In early September, our team spent a few days trading screens and laptops for trees and fresh air. 

I know: that might sound like a company offsite, but we were actually attending an event to reflect on the future of customer experience AND record our own podcast on the side (scroll down to listen to the first episode!)

CX Festival in Berlin was a middle ground between recharging in a natural setting and discussing challenges around customer experience with many world-class experts. 

If this sounds like a balance you’d also like to see within your daily work, good news: Next Matter is contributing to more events like CX Fest happening. Keep reading to see how.

Our attendance was celebrated, and instead of pitching everyone with our latest Team Apps or integrations, we focused on exploring the future of CX together with you:

It was so much fun talking about the evolution of CX on the podcast. I felt like I could have gone on talking for hours.

Anna Rauch, Customer Success Manager at Till Freitag

What the CX Festival got right

We’re picky when attending events, but this one was a no-brainer for two reasons.

The first one is that CX Festival isn’t your typical trade show. This was customer experience in the woods, and its lineup and location set just the perfect tone for a value-packed event.

Over 300 customer experience experts got together for two days at a campground 45 minutes away from Berlin, all hyped up for an event that promised “mixed work and play”. The festival delivered in this regard.

The second one is that we had a trick up our sleeves to make this event special. 

We would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we brought your average booth with your average salespeople to give you the average pitch in exchange for boring swag. 

So we rolled into the festival in a branded campervan and used it as our own podcast studio (and mobile home!). More on this below.

1. A killer lineup

CX Fest brought together some of the sharpest minds in CX gathered for keynotes, panels, coffee, and beers, without your average conference center setting with weak WiFi and stale ideas.

Instead, what we found was a unique vibe with talks and networking happening with nature as the backdrop. 

At the festival, you got to hear panels on crafting meaningful customer experiences, case studies of companies turning their customer service around in a short time, first-hand stories of scale-ups navigating negative feedback, and so much more.

The folks delivering those panels and keynotes were vetted world-class experts, who currently lead customer experience at companies like Zendesk, Babelforce, StepStone, OBI, and Samsung.

Of course, we’re proud to say that Jan, our CEO, was among them leading a panel on whether AI agents can survive in the real world.

I met so many great people and had so many good experiences at CXFest2024! One of them was recording a podcast with Jan Hugenroth.
We chatted about the evolution of CS leadership - what the community was talking about in 2016 and what we're talking about today.

‍Scott Tran, Founder at Support Driven

2. The right venue to do “CX in the woods”

The main reason why CX Fest stood out from other events is the fact that all activities took place in the middle of nature.

The setting and schedule offered so many opportunities to engage in activities and workshops that not only involved learning and networking, but also immersing yourself in nature with homemade food cooked in the campfire, an outdoor cinema, or wakeboarding sessions.

This blend of nature and CX made the festival memorable. And, in order to contribute to more events like this one, the setting invited us to do things differently with a Next Matter booth that was in line with the venue:

3. A Next Matter campervan with our own card game

Yes, we brought our own branded campervan, doubling as our HQ and podcast studio for recording our new, CX-focused series, Cards Against Complexity (reach out to join for an episode!). To some attendees, this comfort zone for discussing CX challenges was their favorite "booth" at the festival.

But the van wasn’t just for show. Inside, we recorded discussions diving deep into real-world CX challenges with Julian Hertzog, Christopher Harms, and many other leaders who weren’t afraid to get into what works, what doesn’t, and what’s on the horizon of customer experience.

In each episode of Cards Against Complexity, guests are presented with a complex CX scenario and need to choose from some truly “interesting" outcomes, such as:

• The inventor of a dietary supplement for CX leaders 
• A CS agent who travels in time from 1960 to the present 
• A logistics team that can only use carrier pigeons
• The organizer of the CX Fest 2025 

Here’s how it looked during an actual podcast recording:

Cards Against Complexity, the Next Matter podcast

This leads us to the first episode of Cards Against Complexity, with Julian Hertzog (Chief Revenue Officer of babelforce) and Jan Hugenroth (CEO at Next Matter). 

Both of them join us from the CXFestival campervan to discuss the road to better CX, AI’s role in CX, the “Human Touch”, Hawaiian shirts, hypothetical chatbot warfare, and more. 

Here’s what’s unique about this episode: 

• Julian shares very valuable insights into his journey from investment banking to software sales, eventually landing in the customer experience (CX) industry. 
• Both Julian and Jan analyze the rise of CX and the importance of balancing the all-important “human touch” with automation, especially in high-stakes and complex service transactions. 
• Throughout the entire episode, Julian explains how AI can be integrated into customer interactions but stresses the need for solid infrastructure. They also touch on the CX festival's “Birkenstocks-first” informal atmosphere, which fosters meaningful connections and discussions about the future of CX.

In short, we didn’t just bring our A-game to CX Festival—we brought the entire van, a podcast, a card game, and a lot of workflow automation.

We’re recording more podcast episodes (and you can watch them here) and playing more games of Cards Against Complexity. If you want to record with us and discuss hard CX challenges, reach out.