The Qualtrics X4 on Tour Sydney event held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) Darling Harbour was a huge success with over 1,300 attendees and more than 30 sessions, including keynotes from Airtasker, BHP, CommBank, eBay, Xero, and others, supported by innovation launches, as well as research and insights from Qualtrics executives.
Following a Welcome to Country by Uncle Allen, Qualtrics managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan, Brigid Archibald took to the stage at the first X4 event in four years, highlighting the thought leaders and business leaders that would share their journey on becoming experience centric.
“Organisations focusing on experience management to connect and retain customers by making emotional connections and designing great products and services will see meaningful results to the bottom line,” Archibald said.
“The aim of X4 on Tour is to inspire you and ensure you leave with the tools and connections to expedite your experience management (XM) journey. We want to show you why you should be asking less and listening more.”
Qualtrics chief revenue officer, Bill McMurray explained the importance of XM, announcing that over 18,000 brands are now leveraging Qualtrics XM, referencing some industry case studies.
“Qualtrics gives AI a human level understanding of where friction and pain lie and steps in while the experience is happening – in the moment, not after the fact,” he said.
“Strategic XM can help you better understand both your customers and employees moving beyond strategy and research into product ranging, pricing, staff benefits and more.”
Qualtrics XM for People Teams enables organisations to understand what employees need and drive action to increase engagement, productivity and retention. “Employees need to be emotionally invested to be more engaged and resilient.
“Research also shows that customers with a full emotional connection with brands are 52% more valuable than customers who are ‘highly satisfied’. You need to be a brand that people love and not just like, by making business more human and not just transactional.”
Qualtrics XM for Customer Frontlines can help surface customer friction and guide frontline teams to better serve clients and ultimately drive improvements across processes and products. It is categorised by Frontline Digital, Frontline Care and Frontline Locations.
“Feedback is automatically routed to the appropriate front lines, so the days of having to ask for feedback are over,” McMurray said.
Qualtrics president of product and engineering, Brad Anderson (pictured below) believes XM is the next generational category of software with Qualtrics becoming the largest XM data platform in the world, now analysing over two billion conversations and more than 1.6 billion pieces of feedback.
“Our platform can identify over 50 emotions expressed by customers from happiness to confusion and measure the intensity of the emotion. It can even read the sentiment of different emojis. Taking this a step further, the platform can also understand intent, friction and effort, allowing action to be taken in the moment and to close experience gaps,” Anderson said.
“On average, businesses only have a 5% feedback rate, meaning 95% of feedback is unheard. The answer is not more surveys, but instead tune in to conversations with XM Discover (DSCVR) and there won’t be a need to ask a single question.”
Qualtrics XM Discover allows organisations to understand what people are saying about the company – both customers and employees – across a variety of channels including email, review sites, social media, phone conversations and support tickets.
“Qualtrics XM Discover helps customer service teams identify behavioural cues for better support, HR leaders to gain employee insights, product teams to understand feedback for future product development and marketing teams to analyse campaign performance. These tools are designed for everyday users with no technical background required,” Anderson said.
Qualtrics director of XM solutions, Vicky Katsabaris demonstrated the natural language and AI capabilities of XM Discover using the experience of buying a new car.
“The customer journey is the foundation of XM from awareness to purchase through to engagement and renewal to see where and why are customers are dropping out. We are announcing a new solution called Customer Journey Optimiser,” she said.
“This provides a complete view of the omnichannel customer experience and can take your customers where they want to go. Discover friction points and identify how to fix them or redirect customers to a better user experience. When buying a car for example, this means identifying problems and automatically routing the information to the right department.”
Katsabaris also announced that Qualtrics XM For People is expanding with Manager Assist, where managers can view and act on employee experience insights, with research showing that almost six in 10 (58%) of managers received no training before starting in a managerial role.
“Manager Assist can help managers personalise the employee experience by focusing on measures related to employee engagement, inclusion, expectations, intent-to-stay and wellbeing. The scores can be compared with previous reporting periods, as well as company and industry-wide benchmarks. It also offers tips for areas of improvement,” she said.
Qualtrics head of XM Institute, Bruce Temkin, which helps organisations design, deliver and mature XM programs, explained the value of customer experience.
“USD$3.3 trillion of sales are at risk from bad experiences every year and 2.5 billion employees don’t try their hardest at work because they aren’t being treated well,” he said. “The value of CX in economic terms includes increasing revenue, decreasing costs, mitigating risks, accelerating innovation and enhancing brand. From a strategic agility point of view, CX management capabilities enable organisations to continuously learn what people are thinking and feeling, propagate insights in a useful form and rapidly adapt to the increasing flow of actionable insights.”