Today’s customer experiences are tomorrow’s value and growth.
Alex Allwood is a recognised, two-time author, a leading voice on AI-driven customer experience, and an advisor on customer growth and retention strategy.
From the moment she steps on stage, Alex connects with audiences through realworld experiences and candid storytelling with a dash of wit — sharing powerful insights that spark genuine audience “aha” moments.
A customer experience pioneer in Australia, Alex was among the first authors to publish books on CX. She is the author of Customer Experience is the Brand (2015) and Customer Empathy (2019) and is currently writing her third book, to be published in 2026. Alex is also a regular writer and commentator on the rise of AI in customer experience.
Alex shares anecdotes, learnings and case studies grounded in insight-led customer experience transformation. Drawing on more than two decades of working with executive teams and organisational leaders, she brings powerful insights from her strategic CX advisory across telecommunications, financial services, government, insurance, retail and tourism.
Audiences will take away a deeper understanding of how brands attract, retain and grow customers in a rapidly changing world, and why today’s customer experiences are tomorrow’s value and growth.
Talking Points
The AI-Empowered Customer: How AI Is Changing What Customers Expect from Brands
As the gap widens between front-runners and fast followers in AI-powered customer experience, customer expectations and perceptions of value will shift.The AI-Empowered Customer: How AI Is Changing What Customers Expect from Brands
With a single prompt and a solution delivered in seconds, AI is changing how people solve problems, make decisions and navigate daily life. As customers become more accustomed to fast, low-effort, intelligent experiences, they will bring those expectations to every brand interaction. This talk explores how AI is shifting the balance of power between brands and customers, as AI-enabled experiences reduce cognitive burden, feel effortless and redefine what good looks like.
Takeaways
- Understand how AI is reshaping customer expectations, decision-making behaviour and service interactions.
- Recognise where AI enhances customer experience and where human involvement remains critical for trust.
- See how leading organisations are responding as AI reshapes how customers
discover, choose and engage with brands.
Your Customers’ Experiences Are Your Brand: Fuelling the Growth Engine
Growth is powered by a simple engine: experience drives advocacy, and advocacyYour Customers’ Experiences Are Your Brand: Fuelling the Growth Engine
drives growth.
For years, advocacy has come from peers recommending brands they trust. Now AI is becoming the next recommendation engine, increasingly shaping how people discover, evaluate and choose products and services. As customer journeys evolve into AI-enabled ecosystems, the experiences organisations create will determine whether customers advocate, remain loyal or switch providers and leave.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn how CX fuels the growth engine, where experience drives advocacy and
recommendation drives growth.
- Discover how peer recommendation and AI-powered ecosystems are reshaping how customers discover, evaluate and choose brands.
- Understand the impact of broken brand promises and CX friction on experiences and the impact on retention, extension, and recommendation.
In The CX Transformation Trenches: How We Reduced Customer Complaints by 20.23% in 12 Months
Customer experience transformation is rarely neat or theoretical. Real change happens in the trenches. This talk shares the real story behind reducing customer complaints by more than twenty percent in twelve months. It reveals the leadership decisions, cultural shifts, politics, pushback and pragmatism required to move customer experience from one department to a shared organisationalIn The CX Transformation Trenches: How We Reduced Customer Complaints by 20.23% in 12 Months
priority.
Takeaways
See how leadership decisions can shift customer experience from aspiration
to operational reality.
Understand how a disciplined focus on root causes, not symptoms, changed
the trajectory of customer complaints.
Recognise how multidisciplinary collaboration created the momentum
required for short, sharp organisational change.
The Power of Customer Empathy: How Real Understanding Changes Customer Value and Growth
Customer empathy is often discussed but rarely practised in ways that changeThe Power of Customer Empathy: How Real Understanding Changes Customer Value and Growth
outcomes. This talk explores how deep customer understanding influences
decisions, services and delivery. Drawing on research and experience, it shows
how empathy shifts organisations from assumptions about customers' needs to
insight that strengthens value, loyalty and growth.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand why empathy matters commercially and how it connects leaders
and teams to the moments that matter to customers.
- Learn practical ways organisations can embed real customer understanding
into strategy and service design.
- Discover how empathy changes leadership conversations about customers,
value and organisational priorities.
When Silence Isn’t Golden (Available for bookings from Q4 2026) Exploring the “Vacuum of Silence” in Customer Churn and Future Growth Risks
Customer churn is rarely loud. Most customers do not complain or complete aWhen Silence Isn’t Golden (Available for bookings from Q4 2026) Exploring the “Vacuum of Silence” in Customer Churn and Future Growth Risks
survey. They leave quietly, with low visibility until their exit appears in churn reporting. This talk explores the imbalance between value creation and value rescue, and how it creates a “vacuum of silence” where critical shifts in customer behaviour remain unseen. The result is churn that appears manageable until
conditions change, exposing risks to future growth.
Key Takeaways
- Recognise how churn signals emerge gradually across the customer journey
long before exit becomes visible.
- Understand why organisations track churn risk yet still miss when customers
decide to leave.
- See how the imbalance between value creation and value rescue creates a
“vacuum of silence” in the churn journey.
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