Keynote Speaker

Claes Fornell, Professor - Chairman, CFI Group
Claes Fornell is the Chairman and founder of CFI Group. He is one of the world’s leading experts on Customer Satisfaction Measurement and Customer & Employee Asset Management. He is responsible for the development and design of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a national Economic Indicator, and for similar indices in Europe and Asia. His work has also led to the development of the CFI Group patent protected software.

Claes Fornell is the Donald C. Cook Professor of Business Administration and the Director of the National Quality Research Center (NQRC) at the University of Michigan. He has advised leading corporations worldwide on the use of Customer and Employee Asset Management for improved measurement, strategic and financial performance outcomes.

Born and raised in Sweden, Claes Fornell received a Doctor of Economics in 1976 from the University of Lund, Sweden and taught at Duke and Northwestern after completing work as a Fulbright Scholar through the University of California at Berkeley. He came to Ann Arbor in 1980.

Claes Fornell has written more that 60 articles and books. He also has served on the editorial board of all the major academic journals in the field and regularly appears in both broadcast and print media as an expert on customer satisfaction and its implications on corporate performance and financial markets.