My Highlights from Oracle Modern CX 2017 - This Year Vs. Last Year

Gartner has researched CEO's around the world to find out "What are your top technology investment areas?" One of the top results was Customer Experience Management. In fact, Des Cahill, Head CX Evangelist at Oracle, mentioned he's seen over 4,500 companies around the globe have appointed a Chief Experience Officer (CXO) reporting directly to the CEO.

The importance of customer experience for a business and many other digital transformation topics were discussed last week while I was at Oracle Modern Customer Experience (CX) Conference.

What a difference a year makes, last year I was at this very same conference and it's always meaningful to network with peers, learn from prospects, connect with customers, and collaborate with our Oracle partners. Last year I attended Mark Hurd's keynote, the CEO of Oracle, and it was great to hear his focus on customer experience directly aligns with Five9's perspective on modern consumers and customer loyalty. This year my experience with Oracle's CEO was much different. The Five9 team networking with Mark Hurd at dinner during the conference was one for the books. Talk about the ultimate customer experience, not much tops that.

A few other highlights from this conference was seeing the relationship liftoff since last year's same Modern CX conference. For example, last year my team and I met with prospects at the booth, and over dinner at the many networking events. This year, my team had two of the prospects we met last year (Lululemon and Booker Software) and now Five9 customers, speak on our behalf at the conference. Another example, last year I was introduced to many Oracle SI and ISV partners and discussed how Five9 can team with them to help customers with their CX challenges. This year, we actually held joint customer meetings and events with many of these partners including Directly, OpenMethods, AmberLeaf, Helix, ApexIT, Infolexa, and Eventus. Lastly, last year I met many Oracle reps, sales management, product management, Service Cloud Executives. While this year I met all the same and more (see the picture of Mark Hurd with Five9 and Lululemon above).

It's great getting the CEO to engage with your customers and truly address their CX challenges. Mark truly has a focus on our customers!

###