With 13+ years in professional sports and entertainment, as well as a 10+ year teaching and coaching career, Carmen Day knows how to build teams, relationships and lead organizational culture change. Working with the Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Blue Jays and now Woodbine Entertainment Group, Carmen has worked with many of the top sports and entertainment organizations in North America. Always focused on initiatives that build loyalty, elevate guest satisfaction and increase revenues, her passion for enhancing the Guest Experience is rooted in her ability to develop proven Training programs that deliver results. She has extensive experience with strategic planning and evaluation in Sales, Guest Experience, Stadium Operations, Event Management and Hospitality. Her passion for people is only outdone by her innate ability to develop trust and nurture relationships with corporate and community partners.

We are All in Guest Experience – How to Create a Guestcentric Culture in Your Organization

The Guest Experience isn’t simply about good customer service anymore. Guest Experience is a way of doing business, it is the culture in your organization and ultimately it drives revenue and your brand promise. In leading companies all employees are expected to walk the talk when it comes to the Guest Experience. It is no longer a separate department but something the entire organization embraces and models. With automation, social media, and the competitiveness of business, organizations are looking for opportunities to differentiate and separate themselves from the competition. In sports and entertainment, we are selling experiences and with so many entertainment offerings out there it is difficult to standout. The guest experience has become increasingly more important.

THIS SESSION WILL HELP YOU:
• Develop your brand promise and guest commitments
• Help you create meaningful training programs and best practices
• Measure success and ways to improve
• Find opportunities to reward and recognize your team
• Develop front line leaders who empower and coach your employees, both formally and in the moment
• Find opportunities to connect your Guest Experience program to revenue and drive results

John Lettieri is a driven entrepreneur. He built the franchises of Hero Certified Burgers and Lettieri Espresso Bar and Café in Toronto to the success they are today.
John received a diploma in dairy technology from the Institut Agricole Grangeneuve in Fribourg, Switzerland. He returned to Canada and developed an award-winning Swiss cheese for the Canadian market.

He continued on that path with his father to begin the first factory in Canada to breed sheep for milk production. From those valuable lessons, he took the leap to become a prominent franchisor in Canada.

Lettieri Cafes, John’s first venture, began in 1988 and grew to 20 cafes. With that momentum, he opened the first Hero Certified Burgers in 2003 which has now grown to 54 locations within the GTA, 1 location in Montreal and 1 location in New York, New York USA.

As the company continues to grow, John continues to source environmentally sustainable products that result in a wholesome and healthier burger.
In 2018, Hero Food Group has opened a quick casual Pizzeria; Hero Certified Pizza in Toronto.

Staying ahead of the competition by building a Leadership Pipeline that supports the development and inspires the journey to Business Success.

John F. Lettieri will share his belief and best practices “that people are the differentiating factor in an organization. Getting the right people in the right roles and keeping them engaged is the key to generating capacity in today’s business environment”.

He writes “When we are in a leadership position, we must be an inspirational leader. It is our duty to inspire and build people strategies and align them with business strategies. This is how we achieve business optimization at HERO foods.”

John will share insight on how every good business has a strategy that demands results. What stands between success and failure? Is in the hands of its people.

HERO Talent optimization is a discipline that provides business leaders with a framework and tools to design culture, roles, and teams that maximize business results.

John shares “As John Fitzgerald once said “People do best what comes naturally”.  We work hard at HERO’s – to align people with the role they do best, naturally!

John will share a four-point people strategy using science, data, and analytics and provide you with the insight to:

1)      Diagnosing the root cause of an organization’s people problems. He will provide insight how to design their people strategy, hire purposefully and inspire effectively to drive an engaged workforce that produces results.

2)      Design – To achieve the best outcome, an organization must leverage people data to deliberately design its approach to leadership, culture, and team dynamics.

3)      Hire The ability to hire well sets the stage for future organizational success.

Defining the roles an organization needs and matching the right person to the requirements boosts the opportunity for success.

4)      Inspire When leaders understand their employees, and employees understand each other, they are equipped to minimize conflict, reduce organizational toxicity, and communicate more effectively, letting distractions get out of the way of results.

Dessalen Wood, CHRP, is an innovative HR executive, seasoned speaker, and coach. She specializes in passionately leading Learning and Development and Human Resources teams at some of North America’s most-respected organizations. Dessalen has over 20 years of experience in national corporations such as Reitman’s Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company, The Children’s Place and The Disney Stores. In 2019 she left her role as Vice President, Talent Development at Cineplex Entertainment to join Thoughtexchange in the newly created role of Chief People Officer. Thoughtexchange’s community intelligence software empowers leaders to find common ground, inspire trust and use data to make decisions that get immediate support.

Throughout her career, Dessalen has coached senior leaders and built teams from the ground up, in addition to designing and delivering multiple original programs. The results have been engaging corporate cultures and high performing leaders at all levels.

Motivation Misconceptions

While all leaders are aware of the importance of motivation when it comes to high levels of performance, there remains an unspoken and pervasive leader fantasy that ideal employees have no needs of their own and are eager to do everything asked of them. Yet research shows that work environment has a tremendous effect on brain function and the desire to work. Still, when faced with push-back, many leaders blame the employee assuming their lack of performance is due to laziness, personality, or greed.

In this session, we will review the latest brain research about how these misconceptions are formed, showing how the “smarter” someone is, the more they defend their incorrect beliefs. We introduce the core of what makes up high quality motivation versus the version that has people feeling constrained and pressured. Through interactive activities, we provide participants with tools to change destructive patterns in their organizations, replacing them with new methods that stimulate creativity, effort, and passion.

Learning Objectives: In an interactive, engaging session, participants will:
• Increase awareness of the destructive power of long held misconceptions about employee motivation; namely how leaders overestimate the importance of external factors such as money on employee motivation while devaluing intrinsic factors, such as autonomy, creativity and a sense of purpose.
• Understand the most common motivation misconceptions, identifying where they originate from and to learning how they impact brain function and productivity.
• Be provided with practical tools for HR and Training professionals to apply to address these common motivation misconceptions and replace them with practices that will improve the quality of motivation within your organization.

Duncan Bureau was appointed President, Air Canada Rouge in May 2018 with overall responsibility for all aspects of Air Canada’s low-cost carrier and subsidiary, focusing on Air Canada Rouge’s distinct brand and culture. He was previously Vice President, Global Sales, a role held since joining Air Canada in June 2014 where he had responsible for the airline’s revenue generated across all sales channels from all global points of sale, and sales distribution strategies worldwide.

Prior to joining Air Canada, Duncan was Senior Vice-President, Global Sales and Distribution at Malaysia Airlines where he was responsible for that airline’s strategic direction in sales, distribution and tour operator divisions, developing sales distribution and channel strategies, and managing international destination sales, marketing and operations. He previously held senior leadership positions at WestJet in sales, business development, distribution, and at Canadian Airlines in revenue management, network planning, financial reporting, annual budget and strategic planning.

Duncan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.

How to use consistent, every-day interactions to achieve customer loyalty

Service delivery undoubtedly plays an integral role in the overall customer experience; from the smallest interactions to a lengthy relationship, every experience affects customer loyalty, and new and repeat business. In this presentation, we will exemplify how we aim to achieve this every day. We will also explore the importance of service consistency for the overall brand, including our relationship with the Disney Institute to impart quality, and consistent, customer service training in our Crew from one of the best customer service minded organizations in the world.

Erik Simins has worked as a top executive in both technology and medical industries. He founded MAGNUS Personnel Corporation in 2011 serving many of the world’s most successful companies such as Amazon, Deloitte, Johnson & Johnson, specializing in markets of technology, biotech and medical device startups.

In 2017, he cofounded BlockAble to alleviate the inefficiencies of the recruitment industry by redefining the process and building a user focused decentralized ecosystem for professionals. As a leader in the blockchain industry, he is often asked to speak at both private consortium and government levels regarding the applications and implications of this new technology and how it relates to the advent of blockchain powered HRTech.

Untapped Human Capital Is the Next Great Global Resource

The principles behind the business of recruiting have not changed for 20 years. The blockchain will disrupt this entirely. This presentation will outline the innovation that is happening now and how it will will fundamentally change how talent is identified.

My career started in 2000 as a contact centre agent for Rogers Communications that progressed into a variety of support roles and later management. Following an enlightening 10 years at Rogers Communications and completion of the business studies program at Seneca College, I accepted an offer from Bell Canada to be the associate director, contact centre business intelligence.

After 12 successful years in telecommunications, i decided to learn a new industry. In 2012, I accepted an offer from Scotiabank as a senior manager within the international banking division, where I led several contact centre projects related to call management, digital engagement, telephony, and IVR. In 2018, i accepted the position of senior manager, strategic initiatives for global contact centres. These opportunities have enabled me to learn about the global market for financial services while applying my project management and contact centre expertise to strategic projects.

Through my pursuit of project management certifications from the project management institute (project management professional (PMP) (2011), PMI-agile certified practitioner (PMI-ACP) (2016)) and the scrum alliance (certified scrum product owner (CSPO) (2016)), I learned the proper application of project management methods & tools to ensure business benefits were realized.

I am very grateful for all the opportunities, I have had to share my knowledge and experiences with the community and honored to return to Seneca College in 2018 as a professor for the school of accounting and financial services while continuing to work at Scotiabank.

As a proud resident of Toronto, I enjoy exploring the city with my wife, bice, and our daughter serena. During my free time, I seek out opportunities to network, cycle, and run.

Enabling Memorable Customer Experiences with Technology

Every year, month, or seemingly everyday incumbents in all industries are facing an onslaught of new competitors that are hungry to service their customers. Winning organizations create memorable experiences that foster customer loyalty and evangelism.

• Customer experiences that P.A.S.S
• Contact CentreTechnology Enablers

Tamsin has twelve years of experience leading complex market research and customer experience projects with cross-functional teams. Her work has brought her to many parts of the world guiding organizational CX strategy, designing and measuring customer experiences, implementing customer-centered service delivery models and supporting organizational CX processes and tools. Currently a Manager of Customer Experience at LifeLabs, Tamsin has held previous roles in market research, customer experience and design innovation including with Bond Brand Loyalty, TNS, and Bridgeable. These roles have afforded Tamsin experience across many sectors including healthcare, financial services, retail, hospitality and gaming industries.

Tamsin is a trained qualitative moderator and is also passionate about facilitating collaborative workshops such as journey mapping, customer co-creation sessions and creative ideation. Tamsin holds a B.Sc. in Biology and Nutritional Science from the University of British Columbia and a certificate in Strategic Marketing from the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Stacey Metcalfe is a Customer Experience professional with over 17 years in the automotive industry. She has served as Manager, Voice of Customer Strategy and Planning since 2012, responsible for overseeing a national multi-brand customer experience program that has helped elevate Toyota to be an industry leader in customer satisfaction in Canada.

Stacey is a driving force behind employee engagement at Toyota through national Customer First initiatives, and has grown an online focus group program that is vital to assisting the organization in making business decisions on a global scale.

Prior to her current role, Stacey spent several years as Lead of Customer Experience Management, where she was the creative figure behind development of an innovative online owners club and its award-winning launch program.

The combination of her career and formal education in Electronics Engineering, has provided the opportunity to be involved with Skills Ontario – Young Woman’s Initiatives, where she has been an active mentor and speaker for several years – inspiring female high school students to consider careers in the trades, technology and engineering.

Jessica Cryer is a sharp and experienced Customer Experience consultant who has a passion for helping businesses create, design, build, and execute strategies that will make a tangible difference. Now as the VP, Business and Customer Strategy, Jessica is responsible for managing a Customer P&L and leading a team in identifying, developing, and executing customer and category growth opportunities through the use of relevant and personalized marketing and sales strategies. Jessica also plays an integral role in leading consulting initiatives that reshape customer-centric thinking and management across organizations.

Prior to joining CSPN, Jessica worked at Monitor Deloitte leading strategy projects for major Canadian financial institutions. Her passion for customer experience led her to Idea Couture, where she focused on customer experience innovation and transformation. Jessica is driven by the opportunity to conceive and build memorable customer and employee experiences, linking disciplines from Strategy, Human Resources, and Service Design to produce desired business outcomes.

Rita joined VIA Rail in November 2014, as General Manager for Central Canada. In this capacity, she oversees all employees and activities related to customer service in stations and on board trains in her region. Her mandate entails providing overall direction and leadership to the Customer Experience and Sales groups, including the development of new business opportunities. As well, Ms. Toporowski is responsible for implementation of new marketing and customer service initiatives. She previously spent 16 years at Air Canada where she held various senior positions, including President of Air Canada Vacations and Senior Director Six Sigma. Immediately prior to joining VIA Rail, Ms. Toporowski was Vice-President, Corporate Planning and Development, at Second Cup. She holds an MBA from Concordia University and a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Psychology from McGill University.

With a passion for creating experiences that delight customers, Joanna has held several roles at Manulife since joining in 2001. Manulife is a leading Canada-based financial services group with principal operations in Asia, Canada and the United States. Not one to stay in a role too long, Joanna has held senior leadership roles in Finance, Contact Centre, Administration, Pensions, Investments, Group Benefits and most recently Transformation. Her experience spans both the US Division of John Hancock, and the Canadian Division, including close alignment with our Global Business Operations team.

Joanna is the former co-executive sponsor for the Global Women’s Alliance in KW & Oakville, and is now a member of its advisory board. Joanna believes strongly in giving back and helping other women advance their careers. Joanna is also the Chair of the Board of a local non-profit, Capacity Canada, whose mission it is to bring ideas, people and resources together to fuel social innovation. An active member in the community, Joanna also regularly plays a key role in the annual United Way Campaign.

Creating Moments that Matter

The world’s greatest companies are no longer differentiating themselves by the products they produce, but rather by the experiences they create for their customers. And while customer experiences are important, so are employee experiences. We created a unique and innovative solution focused on creating a brilliant customer and employee experience all in one. Join me to hear how Manulife empowered it’s employees to help out their family and friends when they need it the most!

This session will help you:

• Understand how focusing on the customer and employee is a win-win
• Get insights on how a small team took an idea and created a working app in no time
• Get a sneak peak at what happens when you unleash the power of your people

Kellee Irwin, Vice-President, Orion Travel Insurance, and past Vice-President, Customer Experience, CAA Club Group, is a highly motivated and strategically-focused leader who has more than 25 years of experience in the private and public insurance sector, with 15 of those years in executive leadership.

Under her guidance at many organizations, including CAA Club Group, Insurance Corporation of British Columbia; Allianz Insurance; and Swiss Reinsurance Company (Swiss RE), Kellee has been recognized for positively implementing transformational change; enhancing the customer experience; delivering effective projects, and achieving top results. With extensive business expertise and a natural ability to motivate and inspire others, Kellee has helped to cultivate success in business and in people.

Passionate about mentorship, in the last 15 years Kellee has become an informal and formal mentor to more than 18 mentees. At one point in her career she was mentoring 4 mentees — all at the same time. She became involved in the mentoring community because of her own positive experience as a mentee, and her belief that both mentor and mentee can learn and grow together.

An avid motorcycle rider who has travelled the world by motorbike, she is on the board of several related organizations. She is a Board Member, Ontario Federation of Trail Riders; Immediate Past Chair, Motorcyclists Confederation of Canada; and Past Chair and Board Member, Canadian Motorcyle Hall of Fame. She has also held other volunteer, board and chair positions with Women in Insurance Crusade Against Cancer and the American Assocation of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Kellee has a Bachelors of Business Management from Ryerson Polytechnical University and is a Fellow Chartered Insurance Professional and Canadian Risk Manager. Kellee was the first Canadian to receive the honour of “Notable Achiever” at the Women in Insurance Leadership Awards.

Transformation through the difficult path of Genghis Khan – Synopsis

Take a transformational journey through the land of Genghis Khan and find out how a 13-day motorcycle adventure in the rough terrain of Mongolia can help you overcome the challenges of your ongoing career expedition. Learn what it takes to recruit a great team, build trust, and stay motivated, even when the path is rocky. Use these lessons every day to help reach your next summit in the adventure called life.

Kirsty is currently the VP of Customer at Hootsuite, the world’s most widely used social media relationship platform, where she is responsible for Hootsuite’s Global Customer Support organization, Voice of the Customer, Customer Experience and Customer Marketing.

Kirsty’s global Customer Support organization at Hootsuite delivers industry leading support for Hootsuite’s 16M customers worldwide. Kirsty’s team is also responsible for using customer insight to drive strategic initiatives and deliver a superior customer experience. Kirsty’s Customer Marketing team works to develop strategic programs designed to maximize customer adoption, usage, engagement and retention.

Prior to Hootsuite, Kirsty was the Chief Customer Advocate at Snapfish, a San Francisco based online photo merchandising company.

Kirsty has over 19 years of international experience gained from senior sales & marketing, operations, and general management roles in the US, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, where she has a track record of effective leadership and business transformation.

Engaging employees to deliver a powerful customer experience

We are in the midst of a digital transformation, with customers in the drivers seat when it comes to interacting with companies. At the same time, it is widely understood that great customer experiences rely on happy and engaged employees. Hootsuite’s VP of Customer, Kirsty Traill, will cover best practices for managing customers via social media, foundational principles of customer journey mapping, how to create seamless experiences for your customers, and engage with them at scale. This session will also cover understanding and optimizing your employee experience, to engage your staff and empower them to deliver what matters to customers.

This session will help you with:
• Best practices for customer support via social media
• Identifying and delivering a consistent experience for your customer
• Understanding the employee experience
• Engaging employees to go above and beyond
• Leveraging engaged employees to drive reach and impact

Perry Monaco leads the Customer Success Organisation in Canada for LinkedIn, as well as a team of CSMs focused on CS activity in a pre-sales function in the USA. His teams work with talent acquisition departments and companies building social media recruitment strategies while focusing on the end user to manage retention, customer experience, and account growth through customer success planning. Perry was one of the first 4.5 million members of LinkedIn and was previously a recruiter before helping to build the CS practice at LinkedIn. Perry currently resides in the Greater Toronto Area with his wife and three children.

The LinkedIn Culture and the HR Hackathon

Join Perry Monaco, Head of Customer Success at LinkedIn Canada in this deep-dive into the LinkedIn culture and it’s evolution over the past decade, supporting an employee base of over 12,000 present day. LinkedIn created an HR Hackathon to understand and solve for low levels of employee engagement across the organization’s lifecycle. Perry will shares details and best practices to help you hack your HR and culture. These strategies can help you:
• Build a strong and employee centric culture
• Create a genuine and authentic workplace
• Leverage the employee voice for improvement
• Increase retention and remove obstacles for recruitment

Melanie Fleming is Vice-President of Strategy, Planning & Product Marketing at TELUS International, a customer experience (CX) innovation company that designs, builds and delivers next-gen digital solutions for global and disruptive brands. TELUS International is a subsidiary of TELUS, Canada’s fastest growing telecommunications company.
For almost 10 years, Melanie has been instrumental in supporting TELUS International’s growth strategy via both organic growth and Merger and Acquisition activity. Today, the company boasts over 30,000 team members across North America, Central America, Europe and Asia, supporting customers in over 40 languages.

While ensuring a human-centered approach to meeting digital requirements, Melanie has also played a key role in defining TELUS International’s digital experience (DX) technology solutions including AI, Bots, Cloud, Omnichannel, RPA and more.
When not obsessing over CX and DX, Melanie can be seen coaching her daughter’s hockey team in her hometown of Toronto.

Keeping High-Tech, ‘High-Touch’ in the Age of a Digital CX

Relentless advances in technology are transforming the way we live, work, socialize and raise our families in the digital world. Incredibly, connected devices are reproducing five times faster than we are as
human beings, growing from zero to more than 7.2 billion in less than three decades. However, as tech-savvy as we have become, the majority of consumers continue to prefer a ‘human touch’ when interacting with their favorite products and brands. Drawing upon our success partnering with some of the world’s largest and most iconic brands to deliver digital customer experiences, we’ll share insights on how to implement a high-tech/’high-touch’ strategy to delight customers. This includes how to maintain the human touch while leveraging the latest CX tech, such as AI, Bots, Cloud, RPA and more.

This session will help you:
● Learn how to combine the best of human and machine intelligence when serving customers
● Decide which next gen CX technologies to implement – and when
● Refine your end-to-end digital CX journey with accelerators for speed to market
● Measure the value of digital CX and what metrics matter most
● Understand why some companies are successful at digital transformation, while others are not

As VP of Learning & Development for CSPN, Corey Atkinson has a wealth of experience in leadership, management client service and business development, and focuses on supporting others to realize their objectives ahead of projected target dates. He has a sharp eye for what is required for organizations and individuals to develop their performance edge in business today.

He has coached and trained over 5,000 professionals from all industries and worked with over 200 organizations. A seasoned facilitator, consultant, and certified trainer of Personality Dimensions, he is an avid developer of accelerated learning methodologies and experiences, programs and systems – all designed to turbo-charge learning for rapid development.

Passionate about helping others build skills and strategies, he has delivered many keynote presentations and customized learning solutions for different organizations – for-profit, non-for-profit, private and public. Through his natural ability to connect, Corey proposes countless ways to acquire and use skills to evolve, grow and excel.

The unifying theme of his work is this: The more we understand the principles of human nature – “what makes people tick ” – the more effectively we can bring out the best in others, whether they are co-workers, employees, or customers.

How to make your CX Strategy STAND OUT

Capturing new buyers, clients or customers is important. But keeping them – that’s what really counts. With customers able to talk to other customers so easily online, companies need to reconsider how to ensure end-to-end customer experiences don’t have any gaps in quality. The goal today, as every industry embraces the customer and employee journey, is to ensure that both strategies – CX and EX – truly stand out.

Whether you prefer Apple or Samsung. Nike or Under Armour. FedEX or UPS. Being able to identify the critical factors for success is the first step. In this powerful presentation, Corey Atkinson – VP of Strategic Learning & Development at CSPN, will provide insight and tactics to ensure you are leading the customer experience and employee experience with excellence.
– Learn the Critical #s of the Employee Experience
– Using the Customer Experience Economy Model
– What Customer Journey Organization are you

Doug heads up the marketing function for Emailtopia, a role that brings him into close cooperation with every other department, from sales and customer support to deployment and product development. He has over two decades of experience in marketing technology to businesses, in organizations ranging from a five-person public relations boutique agency to a multibillion dollar global IT consulting giant. With an engineering degree and a background in communications, he describes himself as the “Google Translate” between engineers and the outside world.

Spring Into a Sunny Outlook: Maximize Productivity for Team Inboxes in Office 365

Microsoft’s Office 365 suite has many excellent productivity tools, and Outlook is by far the most common email client for business users. But it’s missing an effective way to optimize workflow for team inboxes – a mainstay of customer service communication. Learn how innovative cloud-based tools integrate with Office 365, allowing teams to become more productive and efficient without having to learn a whole new software environment.

Richard is looking to change how customers partner with their banks in Canada. As Vice President of Digital Operations and Client Services with the Laurentian Bank Financial Group, Richard shares his informed insights into what it takes to succeed in today’s demanding banking environment. He shares his thoughts on the importance of teamwork, communication, innovation, and the need to stay at the forefront of technology when going after the customer of tomorrow.

Richard has spent the past 18 years with organizations that are industry leaders in both employee and customer satisfaction. With American Express, he helped guide their Canadian lending and business travel programs to the position of category leader. Since that time, he has established nation-wide servicing and sales programs in the payments, personal finance and banking industries. As both a leader and consultant for B2C and B2B client experience strategy, Richard continues to expand the reach of his Operations successes.

Richard adds a broad range of experiences to his portfolio that tap into his passion for digital communication, travel, and marketing. With a focus on personal growth, he achieved his MBA and is currently completing his Bachelor of Education in Adult Education.

4 Principles Supporting Successful Business Transformation

Business transformation is now an everyday occurrence.  With evolving customer demands, technical innovation and access to global resources, successful transformation initiatives are directly linked to organizational success.  This presentation will explore learnings from previous transformation initiatives, and how The Laurentian Bank of Canada is delivering on its new digital offer.

This session will help you to:

• Identify strategies supporting successful transformation
• Avoid the hidden pitfalls that can derail your plans
• Communicate to achieve maximum impact

Stephan Dyer is a bilingual, award-winning comedian, motivational speaker and public speaking coach with more than 200 shows in 8 countries, 16 cities. His weekly shows in Spanish and English in Toronto, sold out leadership through comedy workshops, as well as his numerous awards in Public Speaking by Toastmasters International earned him the Latin Comedian of the Year Prize by Latin Awards Canada (2017) (with co-winner Juan Cajiao). In 2018, he received the Second City’s Diversity Fellowship (full scholarship) and was invited to Malaysia to deliver a TEDxTalk on The Payoffs of Chasing After Your Dreams.

Juan Cajiao is a bilingual, award-winning comedian, motivational speaker and public speaking coach with more than 200 shows in 9 countries, 19 cities. His weekly shows in Spanish and English in Toronto, sold out leadership through comedy workshops, and numerous participations in International Comedy Festivals earned him the Latin Comedian of the Year Prize by Latin Awards Canada (2017) (with co-winner Stephan Dyer). In 2018, he participated in Comedy Central Latin America (Callback) and was invited to Malaysia to deliver a TEDx Talk on “The Payoffs of Chasing After Your Dreams”.

David is a seasoned business owner and management professional with 30 years experience. He started his first business while still a teenager and has been focused on entrepreneurship, sales and management since that time.

David is the executive producer and host of BiZ TV Canada, a business show designed for SME business owners. Biz TV Canada is online and has aired on CHCH TV, Air Canada’s Inflight Entertainment and streams daily on Financial Post Entrepreneur On Line.

David is also the former host and community producer of Rogers TV IN-BUSINESS, a cable television show that produced 200 episodes and featured over 1,000 guests.

David is a results-oriented professional who believes in metrics and inclusion leadership. He is commited to educating the business community with the key ingredients for success and growth.

David is married to his best friend, Joanne and is blessed with two wonderful daughters, Aaren and Kayla.

Lisa is the Director of Customer Care at World Vision Canada, where she provides leadership and oversight to the contact centers in both Mississauga and Montreal. In this capacity, she drives the achievement of shared marketing revenue targets from across the Customer Care division. With the ever-growing need to acquire well-engaged and loyal donors, central to Lisa’s role is the motivation of over 120 staff members, in teams of inbound and outbound telemarketing agents, to deliver a meaningful and highly customer-centric experience. Having held various leadership roles for more than 27 years at World Vision, in marketing, international programs and business operations, she has made significant contributions to the development and execution of robust strategies that increase revenue, improve business efficiencies and secure donor loyalty. Lisa is a steadfast champion for the most vulnerable children in our world – those who have no voice. Each day, she lives out a vibrant and contagious passion for her work at an organization that thrives to bring life in all its fullness to these amazing children.

Nitin Badjatia serves as the Head of Business Strategy for ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management product line. He’s a two-decade veteran of enterprise customer service applications, having been at Siebel Systems, RightNow Technologies, and Oracle in various sales and strategy roles. Nitin also led business strategy at knowledge management pioneer Knova Software. In 2012, Nitin was awarded the Consortium for Service Innovation’s Innovator award for his extensive contributions to the industry at large.

Loyalty and the long now of customer service

Customer service is your true loyalty program. Loyalty reflects enduring trust, and is based on delivered outcomes. To compete today, customer service must be more than an activity, and bigger than a department. Companies that recognize this make customer service a team sport. In this session, we’ll discuss how to embed workflows that naturally enable customer loyalty.

Jaime is a positive psychologist and certified coach by the NLP Coaching Institute of California. Jaime is the creator of the concept ‘Emotional Paycheck’: How to give your team a raise in the check that matters most, he has done many TED talks on this topic. He is a radio and TV presenter with more than 15 years of experience. He has spoken in many countries across the world.

Coming Soon!

Vincent works as a Business Development Manager for Esker, helping companies automate finance and supply chain processes through AI driven, Cloud-based software solutions.

His goal for any company he works with is to assist with process improvement and ROI through digital transformation. He enjoys what he does because he is helping individuals and companies become more efficient, freeing up time for more important business and personal activities.

Conquering Customer Experience in the Digital Age

Listen as Vincent Immordino of Esker discusses how organizations can overcome fierce competition in the customer service arena with an AI-driven order processing solution. Taking things a step further, he will showcase Esker’s solution and its intuitive, cloud-based platform. By addressing low-value, repetitive areas of order taking and providing smart, self-service tools, automation elevates the entire customer experience — a key differentiator in today’s digital age.

 

This session will help listeners understand how to:

• Navigate changing customer service expectations
• Provide customers with self-service tools for greater collaboration
• Automate customer portal order retrieval with Robotic Process Automation
• Leverage a mobile app for on-the-go order placement, processing & management
• Elevate order processing speed, accuracy & analytics

Marty brings to Thoughtexchange a passion for building and developing meaningful new client relationships. Prior to joining the company, Marty earned his BBA degree at York University in Toronto and worked in finance before holding increasingly senior sales leadership roles for a global business intelligence company, primarily focusing on growing the firm’s high-end corporate development events business. A native of South Africa, Marty grew up in Toronto before settling in Vancouver, where he now resides with his wife and 3 young kids.

Collaborative & Courageous Leadership

Learn how innovative and dynamic leaders are leading the way by having courageous conversations within their organization. Discover how organizations are creating a culture that promotes openness, transparency and collaboration by empowering their employees to share their voice and consider the thoughts and ideas of others; shifting the corporate paradigm from closed and knowing to open and learning. In this session you’ll learn what collaborative and courageous leadership means to you and those around you.

Una Wright, Founder, YouthSpeak Performance Charity that provides leadership training to youth with personal experience related to mental health, bullying and/or addiction. Youth share their stories within youth-led interactive assemblies and workshops for grades K-post-secondary throughout the GTA and southern Ontario, to date reaching over 230,000 students, parents, educators and other caring adults.

YouthSpeak was inspired by Una’s lived experience who, amongst many challenges, has lost two children. She has made it her personal mission to give a message of hope and empowerment, and to build resilience in the face life’s challenges. Lives are saved by Increasing empathy and understanding about these issues and creating a safe space for youth who are struggling to come forward so they can be connected to support.

Maureen is currently the Vice President, Customer Experience at Southwire Canada. Maureen has deep expertise in the areas of business transformation, customer experience management, continuous improvement, escalated complaints management, customer journey-mapping, change management, contact center and self-service enhancements and digital engagement. She is a knowledgeable and highly experienced professional having held senior roles in the wire and cable industry, energy industry, insurance industry, and in consulting practices. She has worked with dozens of organizations on Organizational Assessments, Business Transformation Strategies, Operational Strategic Planning and Customer Experience Optimization.

Maureen is a founding member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, is a certified customer experience professional, and is a certified change management professional.

Coming Soon!

Mark Bloom has over 15 years of sales, marketing and business development experience in a variety of financial service and high-technology markets. In the course of his experience, Mr. Bloom has helped F100 organizations develop technology infrastructures, build global strategies and execute sales and marketing programs with strategic partners. Past clients/employers have included Ford, Motorola, United Technologies, Cisco, Chrysler, SonicWall and Compuware. Mr. Bloom holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Management Information Systems and an MBA in International Business.
As Director of Omnichannel Product Marketing for Zendesk, Mr. Bloom drives Omnichannel messaging, positioning and GTM activities, in addition to presenting at trade shows and symposiums.

Omnichannel Customer Care and the Experience Economy

From vendors to partners to industry analysts, it seems that omnichannel has become the new buzzword. But while everyone is talking about it, is anyone really doing it? Or doing it well? And where did all this buzz come from? In this session, Mark Bloom, Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk, will discuss the two larger paradigm shifts that are driving this buzz and how businesses can ensure they have a solid omnichannel strategy in place.

What you will learn from this session:

• Learn about the paradigm shifts affecting the CX industry
• How can investing in CX help grow your business
• How to implement an effective strategy to meet customer expectations in an omnichannel world

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!

Deanna is a high-energy marketing executive with over 20 years of experience, collaborating with partners in the Banking, Insurance, Retail and Packaged Goods sectors. Deanna has extensive experience developing and implementing innovative strategies and campaigns, designed to drive sales, enhance customer engagement and maximize customer lifetime value.

Prior to joining CanadaDirect in 2017, Deanna spent 10 years working with Aimia Inc., developing and executing the Enhancement Services, global marketing strategy.

Shai Berger is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fonolo, a leading provider of cloud-based call-back solutions. As an innovator in the space, Shai Berger is on a clear mission to educate the call center industry on how to improve the customer experience.