Claudia Belardo is the Director of International Customer Experience, SAP Concur. She joins the 2019 edition of Customer Contact Week Europe as both a speaker and a judge for the CCW Excellence Awards. On the 8th of October, Claudia will join four other advisory board members in a conversation about how businesses can future proof their customer contact strategies. Below, we ask Claudia some questions about her work in customer contact and involvement in event.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career?

I have 16 years of experience in building and leading best in class Support and Services teams.  Today I am refining my skills in the CX field serving as the International Customer Experience Director at SAP Concur. Here, I am responsible for fostering a company-wide culture that maintains an effortless customer experience at the forefront of everything that is done. This involves driving customer-focused change throughout the organisation by pulling together Customer Journey Mapping, Customer Success Mapping, Customer Listening, Customer Advocacy and Health Metrics insights to build compelling business cases for change, prioritising CX improvement programs. 

What makes you passionate about work in this industry?

I graduated with a degree in languages and have always used them to during my career which has always been in the technology area. I remain passionate about bringing a consistent experience to customers regardless of where they are based in the world, which languages they speak or whatever cultures they are influenced by, but remain mindful that these factors can influence what you need to deliver. 

What do you believe defines customer contact in 2019 and what transformation initiatives is SAP Concur currently undergoing to address this?

I believe that in 2019 customer contact is defined by the extent to which your customer’s effort does not go to in order to get an issue or question answered. At SAP Concur, we are creating more proactive enablement material that aligns with the customer success journey at every moment of truth and using AI to mine and learn about the data we receive in our customers to expose more potential areas.

What are the key challenges that you are facing on this journey?

Like every big transformation program gaining cross-silo buy-in and helping the business to understand how to manage their customers as assets is always a big change management challenge.

Why are events like CCW Europe 2019 important for industry professionals and what can they expect to take away?

In order to find solutions it is important to sometimes look up and out of your familiar comfort zone to gain new perspective and approaches but also understand what has worked and equally has not worked for other companies.

Learn more about Customer Contact Week Europe by clicking the image below: