Enhancing Customer Experience: Hype vs. Reality

In collaboration with Zendesk

Focused, data-driven customer experience strategies increasingly rely on the use of sophisticated AI and machine-learning algorithms. The future promises rich and accurate data models, such as digital twins, that will change how retailers present, sell, and deliver goods and services. As competitive pressures increase, companies struggle to balance the physical and employee resources needed to fuel, manage and act upon the insights from increasingly complex models. 

In this roundtable discussion, industry and academic leaders will discuss:

  • The benefits and limitations of using AI models to drive decision-making.
  • How companies can separate the hype from reality as they lay the groundwork for an actionable, responsive CX capability.
  • What retailers can do today to prepare their operations in order to fully realize the promise of AI technology.

The conversation will continue with a Q&A with the audience, including diving deeper into the challenges of the retail and service industries.

Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 1:30–3 p.m. EDT

RSVPs Closed

 

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Panelists

Portrait of Jimmy Drake

Jimmy Drake

Vice President of eCommerce, Purple

Jimmyis the VP of eCommerce at Purple Innovations. He and his team are responsible for eCommerce sales, customer experience and operations for the DTC business. This includes a number of distinct teams such as digital product management, user experience design, site merchandising, customer insights, and the contact center sales and service organizations. His team is collectively accountable for establishing, delivering and optimizing high growth strategies for the company. Jimmy has been in the customer experience, eCommerce and retail space for well over 15 years. In that time, Jimmy has delivered customer-centered growth strategies; established teams; and built operations for some of the largest technology, retail and manufacturing companies in the world. Jimmy is a Pittsburgh native, but currently lives in Utah with his wife and two children.

Portrait of Raelin Musuraca

Raelin Musuraca

Assistant Teaching Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Raelin is a researcher and strategist with more than 20 years of experience helping companies develop a deep understanding of their customers through human-centered research and design. By examining the full customer journey, Raelin turns research insights into actionable initiatives designed to improve the customer experience with a focus on increasing revenue, decreasing costs and elevating shareholder value.

Currently, Raelin is an assistant teaching professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon. Her goals are to help students build a strong methods-based foundation, develop critical thinking and empathic skills, and understand the drivers of business value. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Raelin managed customer experience efforts at American Eagle Outfitters, where she led the Voice of the Customer program and Customer Journey Mapping initiatives. Raelin also led client experience strategy at BNY Mellon and through her own digital firm Sharp Creative consulted with retail, hospitality and consumer product companies.

Portrait of Paul Pangaro

Paul Pangaro

Professor of Practice, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Paul is professor of the practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, part of CMU’s School of Computer Science. Paul’s career spans roles as entrepreneur, researcher, consultant and teacher. He has founded start-ups; served as chief technology officer; managed product teams; and consulted as future-caster for organizations such as Du Pont, Nokia, Samsung, Instituto Itaú Cultural (Brazil), and Ogilvy & Mather. He has published on design methodologies, conversational systems with text- or voice-based interfaces, and mechanisms for organizational change, and lectured on these topics in Brazil, Europe and North America. In collaboration with TJ McLeish, he displayed a full-scale working replica of Gordon Pask’s “Colloquy of Mobiles” at Centre Pompidou in February 2020 and is now part of the permanent collection of the ZKM Museum in Germany. Paul is president of the American Society for Cybernetics. He holds a B.S. in humanities/computer science (MIT), and a Ph.D. in cybernetics (Brunel University, UK). His personal website and blog can be found at pangaro.com.

portrait of Chris Stephens

Chris Stephens

Vice President of Enterprise Data & Analytics, Zendesk

Chris is vice president of Enterprise Data & Analytics at Zendesk, where he and his team are responsible for data and analytics strategy and delivery across the company. This includes data platforms and engineering, architecture, BI, data science and governance. Chris has done about everything you can do in data — from building models to selling the platforms that run them. Chris' experience over the past 25 years includes leading a global data science and strategy practice, leading product management teams, bringing analytics products to market, and running data and analytics for a $4B global retail organization. He serves as an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon in the CDAO program.  He is proud to call Pittsburgh home, along with his wife and their five children.