CX Europe 2018 is just eight days from now — Tuesday and Wednesday, November 13–14 at the Royal Lancaster next to Hyde Park in London — and this year we are exploring how companies are resetting, realigning, and reinventing themselves to make CX the engine for growth.

To set the scene, as this year’s Forum host, I will be sharing some new research on the importance of divergent and convergent thinking to create great CX. Divergent thinking is about sparking creativity and uncovering new insights. Convergent thinking, in contrast, helps synthesize and refine to narrow in on an actionable solution or next step. I will reveal how companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Marks & Spencer (M&S), and 7-Eleven alternate between methodologies and tools that support divergent and convergent thinking cycles to ask the right questions and get to the right customer-centric answers.

Day one of the Forum is jam-packed with great content, from how to design positive emotional peaks to how to elevate your CX influence by thinking three to 10 years into the future to why paying employees for delivering good CX is a bad idea. We also have an exciting last-minute addition to the program on how to measure customer emotion in a volatile climate where data breaches, fake news, and political turmoil can erode confidence and push consumers to retreat away from innovation.

Day two promises to be equally thought-provoking as we look at why CX professionals need to become value architects, how data and insight is used to drive deeper understanding and inform business decisions, how to combine customer and employee experience to create a quantum leap, and how to create a culture of test-and-learn.

Having had a sneak preview of the presentations we have lined up for you, I can assure you that we have a great lineup of experts sharing their insights from the mainstage, including:

  • Hostelworld Global Head of CX Cathy Thomson
  • Lloyds Banking Group Experience Strategist Laurent Christoph
  • Telegraph Media Group Chief Customer Officer Robert Bridge
  • Credit Suisse Head of CX Greg Hodgson
  • KSM Factory CX Thought Leader Zanna van der Aa
  • MoneySuperMarket Product Director Manish Gajria

You can register here. My Forrester colleagues and I look forward to seeing you there!