Unpacking the Insights: A Deep Dive into Qualtrics X4

Unpacking the Insights: A Deep Dive into Qualtrics X4

Hosts: Jack McFarlane & Nick Schlemmer

This week on The Play by Play podcast, Jack McFarlane and Nick Schlemmer talk about key insights from Qualtrics X4: The Experience Management Summit in Salt Lake City, UT.

– AI, customer satisfaction, and feedback in the organization

– AI’s role in improving customer experience

– Data-driven decision making

– Post-pandemic trends in travel and experience spending

– Simplifying complex issues for your customers

Thank you for joining the show today! Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Transcript follows:

Jack McFarlane 0:07
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the HR Happy Hour Network. This is The Play by Play podcast hosted by myself, Jack McFarlane and Nick Schlemmer.

Nick Schlemmer 0:14
Hey guys, how’s it going?

Jack McFarlane 0:16
So this past week, I had the pleasure of attending the annual Qualtrics X4 event that’s held in Salt Lake every year, I got to go with Steve Boese, you know, shout out to the HR Happy Hour Network, one of our founders there. And we had a blast, we really did. It was like, it was like a conference that was mixed with the party is how I would describe it, like huge music bumping speakers everywhere, like a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. It was a cool experience. And while we were there, we got to hear a lot of talks from a lot of major industry leaders like Delta, Porsche, Hilton, American Express, Adidas, obviously, Qualtrics, who, you know, for those that don’t know, are a tech company. And their whole thing this year was their new Qualtrics AI that helps run your business, you know, getting customer feedback, employee feedback, all that stuff, that was their big thing. We’re not going to talk about that today. What I do want to talk about today is just everything we heard from those industry leaders. Nick was unfortunately unable to attend, he’s still in school, so he couldn’t make it out Salt Lake, but he’ll be here kind of as your your viewers guide, you know, he’s going to jump in with some thoughts and even some questions that you guys might have. And we’re just going to basically take a deep dive into what the new post pandemic world leaders are thinking about business.

Jack McFarlane 1:41
All right. To start off, today, we’re going to talk about Zig Serafin. Nick, he is the CEO of Qualtrics. So this was the first guy to speak. Obviously, it’s Qualtrics event, you had a lot to say. But I did like what he had to say about AI. So this is not going to be specific to Qualtrics AI, this was him talking about what he called the AI revolution. So some of his big points was that using AI will make work more human. This was that was a big theme throughout was making work more human. And it he was like making it human doesn’t mean not using machines. Okay? So they envision AI being a very personal, a very interactive experience, that will just make work easier, and not not take jobs away. It will remove the mundane task. So you know, stuff that just takes you, you know, a couple hours a day that a machine could do easily it doesn’t. You know, it’s like if you’re a doctor, like making appointments, like you know, filing out, oh, they’re coming in at this time this understand, like, have ai do that, basically, first topic off my head, I don’t you know what I mean? mundane tasks, know for sure, which basically frees up more time for you to create. So that’s the human part is, by letting ai do all the mundane stuff, it gives you a lot more time to really focus on being creative or more complex issues in your job. And this goes for every industry that these topics that we’re talking about today are not specific to one industry, this is just general business. AI will help make decisions faster. Then after he talked about AI, he switched over to a satisfied versus and excited customer, which was another big thing they wanted to emphasize is that a lot of companies nowadays, oh, we’re looking for customer satisfaction, right? The wanting to solve, if there’s a problem, they want to solve it and satisfy the customer. Well, not just Zig. But all the CEOs and CMOS that talked we’re very for know, we want the excited customer, you know, we want the customer that’s going to interact with us. And that’s going to be a lifelong, you know, lifelong customer because you just don’t get that with satisfied you can be satisfied and not happy, if that makes sense.

Nick Schlemmer 4:10
No, yeah, that makes sense.

Jack McFarlane 4:13
So Qualtrics with their new AI, they were big into surveys and getting customer feedback. So that’s kind of what this part is going to come from. And they’re so the only 1/3 of customers speak up when there’s a problem. And that 64% of consumers and customers will switch companies after one bad experience. So you don’t even get a chance to fix a problem. That is why they want in by they I mean all the companies are trying to find a way to interact with customers on every channel, especially social media, Facebook, tik, Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, any social media, they want you to connect, connect, connect, because they want to build excited customers not satisfied customers. And I thought that was a big takeaway too. Do you have any thoughts on that Nick, or what’s kind of jumping?

Nick Schlemmer 4:58
I got a couple different things. So jumping back up to where you started in the beginning to where you said you wanted to make, or they wanted to make the experience more human, I believe is what you call it. Yes, every he first said that or he’s on stage. It gives his introduction he says that. Just hearing you say it. I was like, that doesn’t make any sense. Ai seems like super technological, more technology side, how would that make things more human? So I was wondering, did that same thought go through your head whenever he said that we are sure human?

Jack McFarlane 5:29
Yeah. Well, I mean, that is the first thing he said. And like on the giant screen that pops up, you know, the word human and someone working on computer and I think everyone was like, okay, AI? Seems like that’s the opposite of more human. Yeah, seems more machine. And I thought the same thing. But I mean, like I said, the way that he described it is it’s not making it more human in the sense that you’re working with less machines, you’re you’re making it more human in the fact that you can focus on more creative, more complex issues. You’re letting the machines do the mundane. Easy, you know, yeah. Tasks. Just have to find in your workday.

Nick Schlemmer 6:04
Yeah, those time consuming tasks that exactly don’t have too much relevance, but they have to be done. Kind of Exactly. Yep. Yeah. And then, one other thought I had was, you mentioned that only a third of customers speak up whenever they have a problem. And I related to that, like, right away is because most times, like whether I’m staying at like a hotel, or maybe it’s a restaurant, and maybe they never came back for like refill my water, I’m not the type of guy that’s gonna, hey, like, start something or say something, I’ll just let it slide. And that’s just who I am. So that totally makes sense to like most people, they don’t want to speak up, they don’t want to, like, potentially cause a problem or an issue. So that one, that one’s stuck out to me a lot.

Jack McFarlane 6:48
Yeah, and that’s a big problem facing all companies is that not a lot of people are speaking out when something’s wrong. They’re just simply switching. Yeah, they’re switching to different brands switching to a different hotel, or flight or whatever. And so, you know, that’s why they want you to interact with customers on average. Yep. No, you know, build that excited customer, because then they are more likely to let you know when there’s an issue. And another thing that now this is Qualtrics related that their AI, it’s a lot of survey based, so it’s a lot of send it out to the customer, they’ll take a survey. But what they were saying that once the AI gets enough surveys for your company, or business or whatever, then it can start to predict when there might be an issue before even the survey. So that’s, they kind of wrap that into with it. Like, look, maybe not everyone’s saying it but our AI can predict when there might be a problem or, or what area might be lacking. So they kind of tied it, it was, you know, it’s very informative, but it was also a bit of a sales pitch, you know, yeah, of Qualtrics. So, but yeah, you’re on the right track there. So why don’t why don’t you I know you weren’t there, Nick. But I did give him a rundown on everything. Um, I’m gonna let him take over, he’s going to talk about Lindsay Vaughn, who, for those who don’t know, is an Olympic gold medalist and skiing. So what does she have to say next?

Nick Schlemmer 8:07
I’d love to talk about this. So as Jack said, she’s an Olympic gold medalist. So she came to this conference through the eyes of an athlete, not necessarily of like a CEO or CMO, like Jack mentioned before. So all most of her main points, I would say, would be hard working, doing what you can, having passion in what you do, never stopping just because you fail one time, doesn’t mean you can get back up and do it again, you could always get back up and start again. So she talked about a lot of things to where, through the eyes of an athlete, to where it’s not necessarily involving numbers, or any kind of business or anything like that moreso in your head, your mental capacity, your physical abilities, and things of that nature. So and one of the more main things that she pointed out that Jack really liked, and I would really like as well, is she said that the more data and info that you can collect leads to more confidence into what you’re talking about, or how you’re performing. And I want to get your thought on that Jack. But I think that couldn’t be more of a true statement.

Jack McFarlane 9:15
Yeah, no, I agree with that. 100% I think it applies to business, anything in life, like her example was getting data on a hill, she’s gonna, you know, race down, she, the more data she gets, the more confidence she has, when she’s about to do that. And then if you tie it back into business, you know, if you have a situation and and you need to solve a problem, getting more data can help lead to better decision making. And so that was I mean, obviously, she talked about oh, you know, if you’re working hard, you can do anything, you know, you got to build grit and have passion. I don’t want to knock on her. You know, we’ve all heard that in our lives. Okay. If that was not very special. I’m just going to be honest there. That was the very much an athlete who’s never had to work in business in their life not knowing what to talk about. But the data part was really good. I’ll give her props for that. And another thing she said was some that sometimes you have to just go with your gut. She says, sometimes data might say, to do one thing. But practically, it might be better to do another. So you’ve got to be ready to adapt with it just because this says it doesn’t necessarily mean you should go with it. That’s that’s the human part is Yeah, even though you’re collecting all this data, it’s still very human. Exactly what we can try thing was like data.

Nick Schlemmer 10:34
Yeah, for sure. And you can tie that right back into what you were talking about earlier with Zig, to where you can start to predict like the AI may be able to predict things for the future. But just like you said, sometimes, that might not be right. You have to like each situation is its own thing. Everything’s different.

Jack McFarlane 10:58
Yeah, there’s more than there’s more than data that goes into a decision. Yeah, but data can help. That was her picture. Yeah. So that was the main takeaway from Lindsay Vaughn. After her, we heard from the CMO at Porsche named Robert Adder, and obviously, Porsche and major luxury car brand. So his whole talk was centered around building that excited customer a little more. His whole thing was Porsche is not just a brand, it’s a promise. So it’s like when you buy a Porsche, you know, you’re getting more than a car. Right? And, and I think that can be applied to any business, if you can, if you can build a culture and your business to where it’s more than a product, and it’s more of a family is what he was kind of getting at is trying to build that family that that really brings the excited customers. There, he was, he’s the CMO chief marketing officer. And so he talked about their marketing strategy. And this can be applied to any business. Well, not just Porsche, they said that it’s a very simple strategy, they want to focus on all customer touch points, and not just the major ones. So if you’re a car dealership, a major touch point is when a customer walks into the dealership, how did the car salesman is showing them around a lot and all the major things you think about when buying a car, but Porsche goes even deeper, they want to think about, what is it like when you’re using our website? What is it like when you call the phone? What is it like when you need to repair like they think about every possible customer touch point, and they just focus that they’re big into the feedback culture. So they send out surveys, and they haven’t really, and because they build that family, they get a lot of customer feedback a lot, I forget the number he said, I forgot to write down, but they get a lot more than 1/3. I will say that.

Jack McFarlane 12:45
And then based on that feedback, they give themselves 72 hours to fix it. If they don’t fix it within 72 hours, then they see it as a major failure, and they will compensate the customer for that. So that that’s another strategy you can do into your business is set up. You know, if there’s a problem, we give ourselves three days, and if we don’t fix it in three days, or help start fixing in three days, then we have failed and we owe the customer something. Yeah. Another idea that Porsche had, that I think Qualtrics might be doing as well is a specific customer ID numbers, I think it’s called a Porsche ID for them, or whatever. But it’s basically just give each customer their own number. And that makes it very individualized, very unique. So and a lot easier to pull up a customer profile off to the side of hey, you know, John Doe is having problems with this Porsche. Here’s his ID. Here’s the Porsche he bought when he bought it how many miles all the information so you know, any business could try and implement that and when there’s customer issues, Oh, for sure. And so that was his big thing is try to make your company more of a family more personalized. Go for the excited customer. Interest, use passion, and that was big with Porsche.

Nick Schlemmer 14:00
Yeah, and one of the things I really liked whenever his quote, not just a brand, it’s a promise. Whenever he says it’s a promise and you talked about making it feel like a family or like an experience, it seems that seems to be the trend that we’re seeing nowadays, who are all these different brands and companies want a full rounded experience from the time you get in contact with them to whenever you’re done.

Jack McFarlane 14:25
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I think you know, we’re talking for so it’s hard to not think other car companies but some others that stick out like Ferrari is very much an experience BMW Vinu a lot of BMW dealerships they are very much we build the experience not the car and it makes you want I mean, it makes you want to buy those cars not just that they’re nice, but I mean, I bought now car Max was great. I bought my car a car Max, but it was very much dealership, right? It was not an experience. Like I don’t have any drive to go back to car Max when instead if I had the money I’d be like, oh, man, I want to get a BMW, right? So it works. It really works.

Nick Schlemmer 15:05
Oh, for sure. And one thing just popped into my head. So you know, everybody’s on, not everybody, but a lot of people. Apple is built up such a reputation to where they have returning customers all the time. I could see that in the car culture, to where like, if they create this whole awesome experience, and it’s really personalized, that when that new car that new model comes out, just like the iPhone, they’ll be back get the new one. Exactly. That’s like that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

Jack McFarlane 15:33
That’s building your culture. That’s building a family right there. That is that is a that’s a great example is apple. Yeah. So that the next two speakers did a joint interview, and they were Steve. Now, please bear with me on this name. Okay. Yes, I’m sorry, Steve. So squarey, the American Express CEO. Okay, so Steve, and Edie Bastien the Delta CEO, so American Express Delta, huge partnership, probably the most successful partnership, I think they bring in like $7 billion from their partnership is the number I think they threw out there. So one of the most successful of all time. So the first thing they wanted to talk about was post pandemic trends. So Nick, um, let you take this away. What did they have to say about that?

Nick Schlemmer 16:18
Yeah, sounds good. So they’re still talking about and I want to say, Me and Jack have also pointed out some of these, just in the past just brief mentioned, yes, but that’s true. But they wanted to talk about that. Experience, space is going very strong. So like me and Jack have been mentioning throughout this whole episode. And in the past, people are wanting to spend money on experiences, not just singular items, that purse or whatever it may be, they want to go on that trip, get these experiences that they might only get to experience once, maybe twice in a lifetime. And restaurant, and travel is way up just to go right along with that. So those are kind of the main ones. And another one, that Jackie might be able to help out and touch on this more. But the value is no longer just meaning a lower price tag, there’s a lot more built into what is considered value to a customer.

Jack McFarlane 17:11
Exactly. Yeah. So when you think of like a value brand, or something you think of the cheaper, you know, brand, like like, like great value Walmart’s brand in house brand is is cheaper. And they’re saying no, that’s not the case anymore. Value doesn’t mean on sale. Even though in a lot of people’s minds, that’s kind of what they think of now no value is you might be spending a lot of money, but man, you’re getting a fantastic trip out of it. Like it’s worth the money that you’re spending. It’s I mean, it’s a basic economic principle is that if you’re, if this is a good example, let’s say you wanted to buy a water bottle, and the water bottle cost $3. Well, you are so thirsty, that you would pay $10 for water right now. So that $3 water bottle is very valuable. Yeah. Let’s say that same $3 water bottle, you just chucked the Atlantic Ocean. So you would pay 50 cents for that water bottle. It does not have value anymore. It you know, it’s basically just like price is not what determines value, guys, that is what they’re saying. Yes, exactly, though. That is what’s in a lot of people’s minds. So I know that’s kind of a weird example. But yeah, that’s the best way I could describe it. No, I get it.

Nick Schlemmer 18:31
It’s wired in our minds that way off of just those singular items, right? We’re talking about value of the experience.

Jack McFarlane 18:39
Yeah. Personal value, not financial value. Yeah, I think is is maybe the best way to phrase that. So yeah, they they, obviously delta is a travel company. So they have a lot of data on travel. And they even the CEO, he was saying how shocked he is and how high travel is remaining. Because obviously they expect to travel to take a job after the pandemic. But now that we’re, you know, three years removed, basically, it has not gone down, it’s only gone up. So they really expect travel and experience spending to be around, like for a long time. And which, which is something that we’ve talked about. I mean, we have said that multiple times here on the podcast is that travel is here to stay. So it was nice to hear that from the Delta CEO. I gotta be honest.

Nick Schlemmer 19:31
Yeah. And I’ve got a question off of that for you, Jack. Whenever he was mentioning that did he say like, what kind of age range that that they’re seeing like this? Like kind of Yeah, with the consistency.

Jack McFarlane 19:43
He said that they were seeing millennials and younger mostly so millennial Gen Z, but he did say that. Usually trends are age based, but this one is across the board. For the most part. He said, even baby boomers travel it Experience spending is way up. It’s across the board right now. But it’s more focused in younger Gen Z, millennials, but you see it in Baby Boomers and Gen X.

Nick Schlemmer 20:12
Gen X.

Jack McFarlane 20:15
But yeah, so it’s a trend that we’re seeing everywhere. But they didn’t just talk about trends, they did a couple of different they did brand hiring and turnover and data. So quickly with brand, the whole thing was, don’t just say your company values, you really have to live by them. And that if your company isn’t top down, so like, if the values are only held in the employees, at like a store, right, let’s, let’s say you’re running a store, you’re the CEO, if the values are only in your employees, and you don’t have them, then it doesn’t matter, the values have to be all the way throughout the whole hierarchy of your business. And that you really have to live by them. Because that’s what makes a good culture. And as we heard from Porsche and, and Zig like, like, building a culture is, is massive into making an excited customer and getting all this feedback and, and making millions of dollars. You know, that’s what we’re getting out here. It’s a business. And then to just treat your customers good. I mean, who doesn’t know that? I’m sorry. I’m gonna point it out when it’s a little bit. Okay. So we all know that to your customers. Great, guys. If you have a business, that’s that’s good idea. Yep. Then they talked about some turnover. And, you know, we’ve talked about the snake, you know, the quiet quitting, how, especially younger workers, they’ll just jump from place to place like, Oh, they’re paying me more. Yep. So and it’s a problem that they face. And, and guys, these companies, every company that talked was in the top 50 have voted best places to work for. So they’re doing it right, and they’re still dealing with this issue. They said, to focus on employee experience.

Jack McFarlane 21:56
So really, you know, it’s not just sending surveys to your customers, it’s sending surveys to your employees, you know, you know, what do you think of working here? What can be improved? What do you like? What do you dislike, all this other stuff really focused on making your employees the number one priority, not just the customer? Yep. Allow them to learn and grow at work. Shocker, allow advancement, that is a good idea to let your employees be unique. Don’t just throw them in a cubicle, and you know, have them crunch numbers all day long, like, let them have their personality, let them bring that uniqueness to work. And then finally, they talked about employee benefits is another huge thing is because, you know, let’s say you are looking to be a pilot, and, you know, American Airlines is offering you 3000 a year more than delta, well, why would you pick Delta, if they’re, you know, yeah, offering you less money, their whole thing was, you can allow good benefits, that will help the offset of that, what their example was, they let every employee at any level of Delta fly for free, based on seating availability. So you can do a unique benefit like that. And the last thing they said, was data, their whole thing was they get lots of data. Obviously, these guys are major CEOs, they have hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re working 18 hours a day, they get a lot of data, they wanted to let everyone in the audience know that. Data should tell a story, right? It they don’t want empty stats is how they described it. They want the data to mean something because they’re getting so much data. And obviously, you know, 99% of people are not the boss and work for a boss. So it’s good to know that if you’re sending data to someone, you want it to mean something like and you want data that helps with the future, not data that is the past, what because what does that do? You can use past data to sort of predict the future, but they want data that is going to really help you with the future. So not just like, oh, last year, we sold 1 million tickets. Good job, guys. Because that doesn’t that doesn’t help move the business forward. And that was what they had to talk about. And that was honestly my favorite talk of the day. They were very funny together. And they said a little more than than what we’re seeing here. But these are the base principles. After them. We got to our final speaker of the day. He’s the Hilton president. It is Chris necesita. Once again, I’m not exactly exactly sure. And he wanted to talk about customers and fixing issues. So Nick, why don’t you take away? What did he have to say about that?

Nick Schlemmer 24:36
Yeah, so it looks like he started off strong with saying, Ask, listen, and then act. Don’t wait for that problem to occur, fix it in the moment and fix it right whenever it occurs. So basically, in the moment, another thing was the act of listening is far more powerful than anything else that you could do, which I believe that fully. Yes, fully listening to somebody could really help you determine what to say next, what to do next how to act, things of that nature. Something else he mentioned was try to simplify these complex issues and problems that may come up as best as you can obviously, I know a lot of times big companies can run into, you know, major problems, and could take time could take more money could take a lot of manpower. But a lot of times, if you can treat it, or just bring it down to earth, like, we’re gonna do this, this and this have a good plan, have a good setup for it, I think it can make things a lot more easier.

Jack McFarlane 25:35
It can be very overwhelming, if you have a big issue. So simplifying it, it can really get an attack plane in order and how to solve it. Yeah. So yeah, that was the big thing. And the last thing he said was, that product is not the element of customer experience. It it’s part of it, but just just a customer buying a product is not that’s not the whole thing. You know, I mean, so. And I think, you know, we all kind of know that, like, obviously, there’s a lot more that goes into buying a product. If you just wanted to point that out, too.

Nick Schlemmer 26:12
Well, it’s kind of like what we’ve been talking about with all of these other guys making an experience. Yes, they are a company. They’re still selling some sort of product or service. But the end goal is to not just sell it to them once. Right? Exactly.

Jack McFarlane 26:27
They weren’t that excited customer that was the big takeaway is you want excited, not satisfied. So you got to build up your culture and your brand. Listening, that was the main thing I got from the Hilton president is, is make sure that you’re really listening to your customer, not just and what they’re saying. But also in what they’re not saying, you know, if if you’re getting 10 customers, and they’re all like, oh, the bed is great. The bed is great. The bed is great. This is great. This is it, and they leave out, let’s say the bathroom, no one complements the bathroom. Well, then, hey, there’s another complimenting all this other stuff in the room. They love the TV, they love the bed. No one loves the bathroom, that might be an issue. So really listen on what they’re not saying as much as their as what they’re saying.

Nick Schlemmer 27:14
Oh, for sure. And and that could probably that took me back to the what Zig said, with having the AI do it for you like that could potentially be something that AI could find, like, hey, exactly.

Jack McFarlane 27:26
Maybe you look at this. I just thought that right? Yep. No, that’s exactly what they were meaning by that. So yeah, that’s good. And that was it. That was the event went. And I heard some other Qualtrics people talk, but it was more specific to the Qualtrics API. So we’re not going to get into that with you guys. Unless Qualtrics wants to pay us. Then I would be glad to talk about that all you want guys. So Qualtrics if you’re listening, I’ll talk about it.

Nick Schlemmer 27:53
We’ll talk about good sponsored show. Yeah.

Jack McFarlane 27:56
Yeah. So that was it.

Nick Schlemmer 27:58
It sounds like you learned a lot got a lot of good information.

Jack McFarlane 28:01
It was very, I learned a lot. That is a great way to put it. I really learned a lot. It was a cool experience, seeing all the major CEOs and CMOs and all that too. So we’ll take a quick break, and we’ll come back with a quote of the show.

Nick Schlemmer 28:19
Alrighty, guys, we’re back. We’ve had a great episode. So far. It’s been a blast. But we’re gonna wrap it up with the quote of the show today. And Jack, I’ve got one coming at you from Oprah. Oprah Winfrey.

Jack McFarlane 28:29
Okay, the big O big. I’m excited to hear it.

Nick Schlemmer 28:35
But here we go. So she said, and I quote, you define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.

Jack McFarlane 28:44
Yeah, I love that. I love I like to say, I think that can be applied to business too. Like don’t let other people define your company, you exactly the defining link of your company. So I think that fits in perfectly with this episode.

Nick Schlemmer 28:57
Yep. And I wanted to tie it back into we all talked about creating, creating each and every experience different, personal. So each different company. Don’t let all the other scripts of all the companies write what you do. Find your own to find your own life to find your own route. So that’s what I that’s what I was kind of thinking.

Jack McFarlane 29:13
I love that. That’s perfect. Well, what a great way to end the show. We really appreciate you guys listening once again, we hope that you learned as much as we did, and that you really enjoyed it and we’re you know, we’re excited. We got a lot more to go this year. So a lot of good fun stuff coming at you guys. So thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai