Simon Mainwaring

I’ll start my list with a little bit of an outlier, who is not a ‘pure’ customer experience speaker, but that’s also exactly the reason why I like Simon Mainwaring so much. He was a Worldwide Creative Director at many of the world’s top creative advertising agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and Ogilvy working on big brands like Nike and Motorola. And then, years ago, he reinvented himself as a brand futurist and global keynote speaker. But most importantly: he was one of the first keynote speakers to talk about purpose-driven branding and storytelling, a topic for which the world now finally seems ready. Simon is now a sought-after international speaker and his book “We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World” is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestseller.

Dan Gingiss

Dan Gingiss is a customer experience speaker and coach with a 20-year corporate background at companies like McDonald’s, Discover, and Humana. He helps businesses create experiences that customers can’t wait to share with friends and social media followers. He is one of those people that combines experience from the field with a great vision on how customer experience should evolve in the future. And the cool thing is, Dan is very easy to work with, he is very approachable which I think is fantastic: making the experience for his customers as good as possible. Practice what your preach, I love that!

Shep Hyken

Shep Hyken, who calls himself the “Chief Amazement Officer” of Shepard Presentations, is a customer experience speaker and author (among others of Wall Street Journal and USA Today best seller ‘The Cult of the Customer’) who “helps organizations build loyal relationships with their customers and employees”. He is known for his presentations on customer service, customer loyalty, internal service, customer relations and the customer experience.

Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne Bliss is the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association and a renowned expert on customer experience and customer-centric leadership. She pioneered the role of the Chief Customer Officer, holding the first ever CCO role at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations. She is, among other CX books, the author of ‘Would You Do That To Your Mother?’. Having delivered speeches and workshops for nearly every business vertical in B2B and C2B companies, Jeanne also advises leaders and organizations about customer experience that creates lasting memory.

Robert Spector

Robert Spector is one of America’s leading experts on customer experience and employee experience. He has been involved in customer service since the age of 13, when he started working in the family butcher shop but he’s best known as the author of the business book classic ‘The Nordstrom Way’: The Inside Story of America’s Number One Customer Service Company’. Robert is currently working on a new book, ‘The Seattle Effect’, which explains the customer-focused strategies of Seattle-based icons Nordstrom, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, Boeing, Microsoft, REI, and Pearl Jam.

Jay Baer

Jay Baer delivers keynote speeches on giving organizations a competitive advantage through marketing and the customer experience. He writes the ‘Convince & Convert’ social media strategy blog, voted one of the world’s top 5 social media blogs. Jay is also on the board of the Northern Arizona Center for Emerging Technologies, and mentors start-up technology businesses across the country. He’s a New York Times best-selling author of six marketing and customer experience books, among which ‘Talk Triggers’ and ‘Youtility’.

Adam Toporek

Adam Toporek is one of the top customer experience thought leaders and influencers in the world and the author of ‘Be Your Customer’s Hero’. As a third-generation entrepreneur with extensive experience in retail, wholesale, franchising, and small business, Adam understands the impact that customer experience can have on the bottom line and he brings lessons from the front lines of entrepreneurship to organizations of all sizes. Much of his real-world approach to customer experience comes from his entrepreneurial background.

Blake Morgan

Blake Morgan is a keynote speaker and customer experience futurist and author of two books including the new bestselling “The Customer Of The Future: 10 Guiding Principles For Winning Tomorrow’s Business” (HarperCollins). Blake is a guest lecturer at Columbia University and adjunct faculty at the Rutgers executive education MBA program. She contributes to Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and is the host of The Modern Customer Podcast and a weekly customer experience video series on YouTube.

Brian Solis

Brian Solis is a world-renowned digital analyst, anthropologist and futurist who has been called “one of the greatest digital analysts of our time.” Brian is also a global keynote speaker and an 8x best-selling author. His book ‘X: The Experience When Business Meets Design’, explores the importance of experiences and how to design them for customers, employees and human beings everywhere. Solis studies disruptive technologies and its impact on business as well as innovation, experience design, culture dynamics and digital behaviors. Through his research and published work, he humanizes disruptive trends to help leaders understand how technology, markets and people are evolving and how to drive innovation and growth.

Annette Franz

Annette Franz is the author of ‘Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business)’ and the founder and Chief Experience Officer of CX Journey Inc. She is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, consultant, and speaker and was recognized as one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider. She has over 25 years of experience in helping companies understand their employees and customers in order to identify what makes for a great experience and what drives retention, satisfaction, and engagement.

Steven Van Belleghem

That’s me! I wanted to add myself as a bonus speaker to this list of ten good friends and colleagues that I can all strongly recommend. I’m an international keynote speaker myself, given more than 1.000 keynotes in more than 40 countries in the last few years. The core of my expertise is the future of customer experience. If you would like to sample my work, feel free to check out www.youtube.com/stevenvanbelleghem