Hosted by Opus Research at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City, the 2019 Conversational Commerce Conference featured executives from Google, TD Ameritrade, Fannie Mae, Travelers, DSW, Simon Malls, Milestone Technologies and others to present key business opportunities for deploying NLP and conversational technologies for sales & marketing, service automation and customer engagement. 

Conversational Commerce Conference 2019 showcased real-world customer deployments and panel discussions from leading industry experts. Below please find featured presentations, customer case studies and the full agenda from this year’s event.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019
9:00 AM – 9:10 AM
Welcome: Conversational Commerce Conference 2019
Hosted by Opus Research, C3 goes beyond the AI hype balancing real-world experience with informed technology forecasting.
Speakers:
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst & Founder, Opus Research
Derek Top, Senior Analyst & Research Director, Opus Research
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9:10 AM – 9:45 AM
Keynote: From Big Data & AI to Conversational Service Automation
Forward-looking brands and businesses are integrating speech and conversational analytics with elements of Artificial Intelligence to support a new category of solutions for “Conversational Service Automation.
Speaker:
Umesh Sachdev, CEO & Co-founder, Uniphore
Russ Shield, VP, Customer Care & Solutions, Fannie Mae
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst & Founder, Opus Research

9:45 AM – 10:15 AM
The Virtual Customer Service Field of Dreams – Build It So They’ll Come
Citizens Bank showcases their journey of developing a holistic, virtual customer service strategy. Learn about the Citizens journey with live chat, guided experiences, self service message boards, and social customer service to drive operational efficiencies and client satisfaction. Citizens began it’s journey over 4 years ago, taking it’s first chat to aid in the client acquisition process. Since that time, the bank’s strategy has evolved to meet the significant demands of an ever-digital customer base that is looking for hassle-free virtual customer service.
Speaker:
Lamont Young, EVP – Head of Digital, Citizens Financial Group
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10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Panel: Better Business Results from Better Listening
Brands are embracing NLP and Conversational AI to guide prospects and customers through searching, shopping, and support of their products and services. Conversational intelligence enables businesses to harness the voice of the customer to elevate customer engagement and drive business impact.
Speakers:
Brian Craig, VP, Analytics Marketing & Product Management, Marchex
Samuel Monnie, Digital Transformation, Campbell Soup Company
Annie Shea Weckesser, CMO + People, Uniphore
Derek Top, Senior Analyst & Research Director, Opus Research

11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Case Study: DSW Shoe Warehouse
Siloed approaches to omnichannel security can lead to poor customer experiences, ineffective authentication and In the face of rapidly growing call volumes, DSW activated an AI-powered Virtual Assistant to scale their operations without adding headcount – resulting in more than $1M in savings from handle time reductions in its first year.
Speaker:
Tim Harpe, Director, Customer Operations, DSW
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11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Case Study: Eaglemoss
Eaglemoss is the world’s leading partwork publisher and licensed collectible company. With Snap’s Conversational AI solutions, Eaglemoss implemented Facebook Messenger opt-in feature on their site’s product pages and achieved 4x ROI when compared to their investment in the platform.
Speaker:
Imran Hassan, Director of Digital Marketing, Eaglemoss
Christian Brucculeri, CEO, Snaps
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12:00 PM – 12:30 PM
Panel: Charting Your Path to Conversations at Scale
In deploying intelligent assistants, many firms increase user engagement though analytics services in order to design a conversational user interface that is complex, robust and accurate. This panel of experts discuss what it takes to support successful initiatives including building the right team and identifying critical measures for success.
Speakers:
Arte Merritt, CEO & Co-Founder, Dashbot
Angela Novosel, Senior Product Manager, TD Ameritrade
Tim Carlson, Senior Director & AI Product Manager, Travelers
Buka Gurgenidze-Steinau, VP, Cognitive Solutions, Haptik
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst & Founder, Opus Research

1:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Case Study: Discover Financial Services
Discover Financial Services has implemented Concentrix’s conversational Virtual Assistant platform and decreased misrouted calls by 67%. The subsequent full implementation of this solution increased the client’s IVR containment from 67% to over 69% and earned it the #1 ranking in the J.D. Power 2018 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study.
Speaker:
Allyson Boudousquie, VP, Market and Product Strategy, Concentrix

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Panel: Doing DIY Right – Lessons Learned from Experience
As we witness the “democratization of AI” business unit managers are taking charge of efforts to develop chatbots and automated virtual agents. Hear how solution providers accommodate their efforts with a mix of tools, APIs and guidelines to mitigate risk and support successful implementations.
Speakers:
Dan Castellani, Principal Product Manager, Nuance
Callan Schebella, CEO, Inference Solutions
Nicolas De Kouchkovsky, Chief Marketing Officer, Servion
Derek Top, Senior Analyst & Research Director, Opus Research

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Presentation: Connecting With Customers Where They’re At
Natural language customer conversations help support omnichannel strategies and enable digital self-service anytime, anyplace, and on any device. This panel delves into how purpose-driven conversational services have evolved to address the immediate needs of digital customers in messaging channels for both predictive and personalized customer experiences.
Speaker:
Rob Lawson, Global Partnerships, Google
Patrick Flanagan, VP Digital, Simon Malls

3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
Panel: “Voice-First” Conversational Commerce
As “Voice-First” personal intelligent assistants (Amazon Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, Bixby) continue to proliferate, people will use their own words to take command of their personal AI. This paradigm is fundamentally changing the relationship between how businesses interact with customers and unhooking the direct link between brands and consumers.
Speakers:
Will Hall, Chief Creative Officer, RAIN
Lisa Michaud, Senior Product Manager, Interactions LLC
Alexey Khitrov, President, ID R&D, Inc.
Bradley Metrock, CEO, Score Publishing

3:45 PM – 4:15 PM
Case Study: MyPetDoc
MyPetDoc, a conversational marketing platform for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, is built on extensive pet health interactions to create credible expertise that allows pet brands to seamlessly target product messaging exactly to their customers’ needs.
Speaker:
Cal Lai, Chairman & CEO, Vet24seven
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4:15 PM – 4:45 PM
Executive View: Timetable for Fostering Conversational AI
An interactive discussion, welcoming the leaders and visionaries of Conversational AI — what are the enablers for driving innovation in Conversational Commerce? What does it take to provide secure, personalized services and successful intelligent assistant customer experiences — and is it worth it?
Speakers:
Max Ball, Director – Product Marketing, RingCentral
Natalie Heroux, VP & GM, Milestone Technologies
Nathan Ziv, VP, Product Management, Invoca
Rob Lawson, Global Partnerships, Google
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst & Founder, Opus Research

4:45 PM – 5:00 PM
2019 Conversational Commerce Awards (CCA) Ceremony
Since 2014, Opus Research awards have showcased real-world implementations of conversational user interfaces for customer engagement, digital commerce, self-service, employee assistance, and intelligent devices. A panel of expert judges will announce this year’s three winners.
Speakers:
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst & Founder, Opus Research
Derek Top, Senior Analyst & Research Director, Opus Research
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