Companies show they care at the Customer Engagement Summit

I was invited to the Customer Engagement Summit held at Victoria Park Plaza at the end of November

There were an amazing number of delegates at the Summit, nearly 600, and most major companies seemed to be there. I now attend many industry events and it's always great to hear, on behalf of UK consumers, the many good things that companies are doing to try to help their customers and improve their experience - and show they really do care.

The event was really well chaired by Mike Havard from Ember Services, who gave me (Nigel) and Please Press 1 a great mention in his opening remarks, talking about the tidal wave of consumer social power and how businesses must react. I had a lot of interest from many companies during the day discussing how myself and Please Press 1 can help them help and keep their customers. I've got some great meetings booked in with some big brands to discuss things further as part of the new PR campaign next year.

The event was organised by Engage Customer. I have been to many of their events and they always ensure great quality speakers and presentations. A consistent message from the presenters and the event was the importance of engaging the right employees to ensure your customer service and engagement works as well as it can.

Opening keynote at the Summit was by the economist and journalist Louise Louise Cooper Cooper who gave a really great presentation, simplifying a complex subject really well and giving some great personal experiences of good and bad customer service - her Primark jackets story was both awful and amazing. Louise highlighted some big warning signs including the ongoing debt, uncertain political climate, the impact of EU withdrawal and the dependency on Germany. But also, at the end of the day, nobody knows - because the data and therefore forecasts are so poor and give many false "illusions of accuracy".

It was a shame I couldn't see them all but I did see many more really good speakers and presentations including James Leech (Argos), Laura Jamieson (Barclays), Mathis Wagner (Charles Tyrwhitt - my favourite shirt company!), Megan Neale (HGS) and the really entertaining "Digital Tech Entrepreneur" Andrew Walker - great fun, enthusiasm, energy and forward thinking common sense.