Session 103: The Experience Economy Is Here: What It Means for the Future of Customer Experience

Wednesday, August 5 at 10:15 AM

If we look at some of the most anticipated IPOs this year, we see a telling trend. "Experience-born" companies like Uber, Airbnb, Slack, and StitchFix have redefined how brands interact with customers, raising the stakes for every business around the world. These all started from a mindset of "let's create the best possible experience for someone (regardless of whether it scales) and then let's work back from there."
With experience-born companies becoming the norm, we're in the midst of a dramatic paradigm shift in consumer expectations.

There has been talk about putting customers at the center of all you do for awhile, but actually doing it is much harder. And the demand for it is much more real now. In this session, Elisabeth Zornes will explore the importance of the true customer-at-the-center paradigm, focusing on:
• What business can do about it
• Why it's essential to strive for human-first experiences
• Why you must continually reintroduce yourself to the customer
• How to find the new sweet spot between empathy and technology

Elisabeth Zornes

Chief Customer Officer

Zendesk, Inc.

Ms. Zornes has served as Zendesk's Chief Customer Officer since February 2019. She represents the collective voice of Zendesk's customers and leads the teams responsible for helping customers onboard and maximize the benefits of the company's growing product portfolio. She brings 20 years of experience as a leader in customer support, operations and services, most recently leading global customer support for Microsoft Office consumers, enterprise customers, and partners. Ms. Zornes holds a masters degree in science and a minor in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany and extended executive education at the Harvard Business School and INSEAD for international business and global management and MIT's Executive MBA program at the Sloan School of Management.