Meet the Judges

Ian Golding is a Certified Customer Experience Professional. A highly influential freelance CX consultant, Ian advises leading companies on CX strategy, measurement, improvement and employee advocacy techniques and solutions. Ian has worked across multiple industries including retail, financial services, logistics, telecoms and pharmaceuticals and has deployed CX tools and methodologies all over the world. An internationally renowned speaker and blogger on the subject of CX, Ian was the first to become a CCXP Authorised Resource & Training Provider.

Stefan has been a leader in Fortune 500 companies for more than 15 years. He has held global responsibility for the customer experience of 120 million customers as well as the employee experience of tens of thousands of employees. Stefan now helps leading organizations around the globe to combine their Customer and Employee Experience practices and treat them as two sides of the same coin. Stefan is a global keynote speaker and the author of "The End of Work-Life Balance".

Customer experience strategist and business transformation advisor; Advisory Board member and international keynote speaker. Supporting executive teams of Fortune 500 companies and SME’s to design and drive significant customer experience programmes with impact.

Craig has worked on customer centered change in the financial services, telecoms, luxury retail, technology, education, hospitality, healthcare and travel sectors.

Craig is Customer Experience Director at Activate Experience and more recently held the position of Customer Experience and Brand at Emirates. He is based in Dubai and consults internationally.

Nienke Bloem is an acclaimed Customer Experience consultant, co-founder of the customer experience game and a distinguished keynote speaker on CX. Her passion for the field of customer experience is evident in her credentials and her way to bring fun while working together. Nienke is a certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and promises to make customer experience WORK. Her mission is to make the world a more beautiful place for employees and customers.

Olivier Mourrieras has spent the last 12 years in shaping and delivering market leading global customer experience strategies at Orange and E.ON. He has driven change from laying out foundations to building sustainable capabilities and delivering differentiating customer experience offering value for the customer and for the business. Olivier is the CEO of CX-Impact, a customer experience consultancy providing personalized advice and support for leaders who want to improve their customer experience and most importantly, differentiate it.

If you’re looking for customer strategy, CEM, CX, customer journey management, customer centric marketing, business strategy, or innovation, it’s time for us to talk. Not about green or blue hats, the latest shiny digital toy or complex processes. But about profit opportunities, practical ideas and concepts that allow you to differentiate your business in the market place and even transform your industry. In other words: “ideas that make money” - and practices that make your customers more loyal, happier, and more likely to recommend you.

I don’t come to this conversation empty handed. Over the past 20 years, I’ve been an entrepreneur, a CEO and had the opportunity work with senior teams at large accounts like Lexus, Toyota, Vodafone Group, ING, BAT Japan, Sanoma CEE, Heineken, Philips, Bank of Pireaus, JTI, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Novartis, Deloitte, Lowe, Ogilvy, and many others. While this experience gave me the opportunity to inspire them with new ways to grow their business, it also taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t in business model innovation and CX.

Gayana is an independent customer experience professional and a trusted advisor to C-level. She has a proven track record in driving organizational improvement processes and leading companywide change programs such as: CX, employee engagement, customer centric behavior, NPS, sales performance management, transformation. She is passionate about helping companies to become customer centric and as Certified Customer eXperience Professional (CCXP) she is co-hosting Customer Experience Masterclasses to share knowledge and methodologies.

With 16+ years of international working experience in both B2B and B2C customer experience and marketing roles, Marleen helps companies to build, improve and drive customer strategies linking CX results to business growth. Marleen is a passionate CX believer, an energetic communicator challenging you to think customer centric, outside-in to create maximum awareness across your organization. Marleen her specialties in CX are both market research and strategy. Her goal is to help people that face the same CX challenges by coaching/ training and consulting them to become more customer centric. Worked for Canon Europe, KPN, Ipsos and PostNL. She started NeCXus end of 2018 together with Gayana Helder.

Babs Asselbergs is the Co-Founder of the Customer Experience Game and has her own consultancy practice. Babs is a certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and helps organisations to bring customer and employee experience alive. Babs loves to look from a different perspective to the world around her & to learn others to do. Babs is practical and pragmatic: she helps you start doing and experimenting step by step by yourself to create a better experience for customers and employees.

Specialized in Customer Experience Management. Broad experience as consultant and manager in customer care operations. Actively taking care of people, means, organisation and processes being aligned towards the goals. Convinced that customer experience is the largest contributor to the succes of organisations. No secret ingredients, a practical approach to challenges delivers practical solutions that work for customers and employees. I'm passionate about realising the desired customer experience and enthousiastic about sharing experience and knowledge.

Sirte Pihlaja (Certified Customer Experience Professional, LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitator) is the CEO of Shirute, the first customer experience agency in Finland. She is also heading the activities of the global Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) in Finland, and one of the Association’s Founding Members and Member of the International Advisory Board. Sirte is an internationally known CX expert, coach, designer and strategist with over 20 years of experience in advising large corporations and brands in industries varying across banking & insurance, energy, fashion, gaming, health & wellness, hotel & travel, media, public sector, retail, and telecom - to just name a few. At Shirute, she delivers creative solutions in customer experience management, research and experience design, CX culture, data analytics, voice of customer, and delivering solutions through omnichannel service design. Sirte is known for translating customer understanding to concrete actions and results in a fast and cost-efficient way. She has acted as Business Manager, Board Member, Lead Strategist and Service Design Lead at Accenture, Tieto and Fjord and over 10 years as a journalist in international media. Sirte (M.Sc.) has been studying journalism, political sciences and computer science and graduated from the University of Helsinki, Helsinki School of Economics (Aalto University), Sorbonne and Swedish School of Social Science. She has strong language skills, working in Finnish, French, English and Swedish.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirte/

www.shirute.fi

Founder and managing partner of Integria Consult, a consulting company in Russia that focuses on customer-centric corporate culture and customer loyalty. MBA, CX evangelist with more than 15 years of international experience in marketing, consumer research, customer retention and loyalty programs with companies like VW Group, British Airways and BRP. Speaker, author, blogger, executive coach, corporate consultant. Business trainer and facilitator in the area of customer centricity and customer-obsessed culture. Certified corporate culture measurement and development expert.

Jaap Wilms consults and supports international companies in bringing their Voice of Customer, CX and NPS Programmes to the next level. With 20 years of international experience in CX, his former role was Head of Global NPS for a leading Financial Services company where he designed and ran a best-in-class NPS Programme for several countries in Europe and Asia.

With his company Wilms & co he consults and supports CX Programme Managers in businesses throughout Europe. With actual real-life experiences, a broad and in-depth expertise, and an array of odd knowledge he is sure to surprise, inspire and challenge you.

Jaap is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP, GlobalCEM, SMX), a frequently asked speaker, a guest lecturer at MBA and universities on CX and Strategic Innovation, and holds an off-beat additonal degree in Iconology. Yet most important, he loves anchovies, roquefort and coffee (though not mixed).

For more information, please visit www.jaapwilms.com

Anita Siassios is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and first Australian certified Forrester CX-Pro. Anita is the founder of ManagingCX and proud to have established the first CXPA Authorised Customer Experience Excellence Course in Australia. Anita is also the founder of the award-winning Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Melbourne Network, taking the 2018 CXPA Best Network Award, 2018 CXPA Extra Mile Award, is a member of the CXPA International Advisory Committee and co-led the 2018 CXPA CX Innovation Awards. Anita is also the Australian judge for the 2019 MyCustomer CX Leader Award.

As CX architect Els kicks off and supports teams in their transformation towards a customer intimate organization. With more than 20 years of experience in international management and board functions she learned “by doing”. She is convinced that not only the customer contact employees are key, but that also everyone at the top and behind the screens needs to be conscious about their own impact on the customer. Els guides you in making the right choices, setting up realistic transformation plans and going through the operational execution. When you don’t mind reading Dutch, you can be inspired by her book “Uit liefde voor de klant”.

Elly Domene is a globally recognized thought leader in customer experience strategy, implementation and organizational design. As the founder and leader of SES Networks’ CX function, Elly has re-imagined the way the company interprets and operationalizes customer insights. As Chief of Staff for the CEO, Elly brings her combined skills to this role and helps to operationalize the corporate strategy throughout all functions. Elly’s greatest joy is seeing customer needs become the foundation for corporate strategy and execution.

Nils is founder an managing partner at N3Wstrategy. He has over 20 years of experience in CX. He navigates corporate organisations (profit & non-profit) towards positive change, e.g. growth in customer experience and in business results. Every year he hosts several CX Benchmark Tours for leadership teams in America, Asia and in Europe. Nils trained hundreds of managers and employees as CXProfessionals. His mission is to put CX into the DNA of organisations, focusing on leadership, employees and customer process design.

Jaap is an experienced CX management consultant at Altuïtion, a leading consultancy in the Netherlands. He has been working in the field since 2006 for a variety of national and international companies such as Liberty Global, Rockwool, Efteling, ING, Allianz and many more.

As core team member of Altran’s Expertise Center Innovation and Design, Thirza Rottier helps companies transform their ideas into viable products and services. Over the years she has worked with many companies to improve their customer and/or employee experience. Which she believes go hand in hand.

“I strongly believe in the power of customer insights. A deep understanding of your customers’ needs, motivations and emotions should be the foundation of every innovation and product or service redesign.”

David has a successful track record of creating customer experience concepts and programs for all types of companies, from multi-national companies to local non-profit organizations. His guiding philosophy is based upon the premise that "Customer Experience is a moment of truth and therefore always true, it steers perception and defines behaviour, making “experience” in and of itself the primary catalyst of transformation. His background in both direct and indirect international sales, business development and marketing has enabled him to continually connect with a multitude of business strategies and behaviours. David is continually looking to ask the questions that are relevant and will resonate with customers as well as the customers of customers. David's company TEoC (The Experience of Customers) has provided strategic services to customers such as Vodafone Global Americas, Microsoft, NetMotion & Nijestee.

Alexander’s passion for serving customers was ignited as board member of T-Mobile Netherlands and further developed as co-owner of Customer Contact Company. His strategical insights lead to combining significant contact reduction with increased customer satisfaction. His operational experience was built through managing contact centers and leading integrations at T-Mobile (Orange) and Ziggo (UPC). Alexander is an innovator with a deep involvement for both customers and employees. He holds a PhD in Physics. When not working Alexander likes to sail, play golf and cook.

Riccardo Osti is the CEO of Wonderflow, the world’s #1 customer feedback analysis platform. Riccardo leads a team of 100+ professionals in 10 countries. In the last years, he helped 20+ of the Fortune500 to become more profitable by investing in the consumer experience. He is an author, a speaker and a mentor for Europe’s best venture accelerator, Rockstart. Riccardo also runs a Youtube channel, where he shares his learnings about customer experience, data science and AI (www.riccardoosti.com)

Experienced CRM entrepreneur (> 25 years) for customer engagement and experience challenges! My motto is "customer convenience will give you loyalty!". With this motto I help my customers to create and implement a sustainable customer focused way of working that supports the customers journeys and will contribute to the customer experience. Connecting processes, people and ICT solutions.

My customers can be found in several industries (B2B and B2C), like education, leisure, government, insurance, professional services, manufacturing industry.

Hugo leads CS teams in global and regional organisations in the past 20 years. Creating CS teams focusing on the customers’ needs was a personal key objective. He is driven by making connections between people while keeping a keen eye on the set objectives. It starts with a strong belief that people, when treated as valuable assets will give their best and work towards common goals. Before working in CS, Hugo fulfilled account and project management positions in international settings.

Annelies D’hondt has a proven track record in all aspects of Customer Experience Management, both in B2C as in B2B markets. With a vast background in marketing, she quickly learned that selling to and retaining customers is much more effective when you deal with happy customers who trust you. It is through this realization that she evolved to Customer Experience in its very earliest years. For more than 8 years she introduced and managed Customer Experience at senior levels in a major Telco in Belgium. She approaches Customer Experience from a strategic viewpoint and then builds the tools to cascade the strategy throughout the rest of the organization. Since 3 years she has started up Outside In Consulting to help other companies in their Customer Experience management efforts.

Tirza Schmidt is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and Customer Experience Manager at T-Systems. She establishes the B2B strategic direction for Customer Experience, engages the business, drives action and supports growth. Tirza creates customer advocates by combining the voice of the employees with the customers’ needs to drive business decisions so that differentiated exceptional experiences are delivered. Utilizing her broad expertise in the areas of communication, programs, project- and process management and human resources, she promotes employee empowerment, aids collaboration and creates structure through a customer-centric, hands-on and problem-solving approach.

A highly experienced Commercial Director and CX transformation leader. As CX Director at National Grid, Jocelyn established the strategic CX/EX transformation programmes, delivering Y2 targets in Y1. As Commercial Director at CalMac, the UK’s major ferry operator, Customer and Stakeholder engagement plus Digital transformation (£18m) were at the heart of the successful £1b contract bid. At E.ON Jocelyn was Head of Global CX, now central to their vision; the programme is considered best practice as NPS targets and financial benefits were exceeded.

Coming from a broad business and technology background I have spent a career dealing with positives and negatives experiences on both sides of the customer/service provider divide.There should be no divide. That is precisely the point!

Currently engaged in managing the CSM experience for EMEA customers, focussing on solving issues and assisting in achieving business and strategic goals through our software. Continual multi-channel, multi-level interactions ensure the right resources at the right time achieve customer success, and our own.

Edwin Best is CRM & Customer Experience expert. He is owner of The Best CRM, guiding organisations for the transformation towards Customer-Centric business. Edwin has (internationally) collaborated with a lot of customers with a wide range of CRM & Customer Experience issues; CRM / Cx strategy, CRM selection, CRM implementation and change management.

He is acting on the cutting edge of business and ICT. His mission is to make an active contribution to discipline of customer centric business.

Shimon Ben Ayoun is co-founder and Managing Director of spotONvision, B2B Marketing Forum & enspark.io. A customer-centric entrepreneur at heart, Shimon helps marketing and sales team in digital transformation and in the journey of marketing from a cost centre to ‘revenue generator’. He is constantly looking for innovations in B2B marketing & sales practices & technologies to help marketers in becoming customer-centric obsessive & data driven. One of the innovations which were co-founded by Shimon is Enspark.io, an AI-driven sales engagement platform that was launched this year.

Shimon has over 20 years of proven experience in B2B marketing & sales.

As former Executive Vice President Customer Experience at leading Dutch Telco/ICT provider KPN, Erik has been responsible for creating ‘un-telco like’ experiences for customers in B2C and B2B. With his CX Team, he’s ignited numerous VOC activities, started a Customer Lab, integrated thinking, launched CJ’s and successfully led a company-wide cultural transformation towards a customer-centric organisation, day-to-day behaviour, inspiring leadership and year-on-year increasing NPS scores. Erik recently left his position to pursue his goal to support, inspire and challenge a new company - set out to raise the CX bar.

With 20+ years of experience in international Marketing and Sales, Jos is an expert within the commercial and digital domain. As founder and CEO of customer engagement agency Engagement Factory, he leverages his extensive knowledge of CRM, online marketing and change management to help organisations create compelling experiences throughout the customer journey.

Laura Tengerdi is Head of Communications and Customer Experience of Budapest Bank, former GE Capital, Hungary. She has over 20 years of experience in brand marketing, customer marketing and customer experience, managing global and local brands and background in both B2B and B2C roles. She has a deep knowledge of a wide range of industrial sectors too. Her key qualities include a true enjoyment of developing strategies or putting a fresh face on an already established brand. She is a big believer of the thought ’Customer First’, that mindset she mastered during the many years she spent as a senior leader in the Central-European Organisation of Unilever. Later in GE Capital and Budapest Bank, she expanded her belief with putting employees in the forefront too. To top up her enthusiasm and experience in this field, she managed to become a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) in July 2018.

Lorna is a customer experience enthusiast who has zeal and passion for offering and receiving contagious exemplary customer experiences. She is a Certified Customer Experience and Net Promoter Score Professional, with skills and competencies drawn from Sales and Customer Relationship Management acquired over the last ten years in the banking and Hospitality industries. Lorna thrives in driving the voice of the customer and understanding the way in Customer pain points with the aim of proactively driving lasting and positive memorable solutions for customers.

Marlan Hardie operates as the People Engagement Officer for global service providers at World Wide Technology. With 20 years in the customer care industry and a consulting background, Marlan has worked with many of the largest call centers in the telecom, cable, financial services, media and entertainment organizations. He evangelizes that “the brand of every great organization is how the customer perceives being treated”. Marlan lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 20 years and two children.

Gökhan Kara is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). He’s the first CCXP in Turkey, founder and leads the Customer Experience Professionals Association Istanbul Network, awarded 2018 CXPA Most Innovative CX Day Event. He worked as a CX practitioner in Telecom, Banking and Energy sectors. He’s writing articles for HBR Turkey, CX Magazine and CX Network. He’s an international keynote speaker and spoke many of International Customer Experience Management summits.

Gökhan is Customer Experience Manager at Enerjisa. He is a part time lecturer at MEF University and gives Customer Experience Management course for MBA students. He gives trainings and consultancy to compaines for creating better customer experiences. / https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokhankara16/

Thought leader and innovator for ways of engaging associates, customers and partners.

Skilled in creating CX business value and systematically changing organizations to align around experience and drive financial impact. Specializes in enabling brands with skills and competencies like design thinking, journey management and value mapping to drive sustainable shifts in how organizations work to achieve results. Over 25 years of transforming experiences working in and with brands such as Sysco, AT&T, Dale Carnegie, Invisalign, Ciena, Freeman, Sodexho, Sandy Spring Bank and MoneyGram.

Ann Marie has extensive experience in defining and implementing strategies to optimise Customers Experience. She has worked for global organisations at executive levels in the software, engineering and outsourcing sectors. She serves as a customer advocate, partnering with leaders across all business units to transform the customer experience and ensure that customers are at the centre of the decision-making process. Ann-Marie’s areas of expertise and research are CX frameworks, CX-Insight programs, employee engagement and CX-digital strategy alignment to customer journeys.

Ruud Verduin is recognized as an expert in customer experience and customer relationship management in The Netherlands. He is head of consulting at Smart Connections, helping clients with effective customer relationship management strategies and supporting them in customer-centric change. Ruud has worked across multiple industries including hospitality, education, financial services, fundraising, publishing, retail, as well as b2b and not for profit sectors.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruudverduin/

Marcko is Customer Experience Consultant and Managing Director at CXworks. He is specialized in the area of customer experience and customer journey mapping. Marcko has extensive experience in managing customer experiences, digital transformation and online marketing, with which he has helped several companies improve the multi-channel customer contact of their commercial and service organizations.

Praveen is a customer experience strategist for over 20 years. He has advised a number of organizations on customer centricity strategies, measurement and advocacy. Praveen has worked extensively with large organizations across multiple industries and sectors such as banking, insurance, telecom, retail, manufacturing and automotive to name a few. He was honoured as the “50 Most Impactful Customer Experience Consultants” in India. A frequent speaker on customer experience, he is also a guest columnist on online publications and websites. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Hansa Research Group, a leading research organisation in India, engaged extensively in the area of customer experience measurement and strategy

Jurrien worked as an analyst and later on as manager within several industries (market research, e-commerce, utilities and finance). He is passionate about trying to understand customer behaviour and needs through data and using these insights for new customer-focused contact strategies and campaigns. In 2018 he started his own company Datahart, helping clients with data-driven solutions to better interact with their customers.

Freelance Business Consultant turning CX into Business Impact. Helps managers to grow business thru strategic CX transformation projects and capability governance. Laser focused on increasing Customer- and € Business Impact with Digital Technology, Agile Change and cross-functional e2e Chain Management. While growing NPS and € quantified ROI of Omnichannel CX Management. +15 years in large Telco, Media and Public. Top-ranked Executive MBA. Multilingual in French, German, English and Dutch.

Customers are smarter and more demanding than ever... The digital world makes it much more difficult for you, as an organisation, to build up long-term relationships with your customers. That's why we want to enable you to understand your customers better and transform your organisation in a customer-centric way so that customers become loyal instead of indifferent. Siska is the founder of Jezzup and an experienced consultant in CRM, Customer Engagement and Sales & Marketing Transformations. Having been in the “customer” business for 20 years, Siska has a solid understanding of business drivers and enablers. Siska is passionate about building a customer-centric organization, about how to do things differently and combines this with a real “can-do” mentality. Before founding Jezzup, Siska was leading the Dynamics CRM business at Microsoft. “People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Joacim Lundberg is an Analyst within customer experience, loyalty and insights at Länsförsäkringar Skåne which is a mutual bank, insurance and real estate agency in Sweden. As owned by the customers, it’s crucial to be customer-centric. As a matter of fact, every customer has to be treated for what they are: an owner of the company. In his daily work, he performs data analytics, listens to the voice of the customers, creates retention-building activities through marketing automation in the customer journey built on insights of the customers. Joacim is a certified Net Promoter® professional and is inspired by the emotional connection between customers and brands and the fulfilment of a more significant purpose for the customer than just the relationship to a product or service. And it all starts with the coworkers at a customer-centric work place. He is driven by creating the one thing humans need most in the world - happiness!

Customer loyalty is so interesting that I am be working within customer loyalty for over 20 years. As Expert Customer Experience I help companies to understand the customer better and really make a difference in customer experience. It is my mission to make the world more beautiful for customers. At SAMR Marktvinders we help organizations develop sustainably based on meaningful information. For this, we use a unique combination of data science, human insights, design thinking, strategy development and implementation power.

Spiros loves supporting organisations in their journey to become the best versions of themselves so that they prosper while people feel free and happy. Customer Experience is a big part of that effort and has been in his business practice for the last years. Spiros has a broad commercial experience in areas such as Strategy & Business Development, Sales, and Marketing and has worked in various organisations including Hewlett-Packard, the European Commission and Sony Ericsson. Before starting Krataion Consulting in 2012, he was Head of Sales for Southeast Europe in Sony Ericsson. He holds a BSc in Business Administration from Athens University of Economics and Business and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa. Last but not least Spiros is also an organisations constellations practitioner. He loves travelling and his motto is "what would you do if you weren't afraid"?

I am passionate about transforming the energy of communities into experience triggers along the entire customer journey. In clearly focused agile project cycles, cross-departmental teams transform pain points into experiences that make a difference to the end customer. My greatest strength here is to intuitively open areas for people where they can develop freely. In doing so, I lay down a path that others can follow and which provides security. At the crucial moment, I coach individuals, leaders and teams so they are ready to take the next step. In this way, I help to shape an organizational culture that promotes transformation.

Danielle Navas-Brandt is a B2B marketing and brand strategy specialist. She has an MBA from Boston University in Brand Strategy and Marketing Leadership. As an expert on Corporate Identity, Brand Positioning & Brand Activation she connects the brand with customer experience. She believes that customers make a connection with the personality of a brand. That is why personality and purpose are key drivers in customer experience. Her mission is to ban boring B2B branding with her company brandfabric.

Tony Lynch is a business consultant, speaker, coach and trainer. He helps business leaders develop strategic plans, closing the gap between expectations and results, with a process for greater effectiveness, team engagement, performance, productivity and profitability. Tony is a regular speaker at events as well as being a TEDx speaker. He was also featured in Inc in the '100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference'.

Gerda is a passionate and entrepreneurial Customer Experience Manager at Grodan with a background in the hospitality industry. In the past, she worked at different branches, and for distinctive brands. Gerda's personal mission is ‘making the world more customer driven and hospitable’. She guides CX programs with a hands-on mentality while working together to set directions and build an experience from the ground up. She loves to dance, she likes creating a tasteful dinner experience, and to socialize with friends and family.

“AH- erlebnis” : "De ervaring plotseling de oplossing van een probleem te zien waarnaar men eerder lange tijd en tevergeefs op zoek was”. “Wij halen meer rendement uit uw communicatie Euro” “Dat doen wij door bedrijven persoonlijker en relevanter te helpen communiceren met hun klanten en digitale transformatie te versnellen” We combineren en verbinden, met +25 jaar ervaring, business en ICT om op die manier klantcommunicatie projecten bij onze klanten te adviseren en te begeleiden. Door onderzoek, advies en implementatie begeleiding bieden wij oplossingen die direct bijdragen aan uw bedrijfsresultaat.

"AH erlebnis": The experience of suddenly seeing the solution of a problem that people had previously been looking for for a long time and in vain ” (Term of the Austrian-American psychologist Karl Bühler (1879-1963). "We get more return from your communication Euro " We do this by helping companies to communicate with their customers in a more personal and relevant way and to accelerate digital transformation. We combine and connect, with +25 years of experience, business and IT to advise and guide customer communication projects with our customers. Through research, advice and implementation guidance, we offer solutions that directly contribute to your operating result.

Faran Niaz is Senior Vice President, Global Head of Customer Experience at ADIB. A change Management Expert & highly experienced Customer Service expert with over 25 years of Global experience in Banking/Financial Services including the successful establishment and running of Alternate Channels, Call Centers, Customer Service units and Quality setups for Citibank, Mashreqbank and ADIB. Faran has led ADIB in winning ‘Best Bank in Customer Experience in UAE’ for an unprecedented seven consecutive years. An unparalleled achievement in the Banking Industry. Faran is also a talented Award-winning Photographer with his work exhibited in Italy, Thailand & UAE. Faran is one of the Chair Judges at the International Business Excellence Awards.

Anna Noakes Schulze is Senior Partner for Customer Experience at Ecodynamics, a platform economy & digital business consultancy, as well as the Founder & Director of SunflowerUX, a digital customer experience consultancy. Anna is a TEDx speaker, supporter and coach and a mentor for customer experience at Startplatz, a startup incubator with offices in Cologne and Dusseldorf. For over twenty years, Anna has been dedicated to building better digital experiences. She retains a single-minded focus on helping businesses succeed by connecting with their greatest asset: their customers.

Connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annanoakesschulze/

Ecodynamics: www.ecodynamics.io

Demet Tunç leads the Customer Experience Council at the Conference Board. The Council’s mission is to gain insights in customer experience across industries and regions by providing global peer-to-peer benchmarking and best practice sharing. She also provides consultancy & project management services - from strategy to execution with a hands-on approach - in marketing, customer experience and commercial management. Demet started her career as a brand manager at Colgate Palmolive. Following this she spent 10 years at Goodyear Dunlop, holding quite a few Business and Marketing Management roles in Turkey as well as in the EMEA headquarters in Brussels. She then became Vice President at Ingersoll Rand for the Security Technologies Business Unit in charge of the EMEA Region before joining Bekaert. Demet held a global role as Senior Vice President Customer Excellence and Chief Marketing Officer at Bekaert. She has a degree in engineering at Istanbul Technical University as well as an MBA degree obtained at Koç University.

Vassilis is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a keynote speaker. He loves Customer Experience and Service Design concepts since they both have the human in the heart of their interest. He has been involved in a series of cutting edge projects aimed to bring Customer Experience Culture into organizations worldwide. With his background in psychodrama and sociodrama, he aims at making an impact on people’s lives and driving change. He founded VividVibes in 2017 focusing on purposeful and disruptive strategies.

Hendrik is a globally experienced CX partnership leader, creating best in class customer and partner solutions. He is passionate about creating highly collaborative business partnerships that thrive by creating true win-win relationships in which partners are equally committed to each other’s success. Hendrik has a proven track record of 24-years successfully managing and optimizing CX operations while achieving highest levels of customer and client loyalty, working with various regions and mentalities as in the Americas, India, Philippines, China, as well as Eastern and Western Europe.

Jesko has extensive experience in defining and implementing strategies to optimize Customers Experience. Being responsible for Customer Experience in BAWAG PSK (a top retail bank in Austria) he is looking at new innovative ways through technology and process design to support customers when they need it most. Due to his international banking experience – he worked in several countries for a pan-European bank at the executive level in Retail and Corporate& Investment banking, his sound project management capabilities and deep experience in Lean Six Sigma it is in his DNA to partner with leaders across all business units to ensure that customers are at the centre of any decision-making process. If you would need to describe him, " ambitious, curious & passionate" describe him the best!

Dave Wurms is an experienced CX professional with great knowledge of feedback management methods and systems. At Focus Feedback he assists many large (international) organisations to understand why customers are loyal and if they consider leaving, he and his team figure out why they leave. And more importantly, what actions does it take to keep them on board. At Focus Feedback it is all about bringing customer experience to customer excellence. We do so by measuring Net Promoter Scores (NPS), Customer Effort Scores (CES) and collecting other relevant information such as reviews and ratings, at various touch-points. These data are gathered and analysed, allowing us to distribute helpful insights to the right people within (even the global) organisations in easy to use and meaningful dashboards.

After graduation at the Hotelschool The Hague and Erasmus University (business economics, specialization quality management) I started my working career in 1993 as a business consultant. My specialization is service excellence related concepts. I have written 15 management books on these concepts. In 2017 the Service Excellence Foundation was established in the Netherlands to promote the model and principles of the European guideline CEN/TS 16880: Service Excellence - Creating outstanding customer experiences through service excellence. In 2018 I received my PhD based on a thesis on service guarantees.

Being a marketer in heart and soul, Ingrid always puts the customer at first. After leading the fundraising department for several years, Ingrid is now responsible for the Customer-Centric Programme of the Dutch Heart Foundation. The Dutch Heart foundation has a huge ambition in involving the Dutch people in her mission: a healthy heart for everyone. Therefore Ingrid is leading the organisation towards a Customer-Centric Organisation by changing systems, processes and people.

Cyreta is an Operations and customer experience professional with both theoretical and practical training in Management & Business Operations. With over 15 years’ experience in Administration, Sales, Marketing, Information Technology, HR and Legal Services, she has been able to solve diverse problems throughout her career and she is not intimated by uncertainty. She also holds an MBA and two Bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration and Law. She is motivated towards helping organizations dramatically improve business results by changing how they interact with employees, customers, and partners.

Eric is a twenty-year veteran in customer service and customer experience, storyteller and blogger. Currently, at Vistaprint, he oversees customer service operations for the Dutch-speaking market and German design services and is responsible for identifying customer experience challenges and designing customer-centric solutions.

Daniel Van Hove drives the Sales & Marketing at ESAS, providing customers with the information and services needed to enhance their own customers' experience, reduce their cost of ownership and speed up their time to market. By innovating customers' operations, ESAS gives them a significant competitive advantage in their market.

I’m really passionate about customer service and engagement, and truly believe that software can empower customers and businesses to build stronger bonds, be more efficient and increase productivity to unprecedented levels.

Thomas is an experienced leader with extensive track record driving transformation and growth in global organisations. Thomas has expertise in CX and Experience Management, Research, Insight/Analytics and is a thought leader in the Digital Transformation and growth arena. Currently, Vice President of Strategy and Digital for a $1.6bn global technology business, Exela Technologies, Thomas has led global CX programmes across Telco (Vodafone) IoT and electronics (Premier Farnell/Avnet) and in Financial Services (Nationwide Building-Society). As a Technology evangelist and entrepreneur Thomas has also co-founded technology start-ups and is an active member of the Amsterdam tech-community.

It is my personal drive to increase the happy moments for customers (and employees!) during their interaction with companies. My education focused on Marketing Management, which resulted in me becoming a CX expert with a keen eye on all marketing instruments, where People is the most relevant one for CX: it’s the employees that make a huge difference in customers staying loyal or not. In my 20 years of experience in the field of CX, I have been working in many stages of the VOC programs, ranging from survey design, brand alignment and onboarding sessions, to dashboard implementation and activation workshops. Working for Kantar gave me the opportunity to create a better world in many industries, a.o. the airline industry, automotive, finance and FMCG.

25+ years of international exposure in Customer Service and Customer Experience working for leading brands across a diverse range of industries undergoing the large-scale (digital) transformation and disruptive change. A thought leader in Customer Experience, and Customer Advocacy, and passionate advocate for Service as a sustainable competitive advantage, differentiating brands and creating value for customers, employees, and the business. Nicolette helps organisations integrate customer centricity in their strategies and governance processes, and advises and helps companies to develop their CX muscle.

Olga Kullander is a CX professional with 10+ years of experience in the professional services industry. She started her carrier in operations and for the last 5 years, she’s been engaged in CX and process improvement. She partners with the senior leaders on strategic and operational issues drives CX strategy and digital transformation initiatives. Olga is an unrelenting advocate of process innovation, able to challenge the status-quo, passionate for experiential development, and effective promoter of collaboration at different levels of the organization.

I am a team manager in customer contact teams for several years. With teams serving customers as well as b2b teams, and teams up to 40 people I am an experienced manager. It is my strong belief that having contact with a company influenced your experience and your view on the company big time. In every conversation over and over again. The best thing you can do is give the biggest stage to your customer contact.

Hilde van Gestel is a Registered Customer Experience and Multichannel management Professional (RCEMP®). With over 20 years of experience in defining and executing programs to optimize customer experience and multichannel Management, she is a pro in this area. By listening closely to customers and employees she designs and implements improvements, new services and devices allowing the organization to actually make a difference in CX. As Lead Customer Experience & Quality she is assigned to turn Mediq into a customer-centric organization. She implements customer programs and is coaching people in working with customer journeys, feedback, knowledge management, multiskilling and optimizing multichannel management. Hilde is open-minded and likes to explore. This is reflected in her choice for a PhD in Japanese language & culture. This curiosity is also shown in her crave for visiting different cities and countries and trying new food recipes.

Romina is a senior, well-seasoned HR professional with a contagious drive and passion for the interim management market. She is a hard-working and dedicated HR professional who goes the extra mile to understand the needs of her clients and matches those with the perfect candidate. She spends the time upfront to thoroughly brief her candidates and ensure there is a good fit, not just in terms of skills set and experience but also in terms of cultural fitShe founded her own company Youphoria, specialized in Interim Management. She holds a Master’s in applied economics at the University of Hasselt. She started her career in the banking sector as a corporate banker for international companies and evolved further as Managing Director of Belfius of 5 agencies. Afterwards, she decided to switch her career to the recruitment sector and so she entered the world of Interim Management, where she worked for 2 International listed companies and started a division of interim management in an international headhunting company. Throughout her 20+ years of professional experience, Romina has gained a wealth of expertise in the recruitment & interim management world, while building a broad network of company decision-makers & candidates.

Martin is an experienced senior leader who has spent the last 13 years working for customer-focused organizations ranging from large multi-nationals such as Blizzard Entertainment and Apple to exciting tech SMEs such as tado.

Maurice is the Founder and Managing Director of Unleash Potential. He has over 25 years experience in the public and private sector at Senior Management / Executive level. He is former Chairman of the Customer Contact Management Association (CCMA), held positions with VHI Healthcare and Sage as Head of Customer Experience. Maurice’s leadership and strategy execution skills have been recognised by many national and international awards including European People Manager of the Year and European Industry Champion of the Year (ECCA).

Customer Engagement has been the red thread throughout my broad experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. I have worked in sales, local and international marketing roles, international digital marketing innovation and regional and global patient experience lead roles in large Global pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Pfizer and AbbVie on market-leading brands.

Arne Roex is the Customer Experience Manager at Eurail. Arne is a certified Customer Experience Specialist (CXS). His passion for the field of customer experience and marketing show from his work experience. His mission is to make Eurail a customer-centric and fun place to work.

Claudia is an international professional with extensive global experience spanning 20 years at management level in blue-chip multinational companies. Prior to joining ServiceNow, she was Director Customer Service North West Europe at Maersk Line and Global Head of Centre of Excellence at DHL Express. Her experience includes all aspects of Customer Service, Digitalization, Project and Program Management, Key Account Management and Procurement. Claudia has a proven record in delivering Transformational Change, Customer Service Systems, Performance and Process Improvements, Revenue Generation and Cost Savings. Claudia led international high-profile Business Projects in complex multi-cultural work environments in Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East.

Birgitta is a leader in Customer Service and IT management with more than 15 years of experience driving programs and organizations to achieve operational excellence. She has a proven track record in implementing improvement initiatives, process optimizations and organizational changes to improve Service Quality, Reliability and Customer experience. Lead by her favourite quote “Life starts at the end of your comfort zone”, she loves guiding & mentoring people to continuously outperform in standards of excellence.

As Chief Customer Experience Officer she oversees all public-facing work and leads programming, experience and design for 14 new libraries. She is an in-demand speaker on issues of libraries, customer experience and design. In 2017 she was chosen for a Global Impact Award from the Customer Experience Professional Association; she is a CCXP (Certified Customer Experience Professional) and, in 2018, was elected to the board of the Customer Experience Professional Association.

Diana Othieno is an Accredited Customer Experience Professional. She has performed and directed a wide variety of Customer Experience initiatives in both internal and external Customer Experience Operations. She is a Certified Prince 2 Project Management Practitioner and has designed and implemented an Enterprise CRM system, Queue Management system and a Customer Experience Center for superior delivery of service through technology. She has conducted an internal Customer Experience Awards Gala and promoted recognition of individuals and teams who go out of their way to deliver memorable customer experiences. She is a passionate Customer Experience trainer who is looking forward to making a significant contribution towards bridging the Experience gap in the Experience economy.

With over two decades of experience in the industry, Mohan has a proven track record of enabling UX-led business transformations for several blue-chip companies. He is currently the Vice President and Global Head of User Experience Design at HARMAN. His team was awarded the prestigious Red Dot Awards, named “Agency of The Year – Design and Technology”, ranked a leader in Experience Engineering by analysts, and won several other accolades with a USP that blends design and technology. He has mobilised teams across domains and geographies, integrating data, design and engineering to deliver seamless customer experiences.

Liam has 25 years mixed senior commercial and general management experience to MD level. For the last three years, Liam has held a key role at the number one international CX search and selection business Customer Management Resourcing. CMR work closely with a range of leading global Brand-Owners, BPOs and Consultancies from offices in Manchester, Barcelona and Utrecht, was Liam is responsible for International Growth, Strategic Client Relationships and Executive Search.

Paul is the Founder & Managing Director of CMR, a boutique international recruitment agency which specialises in mid-executive level roles in Customer Management that offer permanent and interim contract solutions – they are leaders of talent acquisition in AI, Contact Centres & CX, which includes Customer Operations/Contact Centres, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Customer Experience (CX) & Insight, BPO, Change & Transformation. CMR currently employs 20 consultants internationally and are now on a mission to be the leading and largest agency in this sector across Europe. They recently opened another office in Barcelona which is part of our international growth strategy to tailor a global talent solution to larger brands whereby we can trade locally and continue to build our network within local markets…. We're also doing a lot of work in The Netherlands & Germany and plan to have another subsidiary business open by the end of summer 2019 in Utrecht.

In Marks professional career, he always worked in customer service or service related roles. Directly managing cross-functional teams in different geographies but also worked with customers to improve support models. Measuring and understanding KPI’s leverage best practices and lessons learned to align support models to customer expectations.

An experience design enthusiast at heart, Patricia is also a customer-driven transformation and change disciple. She is convinced that great CX is built on great EX and has extensive experience in building and organisationally embedding customer/ employee experience-centric mindset, teams, and operating model. She is leading a multi-disciplinary team composed of CX and UX Designers, Customer Engagement and Change Managers and Customer Insights & Analytics experts to jointly boost employee experience along end-to-end journeys beyond silos and increase service effectiveness.

Marjolein Droog is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and senior associate Customer Strategy at Aegon Group. She drives Aegon’s customer-centric strategy by sharing exemplary customer experience best practices across all Aegon companies worldwide, and by building CX knowledge, capabilities and tools to facilitate those practices. With her broad expertise in the areas of CX management, marketing, communication, human resources, and (project) management and her no-nonsense approach she is able to connect people, drive action and support growth.

Adil is a Founder and CEO of Qmeter. Qmeter is an enterprise solution for Customer Feedback Management and Customer Experience Management. Using different Channels in order to collect instant feedback in the SIMPLEST, DETAILED & FASTEST ways is the main ideology of Qmeter. Qmeter has a truly global footprint and distributes in many countries (Europe, Middle East and Asia) through own subsidiaries and partner network. Having a 10 years business partnership with Qmatic company Adil highly experienced in deploying Customer Journey Management solutions and creating new touchpoints to enhance Customer Experience. Adil is also the creator of the new methodology of Customer Experience Measurement, SLI - Satisfaction Level Indicator. SLI is a competitive measurement which shows your current satisfaction score compared to your best possible performance. The main principle of this technique is to show you what would you get in a perfect situation and how are you doing currently.

Arif Ali Gezmisoglu is working in Turkish Airlines since 2004 and worked in engineering, commerce supervision, deputy inspector, auditor, quality insurance, regional director positions until he became the Manager of Customer Experience in 2015. He is now VP of Customer Experience and Relations in Turkish Airlines. He is an international keynote speaker and accepted awards on behalf of Turkish Airlines, "Five-Star Global Airline" awarded by Airline Passenger Experience Association and first place in airline category for "Brands with Best Customer Experience Management" A.L.F.A. awards from Marketing Turkey.

Isabelle is graduated from the Solvay Business School in Brussels. During her whole career, she spent her high level of energy in the implementation of transformation programs in organizations with a wide range of operational change concerns related to customer service. Isabelle is working for the Belgian pioneer in direct insurance “Corona Direct” as Head of Customer Excellence Group and Member of the Management Team. She is assigned to accompany the customer-dedicated teams in a more digitalized and multichannel journey.

Aline Mueller is an innovative thinker with solid experiences in enabling companies and people to become truly customer-centric. She is passionate about simplifying customer journeys, designing innovative services and processes, driving digitalization and thus increases customer loyalty and a companies revenue.

The UK’s top woman in Customer Experience, a world leading expert, global keynote speaker and soon to be published author, Clare founded London based CX Agency 'CMX’ in 2017, specialising in CX Design and customer-led Transformation. Before starting-up CMX, Clare held a number of senior leadership roles in FTSE 100 organisations, including Head of CX at Sainsbury’s. As a seasoned CX professional she has worked for and with some of the UK’s best-known brands including M&S, British Airways and Premier Inn.

Managing Partner, Axis Partners. MBA from IE business school, Mechanical Engineer and Masters Degree in Motorsports, with certifications in Lean Six Sigma, Artificial intelligence (MIT) and Operational efficiency (APICS). 15 years of experience across 4 countries in Customer Experience, Innovation, Digital, Operations efficiency and Business Strategy working with numerous Fortune 500 companies.

Lynet is a leading Customer Experience and Human Resource Expert with fifteen years of progressive working experience in the Banking and Logistics sector. She has held several roles namely; Head of Department - Customer Experience, Human Resource and Training Consultant and Contact Centre Service Manager. She is a highly capable change - agent who has consistently refined and revitalized strategies initiated change and facilitated solutions-driven team collaborations. Her departments have been awarded as the most innovative. She is proficient in leading and managing cross-cultural teams, overseeing Human Resource Processes, instituting and implementing HR Policies on Recruitment, Performance Management, Training and Development and Employee Relations and Welfare functions. Her experience lies in; building and executing plans for multiple consumer segments in an Omni-channel /cross-channel/live/ and digital environment, provision of Human Resources services, policies, program and training. Her contribution and success have been achieved by having a clear understanding of internal and external stakeholders’ needs to execute practical solutions. She prides at being a self-starter with initiative, drive and the capacity to spot potential and deploy it.

Katia is a positive and enthusiast professional for whom building trust is key. She has 25 years of experience in Human Resources and Customer Care management in the competitive telco world. Currently, she is Head of Front Office Sales for the consumer market at proximus. She's facing the challenge to make the shift to digital, lower customer effort and improve the customer experience while maintaining a relevant and important sales channel for the consumer market. Empowering people, making them more accountable and proud and working in a more E2E and multidisciplinary way are key battles to obtain this. In her private life, Katia has 2 children of 10 and 12. She likes to play tennis, read a book and go see the soccer and basket games of her children :-).

After studying business psychology in Germany, Matthias applied his understanding of human behaviour as a consultant in hospitality, events, real estate development and technology. He is passionate about understanding the customer in order to deliver unforgettable experiences. Matthias advises leading companies on CX strategy, transformation and implementation - from measuring the CX maturity, creating customer journeys and developing customised CX frameworks. At Renascence, Matthias and the team keep evolving tools & frameworks including Compass CX - a bespoke CX framework that the company is using to understand functional, behavioural and emotional friction points.

Donna O’Toole is an experienced awards expert who has helped hundreds of household brands, businesses, and leaders to grow their profile through winning prestigious industry awards. As founder of ‘August’ a unique recognition agency that helps business leaders and their companies to raise their profile, Donna has proved her expertise through an outstanding success rate in The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise competition. Donna has now launched a unique digital training platform designed specifically to help small businesses, comms teams, and entrepreneurs to win the awards they enter.

Eugeny started his career in CITI in 1998, where he quickly grew up to the executive position in consumer digital channels. Starting from 2014 he took the leadership of Sberbank’s flagship corporate digital department, developing innovative digital channels and services for SME (among them is online-bank with 2,5+mln clients). Eugeny believes that customer experience is one of the core pillars for any company’s strategy and makes sure that his team put it on the top list of priorities.

Peter is a CX professional, digitalization expert and marketing strategist with over 20 years of business experience. He is based in Prague and has the experience with driving Customer Focused projects ranging from startups, through scale-ups till big corporations such as Microsoft or O2. Currently owns a consultancy company MonetizeCX.com with a focus to translate the value of improved customer experience/customer-centricity into better perceived value for company shareholders to inspire them to fuel further growth based on CX related initiatives.

Francis Goh is the CEO of HehSed Consulting, which specializes in Digital strategy development, innovation, through Design Thinking, agile & lean methodologies, Customer Experience and Digital & Social Marketing. Prior to this, he was the CEO at Mercer. Francis has more than twenty years of international experience in the technology and energy industries, having had numerous P&L and high impact leadership roles with global leaders such as Accenture, SAP, HP, Microsoft and ExxonMobil. During this time, Francis has worked across Asia, Europe and the United States. Francis specializes in the areas of emerging solutions, breakthrough business models and innovation. He has a proven track record in building high-performance teams and overachieving both revenue and profit targets consistently. He has a strong reputation for developing and deploying new business go-to-market strategies across sales, operations and resource management. At SAP, he established innovative business models which further enhanced SAP’s brand positioning and grew both topline and profits as a result. Francis is a hands-on leader with a deep solution and value-selling expertise across a broad spectrum of clients in the Asia Pacific region across industries. Francis is passionate about recruiting, managing and coaching high-performing talent. He is also a recognized keynote speaker and is frequently invited to speak at various industry platforms. Francis holds an Honors degree in Mechanical Engineering, an MBA and a PhD in International Management.  

Over the past two decades, Bram has honed his experience, globally, in growing businesses, change management, branding, marketing, sales, customer success, go to market strategies and commercial operations in discussion with hundreds of companies, big and small. Pre Wonderflow, He was the CCO and COO at a global research firm. Before that adventure, Bram was the Co-Founder and CEO of a global advisory firm that provides strategic guidance and analyst relations support to providers of high-tech products and industry analyst firms. He also gained knowledge as a consultant and sales executive at companies, including Essent/RWE, Dell, TomTom, and Gartner.