Latest News VM LIVE to Spotlight New Ideas in Retail Customer Experience By Staff Friday, July 29, 2016 12:18 AM NEW YORK—Customer Experience, or CX, is one of the most talked about topics in retailing today, and for good reason. By enhancing the Customer Experience, retailers can create excitement that attracts consumers to their stores and engages them with their brands. As successful retailers have learned, CX can be a valuable component in an omni-channel sales approach and an effective way to differentiate a store from its competitors.Customer X 360, a new VM LIVE event at Vision Expo West, will present new ideas that are shaping the in-store customer experience. This special program for retail executives will bring leaders from inside and outside of the optical business to talk about and illustrate how CX is the essential approach now, blending data management, digitized displays and new merchandising environments to engage the customer. Attendees will learn what kind of experiences drive customer acquisition, satisfaction and retention, which tools retail managers should consider to transform and enhance the customer experience, which tools hold potential for the exam experience and the dispensary and which new technologies bring the right combination of “click” and “brick” to the eyecare practice and optical retailer.Pete Bridgman. Guest speaker Pete Bridgman, senior vice president and general manager, LensCrafters North America will share his views about the customer experience and discuss the CX strategies of the world’s leading optical retail chain. Bridgman is responsible for the brand, product, innovation, customer service, people and technology strategies for the nearly 1,000-store retailer with locations across the U.S. and Canada, including shop-in-shop LensCrafters’ locations opening in select Macy’s Department Stores in 2016. As an architect of strategy and associate engagement, his emphasis is LensCrafters’ sustained growth, both sales and profit.Other VM LIVE speakers will be announced soon.VM LIVE is another in a series of Vision Monday’s leadership-driven, special live information-sharing and networking events, targeting senior retail executive decision makers and influential practitioners.VM LIVE will be held on Wednesday, September 14 at the Venetian/Sands Expo & Convention Center, just prior to the start of International Vision Expo West, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.Tickets are $95, and registration is now open for VM LIVE Customer X 360 at www.Visionmonday.com/live.