Uncover the Power of Customer Experience

A warm welcome to Day 2 of CEM Africa 2023 from the event organisers (Kinetic and Vuka Group) to our distinguished guests, partners, and industry pioneers.

Opening Address By Chairperson

Join the Global Voice of CX, Dennis Wakabayashi, for an insightful exploration into the universal human experiences shaping our world. In this keynote, he unveils the ‘9 Human Truths About Experiences’, a treasure trove of discoveries made by renowned researcher David Allison. This compelling presentation unveils profound insights derived from Allison’s extensive study that reached over a million individuals globally. Attendees will learn valuable perspectives to help them adapt to our increasingly interconnected world.

Speakers:

Dennis Wakabayashi, CX Industry influencer, Team Wakabayashi

Advisory Board Panel Discussion

Understanding how customer service forms a critical touchpoint. The journey starts at the discovery of a product all the way to purchase and beyond. This, in turn, results in an ideal “customer experience” that consumers demand as a successful outcome.

#dcx #digitalcustomerexperience

Speakers:

Alex Wörz, CEO,

Anton de Wet, Chief Client Officer, Nedbank

Dennis Wakabayashi, CX Industry influencer, Team Wakabayashi

Helen Bywater, Global Head of CX Service Design, Ipsos

Qaalfa Dibeehi, Dean of the Customer Experience Leadership , Majid Al Futtain

Sam Tayan, Managing Director - Middle East and Africa ,

Simon Broadbent, SVP,

A warm welcome and the official opening of CEM Africa 2023 from the event organisers (Kinetic and Vuka Group) to our distinguished guests, partners, and industry pioneers.

Speaker to be announced

Speakers:

Dennis Wakabayashi, CX Industry influencer, Team Wakabayashi

Panel Discussion

Speakers:

Abdulaziz Alshamsan, Founder & CEO | Former Executive Director General - Customer Experience ,

Alderman Theresa Uys, Mayoral Council Member for Corporate Services ,

Dennis Wakabayashi, CX Industry influencer, Team Wakabayashi

Introduction by Chairperson

Speakers:

David Hobbs, Customer Operations Specialist, OneDayOnly

Panel Discussion

While both multichannel and omnichannel approaches offer customers a range of options to interact, Omnichannel goes a step further in focusing on the customer journey. The omnichannel experience ensures that the organisations are meeting their customers where they’re at, in lieu of simply providing a variety of communication channels. Your omnichannel strategy therefore gives your organisation better insight into every customer digital touchpoint and interaction. During this interactive panel, the audience will gain insights into improving their organisation’s omnichannel approach to ensure a seamless customer experience across all communication channels.

• Enabling your business to personalise interactions to deliver a customer experience that appeals across the spectrum of generations and preferences.
• Integrating tools and options to tie channels together and work with the customer around their preferences.
• How to effectively avoid the “creep factor” while maintaining personalisation.

Speakers:

Daniele Joubert, Head: Growth and Consumer Operations, Uber

Darryl Marcus, VP Sales Africa,

Jason Harrison, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer ,

Karine Cardona, Senior Analyst, CX- Design ,

Kunal Badiani, Regional Vice President,

Nisha Maharaj, Senior Marketing Manager, V&A Waterfront

Sibusiso Khumalo, Group Managing Director ,

Panel Discussion

How can this technology facilitate natural language processing (NLP), collect and evaluate customer sentiment (sentiment analysis), and predict future customer trends; offering invaluable insights for inclusion in your company’s marketing tool chest?

How can AI capture insights through data mining and recognition capabilities to vastly improve the efficiency in processing extensive collections of customer-specific data?

How can machine learning (ML) and data science technology allow for processing large quantities of information to identify bottlenecks and increase efficiency?

In this session, understand how AI and data science tools and technology allow companies to analyse and develop new and direct ways to market and sell products and services by targeting the appropriate prospect profile for any given target market.

Speakers:

Brandon Meszaros, CEO,

Dion Millson, CEO,

Francois VanOs, Senior Solution Consultant ,

Jacques Schalkwyk, CX Practice Lead - Applications and cloud ,

Muhammed Omar, Country Manager - Africa ,

Vincent Maher, Group Executive - Digital ,

Zhecho Dobrev, Principal Consultant, Beyond Philosophy

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

Panel Discussion

Contacting customers via generic email accounts is coming to an end. Now, customers are shifting to social for praise, complaints, and everything in between. Creating a social media interaction strategy is essential for long-term customer satisfaction. Most consumers expect brands and companies with a social media presence to interact with their customers in meaningful ways. As social continues to evolve, the ways audiences engage with brands will grow alongside it.

In this panel discussion, we’ll cover what these interactions look like, and how they impact your overall business strategy.

Speakers:

Clint Payne, Consultant,

Jonathan Williams, Founder & CEO,

Phillip Moepya, Group Head - Experience Design, Standard Bank Group

Zanele Hadebe, Vice President - Marketing (Energy),

Industry Verticals:

Social Media and Influencer Marketing

Social Media Monitoring and Engagement

Panel Discussion

Join us for an engaging panel discussion as we explore the profound shift in the consumer journey and the cultural changes influencing consumer behavior. In an era of rapid technological advancements, globalization, and evolving societal norms, businesses and marketers face unprecedented challenges in understanding and connecting with today’s consumers. This panel aims to delve into the complexities of this changing landscape and provide insights into effective strategies for engaging with the modern consumer.

Speakers:

Brian Majuru, Consumer Intelligence Lead ,

Kholiwe Ntsonta, Head of Customer Strategy, Old Mutual Limited

Mahendra Beharie, Vice President Customer Service SSA ,

Rebone Gcabo, Chairperson: Design & Enablement Cluster & EXCO Member,

Shouneez Baghas, Head Of Client Experience, Rand Merchant Bank

Tarryn Knight, Head of Product, Marketing & PR ,

This 1-hour workshop, presented by Rashid Toefy and Dennis Wakabayashi, is designed to help businesses understand the importance of leveraging the customer voice in managing change effectively. Participants will learn how to align their CX strategy with change management initiatives to ensure that customers remain at the forefront of decision-making, and that changes are implemented smoothly and seamlessly. The workshop will also explore the philosophy of leveraging the customer voice in creating momentum for change, as an authoritative perspective that can solidify support for tackling the adversity that an organization faces when trying to move from innovative ideas to substantial change.

• Understand the importance of CX in change management
• Learn how to align CX strategy with change management initiatives
• Identify key stakeholders and communication channels for CX-focused change management
• Develop an understanding of the philosophy of of leveraging the customer voice for change management success.

Speakers:

Dennis Wakabayashi, CX Industry influencer, Team Wakabayashi

Rashid Toefy, Deputy Director -General, Western Cape Government

The CX world is changing fast. Recognizing that your employees are the key to success in this new and dynamic environment is a real game changer. This workshop explains why your employees are more important than ever and will demonstrate the power of AI-based analytics in driving ROI, scalability and growth using NICE RPA technologies.

Speakers:

Alina Pozitski, Sales Engineer RPA ,

The workshop begins by highlighting the critical role of customer feedback in improving the overall customer experience. We will delve into various feedback gathering methods, such as surveys, reviews, and social media, while showcasing how metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) can effectively measure loyalty, satisfaction, and ease of doing business.

Furthermore, our experts will explore the power of an omnichannel communications strategy, sharing the latest trends and insights in the customer experience realm. By leveraging technology and real-life success stories, we will guide C-Suite executives and decision-makers across industries to create seamless customer experiences that transcend traditional boundaries.

Speakers:

Candice Roberts, Founder and CEO ,

Keith Joseph, Managing Director ,

Kriben Abrahams, Head of Dialler Operations ,

The hype surrounding AI and the impact it delivers, has the potential to revolutionise the customer experience across various industries, offering businesses new and multi-ways of engagement, deeper and better view and understanding of the customer to deliver accurate information at first intention with speed. Join us in this workshop for an interactive exploration of AI and its benefits for your CX offering.

Speakers:

Ben Neo, Head of Contact Center and CX Sales EMEA ,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

As CX professionals we are memory makers and, as Ipsos, we know that the higher the emotional attachment customers are twice as likely to prefer you, advocate you and continue using you. Through R&D we have identified the Forces of CX which are the 6 key building blocks to create emotional connection. Come along to this creative workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and deep dive into each of the forces, learn about how they can be applied across sectors, the impact they have and how you can use them in your business to build long lasting relationships that deliver ROCXI: Return on CX Investment.

Speakers:

Helen Bywater, Global Head of CX Service Design, Ipsos

Lucy (Lucinda) Dixon, Associate Service Line Director, Ipsos

Industry Verticals:

Customer Relationship Management

Don’t miss out on this workshop that will reveal everything you need to know about leveraging Conversational Commerce and Conversational Engagement to unlock the full potential of WhatsApp Business Platform for your business. Discover how to take your CX to new heights and gain a competitive edge through Infobip’s intuitive AI technology. In this workshop, we will guide you through the transformative journey of maximizing WhatsApp Business Platform’s capabilities, empowering you to create personalized, engaging, and efficient customer interactions. We will present easy-to-adopt use cases, and customer stories and show you how Infobip can support you and your teams in delivering successful campaigns.

Speakers:

Marcus Zackey, Retail Consultant ,

Industry Verticals:

E-commerce and Online Retail Solutions

Attend this workshop by Jose Almeida – Data Consulting and Advsiory, Africa with over 20 years’ experience, his data management career has focused mainly in the areas of data governance, data quality, master data management, ETL, data migration and data integration, with experience in worldwide projects in Europe, Middle East and Africa across a wide range of realities and different clients and industries, enabling organisations across the world to proactively manage their data asset and to address their challenges and gain more value from their data, focusing on providing.

Speakers:

Kutlwano Ngwarati, Head of Data and Analytics - Guarantees,

Ncumisa Hlapo, Senior Manager: Business Data Insights ,

Artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced a significant technological breakthrough with the introduction of OpenAI Chat-GPT and other AI
applications. It is rapidly swiping through and disrupting almost all industries, including Contact Center and Customer Services operations, striving to get more information on how AI will influence business.

Some of the frequent questions concerning managers in the CEM domain are:

1. What business value can AI provide to my operations?
2. How can Chat-GPT technology impact my customer’s experience?
3. Is the usage of AI currently available in technology solutions for the Contact Center, or is this mostly a product roadmap item today?
4. Can AI handle analysis tasks formerly addressed only by human analysts?
5. What constraints and challenges does AI have that I should know when adopting an AI \ Chat-GPT solution?
Join this session to find out the answer to these questions and others and to view a live demo of NICE’s cutting-e

Speakers:

Matty Brozin, Senior Analytics Solution Consultant ,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

The digital age has brought forth a new era of customer interactions, revolutionized by artificial intelligence (AI). This workshop delves into the realm of AI-powered chatbots, voice assistants, and predictive analytics, demonstrating their ability to understand customer behavior and deliver personalized experiences. Discover how AI can streamline operations, reduce response times, and enhance overall efficiency, ultimately driving superior customer experiences.

Speakers:

Keith Joseph, Managing Director ,

Wayne D’Sa, CEO,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

Unleash the potential of conversational customer experience and marketing through WhatsApp. Join us for this comprehensive workshop where you’ll learn the latest insights on how to leverage the power of conversation to improve and strengthen customer trust and delight at every stage of the customer life cycle.

We’ll show you a customer-focused and conversational approach to enhancing lead generation, activations, driving customer engagement through content and finally elevating the overall customer experience, to maximise revenue expansion.

Through a combination of proven strategies, compelling case studies, and hands-on demonstrations, we’ll equip you with the knowledge and skills to effectively utilise WhatsApp’s automated responses, quick replies, and chatbots for impactful customer interactions and meaningful connections.

Speakers:

Jonathan Williams, Founder & CEO,

Michelle Matthee, Customer Success Manager ,

Industry Verticals:

E-commerce and Online Retail Solutions

1. Understanding the Employee Experience-Customer Experience Nexus.
2. Empowering Employees to Deliver Outstanding Customer Service.
3. Measuring and Monitoring Employee Experience.

Speakers:

Jacques Schalkwyk, CX Practice Lead - Applications and cloud ,

Ringo Naidoo, Head: Intelligent Customer experience - Applications & Cloud ,

Roark Raman, Amazon Connect GTM Specialist ,

Industry Verticals:

Human Resources and Recruitment

Voice of the Employee (VoE)

Bringing together human interaction and technology — and harnessing connected data — is at the heart of delivering empathetic customer experiences. Powerful experience orchestration allows brands to deliver consistent service while adding context. And that allows you to provide the right level of empathy and emotional connection in every interaction with your brand.

Experience orchestration, though, goes beyond the contact centre. Itencompasses Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS), experience automation, and experience orchestration capabilities – all on an open cloud platform. The Genesys team will demonstrate the power of Genesys Cloud CX that unifies customer and agent experiences.

Speakers:

Carl Thompson, Strategic Sales Specialist, Customer Journey Management ,

Attend this session to understand the critical role of customer experience in a new and dynamic electric vehicle public charging sector in the face of multiple standards, connectors, apps and payment methods.

Speakers:

Dr. Remeredzai Kuhudzai, Founder, Electric Drive Africa,

Speakers:

Dr Jeanne Fredericks, Founder and CEO,

Karine Cardona, Senior Analyst, CX- Design ,

Changes in the contact centre industry, such as the increasing use of digital channels by customers and employees or the high work-life balance
expectations, mean that your workforce management needs to support customers and employees more innovatively than ever. This session will provide a framework for creative ways for workforce management to meet the challenges of contact centres today and in the future.

Speakers:

Colin Field, Director of WFM EMEA ,

Industry Verticals:

Contact Center Solutions

Speakers:

Manish Rai, VP - Business and Delivery,

Join the Momentum Metropolitan Africa and IQbusiness Insights teams as they unpack and share their lessons around developing a customer experience strategy, embedding a CX philosophy and driving the maturity of it. All within an African context. The team will speak to the different nuances in application across 5 countries within Africa, the barriers faced, the successes achieved and future consid-erations for multi-country socialisation. Have you ever wondered how your company would do this?

Speakers:

Kerry Thomas, Business Unit Director: Experience Management,

Selina de Freitas, Insights & Analytics Director: Experience Management,

The CX goal posts are constantly in flux. Customer preferences, technology and market conditions are always evolving. How do we keep up? What business and contact centre technologies are relevant and can be implemented today? How do we futureproof our CX strategies?

If you’re looking for some ideas and insights, join this session to:

• Get a snapshot of CX market trends (including successes and failures).
• Evaluate how/if various CX technologies fit into your plans.
• Learn what you can implement to elevate your CX today and in the future.

Key technologies and topics covered:

1. Hyper-personalisation: the no buzzword guide to understanding your customer.
2. Harnessing the self-service revolution: practical use cases for AI, ChatGPT, voice chatbots, speech assistants and other technologies.
3. From EX to CX: building a case for enhanced employee and customer engagement.
4. The data (gold) mine: extracting CX value from process and interaction data.
5. Scaling CX improvements: the unexpected role of digitisation and automation.

Speakers:

Wynand Smit, CEO,

There’s a real sense of urgency and enthusiasm to discover the best uses of generative AI for customer engagement. But with great power comes great responsibility. As this field continues to grow, it’s essential to understand the impact it can have on our businesses and customers. In this session, we’ll the unique challenges and opportunities of deploying generative AI in today’s most popular customer engagement channels. Walk away with the insights, tools and techniques to leverage this cutting-edge technology to drive better business outcomes in a safe, trustworthy and meaningful way.

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

Delivering an experience through a service requires many areas of a business to come together – from strategy to customer, marketing, operations, technology, people, legal and risk. Every area plays a role and needs to Integrate in a way that ultimately creates the experience ambition. This system shifts for any change or transformation of a service, especially when driven by a new digital capability, which many organisations are undergoing or implementing in this digital age to remain relevant and create a competitive customer experience. Service Design involves architecting a complex system into a compelling and comprehensive visual or blueprint that defines how all elements in a business come together to deliver a service and experience. This workshop will be a practical experience for attendees to understand how to design and execute a blueprint for service design that incorporates all elements from a strategy to customer journey, process, technology and other business functions.

Speakers:

Elmien Sambandan, Partner,

Georgina De Felsoeori Nagy, Associate Partner - Strategy,

Industry Verticals:

Customer Relationship Management

With over 200mn active WhatsApp users in Africa, it’s no secret that every business wants to be on WhatsApp to engage with their target audience. But how many businesses are truly converting their ‘intent’ to ‘action’ quickly? Your brand functions in an ‘always on’ generation that expects to engage with you at any time, across their preferred channels and touchpoints. Enabling proactive conversational AI solutions using platforms like WhatsApp can not only help you deliver humanised conversational experiences but also foster long-term business-to-customer relationships. Not to forget the increased ROI that your business stands to achieve by engaging with customers on WhatsApp. Join our session at the CEMSummit 2023, where we will uncover the true north for businesses looking to revolutionize their communication strategy with conversational AI.

Speakers:

Shashi Bhushan, Director Business Operations ,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

Speakers:

Abishek Kashyab, Sr Manager Sales & Growth, Middle East and Africa ,

Chatbots have become practically synonymous with AI for customer service. The chatbots that leverage AI and machine learning can augment a customer service team’s capabilities by answering routine questions, providing 24/7 access to information, enabling multilingual support, and enhancing overall customer experiences.

But AI-powered customer service can benefit every aspect of an operation, from delivering exceptional user experiences for customers and agents to creating more cost-effective, efficient workflows. Join us in this session as we uncover the obvious, and maybe not-so-obvious benefits of the new technology

Speakers:

Cecilia Canha, Contact Center Specialist ,

Ryno Venter, Solutions Engineer ,

During this workshop we will also explore the present and future ServiceNow Generative AI capabilities for Customer Experience.

Speakers:

Dhesigan Naidu, Head of Platform Operations ,

Jack Govender, Solution Sales Executive, Customer Workflows ,

Jody Anthony Roberts, Presales Solutions Consultant - Customer Experience Solutions,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

Customer Success Management

Digital customer experience (CX) management platform

In this session Ipsos will not only be sharing findings of its recent research among CX professionals from over 65 markets around world (including South Africa), but we will be unpacking what they’re telling us and what it actually means for you. In this interactive workshop, we’ll delve into: the current state of play, what’s changed, levels of CX maturity, leading CX challenges and the top priorities for CX practitioners. With 1 in 4 CX practitioners acknowledging that the experiences delivered to their organisations are generally worse than promised, there is clearly still a lot of work to be done, but also a lot of opportunity. This is the one workshop not to be missed as we will share best practices and strategies on how to ensure you get the biggest return out of your CX investment (ROCXI).

Speakers:

Ben Llewellyn, Global Service Line Leader CX ,

Pieter Kok, Senior Service Line Director: Customer Experience, Ipsos

Industry Verticals:

Voice and Speech Analytics

As business leaders we are often driven to innovate within our organisations to ensure that we achieve the business goals. As a result, we see many new projects underpinned by cutting edge technologies such as AI, Automation, Bots, and many other buzzwords tied into the 4th industrial revolution. It is important for non-cybersecurity or non-technical business leaders and staff to understand the risk that comes with innovation, as with “great innovation comes a greater responsibility”, whether with ethics, risk, or compliance. In this workshop we will look at specifically designed frameworks and tools for business leaders and how to adopt a ”security first” mindset by understanding the Key Risk Indicators of any project, allowing you to critically analyse and ask the right questions at the right time.

Speakers:

Faseeg Osman, CISO,

Grant Hughes, Principal Security Architect, Engen

Retail experience is a crucial differentiator for businesses. While price, value and service remain important, it’s the overall – and sometimes elusive – customer experience that turns a casual browser into a committed brand advocate. Engage with retail trailblazers on why retail customer experience should be a key part of your omnichannel experience strategy.

Speakers:

David Hobbs, Customer Operations Specialist, OneDayOnly

Dino Bernicchi, AI Strategy Consultant, Ex Head of ML ,

Ianthe Sandnes, HOD: eCommerce Marketing & CX, Pick n Pay

Janine George, Chief Product & Marketing Officer ,

Lelen Udayan, Head Of Customer Experience, Mukuru

In this interactive workshop you’ll be involved in the design, build and testing of an Elerian AI digital agent. During this session you’ll get to:

• Determine the use case, process flow and outcome of the agent.
• View features such as: Identification, Verification (OTP, Voice biometrics) Omni-channel.
• Observe the build process in real-time on Elerian’s no-code dashboard dialogue builder.
• Test the agent via voice and text.
• Understand how easy the agent is to deploy and integrate.
• Come join us and let our technology do the talking!

Speakers:

Brandon Meszaros, CEO,

Dieter Winckelmann, Delivery Manager ,

Faidh feisal, Head of Engineering ,

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots

The speakers will unpack key findings from the 2023 South African Customer Experience Report, the 5th annual edition of this survey. This year’s research combined feedback from 2 000 consumers with a survey of 50 business executives to compare and contrast the consumer perception of customer experience from the corporate one.

The research focuses on six primary topics including the recognition that consumer expectations of excellence have slid to a point where standard service is considered remarkable. It examines the channels through which individuals prefer to engage with brands during discovery, research and purchase as well as for support. It looks at the role of reviews in informing buying decisions, at attitudes towards data and closes with an analysis of the industry verticals consumers rate versus those the business community benchmarks itself against.

By combining data, opinion and actionable insights, The South African Customer Experience Report is a benchmark piece of research that should be analysed by all professionals looking to improve their organisation’s service delivery.

The annual report is authored by digital agency Rogerwilco, market research company ovatoyou and CX practitioner Julia Ahlfeldt.

Speakers:

Amanda Reekie, Founder,

Charlie Stewart, CEO,

There’s a real sense of urgency and enthusiasm to discover the best uses of generative AI for customer engagement. But with great power comes great responsibility. As this field continues to grow, it’s essential to understand the impact it can have on our businesses and customers. In this session, we’ll navigate the unique challenges and opportunities of deploying generative AI in today’s most popular customer engagement channels. Walk away with the insights, tools and techniques to leverage this cutting-edge technology to drive better business outcomes in a safe, trustworthy and meaningful way.

Industry Verticals:

AI and Chatbots