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The role of the call center is changing. Omnichannel support, AI, end-to-end customer experience, and other trends are changing the customer support and outbound sales landscape every day.
How do you keep up with those trends and ensure that your call center is functioning as effectively as possible?
There’s no better way to stay informed and learn best practices than by attending a call center conference. Customer contact events let industry professionals share their knowledge, learn about new trends, and get a better handle on customer contact technology.
But which should you attend? We’ve gathered the top call center conference of 2019 (and early 2020) to help you figure out which is best for you. Check out the dates, locations, sample sessions, and a short list of speakers to see which catches your interest.
Customer Contact East
Dates: April 7–10 | Location: Marco Island, FL
Frost & Sullivan’s conference is aimed at customer service and customer contact executives, so it includes lots of high-level breakout sessions. While much of the conference is focused on customer experience, you’ll also find service-focused sessions.
Don’t miss:
- Connected Service Management: A Model for Proactively Resolving Issues
- How to Eliminate Multichannel Friction for the Agent
- Being Transparent in Your Communication with Customers and Employees
Keynote speakers:
- Michael O. Cooper, Founder, Innovators + Influencers
- Rachelle Dever, Global Brand & Guest Experience Director, IHG
- Bruce Millard, Vice President, Digital & Customer Innovation, Safelite Group
Other speakers include executives from Dell, Walmart, Quicken Loans, Hertz, and Google.
Smart Customer Service
Dates: April 9–11 | Location: Washington, DC
With a wide variety of customer-service-oriented tracks and events, this conference is a great event for everyone from CEOs to call center managers. There are plenty of sessions focused on AI and social media, but you’ll get call-center-specific options, too.
Don’t miss:
- Are You Running Your Contact Center On Fake News?
- Take Charge: Confidence In Customer Service
- Improving Customer Service By Not Focusing On Customer Service
Highlighted speakers:
- Tisa Sinclair, Social Response Director, AARP
- Alexandre Guay, Manager, Digital Customer Service, National Bank of Canada
- Robert Weideman, EVP & General Manager, Nuance Communications
You’ll also get expert perspectives from companies like Zoho, Freshdesk, and SAP.
Contact Center & Customer Service Summit
Dates: April 15–16 | Location: Washington, DC
While this summit is primarily focused on connecting call center managers with potential service providers, you’ll still find some keynotes and breakout seminars (though they haven’t been detailed at the time of this writing).
The main attraction, though, is meeting with representatives from companies like Fonolo, Aspect, and Datamark.
NICE inContact Interactions
Dates: April 15–17 | Location: Las Vegas, NV
With a huge number of tracks and a wide variety of customer service and customer experience sessions, most call center managers will find this conference to be a useful one.
Don’t miss:
- Customer Service Best Practices
- Workforce Management
- CX Strategy and Emerging Trends
Keynote speakers:
- Ashton Kutcher, Actor
- Gordon Ramsay, Chef/Actor
Elevate CX
Dates: April 26–27 | Location: Denver, CO
This is a smaller conference (only 150 tickets are available), but it brings some big names to the table. Speakers from Trello, Slack, Guru, Lucid Software, Freshworks, Crazy Egg, and Microsoft will be sharing their tips on improving customer experience.
Elevate CX does things differently than most other conferences. Instead of panels or Q&A sessions, they hold 15-minute, TED-style talks. But you can always get in touch with speakers via the conference’s private Slack Channel.
Don’t miss:
- CS Lessons from HR
- Avoiding Burnout in Support Roles
- Evaluating and Buying Tech Tools for CS & CX Teams
Highlighted speakers:
- Michael Labrecque-Jessen, Senior Support Engineer, Trello
- Yael McCue, Customer Success Manager, Guru
- Ian Jordan, Senior Support Manager, Hudl
ICMI Contact Center Expo
Dates: May 13–16 | Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Want full-day contact center workshops? Tons of sessions focused specifically on call centers? Information on call center metrics, incentives, and performance? This is the expo for you.
Don’t miss:
- Transform Your Contact Center into an Insight Center
- Empowering Agents Through Automation
- The Profit-Center Mentality – Managing Contact Centers as a Business!
Keynote speakers:
- Jeff Toister, President, Toister Performance Solutions
- Ginger Hardage, former SVP of Culture & Communications, Southwest Airlines
- Henry Winkler, Actor/Producer/Author
With big-name sponsors like Salesforce, Genesys, Twilio, Cisco, and RingCentral, you’ll get a look at the technologies you can use to better run your call center, too.
Customer Service Summit West
Dates: June 3–4 | Location: San Diego, CA
The first thing you’ll notice about the Customer Service Summit is the speaker lineup. It includes speakers from Mastercard, Samsung, Uber, Amazon, WeWork, eBay, Hilton, Home Depot, and other world-renowned names.This year’s tracks include social, omnichannel, upskilled agents, and B2B customer service.
Don’t miss:
- Out with the Old: Sourcing and Implementing a Flexible Platform to Synchronize Omnichannel Customer Service
- Unify your Social Support Voice and Retain the Human Element
- Restructure Customer Service for the Connected Customer
Highlighted speakers:
- Lance Gruner, Executive Vice President, Global Customer Care, Mastercard
- Stan Friedlander Former Director/GM, Amazon
- Heidi Rote, Sales Center Director for North America, Jenny Craig
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