October 10, 2025
Event Report: Engage Customer Experience Summit, London
This week’s CXM day out saw us take to the leafy autumnal peace of Battersea Park where, in between the trees emerges Evolution, for Engage Customer’s latest event. Set in an events space crammed with customer experience brands and seven stages running simultaneous interviews, panels and case studies. Among the chaos of hundreds of vendors, end users and interested parties milling around, we caught up with the latest news and insights from the day.
Kicking off the day, host Engage Customer and Ipsos delivered a new report, “Human Versus Digital Interactions.” More on that here, and do read our recent interview with Ipsos’ Jamie Thorpe on the shifting dynamics of customer loyalty.
Donning the silent disco headphones to listen in to some of the presentations, in zones ranging from future of contact centre, customer experience management and engagement marketing, there was much focus on empathy and human need from strategists and those on the front lines of customer experience, as there was on the latest in Agentic AI.
Even as many booths hosted newer “.ai” companies among the usual stalwarts like Medallia and Qualtrics.
Breaking Down CX With The AA
Moving to the Customer Experience Management stand, The UK’s Automobile Association (AA)’s Rebecca Brooks-Daw took to the stage to highlight how her small CX team were driving change across the massive auto breakdown and insurance organisation.
Through an intensive voice of the customer program, which Rebecca admits they are at the start of the journey with, the team is driving action for improved customer feedback, and delivering ROI through reduced complaints and first contact resolution.
The internal message at The AA is to do the right thing, even as AI takes over more tasks, making customer experiences easier and seamless, driving return on investment. The early results make it easier to justify CX to the leadership, and as AI becomes more visible in customer chat, acceptance among customers is growing.
Zendesk Highlights the Value of CX
A practical tour of the benefits of CX came Chris Tomkins from Zendesk’s Office of the CTO. He started by challenging with Sam Altman’s post that “lots of customer service jobs will get eliminated pretty quickly.”
Chris hit back, citing Jevon’s Paradox where efficiency creates greater consumption that leads to more work and jobs trumps AI and automation. He also had a set of dramatic figures showing a 54%/46% split between customers that contacted the business and those who never engaged.
The exciting facet was that 94% of revenue (and 95% of revenue growth) came from the 54% who did get make contact.
Those numbers alone immediately highlight the value of a successful first contact, fast problem resolution and engagement to listen and understand customer needs.
He continued to show where AI will take over the failure/low value tasks in contact and support roles, leaving the higher value tasks for humans, empowering human agents with AI knowledge to deliver a better service.
Within Zendesk, features like App Builder can now create practical tools for users based on a prompt, democratising access to AI and delivering business value from a broader base.
RS Stands for Real Sophistication
Taking to the Main Stage after lunch, RS’s Nicki Young took us on a journey through the later years of the 85 year old company’s move to digital.
He highlighted that driving growth requires sophistication and data, especially with over a million customers. With over 150,000 customer insights in 6 month, RS has segmented their base into a sophisticated segmented model as it aims to generate £12 billion in sales from existing customers.
Speed is key to this effort through seamless and connected experiences, requiring valid, organised and accessible data across the business. That revenue won’t come from working in traditional ways. Experimentation offers greater velocity for the business and more commercial business models and go-to-market strategies, focused on customer convenience, agility to meet their needs.
Views From the Floor
From around the hall, the feeling from most attendees was that their leadership wants the business to use AI, but almost none had been given clear and explicit instructions on how to go about that. We talked to various folk around the stands to get a pulse from the day.
“There’s no doubt AI is transforming CX, but what stood out was the appetite to balance that with a people-first approach. Our conversations showed that organisations know their greatest advantage still comes from skilled, engaged people delivering brilliant customer experiences.” – Ben, Head of Sales, Elephants Don’t Forget.
Next year’s Engage Customer Experience Summit is scheduled for the 7-8 October, 2026, where it will be fascinating to see what’s changed.
