a culture of creativity, experimentation, and calculated risk-taking, CX leaders can unlock new opportunities for growth, differentiation, and customer delight. 

• Develop CX leaders who can inspire, motivate, and empower their teams to create a shared vision and purpose that drives customer obsession, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ultimately leading to

sustainable business success and growth. 

Heather Bissell, Senior Director Customer Care, Nordstrom
Moderator: Nate Brown, Head of Education and Enablement, Metric Sherpa

Take a break, grab a bite, and dive into meaningful conversation.

This isn’t your typical conference lunch. We’re turning the tables—literally—with curated Conversation Cards designed to spark fresh thinking, honest dialogue, and unexpected connections around the future of customer experience.

Whether you're sitting with familiar faces or meeting someone new, each card offers a thought-provoking question or challenge to explore—from AI ethics to empathy at scale, and everything in between.

No agenda. No presentations. Just great food and even better conversation.

Come hungry for ideas, and leave with new perspectives (and maybe a few new contacts too).

Unlocking Real-Time Customer Insights: Removing the Noise Between You and Your Customers with AI
Many organizations aim to be customer-centric, but fragmented feedback channels, manual analysis, and regulatory complexity often get in the way. This presentation will uncover the biggest blockers preventing teams from identifying and acting on customer insights in real time. Discover how AI can unify customer feedback, automate analysis, and surface critical issues instantly—enabling your teams to drive growth, reduce churn, and strengthen customer loyalty.

Learn how leading financial organizations:

• Unify fragmented feedback and automate real-time analysis with AI to replace manual, siloed processes.
• Surface critical issues instantly to proactively reduce churn and strengthen customer loyalty.
• Turn customer insights into growth opportunities by enabling teams to act faster and more effectively.

Chris Bryan, Director of Product Marketing, UnitQ

• Explore how real-world case studies demonstrate the integration of AI into daily operations, leading to extended service hours and enhanced customer experiences. Learn practical strategies to streamline processes and maximize resource utilization.

• Access to a step-by-step guide designed to simplify AI adoption. This checklist will provide actionable insights to help your organization seamlessly incorporate AI technologies, ensuring a smooth transition and immediate operational benefits.

• Discover how to foster a culture of innovation by utilizing AI to add value to your services. Learn how to leverage AI tools to offer personalized, data-driven solutions that meet evolving customer needs and expectations.

Moderator: Joe Meersman, Managing Partner, Gyroscope

• Hear how Barnes & Noble uses Ada’s AI CX platform to track metrics like AI Handle Time, CSAT, and conversation quality, unlocking data-driven insights that go beyond ticket deflection to elevate satisfaction and efficiency.
• Discover how automation insights can inform broader CX strategy and business decisions.
• Learn from Barnes & Noble’s operational blueprint to orchestrate consistent, cohesive, efficient AI customer service across chat, email, and voice.

 
Brendan McGuire, Enterprise AE, Ada

Michael Locurcio, Head of IT, Barnes and Noble

• Discover how leading CX teams are using AI to strike the right balance between automation and human support, helping agents deliver faster, more accurate responses that elevate customer satisfaction.

• Learn how to apply AI and automation where they create the most value—enhancing agent productivity, improving resolution times, and personalizing every customer interaction.

• Explore proven strategies to build AI-driven workflows that scale effortlessly, ensuring speed, consistency, and meaningful engagement across every customer touchpoint.

Lawrence Solis, Sr. Strategic CX Account Executive, Freshworks

During the coffee break we have added a dedicated speaker Q&A in the expo hall. Here you can ask all the burning questions you had during their presentations in a candid and relaxed environment over coffee.

In this fireside chat, Suyog Singh, VP of Product & AI Strategy at Oportun, joins Chris Reese, VP of Customer Success at Cresta, to share the lessons learned from Oportun’s journey to modernize its contact center with AI.

Suyog will discuss how his team designed and validated a scalable framework for using AI to enhance human performance—empowering agents with real-time assistance, translation, and data-driven coaching while achieving 100% QA coverage. The conversation will unpack what worked, what didn’t, and how to build the cross-functional alignment required to translate AI pilots into measurable business results.

Key Takeaways:

• How to structure and test AI initiatives for real operational ROI
• Best practices for aligning data, product, and CX teams around shared outcomes
• How to use AI-driven insights for targeted coaching and performance consistency at scale

• Learn methodologies to capture and interpret the genuine voice of your customer, transforming raw feedback into actionable insights that reveal unmet needs and emotional drivers behind purchasing decisions.

• Explore practical frameworks for dismantling organizational silos, creating cross-functional collaboration that enables seamless customer journeys aligned with your brand promise at every touchpoint. 

• Discover how to explicitly connect your customer experience initiatives to your overall brand strategy, ensuring every interaction reinforces your unique market positioning and translates into measurable business

outcomes and sustains customer loyalty. 

Sharon Scanlon, SVP Group Protection Product, Workplace Solutions Marketing and Customer Experience, Lincoln Financial

Moderator: Branden Cobb, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, MarketingExec.US

• Support redefined: No longer a cost center, modern support is now where purchase intent, loyalty, and lifetime value intersect.
• From resolution to revenue: AI is transforming service moments into sales opportunities and churn prevention into growth.
• Real-world playbook: Real-world strategies and examples of how forward-thinking companies are making support a true growth driver.

Charles Studt, Chief Marketing Officer, Sendbird

• Learn how AI analyzes customer feedback across channels to uncover critical CX issues and drive improvements—while also revealing customer attitudes toward AI, how to build trust and early usage trends through fresh data and insights.
• Discover how AI forecasts customer behavior from VOC data, enabling proactive action and churn reduction. See how AI complements existing CX tools like surveys and journey mapping to enhance traditional methodologies.
• Engage the new-age customer with smarter insights—discover how AI helps turn data into action, enabling personalized experiences and driving meaningful change across your VOC program.

Cathinka Wahlstrom, Chief Commercial Officer, BNY
Mike Kresse, Executive Vice President, Commercial and New Payments Flows, Mastercard

Katie Webb, Chief Digital & Experience Officer, Synovus
Gayathri Krishnamurthy, Head of Product Marketing, Level AI

Moderator: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa

Unwind, connect, and continue the conversation over drinks with fellow CX leaders, innovators, and changemakers. This relaxed, informal session is designed to help you build meaningful relationships beyond the conference room—whether you're reconnecting with peers or meeting new faces in the industry.