On 23-24 February, senior executives from across Europe attended the two-day CXFS event. The conference’s customer-centric focus aimed to provide insight and improve relationships between customers and companies. The event accommodated around 80 executives, VPs and directors engaged in customer experience, marketing and digital strategy from leading corporations. The attendees gained exclusive access to knowledge from the most advanced companies in the field, through conference talks, interactive discussions and innovative network formats.

Innovative agenda
The event agenda covered a variety of different methods of engagement, including conference sessions, which reflected issues identified by senior executives; one-to-one business meetings, offering the opportunity for private meetings with leading specialists; interactive think tank discussions, allowing for debate in an informal setting; and extensive networking, which gave people crucial time to engage with speakers and fellow attendees.

As in previous years, CXFS worked with a leading group of experts and problem solvers who not only spoke at the convention, but gave a more personal, interactive approach to sharing knowledge and advice. The event’s flexibility and catering to individual objectives allowed for attendees to customise their own itinerary; this distinguishes CXFS from other financial conferences.

The event’s flexibility and catering to individual objectives allowed for attendees to customise their own itinerary; this distinguishes CXFS from other financial conferences

Discussing efforts to maintain customer retention and loyalty in a hyper-competitive market, the financial conference covered a range of key issues. These included: effective management of the migration to online and mobile banking; the implementation of appropriate processes and channel strategies to counter changes in consumer behaviour; the shift from ‘big data’ to actionable insight to drive continuous business improvements; delivering personalised services in a digital age and the embedding of customer centricity through effective people engagement, motivation and training.

Effusive praise
Kimia Allahverdi, the Exchange’s director, described the commitment to address customer dissatisfaction as “a call for action, a fundamental change in direction”. The objective of the conference was to assist financial leaders in constructing effective business models that put the customer at the heart of all activities and decisions.

Past attendees have been impressed by the quality of the event. Anne Grim, managing director and global head of client experience at Barclays, described the event as “worthwhile, rich, and thought-provoking”. Paolo Barbesino, first VP and head of internet and mobile banking at UniCredit, said: “They provided me with a thorough overview of what’s happening in the financial service industry customer service development and how digitalisation is pushing this trend even further.” Harmeen Birk, VP institutional clients group at Citi, said: “I found people in my industry that I’d usually never meet, vendors in technology that I didn’t know existed, so it’s turned out to be much better than expected.”

In an industry with such a volatile and uneasy relationship with its customers, the yearly conference offers innovative and inspired solutions that encourage large financial corporations to rebuild loyalty and trust between themselves and their customers.

Get involved
Missed out? Fear not, as the Customer Experience Exchange for Financial Services will be coming to Europe in the summer of 2016! taking place in Frankfurt, Germany on 13-14 September, the European version of CXFS has already secured speakers such as: EVP, Chief of Staff, Danske Bank; COO, Insurance, Lloyds Banking Group; VP, Data Propositions, Innovation and Customer Experience, Barclays; VP, Head of Digital Marketing, MasterCard; VP, Internet Channels, ING Bank Turkey to name a few! You can securely request to join this stellar line up by emailing the Exchange team directly on Exchangeinfo@iqpc.com or by calling +44(0)207 368 8494.