What do my customers want? Astute executives are asking this question more frequently than ever—and for good reason. Leading retail companies understand that they are in the customer-experience business. How they deliver for customers is as important as what products they deliver.
This year’s NACS Leadership Forum takes attendees on a journey of their own to discover how they can become a more customer-centric organization. Speakers will help attendees navigate the steps needed to improve customer experience, moving from individual touchpoints to end-to-end journeys.
Customer journeys are a progression of touchpoints that collectively add up to the experience customers get when they engage with companies. Seeing the world as their customers do helps leading companies better organize and activate employees around customer needs. Paying attention to the complete, end-to-end experience customers have with a company from their perspective can yield remarkable insights.
Designing the customer experience requires restructuring interactions into different sequences and soon requires digitizing processes, reorienting company cultures and enhancing new approaches. Agile, digital-focused companies significantly outperform competitors, according to studies. To achieve impressive results, businesses must embrace new ways of working.
Rewiring a company to provide leading customer experiences can take several years and requires active engagement from company leaders and frontline staff. Executives at customer-centered companies engage employees at every level of an organization, working directly with them in retail settings, taking calls and venturing out into the field.
Delighting customers by mastering the concept and execution of an exceptional good customer experience is a huge challenge. But it is an essential requirement for leading in today’s retail environment.
If you would like to receive an invitation for next year’s event, visit our registration tab for more information.
The NACS Leadership Forum is a world-class event that brings together established leaders from the convenience and fuel retailing industry to explore high-impact and meaningful approaches to business in a dynamic setting.
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11:00 am – 5:00 pm
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Registration Open
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1:00 pm – 4:55 pm
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Top-to-Top Business Appointments (by invitation only)
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3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
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Afternoon Networking
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5:00pm – 6:30pm
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Help Your Company Thrive by Creating Good Jobs
The Good Jobs Strategy—developed from decades of research from MIT professor Zeynep Ton—creates superior value for employees, customers and investors by combining investment in employees with operational choices that increase employee productivity, contribution and motivation. This high-performance system delivers financial opportunity for companies and offers alignment on the competitive and moral arguments for change in the workplace.
In an intimate Q&A with NACS CEO and President Henry Armour, discover why Chet Cadieux, chairman and CEO of QuikTrip, chose to implement the Good Jobs Strategy at his company, and hear him discuss how the resulting transformation that the high investment in workers translated into lower costs, higher profits and greater customer satisfaction.
Panelist: Chet Cadieux, QuikTrip chairman and CEO
Moderator: Henry Armour, NACS president and CEO
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6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
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Welcome Reception
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8:00 am – 5:00 pm
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Registration Open
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8:15 am – 9:00 am
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Networking Breakfast
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9:00 am – 10:15 am
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OBSERVE: Understand the interaction through the customer’s eyes
What Buttons to Push: The Values That Trigger Convenience Customers
Consumers are hungry for time and convenience, the cornerstone of our industry, yet competition to satisfy those needs has never been more fierce. How can convenience stores continue to attract and retain customers?
Using first-of-its-kind data from a global study of a half million consumers—customized specifically for the Leadership Forum audience—David Allison will identify the values that convenience store patrons share in common, a far more powerful way to motivate target markets. Why? Because what we value determines what we do. Once you know the values your customers are using to make their decisions about everything, 24/7/365, you’ll be able to influence their behavior. Inventory, marketing, training, customer service, technologies—every decision you make will be as much as 8X more effective once you know what buttons to push and once you know the values that trigger c-store customers. “Valuegraphics” disprove outdated ideas about age, income and gender, and will multiply the effectiveness of every marketing dollar.
Speaker: David Allison; human behavior expert, author and founder of the Valuegraphics database
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10:15 am – 10:45 am
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Networking Break
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10:45 am – 12:00 pm
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SHAPE: Redesign the business from the customer back
Know Thyself: Five Ways to Find Success in This New Era of Convenience Retailing
Prior to the 1990s, the recipe for retail success was simple. Retailers diff erentiated themselves across four key dimensions: brand, assortment, price and convenience. Then everything changed when the last element—convenience—took on a new meaning. Convenience, once synonymous with “location, location, location,” became distorted by way of e-commerce and Amazon. Together these turn-of-the-century innovations showed the world that anything could be consumed with the quick press of a button, and convenience became less about the “where” of retail and more about speeding up the “why.” While there is no one right path, evidence does suggest that there are five key focus areas retailers can leverage to fortify their identities within this new era of convenience retailing.
Speaker: Chris Walton, CEO and Founder of Omni Talk and Third Haus, a retail technology lab and joint venture with Xenia Retail; former vice president of the Target’s Store of the Future project and vice president of merchandising on Target.com
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12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
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Lunch
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1:15 pm – 2:30 pm
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SHAPE: Redesign the business from the customer back
Customer-centric Digital Disruption
If Amazon, Netflix, Uber and Facebook have proven one thing, it is that disrupting consumer behaviors can be highly lucrative. Indeed, according to former Harvard Business School Professor Thales S. Teixeira, each of the aforementioned companies created a short cut—in effect, reset the value proposition—for consumers across various industries: retail, entertainment, transportation and news. Each company recognized how reimagined business models could deliver a more efficient and bespoke customer experience in the age of the customer. How will convenience retailing follow suit?
Speaker: Thales Teixeira, Co-founder of Decoupling.co; former Harvard professor
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2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
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Afternoon Networking
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3:30 pm – 5:25 pm
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Top-to-Top Business Appointments (by invitation only)
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6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
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NACS Reception & Dinner
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9:30 pm – 10:30 pm
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NACS After-Dinner Cocktails
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8:15 am – 9:00 am
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Networking Breakfast
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9:00 am – 11:00 am
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PERFORM: Align the organization to deliver against tangible outcomes
People-First Culture: Building a Unique Experience for Your Customer, Employees and Community
Michel Falcon, hospitality entrepreneur, advisor and bestselling author, will discuss his People-First Culture philosophy and 3P Strategy, which will teach you new and affordable ways to enhance customer experience and employee engagement to grow your business. During your time together, you will learn how to increase employee retention by putting people first, how to train your employees with “people-first” learning and development programs, and discover how benevolent and servant leadership influences a superior customer experience. Explore the trifecta of customer experience, company culture and employee engagement strategies that can help you grow revenue and profitability, all while becoming a well-admired brand.
Speaker: Michel Falcon, entrepreneur, founder of the People First Culture philosophy, restaurant owner/investor, 2018 spokesperson for McDonald’s Canada National Hiring Day Campaign
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Interested in being invited to the 2021 event? The NACS Leadership Forum is by invitation only, and predominantly top executives (CEOs, COOs and Vice Presidents) of successful convenience retailing companies operating 50+ stores. If you fit these criteria and would like to be considered during the selection process, please sign up below.
The Leadership Forum is an exclusive event made available to our Hunter Club supplier members. Hunter Club Gold members are eligible to register up to four (4) company representatives, Hunter Club Silver two (2) and Hunter Club Bronze one (1). The registration fee for Hunter Club members is $6,000 per person. Additional Hunter Club company personnel over and above their allotment will be $7,500 per person. NACS reserves the right to limit the number of additional registrations in order to maintain an appropriate balance between retailers and suppliers.
Registration is open to non-Hunter Club companies based on availability, and they are limited to one (1) participant at $10,000.
Please contact Nat Keller for more information.
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For Invited Retail Attendees: Hotel accommodations will be made by NACS as part of your registration process. Invited Retail Attendees will have their first night stay (Feb 10th or 11th) covered directly by NACS as part of the registration. Additionally, the Invited Retail Attendees, who participate fully in the Leadership Forum events, may also apply for reimbursement of up to $350 for travel and lodging-related expenses.
Supplier Attendees: Supplier attendance is limited to Hunter Club Member companies. For more information on how to participate please contact Nat Keller, nkeller@convenience.org
Nearby Airports: Ground Transportation to and from the NACS Leadership Forum is on own.
Miami International Airport (MIA) 11 Miles, 20 minutes
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) 25 Miles, 45 Minutes