Five Key Themes that Defined Five9 CX Summit 2022

Last week, we hosted our Five9 CX summit in Las Vegas. It was wonderful being back in person with our customers, partners, employees, and analysts and influencers, and to experience the enthusiasm for CX transformation. We gathered for two days of insight-packed keynotes from Five9 executives, industry experts and customers, workshops and breakout sessions, product demos, and networking with our partners as they showcased their solutions.  

We approached CX Summit differently this year, focusing on content for hands-on learning and peer-to-peer education led by customers. We were excited to see this year’s event attendance grow 39% over our last in-person event in 2019. We ran 32 workshops, 36 seminars and training classes, and hosted 34 live demo sessions in our Demopoolza zone in the CX Hub. It was the place to be in Vegas! 

With so many interesting sessions, we are kicking off a series to share some of the key takeaways on our blog. Overall, some of the predominate themes at the event were:  

• Contact Centers are Ready to Embrace Artificial Intelligence – Once a question mark to many in the contact center space, AI was a hot topic of discussion and interest at CX Summit. More and more, AI is being successfully integrated in the contact center to automate routine calls with conversational self-service and provide real-time assistance to agents during customer interactions. AI and humans are working together to create better experiences for customers – and for contact center agents. Stay tuned to an upcoming post on the product keynote to see how AI is transforming the contact center and how Five9 approaches it differently than other vendors. 

• Analytics are Key to Business Agility – During the product keynote, Five9 CTO Jonathan Rosenberg and our EVP of Product Management, Callan Schebella, demonstrated our all new Five9 Analytics Portal - powered by the Five9 data lake - which will allow you to take control of your contact center data, and do more with it without the cost and time challenges associated with custom reports. “Do more with less” was a recurring theme of the product keynote, as Five9 is focused on how we can help our customers become more operationally efficient and deliver solutions to support agility. 

• EX is the Foundation of CX – From Workforce Optimization technologies to agent attrition, employee experience was a major point of discussion at Five9 CX Summit. During her keynote session, Liz Miller, Vice President, and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, assured us that the Great Resignation is not just a quaint idea from 2021, citing a PwC study that found that one out of five workers plan to leave their jobs in 2022. So how do you keep employees engaged and motivated in a contact center? There is no one size fits all answer, of course, but contact center leaders and experts shared stories about how they’re encouraging self-directed work and autonomy, flexible schedules for the gig economy, and career security and purpose as part of their EX-strategies.  

• Making Room for All Types of Talent – Day one of our mainstage content included a Women in Technology panel, who shared stories about how they are moving the needle when it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We wanted to give this panel top billing because this topic is massively important for our industry, and we know it’s a topic that is becoming more and more important for our customers. Panelists discussed how they are empowering diverse teams, and how they’ve redesigned their workplaces as the role of the contact center agent has changed. A highlight was when each panelist shared a motto or statement about being a good leader, such as being authentic, giving feedback, and ensuring an inclusive workplace where employees are motivated to make decisions and can become adaptable to change. 

• CX Transformation is a Journey – As Five9 President Dan Burkland said during his opening remarks on Day 2, we are right in the throes of truly using CX as a strategic differentiator. Early adopters of new technologies are jumping right into the deep end and experimenting with new use cases, but for many contact center leaders, the early stages of transformation can be overwhelming. Dan reminded the audience that it’s a journey with lots of learnings along the way. “But you’re not in this alone,” he said. “You have a group of people assembled here this week who all share a common goal, and they come at it with different perspectives and views – all of which can help us execute successfully.”  

To summarize, it was a spectacular couple of days with our customers and partners sharing so many stories on how Five9 helps them every day with their business needs. Stay tuned to the Five9 blog for more learnings from the week. 

And thank you to everyone who attended and helped make the event an enormous success!