After check-in at the Columbia Tower, enjoy complimentary breakfast and an hour of networking.

Mike Hilton, Chief Product Officer at Accolade & Co-founder of Concur

Customer love might sound fluffy, but it doesn’t have to be. Mike Hilton, Chief Product Officer at Accolade and Co-founder of Concur, will share how customer-first strategies contribute to success, and how to put ROI against customer love. He’ll also share actionable advice on how to create a culture of customer obsession to create products customer love.

Mike has 30 years of experience in the technology industry, beginning his career as a software engineer at Apple. During his more than two-decade long tenure at Concur, Mike contributed to the company’s growth and profitability while serving as the CEO, CTO, and CPO, among other roles.

Daniel McCone, Digital Marketing & Innovation Manager at Dunkin' Brands

Katie van Zyl, Director of Product Management at GoDaddy
Christopher An-Traumer, Product Manager at Premera Blue Cross

Ashley Ettwein, Director of Product Marketing at ADT
Christy Culp, Senior Director of Customer Success at Apptentive (Moderator)

Customer experience strategies shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. It’s hard to know how to create a CX strategy that exceeds customers’ expectations without first understanding them. Our panelists will share how they give customers a seat at the table by using customer feedback to build, validate, and refine their customer experience strategies. They’ll also share how they ensure their customer experience has parity across channels, how they keep up with consumers’ rapidly evolving expectations, and how to launch multi-touch experiences.

Randy Stewart, 15-year product management veteran & IGNITE Seattle Organizer

Classic product mistakes companies and product managers make, and how to avoid them. 

Landon Ainge, Senior Product Manager at Overstock.com

Robi Ganguly, CEO & Co-founder of Apptentive

Michael Katz, CEO & Co-founder of mParticle

Data is only as good as the decisions it enables you to make. That’s why the ecosystem of solutions providers team up to bring more context to the data they provide. Landon Ainge, Senior Product Manager at Overstock.com; Robi Ganguly, CEO and Co-founder of Apptentive; and Michael Katz, CEO and Co-founder of mParticle, will take the stage to share how Overstock.com is leveraging Apptentive and mParticle’s partnership to create rich customer profiles to build a hyper-personalized customer experience that drives loyalty.

Susan Sandberg, Senior Customer Engagement Executive at SAP Concur

Consumers today have more choices than ever before, making customer retention a top-of-mind issue for companies large and small. One way companies are differentiating themselves is through their mobile experience. Susan Sandberg, Senior Customer Engagement Executive at SAP Concur, will provide actionable insights into how SAP Concur invests in their mobile technology to earn customer love and loyalty, and increase LTV.

Susan has over 15 years of experience in customer-facing roles at some of the world’s largest brands, including Johnson & Johnson.

Lisa Hillmann, Director, Digital Experience at T-Mobile

What if you could tailor your customer experience to each person based on their preferences? The un-carrier is again pushing the envelope on what’s possible by leveraging data and insights to bring to life personalized, targeted conversations with consumers across all of their digital channels. Lisa Hillmann, Director of Digital Experience at T-Mobile, will share how it’s done by sharing tactical tips for creating curated customer journeys of your own to surprise and delight your customers.

Sasha Kai Parker, Digital Product Leader at Disney

As digital professionals, we spend countless hours trying to understand our customers’ wants and needs to create experiences that meet their expectations, but what happens when users want an experience you can’t deliver? How do you continue to build relationships with users and manage their expectations when your product is flawed? Sasha Kai Parker, Digital Product Leader at Freeform—the young adult brand for Disney/ABC Television Group—will describe the challenges they’ve faced as a TV network app in a streaming world, and how they’ve used customer feedback to overhaul their digital platforms and put the customer first.

Kacie Wise, Senior UX Researcher, Global Mobile at eBay Classifieds

While eBay Classifieds users have certain needs that must be met in order for them to successfully engage with the product, how eBay approaches solving these needs across global markets varies. On top of that, working across markets has its own challenges. Kacie Wise, Senior UX Researcher, Global Mobile at eBay, will share the global considerations her team takes into account and go in-depth into how they approach solving user problems across the world.

Lauren Chan Lee, Principal Product Manager at Care.com

Ashtan Jordan, Product Manager at BMO Financial Group

Sandeep Prasad, Head of Mobile at Spirit Airlines

Richard McNerny, Product Manager of Mobile Products at JetBlue Airways

Ren Fischer (Moderator), Sr. Marketing Manager at Apptentive

Product managers’ are deeply connected to the customer. Their knowledge is coveted across departments, and they’re called upon to be the voice of the customer internally. During this talk, our panelists will share how they leverage their platform to be a change agent for a customer-first culture, get more budget for their teams, and more. They’ll wrap up by sharing career advice for PMs, actionable advice on how to manage up and down, and how they overcame their toughest challenges.

Keerthi Thiruvazhi, Director of Digital Product Management at Starbucks

Veronica Rosenberg, Customer Success Manager at Apptentive

Starbucks pioneered the way in connecting digital and physical experiences, a task with many moving pieces that add a level of complexity that’s infamously difficult to get right. Since launching Mobile Order and Pay, a feature that drove 11% of all U.S. transactions in 2017, Starbucks has perfected the art of seamless cross-channel experiences. Keerthi Thiruvazhi, Director of Product Management at Starbucks, will chat with Veronica Rosenberg, Customer Success Manager at Apptentive, about the ins-and-outs of integrating digital channels with in-person interactions.

Robi Ganguly, CEO & Co-Founder at Apptentive

The world of customer experience is evolving. Consumer expectations have matured, from expecting companies to have great experiences in each channel to expecting companies to have integrated experiences across all channels. At the same time, personalization has taken on a new meaning. It’s not enough to know your customers’ names or preferences. You must be able to understand the why behind their feelings and actions. That’s why Apptentive is changing the way companies interact with and understand their customers. In his talk, Robi Ganguly, CEO and Co-founder of Apptentive, will give the audience the first look into the exciting future of Apptentive.

Hetal Patel, Vice President of Consumer & Corporate Insights at iHeartMedia

You have a lot of data sources, but piecing them together to get the insights you need to inform your strategy is a complicated, laborious, and convoluted task. Hetal Patel, Vice President of Consumer & Corporate Insights at iHeartMedia, will share how she makes sense of complex data streams and how to use your findings to have a positive impact on the business.

Hetal has over a decade of experience in consumer research and big data analysis, and has an MBA in Consumer Psychology from University of California, Riverside.

Join us for not-your-regular-networking happy hour. Enjoy refreshments and appetizers at our open bar with one of the best views in Seattle.