Customer Experience Day 2023

The Adobe Customer Experience Day from eggs unimedia has been the live event for IT and business around the digital experience (DX) business for many years. Since its first edition in 2015, the event format has offered inspiration, practical examples from companies, strategy thoughts and deep insights into Adobe technologies. Networking and the exchange of experience among each other have also always been a priority.

On June 14, 2023, the event was held for the first time at MOTORWORLD in Munich. This location offered participants a great setting to learn more about the future of customer experience and to be inspired by renowned industry and technology experts. As always, it was all about the triad of technology, processes and people:

• How do we as a company create an environment in which our employees (people) can develop to the best of their abilities?
• What technologies can help us deliver a great customer experience?
• How can we link technology and the people involved and optimally design internal and external processes?

The renowned futurologist Lars Thomsen spoke about how the current megatrends will influence our lives in the coming years. He described how artificial intelligence will influence our working and private lives. He sees artificial intelligence as a companion, an accelerator and an opportunity. In his opinion, the age is over when humans were the "servants" of machines. Today, technology is the new friend. For example, he predicts that in the next 3 years, many of us will have a digital personal assistant to take over organizational tasks. He chose an electric bicycle as a metaphor for AI's influence. You still have to work, but you get much further with the same effort.

The participants listened to him with high concentration about what awaits them in terms of mobility, energy, artificial intelligence, robotics and demographic development in the coming years. The futurologist left the stage to great applause.

Ampleggs Engineering is the demo brand of eggs unimedia. This fictitious B2B company from the renewable energy sector has challenging requirements in the area of digital marketing.

This is because the trend today is moving away from classic content management to transactional platforms that enable customers to engage much more intensively with the company and its products. The relationship between customer and manufacturer should therefore become two-way. Customers should configure products, read reviews, make contact, retrieve content, come back, request brochures and quotes, and ultimately convert. To achieve this, the tension between customer and company must be maintained over a long period of time.

The best way for companies to do this is through high-quality, exclusive content and dynamic, personalized experiences. Digital Experience (DX) platforms support the playout of personalized content based on data. The term "digital" stands for much more than just the website, but for a multitude of channels that a company serves: website, intranet, store, portal, app, social media, marketing automation, technical documentation, support etc.

Aline Neumann and Katja Coriand from eggs unimedia presented a demo on how Ampleggs Engineering meets these requirements in an international context and how Adobe technologies support them.

The first customer presentation of the day was then eagerly awaited. Carsten Cramer, Marketing Manager at Genesis Motor Europe, and Michael Deiß, Managing Director of eggs unimedia, jointly reported on Genesis' marketing strategy - and how Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) technology supports it. Genesis is a premium brand in the Hyundai Motor Group portfolio. The brand is already highly successful in its home market of Korea and in the US. Since 2022, Genesis has been working with technology partner eggs unimedia and Hamburg-based agency Argonauten to take the premium brand's customer experience to a new level. The brand's recipe for success: a high-performance DX platform for content delivery, a modern direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales model, unique, personalized services, and all-inclusive all-round carefree packages.

Then it was time for the lunch break, which was used by the participants for networking. The catering at MOTORWORLD was great and was praised by many participants.

Following the lunch break, Joel Köbner from eggs unimedia ignited a veritable assets fireworks with his presentation "Inspiring Customers with AEM Assets Dynamic Media".

Everyone knows the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words", which is attributed to the writer Kurt Tucholsky in the German language about 100 years ago. This saying is still true today, because a visualization explains in moments what needs many spoken words and at the same time emotionalizes the viewer. Today, in addition to color photos, we use videos, gifs, reels, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok & Co. and view these assets on different devices (tablet, smartphone, PC, smart watch, smart fridge, augmented reality) and different resolutions (HD, 4K, 8K, etc.).

The AEM Dynamic Media cloud service helps manage and deliver all assets. The solution leads to faster websites, better user experience (UX) and more conversions. Assets are optimally played out and tailored and various AI services facilitate the work of creative minds and thus leave more room for the most important thing - creativity.

End-to-end digitization and digital self-service offerings are also becoming increasingly important for machine builders. SAFELOG, a leading international provider of mobile transport robots (so-called AGVs), relies on Adobe Experience Manager for their new Service Cloud.

Mathias Behounek, Managing Director of SAFELOG, began the presentation by sharing the company's ambitious growth goals with those in attendance and elaborating on the importance of the project. SAFELOG wants to multiply robot sales in the coming years and therefore needs to break away from the direct proportionality of units sold and service personnel tied up. The solution: customer self-service in the SAFELOG Service Cloud, which should lead to relief for internal staff and at the same time improve the service offering.

In his presentation, Dominic Unterseher, Head of Product Management at SAFELOG, discussed the collaboration with eggs unimedia, the implementation and the functionalities of the platform. Adobe Experience Manager serves as a "data hub" and content management system, and with a little transfer thinking, those in attendance could easily imagine how the use case could apply to their industry.

Afterwards, Nhan Tran, working student at eggs unimedia and AEM Developer in the project, gave insights into the Adobe technologies used and convinced with his expertise.

What would the Customer Experience Day be without a lecture on the "people" themselves?

Matthias Lautenbacher, Senior Agile Coach at eggs unimedia, gave an inspiring and interactive talk on sociocracy3.0, with the central question being: How do we as a company create an environment in which employees can develop? He described how eggs unimedia is on its way to becoming a participatory organization and wants to maintain the "eggs spirit" even as it grows. Using a fictitious example, colleagues from eggs unimedia demonstrated a pattern of sociocracy3.0, with the central principle being "good enough for now and safe enough to try out."

Why agility is so important: The emotional commitment of German employees is at its lowest level in ten years. According to the Engagement Index published annually by Gallup, only 13% of all employees in Germany had a high emotional connection with their employer in 2022. 69%, and thus the overwhelming majority, do duty by the book. The proportion of those who have no emotional attachment and have already quit internally is 18 percent. According to the speaker, simple methods support the status quo, unleash creativity and the ability to act, and his recommendation was quite pragmatic: Just start and learn.

The presentation by Swen Arnold from Adobe was about the content supply chain and he started with a quote from Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb: "Genius is one percent inspiration, and 99 percent perspiration". He then modified it a bit and made the following thesis: "Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent process." This is because a better customer experience today requires much more content than ever before, and the challenge is to structure the entire content supply chain - from planning, through production and delivery, to the final measurement of success. This involves many steps that are often not integrated with each other: Resource planning, collaboration, reviews and approvals, budget planning, production and coordination, content management, playout, performance measurement. Not to mention the different communication channels used for this: Email, meeting, chat, ticket system, Excel, and more.

Adobe Workfront helps companies integrate workflows with each other, eliminate media discontinuities, and get a unified view of projects. He concluded by pointing out the following Adobe offer:

As a participant in eggs unimedia's Customer Experience Day, you can book a one-hour inspiration session with him to literally think outside the box together. Afterwards, if desired, Adobe could offer a "Value Assessm

The closing keynote was reserved for Dr. Teo Pham. He took futurologist Lars Thomsen's outlook a notch lower and illustrated the future impact of AI on our lives. Chat GPT was able to boast 100 million active users just two months after its release. Neither TikTok (9 months) nor Instagram (30 months) had managed that before, which illustrates the enormous impact of this innovation. There are now thousands of AI apps and integrations in business applications for creating texts and assets. Even classic customer journeys may look different in the future. While a Google search was often the starting point of a user journey on the web in the past, a typical user journey could also look "Google-less" in the future: Chat GPT (instead of Google)-> Virtual Assistant -> Spatial Computing Apps.

The magic word of the future is well-formulated "prompts". Prompts are commands that a Large Language Model like ChatGPT then executes.

"Create a table in which you BMW X5, Tesla Model X and Porsche Cayenne" or "I am planning a trip from Munich to Karlsruhe by car. Create me rental car quotes for a luxury electric car from Audi, Genesis, Volvo and BMW."

Dr. Teo Pham concludes his presentation with the following statement: "AI will not replace your job. People working with AI will replace your job". Following the presentation, Teo Pham fielded many questions from the participants, so that the Customer Experience Day ended with a classic "Wetten dass" delay of 37 minutes. Despite the extension, around 50 people took part in the guided tour of MOTORWORLD at 5:45 p.m. and listened attentively to the stories told by the two guides. From 7:00 p.m., the event moved on to the social part. With wonderful summer weather and good food, all participants enjoyed a pleasant end to the day. The participants networked actively with each other and exchanged information about technologies, experiences, best practices and ongoing projects. After 11 p.m. DJ Olcay attracted many guests to the dance floor and at 1 a.m. the Customer Experience Day officially came to an end. Because the next day the next highlight was already waiting at 10:00 - the anniversary event of the 10th AEM Forms Forum.