The #1 CX Forum in Australia
Experience the Most Valuable Gathering Across The
Entire Customer Experience Ecosystem
August 5-6, 2026
| The Atrium, Flemington Raceway, Melbourne
The Customer Show - Agenda Day 2
Main Track
9:00 am - 9:10 am
Chair Opening Remarks
Jason Smith -
Founder Fresh View Advisory, Former Director of Customer Experience,
Foxtel Group
Jason Smith
Founder Fresh View Advisory, Former Director of Customer ExperienceFoxtel Group
9:10 am - 9:50 am
Keynote Panel: From Cost Centre to Growth Engine: Monetising CX Across Retention, Margin and Lifetime Value
David Semaan -
Head of Customer Strategy & Experience,
Acenda
Matthew Murdoch - Chief Customer Officer, PassportCard
Vanessa Wong - Head of Customer, Cleanaway
Adam Nettheim - Chief Customer Officer, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation
- Reframing CX from support function to profit lever
- Anchoring investment to retention, frequency and margin
- Reducing leakage across journeys to stabilise demand and protect profitability
- Balancing acquisition growth with service sustainability
- Operationalising trust to protect long-term customer value
9:50 am - 10:20 am
Reserved for Sponsor
Session reserved for Sponsor
10:20 am - 10:50 am
CCO Keynote Presentation: Beyond the AI Pilot: What It Really Takes to Deliver Business Impact
Islam Hassan -
Chief Customer Officer,
Australian Motoring Services
- Cross-sector lessons from implementing AI across complex customer and operational environments
- Why many organisations struggle to scale AI beyond isolated pilots
- Embedding AI into real customer journeys and day-to-day business operations
- Balancing innovation, governance and customer trust during transformation
- Aligning teams, leadership and operating models to support AI adoption at scale
- Measuring meaningful impact across customer experience, operational performance and business outcomes
- What the future of AI-enabled customer experience looks like in practice
10:50 am - 11:20 am
Morning Break
11:20 am - 12:20 pm
Interactive Discussion Groups: Facilitated, peer-led session focused on open discussion and practical insight-sharing
MD Kabir -
Group Customer Experience Manager,
Sutton Tools
Christopher Cramond - Head of Member Strategy, Product & Experience, Aware Super
Sara Valentina Talat - CEO & Co-founder, Briick
Table 1 :
Scaling AI in Customer Service: From Pilot Programs to Real Performance Gains
Table 2:
Rewiring Operating Models: AI Changing Work Design Expectations, Achieving Durable Productivity
Table 3:
The Orchestration Advantage: Why AI ROI Depends on Connecting the Dots, Not Just Deploying AI Tools
12:20 pm - 1:20 pm
Lunch Break
Afternoon Streams
1:20 pm - 1:50 pm Fireside Chat: Cutting the Complexity Tax: Simplifying Data, Systems and Decisioning to Unlock AI and Business Impact
Speaker to be announced soon!
1:50 pm - 2:20 pm Embedding Agentic AI into the Product Discovery, Sales and Onboarding Customer Experience
Andrew Harrison - Director of Customer Experience, NAB WealthA focused discussion on early experience embedding AI into its sales and onboarding journeys, with a clear emphasis on improving customer experience alongside commercial outcomes.
The session will explore how AI has been used to reduce friction, improve speed-to-resolution and create more seamless, personalised interactions across critical customer moments.
It will share practical learnings from the initial rollout - including design choices, governance guardrails, and adoption challenges - as well as how these changes have impacted both frontline performance and customer outcomes such as conversion, satisfaction and onboarding efficiency.
It will cover the problems faced, the constraints in play, and the practical changes made across people, process and operating rhythm, along with honest lessons on what delivered impact quickly, what didn't, and where this approach reaches its limits.
Attendees will gain a clear view of how to measure success without relying on new tools, and where technology starts to make sense once strong operational foundations are in place - offering a highly practical blueprint for leaders under pressure to deliver results now.
2:20 pm - 2:50 pm Afternoon Break
2:50 pm - 3:30 pm Panel Discussion: Scaling AI Agents Safely: Reducing Cost Without Increasing Complaints
Kim Phillips - Head of Customer Operations and Tyro Health, TyroSara Valentina Talat - CEO & Co-founder, Briick
MD Kabir - Group Customer Experience Manager, Sutton Tools
Christopher Cramond - Head of Member Strategy, Product & Experience, Aware Super
- Hardening escalation to address failed handoffs and lost context, reducing repeat contacts and dissatisfaction
- Improving accuracy to address confident wrong answers, protecting trust and reducing complaint risk
- Standardising knowledge to address fragmented policies and content, improving consistency and quality outcomes
- Optimising containment to address automation that stalls, increasing self-serve completion and lowering unit cost
- Operationalising monitoring to address drift and degradation, stabilising performance over time
1:20 pm - 1:50 pm Fireside Chat: From Cost Pressure to Performance: Rewiring Contact Centre Operations to Improve Cost, Capability and Customer Outcomes
Ashley Humphrey - Head of Customer Operations, Aurora Energy
As cost pressure intensifies, contact centres are being forced to rethink how they operate not just to reduce cost, but to improve performance in a sustainable way.
This session explores how organisations are practically reworking operations to streamline processes, remove inefficiencies and lift frontline capability.
It will focus on real-world approaches to improving productivity, resolution quality and customer outcomes, and how these changes translate into measurable reductions in cost-to-serve.
Attendees will gain a clear view of what actually works when driving performance improvement in a constrained environment — and how to move from isolated fixes to sustained operational impact
1:50 pm - 2:20 pm Case Study: Why Transformation Fails: The Human Factors Behind AI Adoption, Risk and Real Change
Simon Reiter - Chief Technology Officer, Aware SuperA focused case study on CareSuper's experience progressing AI initiatives from early pilots through to production, with a clear emphasis on governance, risk and real-world adoption.
The session will explore how AI has been introduced across the organisation, and where programmes have faced friction - particularly in moving from proof of concept to scalable, embedded capability. It will examine the role of governance frameworks, risk controls and operating model decisions in either enabling or slowing progress.
It will share practical learnings from this journey including design choices, governance guardrails and adoption challenges as well as how human factors such as trust, behaviour and resistance have shaped outcomes.
2:20 pm - 2:50 pm Afternoon Break
2:50 pm - 3:30 pm Panel Discussion: Redesigning CX Organisations for AI: Evolving Teams, Roles and Capability at Scale
Su Jella - Head of Data Analytics, Tennis AustraliaTarnya McKenzie - Chief Customer Officer, City of Port Phillip
Lee Stone - National Manager CX and Strategy, Origin Energy
- How AI, automation and self-service are reshaping how customer teams are structured, managed and measured
- The shift from volume-driven models to leaner, capability-led organisations built around specialist roles and automation
- What effective transformation looks like in practice — including changes to middle management, frontline dependency and required skills
- How leaders are balancing productivity gains with experience quality
- Which roles are emerging or disappearing, and how to redesign teams for measurable impact
Main Track
3:30 pm - 4:10 pm
Panel Discussion: Embedding Generative AI Safely: Protecting Brand, Data and Trust
Wes Self -
Chief Operating Officer,
GMHBA
Tarnya McKenzie - Chief Customer Officer, City of Port Phillip
Arnaud Picard - Head of Customer, Prospend
- Stress-testing economics to address optimistic projections, improving ROI integrity and credibility
- Defining red lines to address trust and compliance exposure, protecting customers and brand outcomes
- Agreeing measures of success to address KPI sprawl, proving impact in cost-to-serve, retention and resolution speed
- Capturing next-step commitments to address post-event inertia, converting decisions into 90-day plans
- Ranking bets to address scattered roadmaps, concentrating investment on highest-return initiatives
4:10 pm - 4:20 pm
Closing Remarks & End of Forum
Jason Smith -
Founder Fresh View Advisory, Former Director of Customer Experience,
Foxtel Group
Jason Smith
Founder Fresh View Advisory, Former Director of Customer ExperienceFoxtel Group
