Having initially joined the organization as its Chief Operating Officer in January, 2014, Don Romano was appointed President and CEO the following May. Mr. Romano has accumulated a wealth of automotive experience over 30 years through increasingly senior positions in Canada, the United States, and abroad.

After entering the automotive industry with Nissan North America in 1985 as its Corporate Product Marketing Manager, Mr. Romano joined Mazda Motor Corporation in 2000. Starting as a National Brand Manager in the company’s California office, he progressed through a number of sales and marketing focused positions before becoming the Managing Director and President of Mazda Canada in 2006. In 2010, his responsibilities at Mazda expanded. With the added title of Chief Marketing Officer, he led the company’s marketing activities across North America. In 2012, Mr. Romano became the Senior Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer with ALJ International – his most recent position prior to Hyundai – where he established Toyota Saudi Arabia as the largest independent distributor for Toyota in the world with annual sales exceeding 300,000 units.

Genesis – Disruption in Automotive Retailing

Every business model today is being disrupted by technology; the taxi industry, entertainment, hotels, department stores, and the list goes on and on.  Despite these disruptions, the automotive business model has remained basically unchanged for over 100 years.  However, the traditional automotive retailing model is about to change with the anticipated North American arrival of foreign auto manufacturers like Peugeot, Renault, Tata, Geely, coupled with the arrival of technology brands like Apple, Amazon and Google.  Most analyst expect disruption, but they focus more on electrification, autonomous self-driving vehicles, ride sharing and connectivity.  While these new technologies will certainly change the automotive landscape, the more significant disruption will be the way in which the future automotive industry interfaces with its customers, and it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

This is why Genesis Canada, a subsidiary of Hyundai Canada, decided not to use a traditional dealer franchise business model. Discover why Genesis sells cars using a different model- one that gets results. This model allows Genesis Canada to control the entire purchasing and ownership experience.

Sal has over 25 years of experience in consumer sales, marketing and customer experience management. He is currently employed at Adidas Canada as Director, Customer Service leading a team servicing their wholesale business and consumer warranty.

He has been through two SAP implementations and is well versed in change management and leading and developing teams to reach their potential. Previously, he held senior consumer sales and marketing roles at the Globe and Mail, National Post and Sun Media. Sal is a proud father of 2 and you can see Sal in hockey arenas in his spare time teaching and coaching minor hockey.

Millennials and Gen C – Engage and retain the new generations and decrease the turnover rate of agents within your team

As CS leaders we are always challenged to improve employee retention rates to ensure minimal business disruption and to leverage longer term experience to increase overall stability and growth. This presentation takes a deeper dive into adidas Canada case study.

• How to review the organizational structure, job descriptions and salaries of your agents to improve the retention rate?

• How to involve and equip your managers to utilize their leadership to improve retention and engagement?

• How do we manage the expectations of the new generation workforce?

• What factors explain the problems of agent involvement and retention?

Kelly Harper is Director Customer Experience Program, BMO Financial Group. She is accountable for develop, implement and manage initiatives that will foster a culture of customer experience. Prior to this role she was Director Customer Employee Brand as part of the IFL Learning Experience Design team within Talent & Learning at BMO Financial Group. Accountable to develop standalone brand customer experience learning programs, embed the Brand & Customer into learning & development, champion and bring to life the employer brand promise and value proposition for 46,000 employees, enterprise wide.

Described as a “Customer Experience evangelist, coach and quarterback”, Kelly has been at the forefront of Customer Experience at BMO since the launch of our vision “to be the Bank that defines great customer experience” in 2008.

Kelly joined BMO in 1997, holds has a Bachelor of Commerce and Masters of Management Studies, from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.

Connecting Employee Experience to CX Outcomes

Great customer experience is the cumulative and residual impact, rational and emotional, that customers have across all touch points and interactions. In this presentation, Kelly will discuss the customer-experience value chain, how to drive CX outcomes through creating great employee experience and how to develop customer experience learning strategy to drive employee engagement.

Barbara O’Reilly is the General Sales Manager Water Heating with Rheem Canada Ltd. She is a strong leader and promoter of women in business. Barbara established and leads the Rheem Women in Business Mentorship group and is Chair of the Canadian Institute of Plumbing & Heating (CIPH) Women’s network. Following completion of her education with diplomas and certificates in Business Administration and Marketing, Barbara began her career in the plumbing and heating industry in 1980 with Rheem Canada Ltd in Hamilton, Ontario where she has held roles of increasing responsibility including her current role as General Sales Manager Water Heating with Rheem Canada in Brampton Ontario. Barbara is married to Joe; they have one son who is married with two children. In her spare time Barbara likes to spend time with her family especially her grandchildren, she also likes to travel & is an avid reader.

There is no gender in Building & Leading a Successful Team

Barbara will combine her inspirational and powerful story of Building a Successful career in a male dominated industry along with her insights into some key elements of developing & leading a Successful Team.

Adrienne is an experienced executive with a background in Sales, Client Services and Operations across multiple industries. She is recognized as a dynamic leader, with a passion for Customer Success. A collaborative and trusted business partner of Sales, Technology, Legal and Finance, Adrienne has led complex corporate initiatives and teams spanning technology, compliance and organizational design. Adrienne is respected for her strengths in developing and communicating strategy, defining optimal teams and business processes. She has a proven track record motivating teams to deliver top performance during high-growth and turn-a-round environments.

The Personal Imperative

Personalized brand communications are no longer a nice to have, they are imperative. Yet companies still struggle to deliver targeted messages that build better relationships with their customers. Identifying the right target, managing marketing collateral, and finding the right technology are all common hurdles companies must overcome to deliver powerful communications that resonate with individual consumers. In this session, Adrienne explores how brands can shape personalized customer experiences at scale and relieve the day to day stress of overtaxed marketing teams.

Steve manages all North American and Latin American operations for Esker, and is a member of our Board of Directors.

Mastering the Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation

Join Steve Smith as he uncovers the typical shortcomings of manual order management — and how digital transformation can remake the customer as the focal point of your organization. Discover how Esker’s SAP-integrated solution removes costly bottlenecks and low-value order activities so that customer service staff can work smarter, not harder.

Desmond Nair is the Head of the Business Applications Group at Microsoft Canada. In this role Desmond is responsible for all up success of the Dynamics Suite of Products. Prior to joining Microsoft Desmond served as Director and Board Member for SAP in Africa, and the last 3 years as CEO of a Systems Integrator across India, Africa and the Middle East.

Greg is the Founder of BetaRover Inc; an organization that works with organizations in growing their internal developers and Software teams to prepare them for leadership, coaching and mentorship challenges while preparing them for future growth. We work with your development teams in a variety of formats that include One-on-One leadership mentoring, Team-based Leadership Growth Training and Multi-Team Leadership and Strategy Training.

Service Operations Leader, specializing in Process Transformations, System Modernization, Workforce Planning, and Customer Experience Programs. Mr. Measor joined Moneris in 2015 to evolve Service Operations, assessing and deploying of CRM, developing of Customer Self Help capabilities, and the optimization of the Customer Experience Program. Prior to Moneris, Mr. Measor, led ADP Canada’s Business Engineering Unit, including PMO, Process Optimization, Learning Services, and Servicing Systems. Mr. Measor holds both a Degree in Business Management-Decision Systems, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Villanova.

Andrew Pryse is the director of the CIBC Toronto Customer contact center and has been a member of the CSPN advisory council since 2013. He has over 30 years’ experience in customers service and 15 years in the contact center business currently leading a team of 450 employees.

Nick is a bilingual (French) call centre management professional with wide-ranging experience and a few guiding core beliefs. My drive is to create great call centres, provide customer service that’s a competitive differentiator and maximize revenue generation.

Judy is a comedian, motivational speaker, radio host, Second City stand up coach and author. She has worked with many celebrities including; Jon Stewart, Lewis Black, Robert Klein and Joan Rivers. Her specials have appeared on NBC, CBS, CTV and The Comedy Network.

She is a co-author of ‘From the Stage to the Page: Life Lessons from Four Funny Ladies!” Judy draws from her standup performance experience to entertain, inform and inspire in her dynamic keynote entitled, ‘Relieving Stress From Change with Humour’.

She is a regular volunteer with City Street Outreach – a program that feeds Toronto’s homeless and needy. Judy is the creator/host of ‘Laughlines’ and ‘Stand Up For The Girls’ which have both helped raise over $650,000 for breast cancer research.

Relieving Stress From Change with Humour

Stress is a major cause of most illnesses, and humour is an amazing way to relieve it. Harvard studies show that when you are stressed, your brain shrinks. However, when you laugh, you relax; and when you relax, you learn. This hilarious and inspirational session explores seven stress-relieving ingredients: a positive attitude, perseverance, forgiveness, teamwork, family and friends, mental activity and physical activity.

Objectives:
– How to cope with information overload
– How to Increase your brain’s reasoning and decision-making
– How to appreciate the incredible medical benefits of humour

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.

Rocking Inbound Team Email

Team email addresses ([email protected], [email protected], and so on) are the 1-800 numbers of the digital economy. But for too many organizations, effective management of team email traffic is an afterthought: not only is there a lack of efficiency in workflow, but there is almost no ability to report on traffic volumes or the work patterns of individuals or teams. We will explore the challenges presented by group email, and walk you through the journey one company took to meet their aggressive service level claims.

This session will examine:
– Workflow: how does inbound email get answered by the most appropriate person in the shortest time?
– Reporting: do you tell customers they can expect a reply to an email within a certain number of hours? How do you know how you measure up against that expectation?
– Tracking: do any inbound team emails fall through the cracks? What is the opportunity cost of overlooking an email? Can you measure this today?

A step-mother of three, my first love is my family. The very close second is my career as a well-rounded, strategy-driven Sr Business leader focused on improving customer experience, strengthening employee engagement and achieving remarkable results. For over 15 years I have grown in my skills and expanded my depth of knowledge, which has been essential in being a highly experienced and effective leader in today’s vastly changing global industries.

Community is a large part of my personal and professional life. I served 5 years on the board of a young Canadian charity “Children of Hope” until 2011 than focused on various other local charities and support groups as a volunteer. As I look ahead and am excited to be a part of a much needed voice within a women leadership space, allowing us to drive success together and break the glass ceiling.

Driving a Customer Centric Culture – Power of One

How to build a strong customer centric culture across all parts of the organization. How to drive engagement and accountability to both customer facing and non-customer facing teams on how each part of the customer lifecycle process drives impact in the overall customer experience.

David has had many roles in his 34 year career in the utility industry. They vary from field work including Collections (and disconnections and survived…), Field Maintenance to Supervisor of Field Services to Supervisor of Customer Service, Manager of Customer Service (both in Peterborough and Toronto), now Vice President. David has been with Peterborough Utilities for 18 years. Prior to that, David worked for Toronto Hydro and before that Scarborough Utilities (now you know he’s been around for a while).

David is also the Conservation Officer for Peterborough Utilities and has served on many committees and working groups in the electric and water industry including the Co-Chair of the Residential Working Group with the IESO planning and developing new conservation programs for the customers in Ontario and on the Financial Assistance Working Group with the Ontario Energy Board to address issues affecting low income consumers.

David started Peterborough Utilities Social Media well before many utilities moved in that direction (we are a cautious lot) with much success.

David can “Officially” retire anytime now which makes him “Fire Proof” in his words. David is a certified techno geek and played a significant role in the deployment of smart meters across Ontario and the development and deployment of Smart Thermostats (before people knew what smart thermostats were.)

David is married and a father of three “Adults”. David in his spare time is a musician in a 70’s Rock Band. (So, now you get the hair…)

The Technology in the Utility Sector: Meeting The Ever Changing Consumer Expectations

Utilities historically have been…Boring. Nobody much bothered with us as long as the lights came on and the water was flowing. Now, the energy sector is front and centre in all areas. The pace of technology in the utility space is moving at the speed of sound and within our lifetime, we may not recognize this new evolving industry. The challenge is how do we ensure we are meeting the needs of our customers along the way as ever changing concept and delivery models that we introduce has to be carefully thought through to ensure that we are not leaving our customers in the technological dust!

• Building a bullet proof strategy
• Selecting the right technology
• How to balance choice of delivery
• What consumers want now and tomorrow

Elizabeth has been working with some of the world’s best known and most loved brands for over 20 years, advising on brand, marketing and innovation strategy through the lens of consumer psychology and behaviour. From launching start-ups to helping global giants continue to grow, her focus is on helping brands create legions of loyal fans who contribute to business growth. Her experience spans technology, CPG, retail, financial services, professional services and real estate. An Ex-CMO and Agency Executive Director, she has spent 20 years building brands and innovation pipelines for large consumer and professional services firms. Clients include: BP, P&G, Unilever, Microsoft, Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Kimberly Clark, Wells Fargo, Yahoo!, HSBC, MBNA and Colgate Palmolive.

Experience is everything: moving beyond measurement

If we know a great experience becomes a talking point, a moment of joy, a point of reference for the future; why do so many brands focus on measurement and scores rather than the ultimate customer outcome? It’s causing agent apathy and inertia and who can blame them. Isn’t it time we started to look at how to motivate, encourage, empower and enthuse our front-line agents to create more and more of these talking point moments, rather than just succeeding in giving any experience so long as it results in a positive score. The magic in customer experience is what’s hidden behind the numbers. Isn’t it time your brand found the magic?

Dave takes a creative approach to bridging the Technology and Business gap: he is a Sales Engineer and an Account Manager; a Software Developer and a Product Manager. He also regularly engages in photography, graphic design, and music production. This unique combination of technical, business, social, and creative skills gives Dave the tools to tackle complex and multi-disciplinary challenges.

Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You! The Shifting Mindset of the Next Generation of Consumers

A look ahead to the future and all its possibilities. We discuss how communication markets are shifting through the influence of millennials, and help you gain insight on engaging the next generation of consumers. Automated vehicles, artificial contact center agents, blended A.I., and the exponential curve are all important topics. Join Dave to learn how your contact center can anticipate and accommodate shifting communication needs, and gain insight on:

• How consumers may engage with your brand over the next decade
• 5 characteristics of technology you need to engage
• How can your contact center anticipate and accommodate shifting communication needs

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.

Tomorrows Customer Experience begins with you

With the accelerating pace of change in the global economy, and complexities growing daily – organizations, their teams and each performer – need to develop higher levels of agility – strengthening the key skills to anticipate emerging threats and opportunities by continually scanning their organization’s environment for opportunities. In short, every team member needs to be able to think on their feet.
From the customer experience lens, agility today is about integrating people and technology to create a world class interaction for each customer.
Presentation Outline
• The Roots of Customer Agility
• Thinking on Your Feet Business Case
• What Tooth Paste & Agiity Have In Common

As Vice President, Sales and Customer Service for Canpar Courier, Laurie Stoneburgh has a strong portfolio of experience in leadership, customer support and client engagement. She is respected as a credible voice in decision making, strategic planning and customer relations strategies, always focused on developing quality in service and delivery. Laurie is responsible for the national sales organization, marketing and customer service at Canpar Courier. She strives to build trust and strong long term relationships with customers by capturing feedback to improve customer service and ensure that quality and service exceed customer expectations. Leveraging people and technology are critical as the courier industry shifts in support of not only B2B shipping, but also the rapidly growing B2C market. Laurie’s market knowledge enabled her to understand their business and implement efficient and effective service delivery with a quality driven service model. She recognizes that market needs evolve and it is imperative the voice of the customer is part of the strategic development, focusing on innovation to support the growing ecommerce marketplace.

Monica Horvath-Cekolj is the Care Centre Manager for CARSTAR North America – a division of Driven Brands. She leads a dynamic team of Client Relations Specialist who support and service over 500 locally owned and operated Automotive Collision Repair Franchises across Canada and the US.

Monica’s team assists clients throughout the entire repair process from the time of the accident to post repair customer experience follow-up and warranty claims. She is accountable for 24/7 Accident Assistance, Store Afterhours & Overflow Services, and CARSTAR’s North American Warranty Program. Monica and her team work directly with Insurance Partners, Tow Providers and Rental Companies to transform a negative driving experience into a positive repair experience.

Monica has over 20 years Customer Service, Direct to Consumer Marketing and Contact Center expertise. She started her career at Walt Disney World in Florida and since then held leadership roles at The Hamilton Spectator, The Globe and Mail, and TORSTAR Media Group Television before joining CARSTAR in 2014.

A forward thinking professional with outstanding customer service and highly developed investigative, problem solving and interpersonal skills. Noah also possesses a comprehensive knowledge of business practices and transit operations. He has a demonstrated ability to work in multi-disciplined teams, deal with complex issues and maintain effective working relationships.

Through progressively more responsible roles, Noah has developed the ability to manage, motivate, counsel, coach, discipline, commend and assess the performance of subordinate employees.

He holds a Certificate in Project Management at the University of Toronto. Formal training in the Project Management field has given him the ability to track multiple projects, establish deadlines, and make sound business decisions in a timely fashion.

Tony Walsh is Vice President of Insurance Operations and Customer Service for Pethealth Inc, an International niche provider of Pet Health Insurance, Animal management software, RFID microchip identification and pet pharmacy and pet specialty retails products (United Kingdom only). Pethealth was acquired by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited in November 2014, prior to which the company was listed and traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Tony took up the Senior Director position in June 2015 and within the year moved into his role of Vice President of Insurance Operations and Customer Service for Pethealth Inc. He has responsibility for Insurance Operations, Claims, North American Customer Service, Training & Quality Assurance, Business Solutions and Work Force Management. During 2015 and 2016, he focussed on implementing a strong compliance culture, employee engagement and improving service levels to best in class.

Tony has more than 15 years of experience in the Property and Casualty insurance industry. In 2002 he started his career with Enterprise Rent a Car in their Management trainee Program, after successfully completing the program he took a job with Zenith Insurance as customer service representative learning the Insurance business from the ground up while developing his Customer Service Skills. In 2006 he joined CAA Insurance based out of Thornhill, where over an 8 year period he progressed into more senior roles and eventually managed both the Sales and Service Call Centres. In 2014 Tony started his own consulting company focused mainly around employee engagement, Customer Service and Call Centre operations. It was in 2015 Tony joined the Pethealth Pack.

Tony lives in Brampton with his wife April, his 3 children and his dog. He plays Soccer twice a week, enjoys hockey and watching his kids have fun.

Tony has a Bachelor of Arts Honors from the University of Windsor in Criminology. In addition to many leadership accolades, he has a Lean Six Sigma certification and has completed many communication and effective leadership courses. Tony was also the recipient of the 2016 Pethealth Fairfax leadership award.

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.

Doug Fry is the husband of his amazing wife Julie and Dad of two fantastic young kids. He’s also a strategic executive leader with 19 years of success in building & elevating brands in the CPG & Restaurant industries. He has a background in Strategy, Customer Experience & Hospitality, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Purchasing, & Change Management.

While he’s travelled the world extensively, Toronto is currently considered home. His career began in Vancouver with Kraft Foods, where he blended his fine dining culinary roots with his Keg Restaurant operations experience, to engage with Restaurant Operators for Kraft. Quickly ascending Kraft’s Sales organization, he was promoted to Head Office to design a Training department and curriculum. Doug joined Kraft Marketing next, in category management, including product design, production, distribution, and marketing. Next stop was Supply Chain with the Canadian restaurant giant, Cara. Transforming the silos of individual Brands’ purchasing, into one consistent, streamlined function with stronger Vendor partnerships and innovative menu solutions, resulted in major growth of financial and quality metrics. Doug completed his journey with Cara as VP of Milestone’s, Kelsey’s & Montana’s Brands.

Now with McDonald’s as a Strategy & Operations Executive; he’s been the architect of the evolution of the Guest Centric corporate culture & business strategy; launching a myriad of initiatives that are yielding record results for the Brand. Based on this success, he is now collaborating with other Global Markets on their Hospitality, Operations & Service strategies.

Meet the Needs of your Guests and Exceed their Expectations

Companies often struggle with the decision of how to approach the changing needs of their Customers and how far to go to gain those Customers back and retain them. This presentation will walk the audience through the recent McDonald’s Canada journey and approach to driving Guest Centricity as a Corporate culture and balancing the ever changing expectations of consumers. A rare insight into how McDonald’s created a balanced approach and strategy that made sense for the business and Franchisees but also drove a change in Culture and a gain in market share.

Shannon is a strategic leader who focuses on transforming businesses through superior customer and employee experiences. She firmly believes that business growth is best achieved by empowering and engaging the employees in such a way that they are passionate about creating an exceptional customer experience no matter if they interact with the customer directly or indirectly. Shannon has been held a variety of positions over the past 20 year, focused on exceptional performance for customers. As a certified Customer Journey Mapper and highly skilled coach, Shannon continually evolved the business she leads to drive loyalty, value and results.

Change Leadership

Introduction of Change
• Impacts
• Velocity
• Capacity

Change Leadership
• Emotional Model of Change – SARA
• Communication
• Follow up

Unplanned outcomes of change

Sanja Cancar-Todorovic is a Director – BPO Outsourcing and Vendor Management at TELUS. Over the last 18 years of her career in the telecommunications industry, Sanja had exposure to a number of different roles. Since 2008, she has been leading different Procurement and Vendor Management strategies, from IT Professional, Managed and Infrastructure Services, to Broadcasting Media Content, M2M, Corporate Real-estate, Visual Media, and Mobile Handsets & Accessories.

In her current role Sanja manages the integrated BPO and ITO solutions, with different third-party service providers. She is responsible for Contact Centre Outsourcing, Vendor Management, site strategy, geo-centric resourcing strategy, negotiating full range of commercial contracts, leading operationalization of overall vendor governance and contractual compliance.

In Through The Out Door: Global Outsourcing In The New Era

When it comes to outsourcing, there are many considerations you must take into account to ensure that you’ll actually receive promised savings. This presentation will outline how to best prepare and manage your global supplier relationships when the old rules no longer apply.
• How to determine what functions can be outsourced without impacting customer experience
• The evolution of the outsourcing engagement lifecycle; Vendor Management vs Partnership Management

Chris is currently a sales leader and executive at CanadaDirect | OnPath; an iconic Canadian company most recognized and trusted in the direct marketing | BPO space. For the last 5 years, Chris focused on expanding his deep BPO sales experience by providing market entry and expansion expertise to large and mid-sized companies looking to expand into the Canadian market (within both the private equity and corporate direct roles); specifically on the sales side of the business. He is a big picture thinker with 25 years’ selling experience (20 years selling and managing customer support programs in the Call Center / BPO industry). He has a solid record of managing complex relationships and has sold across customer care, premium tech support, technical support, CRM technology, inbound | outbound sales, and full Omni-channel products; he has personally sold over $450M (annualized) of outsourcing contracts during his career. His domestic and international sales exposure has lent greatly to the progressive strides numerous companies have made on the growth side of their business.

Chris is experienced across several verticals including retail, consumer goods, telecommunications, manufacturing and financial services. Primarily a seller, he’s also managed internal teams as high as 350 people (operationally), sales teams of up to 15 globally, and has managed all aspects of outsourced partner organizations including development of KPI’s, contracts, commercial terms, setting strategic direction and overseeing performance of the day-to-day sales operations in contact center environments (both on the outsourcer and client side).

The Art of Telemarketing: Reinventing a High Performance Channel

Telemarketing has long been established as a predictable channel for generating a high volume of sales and leads. Outbound marketing has seen challenges over the years arising primarily from quality issues, negative public sentiment, aggressive and sometimes rude telemarketers, and over-dialing to name a few. With the advent of the DNC list and an increasingly regulated market (CASL compliance), and the emergence of digital channels, traditional telemarketing seemed doomed. The problem is that emerging channels can be expensive and don’t deliver the sheer volume of new customers that marketers want. It may surprise many to know there has been a resurgence in telemarketing over the last 5 years due to a new technology being employed by a majority of financial institutions and enterprise brands in Canada. The solution, starts with a question that marketing professionals at these iconic Canadian companies are now asking themselves?…………Is it Vasible?

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.

The Art of Telemarketing: Reinventing a High Performance Channel

Telemarketing has long been established as a predictable channel for generating a high volume of sales and leads. Outbound marketing has seen challenges over the years arising primarily from quality issues, negative public sentiment, aggressive and sometimes rude telemarketers, and over-dialing to name a few. With the advent of the DNC list and an increasingly regulated market (CASL compliance), and the emergence of digital channels, traditional telemarketing seemed doomed. The problem is that emerging channels can be expensive and don’t deliver the sheer volume of new customers that marketers want. It may surprise many to know there has been a resurgence in telemarketing over the last 5 years due to a new technology being employed by a majority of financial institutions and enterprise brands in Canada. The solution, starts with a question that marketing professionals at these iconic Canadian companies are now asking themselves?…………Is it Vasible?

Jessica Cryer is a sharp and experienced consultant who has a passion for helping businesses create, build and execute strategies that will make a tangible difference. Now as a VP of Business & Customer Strategy with CSPN, Jessica works with clients to create Learning and Development strategies that educate, empower, and enable employees to excel in their careers. With a desire to promote continuing learning and education, Jessica helps clients build and deliver the right training programs so people can be exceptional at what they do.

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.

Maximizing Each Customer Interaction – Know When to Engage Your Customer and When to Serve

Some customers want to build relationships, and some just want to be served. But how do you know the best way to interact with your customers? When should your frontline staff be empathetic and when should they be problem solvers? Jessica explores how to uncover, understand and manage customer expectations is a way that delivers results, and keeps your employees and customers happy. Once that has been established, learn what it means and what it takes to align these expectations to service and experience engagement models.

Customer Service is a passion. After many years in digital product support, product management, audience and business development and business strategy, Andrée uses her knowledge of the business to focus on achieving high standards of service.

One of Canada’s leading experts on the Census, Doug Norris, Ph.D., is a Senior Vice President and Chief Demographer at Environics Analytics. He joined EA in 2006 after nearly 30 years with Statistics Canada, where he earned the nickname of “Mr. Census” in his role as Director General of Social and Demographic Statistics. Currently, he assists companies, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations in using census and other statistical information for planning and marketing projects. And he frequently writes articles and delivers speeches on demographics, immigration, ethnicity and the family. An adjunct professor at Carleton University and the University of Alberta, he serves on several steering committees related to the use and development of social data. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from McGill University and a Ph.D. in biostatistics and demography from Johns Hopkins University. In 2006, Statistics Canada honoured him with a lifetime achievement Award for Career Excellence in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the agency. That same year, the Canadian Population Society also awarded Doug a Lifetime Achievement Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Canadian Demography.”

Millennials: How are they different?

There’s growing buzz about how to connect with Millennials, the generation that is now 23 to 38 years old. Their generation is large, but Millennials span different life stages: some are still in school and living with parents while others are starting families and careers. And make no mistake: Millennials have different values and aspirations compared to previous generations. They demand more from marketers, like instant feedback from their social media posts. In this presentation, Doug Norris looks at Millennials’ demographics and values and how these may impact on various industries.

Charley is a transformational leader with a passion for building and working with high performing teams. She has nearly two decades experience in leading contact centres, managing transformational change programmes and driving innovation in customer experiences.

At the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Charley is responsible for all aspects of service delivery to members including the contact centre operations, member communications and digital experience functions.

Do demographics matter to your service strategy?

Some insight from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan on how to build relationships with lifelong members from 20 to 110 years old.

This session aims to:

• Describe the OTPP strategy for Member Communication
• Share tools that could identify your customers’ real pain points
• Translate these into outstanding service experiences
• Identify opportunities to reach members from all demographics groups and maybe dispel some myths along the way
• Share examples that have worked for the Pension Plan

Ron Vickery joined ServiceNow July 2017 and currently leads the Customer Service Management solutions team for the Eastern US.

Prior to ServiceNow, Ron held various positions at Oracle beginning in 2011. Serving as Regional Vice President, Ron grew Oracle’s Customer Experience and Cloud businesses while collaborating on Modern customer experience solution strategies. While at Oracle, Ron ran the CX Emerging Markets Team for Latin America & the Asia Pacific regions helping evangelize Oracle’s Service Cloud internationally.

Ron has focused his past 15 years partnering with companies to improve their customers’ experiences; optimizing programs and processes to increase brand loyalty and improve operational efficiencies.

Prior to Oracle, Ron led teams within ATG’s CX Optimization division and NEC Technologies’ Mobile Solutions business.

Lead with Customer Service for your Digital Business Transformation

Staying ahead of the competition and continuously improving your customer satisfaction isn’t easy. Meeting the demands of new business models and creating an ongoing digital relationship with customers that delivers outcomes require your business to be fast and agile. As an innovative leader driving digital transformation, you must stay ahead of the curve and deliver a seamless, closed loop service experience for your customers.

Sharon is a +30 year business professional, having enjoyed a long and award-winning career with McDonald’s Restaurants, both in Canada and across Europe.

Her career spanned across 7 McDonald’s markets, including Canada, Russia, Hungary and Scandinavia.

She held a diverse career portfolio in Operations, People Resources, General Management and Executive Leadership, as well as being a champion and role model for Women’s Leadership at McDonald’s.

With her operations and business experience in-hand, Sharon rose to Senior Vice-President and Chief People Officer for McDonald’s Canada. Her expertise lies in her ability to bring a simplified, yet successful approach to business, always leading with a People-first mindset.

Sharon achieved a life long goal of retirement from the corporate world at age 50 and spends her time traveling, providing consulting services and speaking at various business conferences.

Making the Connection – From culture to employee engagement to customer satisfaction

A high level of customer satisfaction begins by creating a workplace culture which demonstrates the value and commitment to employees. By building a People-first approach to business, leaders create a high level of employee engagement, which leads to higher customer satisfaction and business performance.

This presentation will cover:

• The top trends which are shaping the future of the workplace
• How to build a culture which includes a People-first mindset
• Simple steps to better employee engagement

Cheryl Vanditelli is a Senior Manager, Customer Experience who works with Stakeholders within Scotia Bank to create an optimal customer experience. In her current role she is responsible for channel alignment, conflict resolution, customer onboarding and internal / external partnerships.

One of her favourite quotes is “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

With over 35 years in the customer service industry, Cheryl understands the complexity of balancing customer conflict, retention and the employee experience. With a passion for people, Cheryl truly believes there is no better feeling than knowing you have made a difference in someone’s life.

Cheryl holds an Associates Degree from the Institute of Canadian Bankers and has recently won Scotiabank’s prestigious “Why We Bank Award”. This award is given to 5 people internationally.

Cheryl is married with three adult children, is a mental health advocate and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Managing complaints in digital environment

Ensuring a great customer experience includes managing escalations so that clients are satisfied with the outcome and stay loyal. Cheryl will share strategies and best practices to ensure a consistent approach is applied across all channels especially in times of conflict.

• Learn the human approach to managing escalations
• Ways to be proactive in your approach
• Being agile in presenting your solutions

Jim Napier is a Director in Oracle’s Customer Experience Value Consulting practice. With 30+ years’ experience in business and technology, Jim works with customers to ensure that they’re making investment decisions that maximize the potential value to their organizations. Through interactive workshops, Jim facilitates customers through a series of activities that identify and define existing process issues and prioritize actions to improve. Prior to Oracle, Jim worked with several strategy and management consulting firms that focused on business strategy and operational excellence.

Roadmap to Modern 2.0

Modern service organizations can’t function in a vacuum any longer. Service organizations must be aligned with the strategic direction of the entire enterprise. In this session, we will discuss a compelling framework for setting direction and measuring results – results that are meaningful and relevant.

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.

Seven reasons why people want to work with you

Using one of his missions as a humanitarian relief volunteer, Dr. Leal explains the seven reason why people want to work with you and how to address them appropriately. During this presentation, Jaime shares tweaks and tricks on how to create highly engaged, happy teams with a high emotional paycheck; lots of practical advice and easy to apply take-aways will shared.

Learn how to give your team a raise in the check that matters the most.

Samir brings significant engineering experience in designing and implementing cognitive industrial automation systems. Samir works with clients across industries to define and implement data management strategies and solutions. Samir has also delivered AI Digital Agents strategy and solutioning work to enable global clients embark their digital transformation journey to improve customer experience and overall efficiencies using digital agents.

Customer Engagement 2.0: Empowerment through Digital Agents

Customer (and employee) expectations continue to evolve in an omnichannel world, and organizations face mounting pressure to deliver on past channel / contact center investment. Digital Agent technologies offer a proven way to do more with less.

Mike Smith is passionate about bringing business and technology together to drive results. Mike currently works with clients globally to introduce innovation-led, transformative changes into their organizations. Mike has a track record of delivering Contact Center customer experience improvement, revenue opportunities and cost efficiencies across 5 continents. Mike also previously led Omnichannel Change in a major international bank.

Customer Engagement 2.0: Empowerment through Digital Agents

Customer (and employee) expectations continue to evolve in an omnichannel world, and organizations face mounting pressure to deliver on past channel / contact center investment. Digital Agent technologies offer a proven way to do more with less.

Brings in-depth understanding of the critical factors involved in service level management with success implementing the processes, systems, training and organizational structures needed to meet and exceed rigorous Service Level Agreements (SLA) targets on multi-year multi-million dollar contracts. Persuasive change agent and negotiator, equally effective building robust relationships with client executives, or rallying colleagues and staff around key service priorities. Appreciated by peers, clients, vendors and staff for integrity, superb business acumen, and “outside the box” strategic thinking and problem solving talents.

311’s Transformative Customer Experience Journey

Customer experience has gained much recognition and focus in the private sector, and it is gradually raising the bar of service and experience expected for government services as well. Come out and learn about the strategy and initiatives that 311 has adopted and walk away with ideas to take back to work. This interactive session accompanied by a guided tour is must attend event!
• The top challenges in customer/citizen experience program
• Initiatives and best practices
• Lessons learned
• Where citizen/customer experience will be in the future

Shon Wedde is a Sr. Director of Product Management for the Oracle Service Cloud application platform. A veteran of 25+ years in the technology industry, Shon continues to passionately drive innovative capabilities into the Oracle Cloud application suite. Shon’s efforts with early adopter organizations has demonstrated how emerging technologies can transform the digital service experience through incremental investments. Over the past five years Shon has supported organizations with their Internet of Things (IoT) digital service transformation. More recently, Shon has focused on the emerging areas of Augmented Reality (AR), Conversational Interface (CUI), Human-robotic Interaction, Predictive Analytics and BlockChain. Shon joined Oracle through the RightNow Technologies acquisition and has held product development leadership roles in the telecommunication, contact center and customer experience industries.

How IoT, Augmented Reality, Predictive Analytics, Conversational Interfaces and Robotics are converging to transform the service experience

Are you delivering personalized self-service and assisted service experiences on the channels your savvy customers are racing to adopt? Are there new technologies that can support your customer service efficiency goals and enable your brand to deliver personalized service? Hear how Oracle customers are adopting innovative approaches to delivering on their service business objectives and learn where Oracle is investing to support brands as they adopt and deliver innovative experiences.

Key points:
– Innovative industry leading customer stories
How emerging technologies combined with the OSvC solution support new channels
– Demonstrations/ Video

Arthur arrives to the TTC from the London Underground (LU). His most recent work included designing, developing and implementing one of LU’s major change programs aimed at making the system more efficient, transforming the ticketing proposition and enhancing the way customer service is delivered on stations and across Transport for London. Key aspects of the program included a new station staffing model, more effective staff deployment, increased staff visibility and a range of significant improvements to ticketing and smartcard services.

Customer Development is a small, and new, department in the Strategy and Customer Experience Group, which will lead the development of customer strategy, fares policy, retail strategy, commuter parking strategy, as well as conduct a variety of policy reviews to ensure the TTC delivers customer-focused services.

Breaking the Transformation Barrier

Follow the TTC’s journey to overcome the hidden barriers that can thwart large, complex organizations when they attempt to shift focus to customer experience.
• Bridge the gap between CX strategy and culture change
• Overcome internal barriers that undermine customer focus
• Translate CX innovation into employee behaviour
Learn how to design and embed a values-driven platform for CX at the heart of your organization.

Josh Greenhut is a researcher, writer, facilitator and problem-solver who helps large, complex, diverse groups of people change their world in ways they can all agree on. As Strategy Lead at Bridgeable, an award-winning service design consultancy based in Toronto, he works with clients to transform the customer experience, from C-suite strategy to frontline execution. At Bridgeable, Josh was a key contributor to the TELUS redesign of mobile renewals, which was awarded “Best Commercial Project” at the 2017 Service Design Global Awards in Madrid. He has facilitated transformative work for clients including the Toronto Transit Commission, ADP Canada, Accompass, and Sienna Senior Living. In his spare time, Josh hones his ability to distill complexity by writing children’s books. His sixteenth book, Winnie’s Great War, co-authored with Lindsay Mattick, will be published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, in the fall.

Breaking the Transformation Barrier

Follow the TTC’s journey to overcome the hidden barriers that can thwart large, complex organizations when they attempt to shift focus to customer experience.
• Bridge the gap between CX strategy and culture change
• Overcome internal barriers that undermine customer focus
• Translate CX innovation into employee behaviour
Learn how to design and embed a values-driven platform for CX at the heart of your organization.