Every day, there are more and more advanced back-office and customer-facing technologies at the ready for businesses to modernize CX and CRM. The challenge that many decision-makers face isn’t just wading through the mind-numbing array of advanced technologies to deploy but whether or not they can see the extent to which their customers have moved away from current value-propositions and touch points. Brian Solis is a leading digital analyst, anthropologist and futurist. He has studied how customer behaviors, preferences, values and intent have evolved and how organizations are and aren’t keeping up. In his keynote presentation, Brian will share the world of experience through the eyes of the evolving customer and it how companies need to reverse engineer new perspectives, models, and journeys to stay relevant.

You already realize the importance of Millennials as consumers, but have you considered the impact they could make within your company? Contact centers are changing, with a new focus on handling complex and difficult interactions and "postchannel" strategies that erase your customers' awareness of channels. Digitally fluent and social media-connected Millennials can be the ideal fit for chat, social, and mobile agent support. This presentation shows how you can leverage this key demographic, along with innovative technologies, to enable the best possible customer outcomes.

ELIZA, one of the first chatbots ever built, was introduced more than 50 years ago, but it was not until Siri in 2011, Alexa in 2015, and Facebook’s Bots launch in 2016 that we saw anything close to mass market adoption of conversational assistants. As with these applications, most technologies that start in the consumer world eventually reach the commercial enterprise, but should chatbots be treated as traditional projects? Chatbots are essentially ushering in a new era of man-machine interaction—one that goes far beyond the now familiar "information retrieval" applications that rely on simple question-answer system constructs. As machines are starting to learn how to speak and to perform traditionally human functions, should we treat them more like humans? This is a new IT frontier. Is the goal to improve the human condition? These and other similar questions must be asked, but here is the big question: How do enterprises get this right?

Join your peers on Monday from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. as we celebrate the grand opening of the Customer Solutions Expo. Visit with conference sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and other attendees while enjoying light hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

Join us for an interactive chat with many of CRM’s leading influencers. What is driving customers? What are leading-edge technologies? What about hype versus reality on artificial intelligence? This is an excellent opportunity to hear from the people driving the industry in an uncensored, unfiltered format. All of your questions are fair game and will be answered to the best of our ability. Enjoy a light continental breakfast, good conversation, and networking with top leaders in the field. This is a truly unique opportunity and conference highlight.

Conversational interfaces, or intelligent “chatbots,” are defining entirely new categories of products and services. Deep learning technologies are empowering businesses to gain critical insights from unstructured text in transcribed calls, chats, and social media. Contact centers have been early adopters of these artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Customers can seamlessly communicate across channels with automated assistants that delight customers, providing them faster and better service. AWS is making AI more accessible, available, and easy to use, enabling customers to accelerate their usage of AI in contact center workflows. Learn how AI-powered applications are providing business value by rethinking traditional applications and transforming customer experiences, and how to leverage these innovations in your workflows instantly

According to Forrester Research, nearly half of consumers already engage in automated conversations with intelligent assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. Keyboards, screens, and remote controls are being replaced by more intuitive ways of interacting with devices—most notably, voice communications. This presentation provides fresh insights into how you can use voice and AI to deliver differentiated customer experiences, streamline operations, and take advantage of new revenue streams.

The battle for a customer's discretionary share of wallet is fierce and ongoing. Not only do sports compete on the field with each other, they compete for customer spend with movies, restaurants, concerts and staying at home. But they have a unique advantage that almost no other industry has—their advocates already exist—they don't have to strive for them, but instead have to figure out how to handle them so they remain fans. This experienced and fun panel of current and former sports practitioners tells you their stories—the programs, approaches, and thinking they used to translate the passion of their fans into benefits to the bottom lines of their organizations.