WardsAuto recently ran an article on its website announcing that Erich K. Gail will return once again to speak at Thought Leadership Summits’ 13th Annual Automotive CX Summit this year. While his performance as a keynote speaker last year was outstanding, that’s not the reason he’ll be returning to speak at the event, which will be held June 20-21.
According to the WardsAuto article, Gail, CEO of the Cardinale Group, put it succinctly: “I called them.”
That’s a tribute to the high regard the automobile industry has for the event, which has been newly renamed to emphasize the customer experience.
Held at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California, the Automotive CX Summit grew out of the Automotive Social Media Summit, as well as the Automotive Customer Centricity Summit.
This year’s Summit will feature:
- Innovators and thought leaders in the auto industry
- More than 140 senior executives in attendance
- Presentations on strategies and best-practices that speak to key challenges in today’s customer-centric environment
- Opportunities for learning and insights from industry peers
- Limited involvement by sponsors and vendors
Jon Munzel, Thought Leadership Summits’ president and founder, explained to WardsAuto that the Auto CX Summit still intends to cover the central issues of social media and CRM, along with new areas that are changing the customer experience.
“CX is the evolution of CRM and customer centricity,” he said, “and because the customer experience is a very broad topic, it makes sense to include social media, along with critical topics such as brand engagement, loyalty, retention, culture and analytics in the new Auto CX Summit.”
WardsAuto also revealed Gail will speak about using in-store processes to increase performance and sales. For his part, Gail praised the event, citing its ability to bring together a diverse collection of thought leaders from the auto-industry to facilitate an exchange of ideas.
Serving as chairman for the event will be Larry Schlagheck, who is the managing director for WardsAuto.
According to WardsAuto, there are many other notable industry presenters, including:
- Brian Benstock, Paragon Honda’s VP and general manager. He is slated to discuss the record-breaking year enjoyed by Paragon Honda and sister dealership, Paragon Acura in 2016, along with his target of doubling business in two years.
- Tom Carney, lead instructor at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), will give a talk on how to market to Millennial customers and how to get them interested in working at auto dealerships.
- Ed Cicale, a VP at AutoNation will speak about the process of renaming hundreds of auto dealerships under one brand and detail how the brand intends to expand into other areas. AutoNation is the country’s largest chain of dealerships.
- Heather Macpherson of The Minery and Chuck Kendig of American Honda are scheduled to speak about the significance of employee experience, they’ll also explain how the employee experience affects the customer experience.
- James Reutershan, strategy development manager for Google, will outline customer service paradigms from outside the automotive industry that can be customized for the needs of the automotive sector.
Brands giving presentations include American Honda, Cadillac, FordDirect, Hyundai Motor America, Infiniti and Kia Motors America.
