The Top 31 Customer Success, Support, Experience & Service Conferences to Attend in 2020

It's important to take time away from the phones every day so you can dedicate your brainpower to analyzing trends, conducting trends, and working proactively to grow and improve your skills.

And sometimes, you have to hit the books to get better at your job. Luckily, though, instead of going back to school, you can do that at a conference over just a couple of days.

Conferences, forums, and workshops are a great way to brush up on your skills, learn new ones, and hear from thought leaders and expert practitioners in your industry. Plus, you can use the opportunity to meet and network with peers within the customer success community.

So, once you find some time in your schedule, find an event that looks interested from this comprehensive list. We've organized these events in chronological order and by region — so whether you're in North America, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific region, you'll be able to find an inspiring and educational event coming up soon.

North America

1. DX Summit

Date: October 12-14, 2020

Location: Huntington Beach, CA

Source: MarketingHub

DX Summit is a digital customer experience strategy summit with an emphasis on leadership, vision, and culture. Hosted by CMSWire, an outlet that covers digital customer experience and marketing technologies, workshops and breakout sessions will ensure attendees are getting the latest insights from the experts.

Notable Speaker: Jonah Berger, Marketing Professor at University of Pennslyvania

2. Customer SuccessCon

Date: February 18th, 2020

Locations: Webinar

Customer SuccessCon is about "the art and science" of customer success, and the conference is held at a variety of locations around the world to keep the events small in size. This helps to facilitate in-depth conversations and promote networking among attendees.

Notable Speaker: Tyler Daley,  Director of Success Management at ChartMogul

3. SaaStr Annual 2020

Date: March 10-12, 2020

Location: San Francisco Area

Source: Zuora

SaaStr is one conference for everyone who works in the software as a service (SaaS) industry. There is specific content for the customer-facing world, as well as opportunities to learn from and collaborate with SaaS product, marketing, and sales professionals to learn about how to create a remarkable customer experience with the products companies use every day.

Notable 2018 Speaker: Dharmesh Shah, Co-Founder and CTO, HubSpot

4. X4 Experience Summit

Date: March 10-13, 2020

Location: Salt Lake City, UT

The X4 Experience Summit is an annual gathering of the world's best experience brands. Leaders in Customer, Employee, Product, and Brand Experience management gather into one space containing over 100 tactical breakout sessions led by industry analysts, executives from leading brands like American Express, MasterCard, and Google, and subject matter experts.

Notable Speakers: Ellen Degeneres, Comedian

5. Adobe Experience Summit

Date: March 29-April 2, 2020

Location: Las Vegas, NV

Source: Adobe

The Adobe Experience Summit is dedicated to teaching attendees how to create an exceptional, experience-driven business. There are a variety of tracks available for customer success professionals, as well as marketers and product designers, who are interested in learning how to design a great customer experience across every step of the process someone goes through with a business.

This huge conference is coming right up, but if you can't make it to Vegas in person, you can also sign up to attend the event virtually.

Notable Speaker: Tom Brady, NFL Quarterback

6. Next Generation Customer Experience

Date: March 23-25, 2020

Location: Indian Wells, CA

At NGCX, customer experience innovators across a variety of different industries will meet to learn about understanding the customer journey, making customer experience a priority across a business, and building brand equity to improve customer experience and loyalty. 

Notable Speaker: Kristin Reilly, VP of Global People Experience at Walmart

7. MarTech

Date: April 15-17, 2020

Location: San Jose, CA

Source: MarTech

MarTech is "a tech conference for marketers," but there are plenty of workshops and keynotes dedicated to how technology can improve customer experience, too. This year you can learn about customer data management and how the technology in that field will influence customer relations in the future. 

Notable Speaker: Erin Alemdar, Senior Digital Strategist at Whereoware

8. Smart Customer Service

Date: April 27- April 29, 2020

Location: Washington, D.C.

The Smart Customer Service agenda is chock-full of tactical content about creating a customer-centric culture within organizations, with keynotes, workshops, case studies, and panels to learn from the experts. Now in its seventh year of operation, this conference helps teams develop a sound customer service strategy.

Notable Speaker: Geoff Ables, Managing Partner at C5 Insight

9. Modern Customer Experience

Date: March 23-26, 2020 

Location: Chicago, IL

Source: Oracle

Oracle's customer experience conference promises inspiration, innovation, and networking opportunities for customer service professionals, as well as marketers and salespeople. Attendees can customize their experience with a variety of different workshops to learn from experts in customer experience — no matter what the business function.

Notable Speaker: Jay Baer, President of Convince and Convert

10. Customer Experience Strategies Summit

Date: April 16-17, 2020 

Location: Toronto, ON

CX thought leaders and innovators will be speaking and learning at this conference, which offers specific sessions for learning about Voice of the Customer, omni-channel customer experience, and customer service innovations strategies. 

Notable Speaker: Melonie Bois, Director Voice of the Customer at 

11. Pulse

Date: May 13-14, 2020

Location: San Francisco, CA

Source: Chicago Business

Described as "the ultimate customer success event," Pulse is dedicated to providing in-depth education and networking for anybody and everybody working in a post-sale, customer-facing role. It brings together some of the best minds in business and has them share their insights over a multi-day event.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Emily Chang, Anchor and Author at Bloomberg Technology

12. The Customer Service Summit

Date: June 8-9, 2020

Locations: San Diego, CA

This summit is run by Incite Group, "a business intelligence company devoted to helping large corporations serve their customers better." Dedicated specifically to customer support, this conference brings together big brand leaders to talk specifically about customer care and social media customer service.

Notable Speaker: Aldine Shamir, Global VP of Customer Engagement & CRM at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

13. CX NYC

Date: TBD

Locations: New York, NY

Source: @Citi

Forrester Research offers forums around the world dedicated to customer experience research presented by Forrester analysts and researchers. The big theme of 2019? "Change The Game: LeadingRadical CX Innovation." Attendees will get early access to new research and analysis, as well as ideas for innovation.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Harley Manning, VP & Research Director at Forrester

14. Customer Contact Week

Date: June 22-26, 2020

Location: Las Vegas, NV

This week-long event features a ton of great educational content — including site visits, master classes, workshops, and interactive discussions about customer care technologies and strategies. It features over 250 speakers and includes 12 hours of networking sessions. 

Notable Speaker: Tyra Banks, CEO of the Tyra Banks Company

15.Support Driven Expo: Americas

Date: TBD

Location: Portland, OR

Source:Support Driven

This is Support Driven's other annual conference, held in the United States. It brings together some of the leaders of customer support to explain how you can succeed in your customer service career. Speaking topics range from leadership to career development. 

Notable 2019 Speaker: Michael Redbord, General Manager, Service Hub at HubSpot

16. Customer Experience Summit

Date: August 11-13, 2020

Locations: Orlando, FL

These events are led by the Disney Institute, where attendees can learn about improving customer experience and crafting brand storytelling from one of the biggest storytellers in the business world — The Walt Disney Company. Plus, the events are at Disney resorts, so you can learn from the experts and have some fun.

Notable Speaker: Marylouise Fitzgibbon, Director of Casting at Disney Parks

17. INBOUND

Date: August 18-21, 2020

Location: Boston, MA

Image Source

INBOUND is an industry event designed to bring together marketers, salespeople, and customer success managers in one place to learn and get inspired together. This year, there's a dedicated customer success track to ensure all of the breakout sessions you attend are useful to your day-to-day job.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Jason Blum, Award-Winning Producer

18. CX Week Canada

Date: TBD

Location: Toronto, ON

This year, CX Week Canada explores customer experience as the central driver for successful business outcomes using tools such as customer service, design thinking, employee experience, and technology to deliver on this promise.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Crystal D'Cunha, Chief Experience Officer at The Inside View

19. Digital Customer Experience Strategies Summit

Date: TBD

Location: Chicago, IL

Digital customer experience, or DCX, takes center stage at this summit, where attendees will learn about how technological innovation can improve and streamline the way professionals deliver support. This event aims to help customer service teams create a "customer-first culture" that's dedicated towards customer success. 

Notable 2019 Speaker: Kristen Engelhardt, Vice President, Voice of the Customer at Salesforce

20. Advocamp

Date: TBD

Location: Toronto, ON

Source: Influitive

Advocamp is kind of what it sounds like — like camp, it's a healthy mix of fun and learning. It's about turning customers into advocates, and speakers and workshops will teach attendees how to actually implement a strategy to accomplish that.

Notable 2019 Speaker: April Dunford, Founderof Rocket Launch Marketing

21. NECCF Conference & Expo

Date: June 9, 2020 

Location: Foxborough, MA

This highly-anticipated conference features some of the latest customer service technology that's revolutionizing contact centers. Attendees can speak to the companies and people who are building these tools and see what's to come in the future of customer service. The conference includes speaker sessions, round-table discussions, and peer-to-peer networking events. 

22. The Art of Conversation

Date: May 5, 2020 

Location: Online

The Art of Conversation is a quality-focused conference in the customer experience space. In 2020, speakers from Zendesk, Postmates, and Greenhouse will share their knowledge and experience in an intimate 300-attendees-only venue. 

This is also the only conference to be completely attendee-powered. The team at MaestroQA is speaking to every attendee beforehand, ensuring that the conference agenda reflects the most pressing QA and CX questions on everyone's mind. 

Europe

23. CX Europe

Date: TBD

Location: London, UK

Source: Forrester

Forrester Research offers forums around the world dedicated to customer experience research presented by Forrester analysts and researchers. The big theme of 2019? "Change The Game: Leading Radical CX Innovation." Attendees will get early access to new research and analysis, as well as ideas for innovation.

Notable 2018 Speaker: Harley Manning, VP & Research Director at Forrester

24. Shift/CX

Date: March 25-26, 2020

Location: Frankfurt, Germany

Another comprehensive conference for marketers, salespeople, and customer service reps, Shift CX describes itself as a two-day congress to regroup and realign around customer focus in the new digital age. First, attendees learn about the process of improving customer experience, and then they learn about using technology to implement strategy.

Notable Speaker: Ulrike Peter, Head of Marketing + PR at Schlösserland Sachsen

25.Support Driven Expo: Europe

Date: TBD

Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Support Driven Expo is the conference run by Support Driven, a community of 4,000+ professionals working in the customer success and service industries. Come for tactical talks, inspirational keynotes, and how-to content delivered by actual practitioners who live and breathe customer success.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Asa Nyström, VP of Customer Advocacy at Buffer

26. Customer Engagement Summit

Date: TBD

Location: London, UK

Source: Engage Employee

This is Europe's biggest customer and employee engagement event — two critical keys to building a strong business. Learn about remaining agile in an age of technological disruption while harnessing the power of technology to improve results at this conference.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Seth Ellison, Executive VP & President of Levi Strauss Europe

27. Customer Service & Experience Summit

Date: September 14-15,2020

Location: London, UK

Attendees will learn how to deliver a remarkable customer experience at this event, which will focus on how AI, self-service, social media, and most of all, empowered employees, can advance your customer service strategy. Topics range from self-care customer service to developing training and assessing talent. 

Notable Speaker: Christina Liciaga, Head of Customer Service at HSBC Retail Banking and Wealth Management

28. European Insight Exchange

Date: TBD

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Source: CXPA

The European Insight Exchange is an event sponsored by the Customer Experience Professionals Association. It brings together over 150 customer service professionals to share insights regarding the latest trends in customer success and support. This conference offers peer to peer sessions that allow participants to share experiences directly with one another. 

Australia and Singapore

29. Customer Experience Management

Date: May 26-28, 2020

Location: Sydney, AU

This event is about "enhancing customer experience through Voice of the Customer analytics, culture, digitization, brand management, and user experience." Attendees will learn from global industry leaders in in-depth workshops and keynote speeches.

Notable Speaker: Monica Minehan, Customer Experience Lead at Vodafone

30. Gartner Customer Experience & Technologies Summit

Date: June 16-17, 2020

Location: Sydney, AU

Source: Gartner

Gartner hosts this event at various locations around the globe throughout the year, where they discuss new innovation in thought leadership and technology in the customer experience space so companies can operate more cross-functionally to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Notable Speaker: Olivia Huang, Research VP at Gartner

31. CX Singapore

Date: August 29, 2020

Location: Singapore

Forrester Research offers forums around the world dedicated to customer experience research presented by Forrester analysts and researchers. The big theme of 2019? "Change The Game: Leading Radical CX Innovation." Attendees will get early access to new research and analysis, as well as ideas for innovation.

Notable 2019 Speaker: Harley Manning, VP & Research Director at Forrester

Now that you've found a great conference to attend, you may have to persuade your boss into letting you go. If you're not sure what to say, we came up with a few ways you can pitch the idea to your employer. 

How to Convince Your Boss to Send You To a Conference

You might be wondering how you'll actually pay for the sometimes-hefty cost of a ticket to one of these conferences. We have a few ideas to share for starting that conversation to get the budget you need for your admission, travel, and lodging.

1. Pitch it to your boss as a leadership and development opportunity.

Your boss probably wants to ensure she gets a good return on investment before allotting hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for you to attend a conference. So, when you ask for budget, make sure you have a clear plan in place for how you will make it valuable not just for you, but for your entire team.

Offer to take copious notes while at the conference to share and distribute with the team. You could also offer to lead a master class reviewing some of the topics discussed at the conference with other team members. Additionally, you could spend dedicated time, both at the conference and during off-hours, networking with other professionals in your industry over coffee or meals.

Make sure you offer a way for your boss to earn back her investment — so the conference is worth your while, and hers.

2. Apply to become a speaker.

If you apply to become a speaker at the conference, the organization might be able to defray or fully cover the costs of your travel and lodging. That way, you can build your personal brand and thought leadership, attend the conference, and save your team some budget dollars.

3. Attend a virtual conference instead.

Sometimes, the most affordable conference to attend is one you don't need to travel for at all. If an organization is hosting a virtual conference or training event, it's less likely that the ticket will cost as much as an in-person event. Do some research to learn about virtual attendance options — even if the conference appears to be in-person, ask the organizers if they're planning to live-stream it.

These conferences are a great way for customer service teams to learn about the latest trends in customer service. It's important for your team to take time away from your support services and attend these events that will improve their skills. 

For more information about improving customer service, read about the ways you can reduce customer support friction. 

Are there other customer success conferences we should add to this list? Share them with us on Twitter.