With transparency on prices from 50,000 retailers and the objective comparison of over 400 million offers, idealo is one of the leading shopping and comparison platforms. The self-declared goal: to help customers always make the best possible purchase decision. In addition to the price, other criteria are relevant for the purchase decision and the customer’s buying experience, which are particularly related to the customer experience. In her presentation, Miriam van Straelen, Chief Customer Officer of idealo, explains how the team, with a focus on UX research and in close cooperation with retailers, incorporates these criteria into product development and thus significantly increases the CX/service quality.

When it comes to branding, many people think of social media and PR. Johannes Kliesch, founder and CEO of SNOCKS, says: Isn’t listening to what customers want and optimizing their purchasing experience the best branding? In his session, Johannes talks about the experiences that the SNOCKS team has made in terms of CX since using the experience management platform zenloop.

The energy industry is undergoing a digital transformation. Some companies have realised that their customers are “more than just a counter number”. Digitalisation trends include cloud and platform solutions that are strategically integrated in the business setup and across the value chain to create flexibility for CX and CRM approaches. Muhdi Moussa, Head of Sales & Marketing, guides the development at stadtenergie. The agile working culture is the foundation for the development of customer-centric innovations and distinctive product approaches. With the help of design thinking approaches and the “Customer Journey Map”, the stadtenergie team makes the difference in the energy industry. In addition, the integration of customer-relevant CX surveys at different touchpoints with a variety of methodology also played a crucial role in obtaining 360-degree customer feedback and making CX a USP of stadtenergie.

Putting a strong emphasis on customer experience is not a new trend for Matthias Bühler, MD of METRO Markets, but rather his bread and butter for the past 6 years. Having led both the introduction of NPS at METRO Cash & Carry as well as overseeing the introduction of our customer experience initiative at METRO Markets, he is well equipped to comment on the top three reasons why customer experience initiatives fail – and how to work around them. In his session, he is going to address the ‘know it all’ syndrome, how to deal with the methodology armageddon and why you shouldn’t stop your CX endeavours – even if you don’t see financial results.

We’re collecting data about our customers and finding new ways to measure the customer experience. But what about our own organizations? How customer-centric are we as a company and to what extent can we measure this internally, learn from it, and make targeted improvements? Hartmuth Gieldanowski, Innovation and Agile Coach at Die Schweizerische Post AG & Stephan Engl, Managing Partner at Creaholic SA present how the Customer Centricity Score can be used to measure the degree of customer centricity in a company, how measures can be derived from this and what it takes to set the framework conditions to become more customer centric as a company.

Turn IT blockers back into IT enablers for the perfect customer experience in record time. Dr. Lasse Meißner, Managing Director, BUTLERS Digital, reports on how to solve IT blockers and optimise the customer experience. Four basic principles are essential for this: Partition confusing systems to reduce complexity; Create reliable and clear connections; Define lead systems for individual tasks & Promote agility to satisfy customer needs.

Due to the supply chain, it is problematic for FMCG companies to build relevant relationships with their end customers. To meet this challenge, Krombacher has decided to focus on building direct marketing channels with the help of a customer data platform. In their session, Sven Markschläger, CDO of the Krombacher Group, and Manuel Tönz, Digital Experience Advisor at Bloomreach, will present various cases and learnings that demonstrate how Krombacher’s marketing approach has changed compared to “classic” FMCG marketing. For example, they report on how interest-based targeting of communication or agile planning and control of campaigns can succeed.

According to a Gartner survey, 81% of companies compete mostly or completely on the basis of CX, making CX a key competitive differentiator for financial institutions in 2021 and beyond. In their session, Julian Schaps, Head of Customer Service at Nuri and Kelly Davey, Senior Account Executive at Solvemate, explain how Nuri takes this to heart by empowering their customer service team to do their best work and creating improved conversational experiences with Solvemate. They will furthermore touch on their top tips for scaling your customer service via automation.

Since the unprecedented success of the e-commerce industry leader Amazon, which has set itself the mission statement of being “the most customer-centric company in the world”, the relevance of customer-centric action has also arrived in German companies. And although it should be obvious to orient company decisions to the needs of customers, many companies are still struggling with this. In his keynote, Paul Schwarzenholz, co-founder and managing director of zenloop, reports on how companies can optimise the customer experience in the best possible way, put the wishes of their customers in the foreground throughout the entire organisation and thus significantly increase customer loyalty and retention. He reports on concrete application examples from companies such as Douglas, Deichmann and HelloFresh.

The companies with the highest Net Promoter Score℠ in their industry have delivered 3x the returns of the stock market overall in the last decade. Why? Because great leaders embrace a higher purpose to win, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) shines as their guiding star. Few management ideas have spread so far and wide as the Net Promoter Score and System. Since its conception almost two decades ago by customer loyalty guru Fred Reichheld, thousands of companies around the world have adopted it – from industrial giants such as Mercedes-Benz and Cummins to tech giants like Apple and Amazon to digital innovators such as Warby Parker and Peloton. Fred has raised the bar again with Winning on Purpose (out Nov 30). In our keynote, he shares his vision on the next evolution, NPS 3.0, with practical guidance on how leaders can take insights distilled from the last decade+ of learnings and industry leaders to their companies.