In today’s digital world, it’s incredibly easy to find helpful resources and how-to guides that enable us to succeed in our roles with just a few keystrokes or taps on our smartphones.
With that said, experiential learning and in-person connections are still as important as ever, especially for customer experience professionals. Which is why attending conferences are paramount for professional and personal development. The ability to network with people organically, deeply engage with content with like-minded peers, and have a little fun, are all reasons conferences are valuable ways to improve yourself and your company.
The problem is, there is no shortage of conferences, and for many employees and employers, deciding which one(s) to attend can be a difficult choice. As a consultancy dedicated to the Customer Experience (CX), we’re highlighting 5 US-based conferences customer experience professionals should consider for 2019:
Totango Customer Success Summit 2019
Dates: TBD
Location: San Francisco, CA
If you’ve been to the Customer Success Summit in the past five years, you’ve likely seen our founder and president standing on the stage. As a proud partner of Totango, we’ve enjoyed presenting on a variety of topics, including Net Promoter Score best practices and sharing client success stories with relevant advice attendees can implement immediately.
Why should you attend? This event brings together around 900 Customer Success professionals from around the globe annually. In addition to hearing from thought leaders, visionaries, and practitioners, you will learn how you and your company can increase customer success through interactive workshops, open forums, and roundtable discussions.
Qualtrics Experience MGMT Summit
Dates: March 5-8, 2019
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
If you are looking to gain inspiration from people all over the world, take a look at the Experience MGMT Summit put on by our friends at Qualtrics. It’s an annual gathering of the world’s experience leaders and features diverse and engaging breakouts that will benefit all CX leaders.
Why should you attend? Hear from the thought leaders, social icons, and executives of some of the world’s leading companies on how they design and deliver the four branches of experience management: customer, employee, product, and brand experience. On Friday, digest the content you consumed and network over skiing or snowboarding. By the way, we hear Oprah fans are especially welcome this year.
Gainsight Pulse 2019
Dates: May 20-23, 2019
Location: San Francisco, CA
As a Gainsight partner and attendee of Pulse, take it from us, if you’re looking for that big conference feel, then Gainsight has you covered. We love the thoughtful content the folks at Gainsight put together – from key customer success benchmarks to proven strategies building a customer success culture to the importance of measuring Employee Net Promoter Score for teammate success. You might also find yourself shaking hands with a SaaS founder, venture capitalist, or senior customer success leader.
Why should you attend? Known as the “Official Industry Conference for Customer Success,” attend for deep learning, elite speakers, and peer networking with over 5,000 attendees. They also offer a crash course in beginner or advanced customer success tactics.
Forrester CX 2019 (NY and SF)
Forrester CX NYC 2019
Dates: June 11-12, 2019
Location: New York, NY
Calling for disruptive innovation in CX, this year’s conference is about to “Change the Game.” Put on by the folks at Forrester, the 2-day event is planning content that will push for radical change in CX (plus they always offer early access to new research and analysis). With innovative ideas and new strategies promised, be sure to take copious notes.
Why should you attend? If you’re looking to learn more about quantitative techniques (like behavioral economics) and qualitative research (like ethnographics), this conference should make your shortlist. Plus, attendees will walk away with actionable insights and tools to expand their existing CX strategy.
ClientSuccess CS100 Summit 2019
Dates: TBD
Location: TBD
The most intimate event on our list, the CS100 Summit brings together just 100 of the top customer success executives in the nation. We had the chance to attend last year and enjoyed sharing best practices and ideas with attendees. Fellow attendees felt the same, “CS100 Summit is a genuinely unique event. My learning is accelerated as I am inspired by truly brilliant leaders. I always come away chock full of new ideas and energized to apply them in my work.”
Why should you attend? Inspiring and impactful content is broken into keynotes, innovation pitches, panels, and roundtables, with plenty of knowledge sharing and peer networking opportunities. As you can imagine, with only 100 attendees, the event sells out quickly.
Other Conferences to Consider:
As we previously said, there’s plenty of conferences with customer experience topics planned for 2019. Here are a few other events in North America we think you should evaluate:
- Advocamp
- INBOUND
- MarTech
- Adobe Experience Summit
- SaaStr
What CX event will you attend in 2019?
With a little more background on each of these 5 key customer success conferences, we hope you’re a little further along the decision-making process. As always, let us know if you have any questions or if we can help with this decision in any way. We hope to see you at a conference in 2019!