We are living in the age of the customer. In every industry or product category you can name, there are so many brands, so many choices, so many marketing messages, so much noise, that the challenge for companies aiming to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something truly special.

That's why it's no longer enough just to work on the functional side of business-making products and services more useful and reliable. Truly successful companies work on the emotional side of business as well. They aim to create a psychological contract with customers that goes beyond dollars-and-cents transactions. They design experiences that are truly memorable and forge relationships that are genuinely emotional.

The evidence speaks for itself, as documented in this downloadable article from the Gallup Management Journal. Customers who are "emotionally engaged" behave very differently from those who are "rationally satisfied" or even "rationally loyal." Yes, it takes real investments-of money, creativity, and leadership patience-to transition away from selling value to sharing your company's values. But the returns on those investments can be profound.

The Customer Engagement Summit will offer a collection of tough-minded ideas and real-world strategies about the heart-to-heart connections between the best companies and their most devoted customers. It will feature candid and interactive presentations from companies such as Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, and Commerce Bank-organizations that are well known for creating higher levels of customer engagement than their peers.

I hope you'll join me and our remarkable group of presenters in Coconut Grove, Florida. I can promise you a set of ideas that will be truly powerful, a collection of best practices that will be intensely useful, and an experience that will be, well, emotionally engaging.

Respectfully,


William Taylor
Conference Chairman