Invite-Only Breakfast Workshop: Builders vs. Bystanders: Which Kind of CX Leader Are You in the Age of AI?
Every CX organization has access to AI. That's no longer the differentiator. The differentiator is customer context.
The gap opening up right now is between leaders who are building with AI on top of structured customer context and leaders who are still waiting for their team to send a deck. Builders query their customer signals directly. They test hypotheses in real time. They make decisions in minutes grounded in evidence, not intuition. Bystanders are still stitching together five tools and hoping the quarterly report lands before the strategy meeting.
One group is operating at a fundamentally different speed. The other is about to find out what that costs them.
This session helps you figure out which side you're on and what it takes to cross over. Not a product demo. Not a hype session. A working breakfast where we show you what customer context connected to AI actually looks like, and how to start building toward it.
Key Takeaways:
• Your AI isn't underperforming. It's underfed. Even the best AI models produce unreliable outputs when they have generic data. The model isn't the problem. The customer context is. When AI has access to unified, structured customer signals, the same question that took your team a week to answer gets a trustworthy, evidence-backed response in under 60 seconds.
• What this actually looks like. We'll show you what happens when customer context is connected to AI and the things you and anyone in your organization can do with it.
• How to start building. You don't need to be technical. You don't need a six-month roadmap. You need a structured customer context and the willingness to stop delegating the most important questions in your business. We'll walk through what the first 30 days look like for leaders who've made the shift from bystander to builder, and the one question you can ask your team on Monday morning to figure out where to start.
Michael Nguyen, Head of Customer Intelligence, Enterpret
Most organizations want to become more customer centric. They invest in listening programs, map journeys, and track experience metrics across the enterprise. Yet even strong organizations often find that progress slows or stalls before meaningful change takes hold. The Climb is a framework for understanding why customer-centric initiatives lose momentum and what leaders must reinforce if execution is going to hold across silos.
Using the metaphor of a mountain ascent, Sean shows how organizations can strengthen the leadership, listening, and governance disciplines required to convert customer insight into consistent action. Participants will leave with a clear mental model for diagnosing where progress may be breaking down inside complex organizations and what it takes to stabilize the climb toward true customer-centric execution.
Sean Albertson, Founder, CX on the Rocks collective
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.
Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
• Learn how to design CX strategies that prioritize empathy and emotional connection while adapting to economic pressures and evolving customer expectations.
• Discover practical approaches for integrating automation into customer journeys without compromising trust, transparency, or authenticity.
• Build frameworks for collaboration and cultural alignment that enable teams to deliver experiences that resonate.
Heather Garboden, Chief Customer Officer, American Airlines
Sean Albertson, Founder, CX on the Rocks collective
• Conversation quality and clarity directly impact customer experience and revenue.
• Improving quality of conversation unlocks higher customer satisfaction and scalable growth while lowering operational friction for global CX teams.
• Hear how removing language and communication barriers ensures critical customer conversations are clear, efficient and effective.
Anant Singh, Chief Revenue Officer, Sanas
• Design journeys that deliver speed without sacrificing humanity—learn how to integrate automation and AI while preserving emotional connection at critical touchpoints.
• Embed empathy into digital-first experiences using behavioural insights and real-time data to anticipate needs and personalize interactions.
• Transform journey maps into actionable blueprints that align technology, process, and people for measurable improvements in customer loyalty, and operational efficiency.
Ekta Chopra, Chief Technology and AI Officer, e.l.f
• See the unexpected findings from one of the largest global agentic CX studies ever conducted
• Learn how to avoid the four biggest pitfalls to agentic transformation in CX
• Explore the most relevant AI use cases, and the math behind their value
• Walk away with a success playbook co-developed with some of the world’s most customer-centric brands
Latané Conant, Chief Market Officer, Parloa
• Turn fragmented data into a competitive advantage by operationalizing customer intelligence across channels—enabling predictive service that delights customers before they even ask.
• Harness predictive and generative AI to anticipate needs, prevent churn, and deliver hyper-personalized journeys—creating loyalty in an AI-first world.
• Translate intelligence into measurable business outcomes by aligning data strategies with KPIs like proactive resolution, AI-assisted efficiency, and lifetime value—proving CX drives growth.
Abhii Parakh, Head of Customer Experience, Prudential
Christine McKinney, VP, Customer Experience & Digital Transformation, Blue Shield of California
Moderator: Sean Albertson, Founder, CX on the Rocks collective
Invite-Only Lunch Workshop: AI-Driven Quality Intelligence: What 67 Million Users Reveal About Product Success
Product teams are shipping faster than ever—but user satisfaction has stalled. Why? Because customers aren’t asking for more features. They’re demanding quality.
In 2025, users left 67.7 million pieces of feedback across 8,000 apps, and the message was clear: too many ads, confusing interfaces, broken trust, and unreliable performance are eroding loyalty. In fact, “too many ads” is now the most reported product defect, UI friction outpaces feature requests 6 to 1, and trust-related issues carry the same reputational weight as a crash. Yet overall product quality has barely improved year over year.
In this session, VP of Marketing unitQ Kristen Ribero shows how leading product teams use AI to turn massive volumes of user feedback into real-time quality intelligence. Drawing on new benchmark data and examples from companies like PayPal, Pinterest, and Udemy, he'll demonstrate how teams are shifting from feature-driven roadmaps to friction elimination, detecting issues earlier, prioritizing what truly matters, and building products users actually trust.
This session is about more than analyzing feedback—it's about using AI to operationalize quality as a competitive advantage.
Kristen Ribero, VP, Marketing, unitQ
• Early lessons learned from implementing AI services that strengthen your contact centers team’s delivery of customer support
• The shift required for how we work as executives from “someone will tell me or get me a report” to “it takes seconds for me to check and move it forward”
• Gaining ownership across the enterprise that the support experience is not just for contact centers to worry about
Andrea Halverson, Director, Contact Center Experience & Innovation, Alaska Air Group
Barry Chester, Strategic Sales Director, Cresta
Guitar Center is redefining how its Gear Advisors sell and serve by pairing human expertise with Cresta’s Conversation Intelligence and Coaching. In this Case Study, leaders from Guitar Center and Cresta reveal how AI is transforming sales performance — not by replacing people, but by amplifying what makes them exceptional.
You’ll hear how Guitar Center is:
• Accelerating onboarding and coaching through real-time, AI-driven insights that help advisors meet every customer where they are.
• Empowering advisors with guidance and feedback that drive higher conversions and lifelong customer loyalty.
• Scaling best practices across the workforce, turning what once seemed impossible into daily habits that fuel performance and culture.
Join Scott Selfridge (Sr. Manager of Sales Excellence, Guitar Center) and Chris Reese (VP, Managed Services, and AI Value, Cresta) as they share how AI-powered coaching is orchestrating the future of human-centered, sales-driven contact centers.
· Scale beyond pilots to move past endless proofs-of-concept to deploy scalable AI that delivers measurable ROI and transforms customer journeys.
· Explore next generation applications like LLM-powered customer service, predicative personalization, and intelligent routing-solutions that redefine speed, accuracy and empathy in CX.
· Go beyond implementation by empowering teams to integrate AI into daily workflows, optimize decision-making, and continuously improve customer interactions for sustained CX gains.
Kristina Khan, Director AI Transformation, AT&T
Moderator: Branden Cobb, Fractional CMO, MarketingExec.us
Most GoFundMe users aren’t professional fundraisers. They are often navigating moments of urgency, loss, or uncertainty, and many begin with a blank page, unsure of what to say, where to start, or how to build momentum once their fundraiser is live. In this fireside chat, leaders from GoFundMe and Sierra will discuss how GoFundMe introduced an AI-powered “smart fundraising coach” to guide people every step of the way – from creating and managing a campaign through its completion – reducing friction while preserving each fundraiser’s authentic voice.
Early results show stronger engagement, increased sharing, and improved outcomes, with GoFundMe expecting an additional $125M in help raised in the U.S. this year. The session will explore what it took to bring this experience to life and what the team has learned about designing AI experiences that are both high-performing and deeply human.
Key takeaways:
· How to identify high-impact CX opportunities beyond traditional support
· What it takes to design AI experiences for emotional, high-stakes journeys
· How to use data to guide behavior and drive real outcomes
· What it takes to move from AI pilot to production
Taruvar Aggarwal, Product Manager, GoFundMe
Carolyn Feibleman, Agent Strategist, Sierra
These are not just discussions - they’re immersive, collaborative sessions designed to tackle the most pressing challenges you are facing. These roundtables put you at the center of the conversation, giving you the chance to share insights, exchange strategies, and learn directly from peers facing similar obstacles.
ROUNDTABLE 1: Future-Ready CX: Empowering Agents to Serve the Consumers of Tomorrow
• Elevate agent performance and satisfaction, implement innovative training programs designed for the modern workforce, ensuring agents are empowered to deliver exceptional experiences while reducing churn and boosting morale.
• Inspire and empower agents to embrace change by fostering a culture of ownership, purpose, and growth—equipping them with the confidence and motivation to use new tools effectively and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
• Upskill for the future and discover how strategic skill development and forward-thinking engagement will position your brand for long-term success in a rapidly changing market.
Sean Albertson, Founder, CX on the Rocks collective
ROUNDTABLE 2: The Signals Are There… Why Are So Many CX Partner Problems Still Missed
Most organizations are rich in customer data BUT poor in signal detection. CX leaders must secure customer loyalty by connecting signals across channels to uncover what’s truly going wrong and activate targeted actions using the data they already have.
Leverage fragmented data across transcripts, repeat contacts, work orders, training outcomes, self-service failures, and partner performance to surface the execution gaps where customer frustration builds, and where your biggest opportunities lie.
Look beyond traditional 'CX' data to consider internal operational and marketing metrics that reveal journey‑wide signals you’re currently missing.
Use real‑time, cross‑channel signals to pinpoint breakdowns before they impact customers, enabling proactive intervention rather than reactive recovery.
Brian Cole, SVP, New Logo Sales, iQor
ROUNDTABLE 3: The Executive Imperative: Securing Buy-In for CX as a Strategic Driver
• Understand how to frame customer experience as a core driver of revenue, retention, and competitive advantage – moving beyond the perception of CX as a reactive service to a proactive business strategy.
• Learn how to craft compelling, data-backed proposals using financial projections, industry benchmarks, and ROI modelling. Demonstrate how CX investments translate into measurable business outcomes such as increased lifetime value and reduced churn.
• Explore proven strategies for integrating CX into executive decision-making and aligning it with organizational goals. Discover how to secure leadership buy-in and make CX a cornerstone of digital transformation and long-term growth.
Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
• Gain practical steps to stabilize and modernize your tech stack incrementally, reducing risk and cost while unlocking new CX capabilities in real time.
• Learn how to leverage existing tools and data during transition periods, ensuring continuity of service and avoiding customer experience gaps.
• Explore proven methods to build stakeholder alignment quickly, creating compelling business cases that secure buy-in across IT, marketing, and service functions—even under urgent timelines.
Sean O’Neal, VP Retail Operations, UPS Store, Inc
Moderator: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
• Implement strategies to unify data and workflows, reducing inefficiencies that harm customer satisfaction and agent performance.
• Create a connected CX framework with practical steps for integrating platforms and processes across marketing, service, and operations to achieve a single, actionable customer view.
• Foster collaboration and shared accountability with proven methods to align teams culturally and operationally, driving cross-functional ownership of CX success.
Anna Squires Levine, Global Head of Experience Services, CBRE
Andrew Schulkind, VP Customer Experience, Domino North America
Christiana Fisher, Director of Global Care, Get Your Guide
Moderator: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
- Discover why traditional surveys leave a critical gap between management intent and user perception — and how an AI-native three-layer model bridges strategy, operations, and customer experience.
- Learn how pairing large-scale quantitative surveys with AI-powered recursive interviews captures not just what users do, but why — with C-suite-ready statistical significance.
- Explore how AI-driven analysis turns unstructured customer dialogues into actionable insights, empowering teams to close "Strategic Drift" and make faster, more confident CX decisions.
Xiuzhen (Flora) Zhang, Head, User Experience & Quality Assurance, Trip.com
• Discover how to translate customer experience outcomes into financial impact and operational KPIs.
• Learn techniques for sustaining C-suite engagement beyond initial enthusiasm.
• Explore tools and dashboards that connect CX metrics to revenue, retention, and efficiency.
John Pew, Head of CX Strategy and Innovation for Business Banking, U.S. Bank
Moderator: Brandon Cobb, Fractional CMO, MarketingExec.US
Your Challenges, Solved Live
You’ll shape the conversation with candid perspectives, practical solutions, and fresh ways of tackling the issues holding teams back.
Come ready to ask, challenge, share, and rethink what’s possible. This is your moment to steer the discussion and surface the questions others haven’t asked yet.
Hosted by: Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
AI is no longer optional in CX— but adopting it the wrong way can cost you time, budget, and trust. But where should you start, what should you prioritize, and how do you avoid expensive missteps? This workshop delivers a clear framework to help you evaluate your organization’s AI maturity and chart a realistic, scalable path forward.
Led by Ali Birouti, Director of Digital Evolution at Liveops, this 60‑minute workshop will guide participants through a guided self-assessment across three essential dimensions of AI in CX: human-centered AI, machine-centered AI, and virtual agents. Using interactive exercises and real-world use cases, attendees identify strengths, gaps, and actionable next steps that align AI innovation with operational excellence.
You’ll benchmark your maturity, identify high-impact opportunities, and walk away with a practical plan that aligns innovation with operational reality.
You will leave with:
• A personalized AI maturity score
• A diagnostic framework you can re-use with your teams
• Templates to guide planning and prioritization
• Real-world examples from enterprise use cases
• Clear direction for advancing from crawl → walk → run
Ali Birouti, Director of Digital Evolution, Liveops
These are not just discussions - they’re immersive, collaborative sessions designed to tackle the most pressing challenges you are facing. These roundtables put you at the center of the conversation, giving you the chance to share insights, exchange strategies, and learn directly from peers facing similar obstacles.
ROUNDTABLE 1: Mastering Global BPO Economics: Driving Efficiency Without Sacrificing Quality
• Decode the latest trends in global BPO pricing and delivery models, so you can identify opportunities and mitigate risks before they impact your bottom line.
• Learn a proven approach to evaluating and selecting the right partners, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal disruption during migration.
• Discover how leading organizations optimize cost while elevating service quality and uncover the key ingredients of a high-performing client-BPO relationship in today’s dynamic market.
Sean Albertson, Founder, CX on the Rocks collective
ROUNDTABLE 2: Soft Attrition in CX Teams - The Cost of Quiet Change
• Prevent long-term CX damage by proactively addressing the hidden impact of hiring freezes on service quality, response times, and team morale.
• Maintain high standards with leaner teams using proven frameworks that sustain productivity and customer satisfaction without compromise.
• Build agile, multi-skilled service teams through practical upskilling and cross-training strategies that thrive under resource constraints.
Justin Robbins, Founder & Principal Analyst, Metric Sherpa
ROUNDTABLE 3: Navigating the Maze – AI Regulation, Risk, and Real-World Compliance
• Turn compliance into a competitive advantage by proactively adapting to evolving AI regulations and building trust with customers and stakeholders.
• Enable innovation without sacrificing compliance by implementing governance models that balance agility with accountability.
• Safeguard your CX operations from costly missteps through practical risk management strategies that keep high-stakes environments secure and resilient.
Janis Avila, CX & EX Facilitator and Speaker
Hosted by Janis Avila, CX & EX Facilitator and Speaker
Leading with Authenticity & Purpose
• Exploring how women can leverage their unique perspectives and
experiences to lead effectively
• Connecting personal values with service roles to create a fulfilling
and meaningful career
• Finding your authentic leadership voice and style
Breaking Barriers & Amplifying Voices
• Discussing challenges women face in service roles and strategies
to overcome them
• The importance of supporting and elevating the voices of other
women in service
• Creating pathways for representation and advancement
Building Bridges & Supportive Communities
• Fostering collaboration across gender lines and departments
• Creating strong networks and support systems for women in
service
• Mentorship and sponsorship opportunities
Balancing Professional Growth & Personal Wellbeing
• Strategies for navigating work-life integration
• Managing the demands of service roles while maintaining
personal boundaries
• Sustainable approaches to career advancement and personal fulfilment
Panelists:
Xiuzhen (Flora) Zhang, Head, User Experience & Quality Assurance, Trip.com
Christiana Fisher, Director of Global Care, Get Your Guide
