Consumers Still Favor Live Agents, but the Gap Is Closing

When consumers were asked to compare their interactions with live agents versus AI-powered agents, the preference for humans was clear: 68% rated live agent interactions as “Better” or “Much Better.” By contrast, only 53% said the same about AI-powered agents when compared to their human counterparts.

That’s a meaningful gap. But here’s what’s equally telling: 71% of consumers said they feel neutral or better about AI as their first point of contact when seeking customer care help. Consumer openness to AI isn’t just growing; it’s accelerating.

So what’s driving that tension between preference and openness? It comes down to expectations.

Performance Over Personality

One of the most striking findings in the research is what consumers actually want from AI. While live agents are expected to bring warmth, empathy, and a human touch, AI is held to a different standard entirely.

Consumers ranked “Being Highly Knowledgeable and Accurate” (14%) and “Being Efficient/Quick” (13%) as the top areas where AI-powered agents perform best. Empathy and fairness? Those lagged significantly behind.

The message is clear: consumers aren’t asking AI to act human. They’re asking it to work.

Complexity Changes Everything

Where consumers draw the line most sharply is around issue complexity. For simple tasks (paying a bill, updating account information), the preference split between live and AI agents is nearly even (52% vs. 48%). But when the issue gets complicated?

58% of consumers prefer a live agent for complex issues, and a striking 81% say access to a live agent is “Extremely Important” or “Somewhat Important” in those moments.

This isn’t just a preference; it’s a signal. When the stakes are higher, consumers want a human who can exercise judgment, show empathy, and navigate nuance. AI’s current capabilities in problem-solving simply haven’t earned that level of trust yet.

What Live Agents Need to Get Better At

The research doesn’t let live agents off the hook either. When consumers were asked which soft skills are most critical for human agents to provide excellent care, “Effective Problem-Solving” (16%) and “Being Highly Knowledgeable” (15%) topped the list.

Here’s the catch: those same skills ranked near the bottom when consumers were asked where live agents are currently performing best. That gap between expectation and reality is an opportunity, and a warning, for any brand investing in contact center training.

The Bigger Picture for CX Leaders

The research makes one thing unmistakably clear: the future of customer experience isn’t human or AI. It’s human and AI working together in ways deliberately designed around what consumers actually need at each stage of their journey.

AI excels at speed, availability, and accuracy. Live agents excel at judgment, empathy, and complex resolution. The organizations that figure out how to orchestrate these strengths (matching the right interaction type to the right resource at the right moment) will be the ones that win on customer experience.

The full report goes deep on soft skill differentials, consumer comfort with AI mimicking human qualities, the impact of language and accent barriers, and specific action items for CX leaders.

Download the Full Report →

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But there is a particular kind of conference experience that senior CX leaders tend to describe when you ask them what they are actually looking for. It’s not about the biggest audience or the longest speaker list. It’s about something harder to engineer: a conversation that changes how you think, a CX peer who has wrestled with the exact problem sitting on your desk right now, and relationships that are still paying dividends years later.

When is the last time you left a conference having learned something that actually changed how you work? When is the last time you met someone in a session who became a genuine thought partner, not just a LinkedIn connection? When is the last time a conference sent you home thinking differently about your job function?

That is what CRS is built around.

At CRS Scottsdale (September 30–October 2, 2026), the format is intentionally intimate, designed to foster real conversations, share knowledge, and build relationships that outlast the event itself.

Here’s what sets it apart from other CX conferences.

Leaders Learning from Leaders

At most conferences, you learn from a stage. At CRS, you learn from the person sitting across from you at dinner. The insights come from the CX executive who just cracked a problem you have been wrestling with for months, or the C-suite keynote speaker who is willing to share not just what is working, but what isn’t. There is a candor in the room that is rare because it is composed of people who have actually done the work.

“This is the only event where true CX leaders can learn from other leaders.”

— Ebrahim Hyder, Vice President of Customer Service, Michael Kors

That peer-to-peer dynamic changes everything about how knowledge moves through an event. You aren’t passively absorbing presentations. You are actively exchanging hard-won experience with the people who understand your challenges most deeply.

Intimate by Design

CRS is intentionally small. And that is the whole point. You are not navigating a convention center floor hoping to catch five minutes with someone meaningful. The smaller scale is a deliberate structural choice that shapes every aspect of the event, from the session format to the way the agenda is built, with dedicated connection time woven throughout.

Collaboration at scale is a contradiction in terms. Real collaboration, the kind that surfaces new ideas and shifts your thinking, requires enough space for a genuine conversation. CRS is built around that insight.

“One of the things I really love about these conferences is how intimate it is. The smaller environment allows for a lot more collaboration.” 

— Dima Cichi, Global Customer Success & Service Transformation Leader, Microsoft 

An Openness You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Something happens when you put the right people in a room together. The attendees who come to CRS are not there to pitch or to perform. They are there because they genuinely care about the customer experience and want to get better at it, alongside others who share this. That shared purpose creates a culture of openness that is hard to manufacture and impossible to fake.

“What keeps me coming back year after year are the friendships you make and the people you trust.” 

— Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Member Services, Travelzoo

When the people in the room trust each other, conversations go deeper. Problems get examined honestly. Advice is given and received in good faith. That is the environment CRS creates and protects.

Relationships That Last Beyond the Event

A conference that leaves you with a stack of business cards is forgettable. A conference that leaves you with a network of genuine partners is something else entirely. Attendees describe the connections they have made at CRS as those that have made them better leaders, strategists, and people. Relationships that did not end when the event did.

“I have developed relationships from coming here over many, many years that transcend work. They’re my partners. And I think that’s very unique in the conference space.There’s no other community like that in the industry.”

— Dave Pitsch, Vice President of Guest Services, Arc’teryx

That word, community, is what separates CRS from everything else. An event happens once a year. A community is always there.

Come Experience CRS for Yourself

We are at a complex moment in customer experience, trying to figure out how to harness AI while doubling down on the human connection that still defines great brands. The tension between those two imperatives is real, and the organizations navigating it best are the ones learning together in rooms like the ones CRS creates.

There is no better place to work through that challenge than alongside the leaders doing it in real time. If you have not been to CRS before, this is the year to find out what everyone keeps coming back for.

Learn More  

Register Today 

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Since 2021, Execs In The Know’s Leading with Impact program has focused on raising awareness surrounding mental health. Our aim is to continue working to break past the stigma often associated with mental health issues and address these issues head-on. Our actions, no matter how big or small, can provide hope to those who are struggling. We’re working alongside organizations to help companies and individuals move down a stigma-free path, where those affected by mental health challenges can seek support without fear of judgment.

That context becomes especially visible in the day-to-day reality of work, where experience is shaped not only by what is measured, but also by what is felt beneath those measures.

Behind the Metrics

In the rhythm of a typical workday, especially in customer-focused environments, much of the attention is directed outward toward performance metrics, service levels, and the consistency of the experience being delivered. Dashboards update in real time, targets are tracked, measured, and optimized, and every interaction is an opportunity to reinforce trust, solve a problem, or strengthen a relationship.

Behind those measures, however, are individuals navigating competing priorities, constant interaction, and the expectation to remain responsive, steady, and engaged. The pace can be dynamic, at times unpredictable, and often shaped by variables outside anyone’s control. And within that pace, there is an ongoing balance between output and capacity, between responsiveness and recovery.

Mental health, in this context, is rarely a single moment or a clearly defined event. It is cumulative. It reflects how work is structured, how communication flows, and how individuals move through their day. It is influenced by the volume of interactions, the complexity of customer needs, and the degree of autonomy individuals have in managing both.

It also shows up in ways that are not always immediately visible. In the tone of a conversation, the patience within a customer interaction, and in the ability to remain present through complexity, to listen fully, and to respond with clarity. Over time, these small moments shape the overall experience for both employees and the customers they serve.

A Different Kind of Visibility for Leaders

For leaders, this creates a different kind of visibility. Not one rooted solely in outputs, but in patterns. How teams are pacing themselves across a week or a quarter. How often can they reset between periods of intensity? How consistently they are supported in maintaining both performance and well-being over time.

These patterns are not always captured in traditional reporting, yet they influence many of the outcomes organizations care most about: engagement, retention, service quality, and consistency. They also indicate how sustainable those outcomes are over longer periods.

Where Employee and Customer Experience Meet

Across many organizations, there is a growing awareness of these dynamics. Conversations around flexibility, workload, and support systems have become more integrated into how teams operate. In some cases, this includes more deliberate approaches to scheduling and staffing. In others, it shows up in how leaders communicate expectations, set priorities, and create space for focus.

Rather than existing in isolation, employee experience and customer experience are increasingly understood as interconnected parts of the same ecosystem. The conditions in which employees work (how supported they feel, how clearly they understand expectations, or how manageable their workload is) can influence how consistently they deliver for customers. The relationship is not always explicit, but it is observable.

How It Shows Up in the Work

When employees have the space to focus, recover, and feel supported in their roles, it often carries over into how they engage with each other and with customers. Interactions may feel more measured. Problem-solving can become more collaborative. Consistency, which is central to many customer experience strategies, becomes easier to sustain.

At the same time, the absence of that support can also surface in subtle ways. A slight delay in response, shorter interaction, or a missed opportunity to fully resolve a concern. These are not necessarily indicators of intent or capability, but reflections of the broader environment in which work is taking place.

Moments like May offer an opportunity to notice these connections more clearly. Not as a departure from day-to-day operations, but as a lens through which to view them. A way to reflect on how systems, expectations, and support structures are aligning with the realities of the people within them. It is a chance to observe what is working well and where there may be opportunities to adjust.

Small Shifts, Meaningful Impact

In practice, this reflection can take many forms. For some organizations, it may involve revisiting how workloads are distributed across teams or how demand peaks are managed. For others, it may include examining how communication flows, whether priorities are clear, whether feedback is timely, and whether individuals have the information they need to do their work effectively.

It may also include a closer look at how time is experienced throughout the day. The spacing between meetings, the ability to focus without interruption, or the presence of natural pauses allows individuals to reset before moving into the next task or interaction. These elements, while operational, contribute to the overall work experience. Over time, they shape how sustainable the experience feels and how consistently individuals can bring their full attention to their work.

For customer-facing teams, this is particularly relevant. The nature of the work often requires continuous engagement: listening, responding, solving, and adapting in real time. It is work that draws not only on technical knowledge, but also on emotional awareness and communication skills.

Sustaining that level of engagement over time is influenced by more than training or process. It is shaped by the environment in which the work takes place: the clarity of expectations, the availability of support, and the extent to which individuals can recharge between interactions.

An Ongoing Perspective

As organizations continue to evolve their approaches to both employee and customer experience, there is an increasing opportunity to consider these elements together. To view them not as separate initiatives, but as interconnected aspects of how value is created and sustained.

This perspective does not require a single model or a defined endpoint. Instead, it is an ongoing process of observation and adjustment. A willingness to look at how work is experienced in practice and how that experience aligns with the outcomes organizations are aiming to achieve. Within that process, awareness plays a central role.

So as May unfolds, the opportunity is not limited to acknowledgment. It is an opportunity to notice and observe how teams are operating, how individuals are engaging, and how the conditions of work are supporting, or at times challenging, the ability to sustain performance over time. It is also an opportunity to remain curious and to explore where small adjustments might create meaningful shifts. To consider how clarity, capacity, and support are experienced across different roles and teams.

Not as a one-time focus, but as part of an ongoing approach to building environments where both people and performance can be sustained. Because at the center of every interaction, every metric, and every outcome are individuals, bringing their attention, their energy, and their perspective to the work in front of them.

And in that sense, Mental Health Awareness Month serves less as a standalone initiative and more as a moment of clarity, a reminder of the conditions that support sustained performance, thoughtful engagement, and the kind of customer experiences that feel both effective and human over time.

Take Action

Since 1949, Mental Health Awareness Month has been a driving force in addressing the challenges faced by millions of Americans living with mental health conditions, and this year, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is calling on everyone to take action, raise their voice, and help change the conversation around mental health.

Whether you share your personal journey, raise awareness on social media using #MyMentalHealth, or simply show up for someone in need, every action helps break stigma and build a more supportive world. If you or someone you know is struggling, the NAMI HelpLine offers free, nationwide peer support — available Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET — by calling 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), texting “HelpLine” to 62640, or visiting nami.org.

The post Mental Health Awareness Month: Building Healthier, Stronger Workplaces appeared first on Execs In The Know.

If you’re presenting a CX case study, in any format, here’s what separates the ones that stick from the ones that get forgotten.

Open With a Problem They Recognize

The instinct is to set context: who you are, what you do, how long you’ve been doing it. But you have about 60 seconds to earn the room’s attention, and nothing wastes it faster than a company overview slide. Start with the customer’s situation, the real one. Name the friction, the failure point, the cost that was piling up before your work began. “A national retailer’s frontline agents were spending 40% of every call just locating customer history” puts the audience immediately inside a problem they understand. That’s where you want them.

Specificity is credibility, and the more precisely you can describe the problem, the more confident the audience becomes that you actually solved it.

Make the Stakes Clear Before You Introduce the Solution

Before you explain what you did, explain what was at risk. CX leaders think in terms of retention, loyalty, revenue, and the effort it takes customers to get help. Explicitly connect the problem to those stakes; don’t assume the audience will make the leap.

This is especially important on a main stage or in a large virtual session, where you’re speaking to people in different contexts and with different company sizes. Stakes translate, but technical detail doesn’t always.

Tell the Story of the Work

When you get to the solution, the temptation is to explain how everything works. What CX leaders want to understand is: how did you think about this problem, and how did that thinking lead to something that worked?

Describe the approach: the decisions made, the tradeoffs navigated, and what you tried before you found what worked. This is where your expertise shows. In a live setting, this is also where you can let a little of the real story in, including the moment the team realized they needed to change course, the thing that surprised you, the part that was harder than expected. Authenticity lands in a room, and polished product narratives don’t.

Keep this section tight: two to three minutes in a presentation and two to three paragraphs in a follow-up document. The goal isn’t to be comprehensive; it’s to be convincing.

Lead with Outcomes

Results are the reason anyone is listening to a case study, so treat them accordingly. Vague claims like “improved customer satisfaction,” “reduced friction,” and “drove operational efficiency” land like wallpaper. CX leaders have heard them so many times they’ve stopped registering.

Here’s what resonates:

• A specific metric with a baseline: CSAT moved from 71 to 88 over two quarters
• A business outcome with scale: handle time dropped 22% across 1,200 agents
• A speed-to-value number: fully deployed in six weeks, not the six months originally projected
• A retention signal: the client renewed and expanded the scope within the first year

In a live format, one or two clearly showcased strong numbers will do more work than a slide full of data.

Use Your Customer’s Voice

If your client is in the room or has agreed to be quoted, their words carry more weight than anything you can say. A specific, candid quote (one that captures what the experience actually felt like, not just that they were “pleased with the results”) gives the whole story credibility it can’t manufacture on its own.

The best customer quotes are honest about the starting point: “We didn’t believe it would work this fast” or “Our team pushed back at first, and then they became the biggest advocates.” That kind of candor builds more trust than any metric.

Close by Connecting to the Room

Don’t end with a logo slide or a thank you. End by connecting the story back to the audience’s world. What should they take away? What might look familiar in their own organization? What’s the first question worth asking if this resonates?

CX leaders aren’t shopping for vendors in the room; they’re building mental models of what’s possible. Your job is to give them something concrete to put in that model. The strongest case studies don’t just show what you accomplished for someone else. They make the person listening think: this could work for us.

That’s the moment a case study becomes a conversation, and that’s exactly where you want to be.

Ready to show up where it matters? Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President, Partner Advocacy, at Scott@execsintheknow.com or explore our 2026 Media Kits to find your next opportunity.

The post What Makes a Strong CX Case Study? appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The people asking it are doing their jobs; they are trying to justify spending, demonstrate ROI, and connect investment to outcome. But the question itself is built on the premise that events are solely a direct-response channel, and that their value can be measured the same way you measure a paid search campaign or a targeted email sequence. 

Measurement is not the problem. The measurement framework is. CROs and CMOs are right to demand accountability for event spend, but the metrics that reveal event value are fundamentally different from those that reveal campaign value. The argument here is not that events should escape scrutiny. It is the right measurement approach that reflects what events actually do: deepen relationships, accelerate expansion, and drive retention. When organizations hold events to the wrong standard, they systematically undervalue them, cut them first under budget pressure, and lose one of the most powerful long-term growth drivers available to them. 

At Execs In The Know, we have spent 15 years convening the customer experience (CX) community of executives, practitioners, and the partners who support them. And one of the clearest patterns we have observed is this: the partners who show up with a relationship mindset almost always win. It is worth saying plainly: events are not for leads. And understanding what they actually are for changes everything about how you approach them. 

The 97% Problem 

At any given moment, roughly 97% of your potential customers are not in an active buying cycle. They are not comparing vendors, not requesting demos, not reading RFPs. They are running their organizations, managing priorities, and building mental models of the landscape in which they operate, including who is worth paying attention to when the time comes. 

That remaining three percent? They are in the market. They will talk to sales, respond to outreach, and show up in pipeline reports. Direct-response marketing (email sequences, retargeting campaigns, SDR outreach) is optimized for that three percent. You need to reach people who are ready to buy. 

But events reach everyone. They reach the VPs who are two years away from a major platform decision or the COO who is three months from a budget cycle that will open up new discretionary spend. These are not leads. They are relationships in formation. And the only way to reach them (the only way to exist in their consideration list before they are ready to consider anyone) is to show up consistently, add value without an agenda, and build the kind of familiarity that makes you the obvious call when the moment finally arrives. 

Events, when done well, are the most efficient mechanism organizations have for doing exactly that. 

What Trust Requires 

Trust, in a business context, is a very specific thing. It is the accumulated belief that you understand someone’s problems, that you are competent to address them, and that your interests are sufficiently aligned with theirs that working together makes sense. Trust is not built through a 30-second elevator pitch or a well-designed landing page. It is built through repeated exposure to evidence; evidence that you know what you are talking about, that you are genuinely interested in their success and not just their budget, and that you will still be there tomorrow. 

Events are the trust infrastructure. They are the venue where that evidence is transmitted and accumulated at scale. Consider what actually happens at a well-run conference, briefing, or executive dinner. Your people sit across from CX leaders, and conversations take place that have no agenda. You learn something about their business that no amount of market research would have surfaced, and they learn something about your thinking that no white paper would have conveyed. You are no longer a vendor, a logo, or a line item in someone’s evaluation matrix. You are a familiar voice with a perspective they have encountered before and found worth remembering. 

Why does that matter? When the buying moment arrives, and it always does, CX leaders do not start from scratch. They call the organizations they already know. They shorten the list before the formal process begins, and they use trust as a filter. And organizations that have been showing up consistently and adding value without demanding anything in return find themselves on the short list. 

The Six Things Events Actually Do 

If events are not primarily lead-generation tools, what are they? Across the hundreds of events Execs In The Know has hosted and the thousands of conversations we have had with CX leaders and their partners, we have observed six things that events do exceptionally well (none of which are captured in a badge-scan report). 

1. Brand building at depth. There is a difference between awareness and recognition, and a further difference between recognition and resonance. Events create resonance. When a CX leader has heard your perspective in a session, had a genuine conversation with your team in a hallway, or sat at a dinner your organization hosted, they carry a richer and more durable mental model of who you are than any ad impression or email sequence could create. That depth compounds over time. After showing up to multiple events, you are no longer a vendor; you are part of the fabric of the CX community. 

2. Relationship deepening with existing accounts. The most underappreciated return on micro event investment is not new business; it is retention and expansion. Bringing a key customer into a thoughtfully curated experience, or creating the conditions for a genuine conversation between your leadership and theirs, does something that quarterly business reviews simply cannot replicate. It signals investment and conveys that you consider their success even when no immediate transaction is at stake. That signal carries significant weight when renewal conversations arrive. 

3. Account expansion. Micro events create the conditions for conversations that do not happen in formal sales motions. The customer who joined for one reason discovers that you do three other things directly relevant to problems they have been trying to solve for months. That discovery rarely happens through outbound outreach. It happens through the organic, unhurried conversation that only events make possible. 

4. Customer retention. At a time when switching costs are lower and competitive alternatives are more numerous than ever, the organizations that hold on to their best customers are usually the ones that have built genuine relationships, not just good contracts. Events are one of the most reliable mechanisms for making customers feel genuinely valued rather than merely managed. 

5. Product and market intelligence. A well-run event will surface more actionable insight in two hours than six months of survey data. The candid, peer-influenced conversation that happens in a room of CX practitioners reveals what people actually care about, what is genuinely broken, and what the next generation of challenges looks like. That intelligence has compounding organizational value that almost never gets attributed back to the event budget. 

6. Strategic positioning. Where you show up and what you contribute when you get there shape how the market categorizes you. Organizations that consistently convene meaningful conversations around the right topics become associated with those topics. They are seen as credible, forward-thinking participants in the community, not vendors seeking transactions. That positioning is extraordinarily difficult to purchase through advertising and nearly impossible to manufacture. It has to be earned over time through a consistent and generous presence. 

The Lead Measurement Trap 

If events do all of these valuable things, why does the “how many leads” question persist? Because it is genuinely difficult to measure what events actually produce, organizations default to what they can count. 

Badge scans are countable. Meetings booked are countable. A pipeline attributed within a 30-day window is countable. These three things do not fit neatly into a marketing dashboard: The brand equity accumulated over 18 months of consistent community presence, the retention driven by a customer who felt genuinely valued, or the upsell that was won years later but began as a conversation over dinner before there was ever a deal. 

This creates a systematic bias toward undervaluing events. The costs are visible and immediate; the returns are diffuse and delayed; and when budget pressure hits, the line items with the most ambiguous ROI are the first to be cut, even when they quietly do some of the most consequential work in the organization. There is also a cultural dimension. Many organizations have reinforced a specific kind of short-term accountability for so long that their event teams have internalized the lead-generation framing without questioning it. The badge scanner becomes a security blanket. The count of “qualified contacts” becomes the number that justifies the budget. And slowly, the event program begins optimizing for the metric rather than the mission: collecting contacts rather than building relationships, filling a funnel rather than building a community. 

The result is an event program that is not effective as a direct-response channel. Why? Because events are simply the wrong tool for that job and not an effective trust-building channel. 

The solution is not to abandon measurement. It is to measure what events actually produce. That means tracking relationship depth, not just contact volume, over time. It means monitoring how many initiate conversations that eventually enter the pipeline and tracing expansion and retention outcomes back to relationship touchpoints, even when the timeline is long, and the path is not linear. A CRO who insists on event accountability is not wrong, and how they measure over time for their particular business parameters is critical to realizing the true value of event participation.  

What Better Looks Like 

Reorienting an event program around trust rather than leads requires changes at multiple levels in how success is defined and how the function is understood internally. A panel that exists to showcase your executives is not the same as a conversation that helps a CX leader solve a problem she has been wrestling with for months. A sponsored session that serves as a product demo is not the same as a peer exchange that provides practitioners with new language and frameworks to bring back to their organizations. The test is straightforward: would people come to this event if your brand were not attached to it? If the answer is no, the event is built for you, not for them. 

The partners who extract the most value from events have developed frameworks that account for longer time horizons and less tidy signals. They track relationship quality alongside contact volume, monitor re-engagement, including how many people from a given event remain active in the community over the following year, and they trace closed deals, noting when the first meaningful relationship touchpoint occurred, not just when the opportunity entered the CRM. And they are honest about the limits of attribution, accepting that some of the most valuable things events produce will never be cleanly measurable and that this is acceptable. 

This is the measurement shift that matters most: moving from reach to depth, from pipeline-in-X-days to lifetime customer value influenced, from contact count to relationship continuity. When the measurement approach reflects what events actually do, the business case for sustained investment becomes far clearer, and the connection to long-term revenue growth becomes undeniable. Event strategy, properly measured, is not a cost center. It is a driver of the retention, expansion, and trusted-partner status that compound into durable growth. 

A Final Thought: The Real Value of CX Events 

The partners who win the long game in CX are the ones leaders reach for when building teams, evaluating platforms, or benchmarking their programs, and are almost never the ones who showed up most aggressively in a given quarter. They are the ones who showed up most consistently over the years. 

Consistency communicates something that no single event, no matter how well executed, can convey alone. It says: we are here because we are genuinely invested in this community, not because we need something from it right now. It says: we will be here next year, and the year after that, because our commitment to your success does not depend on your readiness to buy. 

That signal (durable, repeated, credible) is what builds the kind of trust that converts when the moment finally arrives. Not the badge scans, meeting requests sent 24 hours after the conference ends, or the 30-day attribution window. Events are not for leads. They are for something harder to measure and far more valuable: the accumulated credibility that makes you the obvious choice when the 97% finally become the 3%. 

That is worth investing in. 

Ready to show up where it matters? Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President, Partner Advocacy, at Scott@execsintheknow.com or explore our 2026 Media Kits to find your next opportunity. 

The post The Real Value of CX Events appeared first on Execs In The Know.

But something else is happening at the same time, and it deserves equal attention: the interactions that reach human agents are becoming more complex, more emotionally charged, and more consequential than ever before.

That’s an opportunity. And the brands that recognize it are pulling ahead.

The Shift Nobody Is Talking About Loudly Enough

When AI handles the easy stuff, what’s left for human agents isn’t the leftovers; it’s the moments that define the brand. Service recovery. High-stakes exceptions. Customers who are frustrated, confused, or vulnerable. These are the interactions where trust is either deepened or permanently lost.

Research backs this up. According to Qualtrics, when a customer issue is resolved positively, that customer is likely to demonstrate greater loyalty over time than someone who never encountered a problem. This is the Service Recovery Paradox, and it only works when a human agent has the empathy, judgment, and autonomy to execute it.

Scripts don’t get you there. Rigid escalation paths don’t get you there. Empowered agents do.

The 18-Point Lesson from Southwest Airlines

At CRS Amelia Island, Kevin McDorman, VP of Customer Care at Southwest Airlines, made a point that reframed the entire conversation around CX transformation: the frontline isn’t where strategy gets executed; it is the strategy.

His argument wasn’t anti-technology. It was pro-human, with intention. As automation absorbs more transactional contacts, the human role must be elevated with equal deliberateness. That means moving from rigid scripts to guardrails that give agents room to exercise judgment. It means investing in soft skills (active listening, empathy, problem-solving) with the same rigor as any technology deployment.

Because customers don’t experience transformation through a roadmap. They experience it in the moment they need help.

What AI Can Genuinely Do for Your Agents

Here’s where it gets interesting: AI isn’t just replacing agent work; it’s also making agents better at their jobs. Simulation-based onboarding tools are helping new agents handle complex scenarios before they encounter them in real time. AI co-pilots are supporting agents in real time with knowledge retrieval, sentiment analysis, and next-best-action guidance. Auto-summarization is reducing after-call work so agents can focus on the customer in front of them.

The companies winning this transition aren’t choosing between AI and humans. They’re designing operating models where each does what it does best and where the intersection between them is intentional, not accidental.

Looking Ahead to 2030

The contact center of 2030 looks meaningfully different from today’s. Agent profiles will shift, and compensation structures will evolve. Hiring, onboarding, and career pathing will be redesigned around a new contact mix that demands higher emotional intelligence and sharper judgment.

The organizations that start building toward that now, investing in frontline empowerment as infrastructure, not afterthought, will have a structural advantage that’s hard to replicate later.

The question isn’t whether to automate. It’s whether you’re elevating your people at the same pace.

Read the full article in the April issue of CX Insight magazine →

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According to Swoogo’s event data, in-person micro events grew 16% in 2024, and nearly half (45%) of event professionals say their companies are committed to hosting micro events, with enterprise companies 22% more likely to invest in them.

Bizzabo’s platform data shows 34% year-over-year growth in small in-person gatherings with fewer than 150 attendees in Q1 2025.

What Exactly is a Micro Event? 

Micro events are focused gatherings (typically between 20 and 150 attendees) organized around a specific theme, industry topic, or community. They take many forms: intimate roundtables, expert-led virtual workshops or webinars, curated dinner experiences, conferences/summits, city-specific pop-ups, and peer cohort sessions. What they share is purpose. Every person in the room (or on the call) is there for the same reason, which changes the entire dynamic of the experience. 

Unlike large-scale conferences where a sponsor’s booth competes with hundreds of others for foot traffic, micro events create environments where every touchpoint matters, and every sponsor interaction gets noticed. 

At a 1,000-person conference, you’re noise. At a 30-person roundtable or 200-person summit, you’re a conversation. 

Why Audiences Are Voting with Their Calendars 

Attendee expectations have shifted dramatically. People are more selective about where they spend their time and budgets, and they’re demanding relevance in return. Generic content delivered to a generic crowd no longer justifies a day out of the office or an afternoon away from a packed remote schedule. Micro events solve this by design. They attract CX leaders who have specifically opted into a niche conversation, meaning the room is already pre-qualified. The signal-to-noise ratio is simply higher. 

Virtual micro events have further amplified this trend, and they work best as a complement to in-person gatherings, not a replacement. A senior decision-maker who couldn’t attend a flagship conference can still join an invite-only virtual roundtable, keeping the conversation going between live events. Organizers can fill a curated 40-person session with geographically diverse, seniority-rich attendees throughout the year, deepening the community that forms at in-person summits and extending its impact well beyond a single event date. 

The Partner Opportunity 

For business partners evaluating where to place their sponsorship dollars, micro events offer something large-scale conferences rarely can: depth over breadth. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice. 

Higher-quality conversations. When an event draws vetted professionals, every sponsor interaction is with someone who belongs in your pipeline. There’s no badge-scanning lottery. The intimacy of the format makes cold outreach feel warm, and follow-up conversations feel earned rather than awkward. 

Brand recall that lasts. Attendees remember who sponsored the dinner where they had a breakthrough conversation. They remember the company that hosted the workshop that solved their most pressing problem. In a crowded B2B landscape where brand differentiation is increasingly difficult, that kind of memory is priceless. 

Content leverage. Micro events produce rich, reusable content: session recordings, curated highlights, community takeaways, and expert Q&A threads. As a sponsor, your brand appears inside content that the audience actually wants to consume and share, long after the event ends. 

Faster feedback loops. Smaller gatherings make it easier to pilot messaging, test positioning, and gather candid audience input in real time. Sponsors who show up at micro events often get market intelligence that their competitors won’t see until next quarter’s research report. 

What This Means for Your Partnership Strategy 

The most forward-thinking partners aren’t choosing between large events and micro events; they’re building a portfolio of events layered throughout the year to keep the conversation going in the spaces where decisions are made. 

If you’re evaluating your partnership strategy, the question isn’t whether micro events are worth it. The question is which ones align with the communities where your best customers already gather. Start there, show up consistently, and watch the relationships grow. 

We’re here to help you identify the right micro event opportunities. Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President, Partner Advocacy, at Scott@execsintheknow.com or explore our 2026 Media Kits to find your next best room to be in.

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The political headwinds around DEI have been loud, but the business signals are louder. According to our 2026 CX Leaders Trends & Insights: Corporate Edition report, 68% of consumers say it’s important for companies to take a public position on their DEI practices and allow that position to guide their operations. Yet only 36% of CX leaders say their company actually does this. That gap isn’t a branding problem. It’s a performance problem.

The Purchasing Power Behind the Principle

The consumers who care most about DEI aren’t a niche; they represent some of the fastest-growing pools of spending power in the country. Black buying power in the U.S. is projected to top $2 trillion in 2026. U.S. Latino purchasing power stands at $3.78 trillion. The LGBTQIA+ community represents an estimated $1.4 trillion domestically, and up to $4.7 trillion globally. Multicultural consumers now account for more than 65% of U.S. expenditure growth.

And they’re making purchase decisions accordingly. One-third of consumers say they’ve already cut back or stopped buying from brands that rolled back DEI commitments. Among Black and Latino consumers, that number jumps to 45%. Among LGBTQIA+ consumers, it reaches 58%.

The Contact Center

Corporate statements about inclusion don’t matter if the customer experience doesn’t reflect them. When CX leaders were asked how their company performs on accessibility and inclusion in customer support, 76% rated themselves “Very Good” or “Somewhat Good.” When consumers were asked the same question about those same brands, only 58% agreed.

That 18-point perception gap is a blind spot, and blind spots in CX show up in churn, negative reviews, and eroding loyalty over time.

The Companies Staying the Course

While some brands pulled back in 2024 and 2025, others held firm, and their results are worth noting. Costco’s board unanimously urged shareholders to reject an anti-DEI resolution in early 2025; shareholders agreed by a 98% margin. The company’s employee turnover rate is roughly 7%, well below the retail industry average of over 60%. That’s not a coincidence; it’s the return on a workforce that feels valued and a customer base that feels seen.

McKinsey research shows companies in the top quartile for leadership diversity are 39% more likely to outperform financially. Boston Consulting Group found that organizations with above-average diversity generate 19% higher innovation revenues. Harvard Business Review reports that diverse teams make better decisions 87% of the time.

The Window Is Open

This moment has created an opening. As some brands step back, others are signaling something unmistakable to the market: who they’re building for, and whether they can be trusted to hold that position when things get harder.

The brands that will emerge strongest aren’t the loudest; they’re the most consistent.

Want the full picture, including a practical roadmap for auditing your CX experience through an inclusion lens, connecting DEI to core KPIs, and building multicultural fluency into your service design?

Read the full article in the April issue of CX Insight magazine →

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is absorbing routine interactions at an unprecedented scale. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments are being publicly tested. Frontline agents are navigating more complexity than ever before. And as customer expectations continue to rise, organizations are being forced to reckon with a more fundamental question, not just how to serve customers faster, but how to serve them better, more inclusively, and with the kind of human judgment and empathy that no technology can replicate at scale.

Our April issue of CX Insight magazine brings together research, practitioner perspectives, and real-world case studies to examine the forces reshaping CX leadership and how organizations can stay ahead of them.

The DEI Performance Gap Is Widening

The business case for inclusive customer experience has never been stronger, or more urgent. Yet a critical gap persists. CX leaders rate their own accessibility and inclusion efforts 18 points higher than consumers do. That disconnect does not resolve itself. It shows up in churn, in negative sentiment, and in the quiet erosion of loyalty over time. This article examines what closing that gap actually requires operationally, structurally, and strategically.

The Frontline is Not a Support Function

Kevin McDorman, Vice President of Customer Care at Southwest Airlines, made the case plainly at CRS Amelia Island: brands will not differentiate by how much they automate. They will differentiate by how well they equip their people for the moments automation cannot handle. The shift from rigid scripts to empowering guardrails is not a cultural preference; it is a strategic imperative. This article explores what that shift looks like in practice and why organizations that get it right will find it difficult to replicate.

Brand Spotlight: How Grubhub Maintains Service Reliability at Global Scale

Behind every seamless food delivery experience is an operational infrastructure most customers never see. In this issue’s Brand Spotlight, Tanisha Parker, Associate Director at Grubhub, pulls back the curtain on how one of the world’s most recognized food delivery platforms manages global BPO partnerships, workforce strategy, and service consistency across a vast and dynamic ecosystem of couriers, merchants, and diners. Her perspective on eliminating operational friction, without compromising customer value, is one of the most practically useful conversations on this issue.

Case Study: How Uber Is Closing the Customer Feedback Gap with AI

Traditional customer satisfaction surveys capture only a fraction of the experience. Uber decided that was not good enough. In this issue’s case study, Anindya Sundar Das, Senior Director and Head of Global Digital Experience at Uber, details how Uber’s Global Digital Experience team deployed an AI engine that infers customer satisfaction across every single support interaction. It was structured around three core metrics: Resolution, Effort, and Sentiment. The result is a real-time quality signal that enables proactive improvement at a global scale and fundamentally changes how Uber understands and responds to the experience it is delivering.

KIA Spotlight: Balancing AI and Human Connection at Carrier Enterprise

In a service environment where HVAC contractors rely on fast, accurate support to keep their businesses running, the balance between technology and human connection is not an abstract leadership question; it is an operational reality. Michael Luyster, Director of Customer Experience at Carrier Enterprise and a KIA Champion, shares how Carrier Enterprise has built a hybrid service model grounded in customer choice, operational consistency, and trust. His conviction that AI should augment human capability rather than replace it offers a model worth studying across industries.

The Growing Impact of Women in CX Leadership

CX is one of the most cross-functional, human-centered disciplines in business, and women are leading it with measurable impact. The feature on women in CX leadership examines why the pipeline still narrows too early, what structural barriers remain, and why advancing women into senior leadership roles is one of the most strategically sound decisions a CX organization can make. Contributing their perspectives to this important conversation are Lisa Oswald of Travelzoo, Maureen Barnett of Fanatics, Jessica Patel of Belk, and Dima Cichi of Microsoft: four leaders who are actively shaping what modern CX leadership looks like and what it can become.

When AI Improves Metrics but Not Outcomes

Organizations across industries are deploying AI to reduce costs and increase efficiency. By conventional measures, it appears to be working. Automation rates are rising, and handling times are falling. Containment continues to improve, yet retention remains flat. Customer experience remains inconsistent, and business outcomes remain unchanged.

Cortney Jonas Burnos, Vice President of AI & Digital at Transcom, offers a sharp diagnosis: the problem is not the technology. It is the misalignment between how customer experience is measured and where it actually creates value. As AI absorbs the most repeatable interactions, what remains for human agents is more complex, more consequential, and more emotionally demanding — and most organizations have not restructured around that reality.

The Trillion-Dollar Cost That Never Appears on the P&L

According to Qualtrics XM Institute, businesses worldwide risk losing $3.8 trillion annually due to poor customer experiences. More than half of negative interactions lead customers to reduce or stop their spending entirely. Yet this cost rarely surfaces on a standard profit and loss statement. It disappears into churn metrics, missing renewals, and referrals that were never made. This article from Procedureflow provides the framework CX leaders need to translate experience quality into financial risk and bring that conversation into the boardroom where it belongs.

The question this issue keeps returning to is this: what does it actually take to lead well in this moment?

The answer, across every article and every conversation, is the same. It begins with people. The organizations that understand this and build accordingly are the ones that will emerge from this period of disruption with something the competition will find very difficult to replicate: the trust of the people they serve.

Read and download the full April 2026 issue of CX Insight magazine.

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Proposed measures include requiring English proficiency, limiting certain types of foreign call handling, and allowing customers to request a U.S.-based agent, all of which signal a meaningful shift in how brands conduct their customer care operations. 

For customer experience (CX) leaders, this is not simply a regulatory development — it is a strategic inflection point. For decades, contact center models have been optimized around global delivery, balancing cost efficiency with scalability and coverage.

These proposals introduce a new compliance dynamic that could reshape how brands approach CX, potentially creating operational complexities for verticals subject to heavy regulation, including finance, healthcare, travel/hospitality, and other high-touch industries. Ultimately, this could become an opportunity to differentiate. Furthermore, if customers are given more control over where their support comes from, organizations may need to rethink their delivery models, potentially creating new, flexible approaches that might accommodate both preference and practicality.

This raises fundamental questions about cost structures, staffing strategies, and how brands define and deliver consistency across channels and regions. 

What CX Leaders Should Be Evaluating Right Now

As these conversations begin to take shape, CX leaders should consider engaging with their C-suite counterparts now. Understanding current exposure to offshore support, modeling the financial implications of increased onshoring, and evaluating the role of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in facilitating necessary changes. In many ways, these proposals could accelerate trends already underway.

As labor constraints tighten and expectations rise, AI-powered self-service and agent-assist technologies may play an even more central role in maintaining efficiency while supporting a potentially more localized workforce. At the same time, organizations will need to carefully consider how they preserve experience quality, particularly as customer expectations around clarity, communication, and trust continue to evolve. Now is the time to analyze and understand both the go-forward plan and the eventual impact on customers. 

Transparency, Tradeoffs, and the Customer Experience

Communication with customers will also become a more strategic lever. If implemented, these proposals (particularly those related to consumer control over call routing) offer brands an opportunity to reframe parts of the service experience around choice and transparency, giving customers greater control over how they receive support. But that choice must be paired with clear expectations.

If requesting a U.S.-based agent introduces longer wait times or different service pathways, those tradeoffs will need to be communicated proactively and thoughtfully. Done proactively and well, this change could strengthen trust and reinforce a brand’s commitment to both service quality and customer assurance — an increasingly important differentiator in a landscape shaped by automation, AI, and heightened scrutiny around safety and security. Most leaders tasked with making these changes might benefit from getting ahead of the curve and engaging their counterparts and various stakeholders now. 

Preparing for 2027 Starts Now

Looking ahead to 2027, the organizations best positioned will be those that begin adapting (or planning steps to do so) now. This means evolving routing logic to account for customer preferences and regulatory requirements, reassessing workforce strategies to include more flexible domestic capacity, and strengthening quality assurance frameworks to align with emerging expectations around communication and performance.

Perhaps most importantly, it means shifting the mindset from reactive compliance to proactive design. These proposals are not just about where support happens … they are about how trust is built and maintained in every interaction. And in that sense, they may ultimately define the next chapter of customer experience. 

Look for more on this topic in the months to come, and practitioners can connect with peers in the Know It All (KIA) community to compare notes on getting ready for these imminent shifts. 

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