With New Year resolutions quickly filling our plate of commitments, it’s imperative to take a look at how to set yourself up for some amazing experience success in your retail career. NRF 2016 is the place to do that and we’ve previously highlighted some digital reasons to attend.

This year’s BIG Show resonates a key theme repeated in session after session: It’s a Digital World, and Retail Brick and Mortar live in it. Customers demand a seamless experience and Retail must deliver.

There are a myriad of seminars, sessions, and keynotes to attend and defining your agenda can be a tad overwhelming. We’ve narrowed down the impressive list to the top seven we’d attend in an effort to educate and give real world examples on how to capitalize on this seamless, digital brick-and-mortar imperative:

• Leading Digital Transformation in a Rapidly Changing Industry: A Conversation with Kenneth Chenault. Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault discuss the digital transformation at AMEX.
• Connected Stores: How to Serve the Digital Customer. Fred Argir of Barnes & Noble chats about the day when 100% of shoppers will be 100% connected.
• You’re Doing it Wrong: Where Customer Expectations and Your Execution Diverge. Our own Eric Feinberg, VP Marketing at ForeSee shares the need for seamless shopping experiences as revealed through the groundbreaking research of the 11th Annual ForeSee Experience Index.
• Creating Meaningful Customer Experiences: The Store as the Digital Magnet. Savio Thattil of Sephora and Ratnakar Lavu of Kohl’s explore how the in-store experience must match the way we shop online.
• Retail Disrupted: Navigating the Digital Age. Executives from the power brands of NIKE, Fossil, and Disney’s EVP of Retail Paul Gainer combine to converse on the breaking down of barriers to entry due to the  digital disruption of retail industry – and what they’re doing about it.
• Physical or Digital? The Choice is BOTH! Chairmen and CEO’s from Under Armour, Westfield, and John Lewis reveal how they have developed a physical and digital strategy to create a more real-time, intimate and human relationship with their customers.
• Toppling Tradition: House of Fraser’s Customer Insight Team. House of Fraser has radically changed their entire core business infrastructure and digital is a key piece. Join Sarah Baillie, Elaine Smith, and Chief Customer Officer Andy Harding, as they share real-world examples of their success.

There’s a great post here by Retail Experience Strategist Randy Kish that highlights additional sessions that pique our interest (IBM Watson is featured in one of them!) so don’t be shy in exploring.

Look forward to seeing you at NRF this year!

About the Author

Jason Veenker is a passionate advocate for customer experience measurement and serves as a trusted adviser for improving financial customer experiences with ForeSee. He brings over 13 years of partnering with Fortune 500 organizations to help maximize their technology investments. Prior to ForeSee, Jason supported organizations with their strategic business and technology decisions, most recently with Gartner. He earned both his BS in Marketing and MBA through Azusa Pacific University.

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