Engagement & Experience Expo 2016, presented by Loyalty360, kicked-off Monday in Denver at the Marriott City Center Hotel. “It’s been a very interesting time,” said Loyalty360 CEO/CMO Mark Johnson in is opening remarks. “We have some very interesting things going on at the association. We have a new board of advisors on the brand side and the supplier side. We’re looking to do some really unique things around certifications, standards, benchmarks, and we are very blessed to have just an amazing group of people assisting us in those efforts.”
“Already today, and even yesterday, we had some very unique discussions,” he continued. “We’ll be talking about that more through the conference. We’re also going to be looking at ways to get more insight from our conference attendees as well.”
New for this conference is a mobile app to help attendees better experience the Expo. All attendees received an invitation to log into the app, which was made available via iTunes and Google Play.
“The invitation lets you see the agenda,” Johnson explained, “let’s you see all the speakers and comment on speakers and sessions. We’re going to be sending out push messages in regards to sessions attendees have signed up for as well.”
For Tuesdays Loyalty360 CX Awards, conference attendees will be able to vote for the winners via the app. “And you can personalize your agenda,” Johnson added, “but most importantly, you can engage with other people, so you can send friend requests to other individuals at the conference and meet them to really talk about customer experience and customer loyalty which is very important.”
Indeed, that’s what the Engagement & Experience Expo is all about. “One of the things we continue to hear from our members and the general audience at the conferences is ‘we want to engage with our peers about best practices and insights. We want to understand not only what we are doing and what our particular industry is doing but what are others doing.’ We’re very excited about the amazing agenda that we have.”
Day one featured general sessions presented by UnitedHealthcare and U.S. Bank, as well as a session featuring Expo “alumni” Guardian and Ryder. The latter spoke about how customer experience programs have evolved over the last three years. Kim Delaney, VP customer experience at Guardian and Stephanie Wicky, director of marketing for Ryder, discussed how the programs at their companies, as well as the overall customer experience strategies, changed since they last presented at the Engagement & Experience Expo.
Another notable session featured Bob Daly, SVP of retail payment solutions at U.S. Bank. In his presentation, “Behind U.S. Bank’s Ultimate Achievement in Real-Time Redemption and Personalized Customer Experience,” Daly described how the bank built it’s cutting edge reward redemption system.
The day finished off with a discussion led by Johnson which featured Eric Messerschmidt, SVP of strategic marketing, CRM, and loyalty, Norman Vossschulte, director of fan experience for the Philadelphia Eagles, and Matthew Quint, director, Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia University.