Qualtrics adds to XM platform and launches purpose-built products for CX leaders
Qualtrics on Monday introduced several enhancements to its core suite of experience management applications along with five different products it said would transform customer experience programs into “system of action.”
The Salt Lake City-based firm, which is owned by business software giant SAP, framed the announcement by suggesting that traditional tools to manage customer experiences — which it described as “systems of measurement” — aren’t sufficient to address the agility and flexibility organizations need today.
In its XM platform, for instance, Qualtrics said it had added trust-based actions, which will automatically triggers notifications and recommendations for specific and effective actions if key performance indicators (KPIs) drop below a certain threshold. The firm’s Stats iQ tool, meanwhile, has been fitted with Relative Importance Analysis (RIA), an analytics technique often used by data scientists and statisticians that would help identify the root cause of poor experiences. Qualtric’s XM Directory offering was given role-based access to give granular control for individual users and Segments, which it said would make it easier to personalize customer journeys.
The XM platform additions were complemented by what Qualtrics called “purpose-built” products for various members of CX teams, from front-line workers to leaders. These included CustomerXM for Customer Care to better manage contact centres, CustomerXM for Account Management for B2B firms pursuing account-based marketing (ABM) and CustomerXM for Locations, which could help improve CX for those offering curbside pickup and other physical experiences.
Perhaps most relevant given the recent shifts in response to the pandemic, Qualtrics said CustomerXM for Digital will pinpoint organizations’ digital gaps and proactively identifies focus areas for optimization in order to create engaging experiences that improve customer conversion, retention, and brand loyalty.
Speaking in a breakout session at the KustomerNOW virtual summit last week, Qualtrics head of CX strategy and thought leadership Luke Williams suggested many firm are still struggling to offer what customers need and want online.
“Anyone that doesn’t think digital is a part of your experience — you could be running an amusement park and digital is a big part of that experience, you’re delivering,” he said. “It is just a different face to the business, and so long it’s congruent with your thesis and every other part of your business, customer experience will continue to be a space where we thrive.”
Similarly, while not giving away the launch of CustomerXM for Digital or the XM platform additions, Williams talked described many organizations as hitting a wall in terms of analysis and determining next steps as they came to better understand the state of their current CX.
“You have enough data most of the time. There is telemetry going on all over the business,” he said. “The issue is there is no mechanism for contextualizing information and making it useful.”
And though customer care might already seem like a crowded space, Williams said there was much work to do in terms of enabling self-service so agents can focus on the problems they are uniquely qualified to solve.
“For some reason we’ve overlooked until now the value of what the agent is, and that in some organizations they’re the only human your customer may interact with,” he said. “(You need to consider) the amount fo frustration that can occur from the average human standing by saying ‘Why are we doing this?’”
The Qualtrics bevy of launches on Monday also included an offering for those still in the early stages of transformation, CustomerXM for Foundational CX, which it said would offer insights into an organization’s relational and transactional NPS, CSAT, CES (customer effort score), and more.
Williams said while there are some clear leaders in terms of improving their CX and major laggards, another 40 to 60 per cent of companies are somewhere in the middle and need to step up their efforts.
“I think there’s going to be a survivor bias,” he said. “The companies that don’t get it together won’t make it, and therefore the average quality of the player that survive will (need to be) higher).”
