It feels as if this summer is flying by. Although it seems like yesterday when we put on Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum East in New York City, it was actually back in June. And now, our Forum For Customer Experience Professionals WEST in Los Angeles  is just eight weeks away.

Like CX Forum East, the theme of our Los Angeles event is “Boost Your Customer Experience To The Next Level.” We picked that theme to showcase examples of companies that improved the customer experience they provide, whether they were just starting out, already leading their industry, or somewhere in between. 

To kick off the event, Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Megan Burns will describe the four-step path to customer experience maturity that she details in her new report. The fascinating thing about this study is that when we started it, we thought we’d uncover several paths that companies have followed to get to success. But what we found instead is that there is only one path that’s proven to work, and many paths that lead to dead ends and failure.

In addition to speeches and track sessions by Forrester analysts like Megan and my co-author Kerry Bodine, our speaker lineup features senior leaders from companies that recently made major improvements to their customer experience. These executives include the president of Days Inn Worldwide, the CMO and VP of CRM at Sears, the chief customer officer at Eli Lilly, and the president and CEO of Safelite Autoglass. 

Both Days Inn and Sears were showcased in our recent report, “How Companies Improved Their Customer Experience Index Scores, 2013.” They have great stories to tell about how they’ve advanced along the path to customer experience maturity. And I’ve recently seen both Tony Ezell of Eli Lilly and Tom Feeney of Safelite speak – they’re both highly engaging as well as insightful.

We’ve also got some exciting news. This year, for the first time, we’ll be announcing the names of the 2013 1to1 Media Customer Champions live on stage. The 1to1 Media Customer Champions program recognizes executives who believe in treating customers in a way that builds loyalty and engagement while driving bottom-line results for their organization. Now in its eleventh year, the program honors 10 executives annually who use innovative approaches to instill customer-centric strategies throughout their organizations. I’m honored to be one of this year’s judges. Although I’m not through all the nomination forms yet, I’ve already got some favorites — it’s inspirational to hear what some of the nominees have done.

Finally, as a “thank you” to readers of this blog, we are offering a $100 discount on tickets — but only to people who register online, and only if they enter this special code: CXW13WEB. Plus, if you register before 8/31/13, you can also get our Early Bird pricing for a combined $300 in savings. 

I hope to see you on October 9th and 10th at the JW Marriott in Los Angeles! Or, for those of you based in Europe, join my colleagues at the Forum for Customer Experience Professionals EMEA in London (November 19th to 20th).