2022 Customer Strategy & Planning Connections

Our annual flagship conference for industry professionals


26th April 2022, Grand Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne

Specifically designed

This highly-rated event is far more than just a conference

Designed specifically for Planning, Insight and Quality & Customer Experience Professionals. Learn first-hand from practitioners and business leaders who are delivering successful change. Bring new ideas and techniques back into your organisation.
Gold Sponsor
Silver Sponsors
In-person event

Customer Strategy and Planning Connections

Taking place on Tuesday 26th April at The Grand Hotel, Newcastle, the event will be based around open collaboration groups, with tables hosted by senior industry practitioners, each bringing specialist experience in a range of topics or industries. Connections will include our vibrant Exhibition and Networking area.

Keynote Speakers

Lou Banks wants to help your organisation feel better to do better.

Lou Banks, Rising Vibe

Lou is passionate about helping your business get to grips with emotion. Tackle thoughts. Address feelings. Because when this happens it can have a huge impact on business performance.

An articulate, high-energy communicator, Lou instigates the conversations that matter. She invites the elephant into the room, sits it down in a big comfy chair and makes it a nice cup of tea. Lou helps individuals, teams and entire organisations think about how our thoughts and feelings drive the way in which we behave and ultimately, how we show up at work.

Lou Banks is the Founder and Director of Rising Vibe Ltd. When she isn’t raising vibrations in the workplace you may find her walking her dog, sweating in a spin class or enjoying a double G&T with fresh lime, a decent tonic and most importantly, good friends.

Watch Ted Talk
Andy Gilbert wants you to go make a difference.

Andy Gilbert, GoMAD

Andy is Managing Director at Go MAD Thinking. His focus is enabling leaders to have light bulb moments and improve productivity. He is the developer of the acclaimed Go M.A.D. Results Framework & Thinking System used worldwide by major corporations and hundreds of thousands of people in over 40 countries. 

Andy has over 20 years experience in studying peak performance and specifically how people think in a solution-focused way when they "Go Make A Difference" in achieving goals and accelerate results.
He is the author of over 20 books (including the best selling "Go MAD - The Art of Making A Difference", "Go MAD about Coaching", and over 200 audio/video programs.
Scott Budding helps you deliver brilliant customer experiences

Scott Budding, Sabio

Scott is the Head of WFO at Sabio. He has a background of working within the contact centre operation with roles including business training, quality assurance and resource planning. Through his own first-hand experiences, as well as working with many different organisations since moving to a career outside of the contact centre in 2015, he looks to use his experiences to help others.
 
He has global responsibilities at Sabio and these include go-to-market and ownership of the Workforce Optimisation solutions that Sabio provide.
 
Having worked in/with the contact centre industry for nearly 20yrs, Scott is a true WFO/WEM evangelist who has a passion for enabling clients and their employees to be the best that they can be.

Watch Webinar

Conference Agenda

Customer Strategy and Planning Connections

08:30
Registration opens
09:30
Conference Opening Keynote
Hear from The Forum with the conference opening keynote. Enjoy an inspiring keynote from Andy Gilbert, GoMa
10:30
Networking
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
10:30
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.
11:00
Collaboration Discussion
Table hosted, fast-paced, lively and interactive discussions designed to promote possibility thinking and idea creation. This first session will focus on looking back and reflections from the past 18- months and sharing and discussing these experiences across multiple tables. We would expect interaction with between 20 to 30 other delegates during this period.
12:30
Networking Lunch
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Lunch will be served.
12:30
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.
13:30
Keynote
Hear from James Hughes from our Gold sponsor, Sabio and Lou Banks from Rising Vibe.
14:30
Networking
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
15:00
Collaboration Discussion
Table hosted, fast-paced, lively and interactive discussions designed to promote possibility thinking and idea creation. This first session will focus on looking back and reflections from the past 18- months and sharing and discussing these experiences across multiple tables. We would expect interaction with between 20 to 30 other delegates during this period.
16:15
Conference Endnote
Hear from The Forum to wrap up the day and summarise your takeaway
16:30
Formal Close
 Agenda

Customer Strategy and Planning Connections

08:30
Registration opens
09:30
Conference Opening Keynote
Hear from The Forum with the conference opening keynote and be inspired by Andy Gilbert, GoMad.
10:30
Networking
Forum Focus
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
Join this 20-minute presentation on Agent Wellbeing in Customer Operations with Dawn Wray from The Listening Collective. 
Meet Dawn.
11:00
Collaboration Discussion: Confident to Succeed
Use the community of best practice to develop problem solving skills. This highly interactive collaborative session which will help you to identify and prioritise problems and most importantly how to overcome these. In action will not help, and accepting new norms will only bring greater problems. Being confident to face problems head on with an open mind.
12:30
Networking Lunch
Forum Focus
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Lunch will be served.
Join this 20-minute presentation on best return on your analytics technology investment with Andy Rothwell from Davies.
13:00
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on the zero seat contact centre with Phil Michell from Davies.
13:30
Keynote
Hear from Scott Budding from our Gold sponsor, Sabio and Lou Banks from Rising Vibe.
14:30
Networking
Forum Focus
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
Join a 20-minute Q&A session with the Forum team where all things Forum related are open for discussion
15:00
Collaboration Discussion: How to focus on what matters most
The true success of any metric lies in the behaviour that it drives, so choose wisely what you report or target, and build a strong foundation of diagnostic measures first. This is how you focus. This highly collaborative session will help you to explore how your role helps your organisations achieve its strategic objectives. Understand how your role can drive success and improve your understanding of metrics from across your business with a hierarchy of measures.
 
Guaranteed to challenge and drive great debate, this session has been designed to introduce you to the latest thought leadership as well as introduce you to other professionals from across the industry. Your personal takeaway will include: improved awareness of your role and how to drive success, along with tracking the right metrics, stopping old and out dated ones.
16:15
Conference Endnote
Hear from The Forum to wrap up the day and summarise your takeaways.
16:30
Formal end
Conference Agenda

Customer Strategy and Planning Connections

09:30
Keynote
Hear from The Forum with the conference opening keynote. Enjoy an inspiring keynote from Andy Gilbert, GoMad Thinking.
10:30
Networking
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
10:30
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.
11:00
Collaboration Discussion
Table hosted, fast-paced, lively and interactive discussions designed to promote possibility thinking and idea creation. This first session will focus on looking back and reflections from the past 18- months and sharing and discussing these experiences across multiple tables. We would expect interaction with between 20 to 30 other delegates during this period.
12:30
Networking Lunch
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Lunch will be served.
12:30
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.
13:00
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.s
13:00
Forum Focus
Join this 20-minute presentation on a key topic.
13:30
Keynote
Hear from James Hughes from our Gold sponsor, Sabio and Lou Banks from Rising Vibe.
14:30
Networking
Your chance to meet with other members and spend time in the Expo area. Refreshments will be served.
15:00
Collaboration Discussion
Table hosted, fast-paced, lively and interactive discussions designed to promote possibility thinking and idea creation. This first session will focus on looking back and reflections from the past 18- months and sharing and discussing these experiences across multiple tables. We would expect interaction with between 20 to 30 other delegates during this period.
16:15
Endnote
Hear from The Forum to wrap up the day and summarise your takeaways.
16:30
Formal end and networking

Speakers

Phil Anderson
Director
The Forum
About Phil
Phil Michell
Consulting Director 
Davies
Chris Rainsforth
Director
The  Forum
About Chris
Andy Rothwell
Principal Consultant 
Davies
Dave Vernon
Director
The Forum
About Dave
Dawn Wray
Listener
The Listening Collective
About Dawn

Exhibitors

Venue

The Grand Hotel, Newcastle
We have SOLD OUT of the bedrooms that we had reserved at The Grand Hotel. They may have a small number of bedrooms available – please contact them to book; Grand Hotel Gosforth Park Newcastle | Britannia Hotels Official Site
 
The nearest alternative hotel is walking distance; Travelodge | Newcastle Gosforth hotel
Parking

The hotel parking is managed by Parking Eye. This system will not be in operation during our conference and awards celebration.
Guests may be asked to put this registration number into the system as part of the checking in process if they are staying at the hotel.
If any delegates do receive a ticket the hotel will be able to cancel this. In this situation please contact Andrea, and quote the reference number on top of the letter.
 
Andrea Heppell
Event Executive

The hotel do not currently have charging points for electric cars, however directly across the road there is a facility at the Costa Coffee.

Prices & Booking

Places are free to members using member places in line with the level of membership. 1 place purchased within a membership gives you a place at both the Virtual and Face to face event. Extra places for each event (either Virtual or Face-to-Face) can be purchased at £625 exclusive of VAT.

All paid for places must be settled before the conference begins. A credit card guarantee can be used to hold a place. All bookings are subject to The Forum's normal terms which can be read here. Cancellation does not automatically mean an invoice is no longer payable.

Register Now

Fill in your details to register for the 2022 Customer Strategy & Planning conferences and Awards Celebration