Experience ’26 Day 2: Complacency Is No Longer an Option

With the conclusion of Experience ’26, we proved that the old CX playbook is dead, and it’s time to turn experience signals into measurable impact.

Day one of Experience ’26 introduced our rally cry: be a changemaker.

Day two proved why standing still is no longer an option.

The morning opened with the Expy Winner Spotlight featuring CIBC, Verizon Business, Santalucía Seguros, and Vanguard. These teams weren’t celebrated for running polished experience programs. They’re recognized for changing how value actually gets delivered inside their organizations.
Watch the Expy winner spotlights →

The conversations were raw, tactical, and refreshingly honest. Leaders talked about the moments they chose to challenge convention instead of accepting it. The decisions that felt risky at the time, but created real momentum. And the hard-earned lessons that come from turning millions of experience signals into insight the business can act on.

This was not victory lap storytelling. It was a clear look at what happens when experience stops chasing scores and starts shaping decisions. Driving growth. Improving efficiency. Empowering frontlines to fix what is broken and scale what works.

Across sessions moderated by Medallia’s Sid Banerjee and Jodi Searl, and reinforced through a full day of deep dive breakouts, one message landed with force: The old CX playbook does not just slow you down. It makes you irrelevant. Measuring experience without mobilizing the organization around it leaves teams stuck while the business moves forward without them.

Alison Levine, who led the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, closed the day by bringing the urgency home. Drawing on what it takes to survive and succeed when conditions are constantly changing, she made the parallel unmistakable.

In moments where hesitation has real consequences, one truth holds on mountains and in business: complacency will kill you.

Experience programs can no longer run on soft metrics.

The blunt reality of 2026: NPS alone won’t get you budget.

The advanced programs have built rigorous valuation frameworks. They translate sentiment into specific financial figures. The kind CFOs actually care about.

CIBC didn’t just track customer satisfaction. They built a four-stage maturity model: Driver Simulators, Operational Analysis, Financial Linkage, Valuation. The company partnered with their digital and analytics teams to create driver simulators that predict how operational changes impact NPS. Reduce wait times. Watch NPS move. Watch revenue follow.

They didn’t work in a silo. They embedded themselves in the teams that control the levers.

They did the analysis to understand that promoters generate 15% more revenue and have lower attrition than detractors. With that evidence, CIBC’s CX team stopped being a cost center. They became a strategic value partner. They are building the capability to prioritize initiatives based on projected revenue generation, not gut feeling.

Maersk demonstrated what this discipline looks like in B2B at massive scale. They built a CX program across over 100 countries, incorporating relationship and touchpoint feedback through multiple channels. 100,000 employees. 130 countries. Five years of work to drive business engagement, senior sponsorship, and strong ROCXI.

Maersk wasn’t afraid to step back, review, and challenge their approach to chart a way forward. They proved that even in complex B2B environments (and occasionally real-life crises) the partnership between agency, technology, and brand can deliver tangible impact. Now they have a powerful, embedded CX program with a clear roadmap.

If you can’t connect your work to the P&L, you’re not getting funding. Period.

Watch Experience ‘26 Day 2 sessions →

The customer journey doesn’t care about your org chart.

Today’s discussions hammered home a reality that should be obvious, but isn’t.

Customer Experience. Employee Experience. Contact Center operations. These are not separate functions. Treating them that way is organizational malpractice.

This came to life in our panel with Verizon Business and Hyatt Hotels. Both have stopped pretending these teams can operate independently. They’re co-owning initiatives across CX and EX. Linking customer feedback directly with employee experiences. Finding root causes of friction that isolated data sets miss entirely.

Employee engagement is a leading indicator of customer loyalty. When your frontline staff is struggling, your customers feel it. Verizon Business and Hyatt treat this connection as operational fact, not theory.

U-Haul, AdventHealth, and Exelon have also aligned priorities between CX and contact center teams — two groups that historically chase different goals and leave customers caught in the gap.

When these teams are aligned, resolution is faster. Agents are happier. The contact center stops being a complaint department. It becomes a strategic insight hub.

Santalucía Seguros demonstrated what this looks like at scale. Millions of customer signals turned into “human insights” that drive empathy and active listening. Not just in the contact center. Not just in the CX team. The entire organization.

Data doesn’t change minds. Stories do.

The final theme of day two acknowledged something most practitioners learn the hard way: Data alone rarely inspires change. You need the soft skills to drive hard results.

Alison Levine, who captained the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, closed the conference with a keynote that drew parallels between high-altitude mountaineering and modern business leadership. In environments of uncertainty, clarity and decisive action are the only paths forward.

For experience leaders, this means navigating “extreme altitudes.” Uniting teams to make progress even when the path isn’t fully visible. 

It’s not about having all the answers.

It’s about moving forward anyway. As Alison decreed, “Complacency will kill you.”

Vuori demonstrated this leadership when sharing how they use Medallia signals to pinpoint behaviors of top-performing stores. The team doesn’t try to make store teams “more data-driven.” They reduce noise and give managers clear operational priorities tied to customer friction and business outcomes. They turn insights into repeatable playbooks that actually work because it fits how stores actually operate, not how HQ wishes they would. Leadership now coaches specific behaviors that drive sales and consistency.

Many sessions throughout this event demonstrated that to secure executive buy-in, you must move beyond charts and dashboards. You need narratives that resonate with the C-suite and frontline alike.

What did Experience ‘26 actually prove?

Overall, Experience ’26 made one thing unmistakable: the age of watching and waiting is over.

This is a new era.

Experience is no longer something you track. It’s something you operate. The leaders winning today aren’t chasing NPS. They’re connecting omnichannel signals and turning them into real business outcomes.

They’re changemakers. 

Partners across the enterprise. Leaders who use frontline-ready AI to democratize insight, fix root causes, and deliver measurable value.

This isn’t a moment. It’s a seismic shift.
And it’s only the beginning.

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