Brad Anderson, President of Product and Engineering at Qualtrics, is at the forefront of exploring how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing product development and reshaping how companies understand and cater to customer needs. Qualtrics, a leader in the Experience Management (XM) category, is strategically embedding AI into its platform to empower organizations with tools to gather, analyze, and act on customer insights more effectively.

AI's Impact on Product Development

Anderson highlights that AI is significantly accelerating the product development lifecycle. AI can rapidly generate mock-ups of products and systems, drastically reducing development time. Constant feedback, facilitated by AI, can then inform the development of further prototypes in real-time. He notes that AI is also fostering closer collaboration between UX and product manager teams, unifying them through the AI-driven generation of prototypes for UX research.

Qualtrics is already seeing tangible benefits in engineering productivity. AI tools are generating millions of lines of code, which, after human review and correction, are being integrated into the product. Anderson observes that while AI is boosting productivity, it may also lead to a shift in the structure of engineering organizations, potentially resulting in fewer entry-level positions. The focus is shifting towards experienced professionals who can effectively review and implement AI-generated code.

Transforming Customer Understanding

AI is transforming how companies gather and interpret customer feedback. Qualtrics is leveraging AI, including machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), to enhance data analysis and interpretation. These AI-powered features span the entire feedback lifecycle, from survey design to results analysis, increasing efficiency and the depth of insights.

One key innovation is AI-powered conversational feedback, which adapts survey questions in real-time based on customer responses. This leads to more detailed and actionable feedback, with a significant increase in survey completion rates and the amount of information received. Anderson notes that AI-enabled surveys, or conversational feedback, increase completion rates from 75% to 83% and yield 30 times more words in the responses.

Qualtrics Assist, an AI agent, enables users to ask questions, gain insights, and take action on feedback to improve employee and customer interactions. It transforms complex data into simple insights and recommendations, triggering automated actions and workflows to improve experiences and inform decisions.

AI-Driven Features and Innovations

Qualtrics is committed to investing heavily in improving its AI capabilities. Recent updates have introduced cutting-edge AI features that enhance user experience and analytical capabilities across the platform. These include:

• Comment Summaries and Conversational Dashboards: Generative AI powers the ability to summarize thousands of comments, quickly identifying key topics and themes while ensuring anonymity.
• Real-Time Agent Assist: AI summarizes conversation information into key points, enabling agents to better understand customer needs, history, and emotions for more efficient issue resolution.
• Automated Call Summaries: Agents can generate support tickets, send personalized emails, and contribute to knowledge-based articles, ensuring a holistic approach to customer service.
• Video Feedback with Generative AI: Extracts key trends, quotes, and insights from customer video feedback, redefining the understanding of feedback.
• XM for People Teams: Processes employee feedback data from surveys and public Slack channels, providing managers with continuous assessments of employee emotional states and potential attrition risks.
• Predictive Analysis: Qualtrics' predictive analysis capabilities empower users to forecast future trends and behaviors based on historical data, facilitating informed decision-making.
• Intelligent Recommendations: Based on survey results, Qualtrics provides intelligent recommendations for action items.
• Digital Experience Analytics: Detects behavioral patterns like rage-clicking to identify friction points, helping businesses optimize digital experiences.
• Location Experience Hub: Helps businesses analyze customer sentiment at individual store locations and provides AI-personalized responses to enhance engagement.

Looking Ahead

Qualtrics is dedicated to remaining at the forefront of technological advancement, pledging substantial investments to bolster its AI capabilities over the next four years. By leveraging AI-powered feedback analysis, digital experience optimization, and location-specific insights, organizations can build stronger customer relationships, reduce churn, and drive revenue growth. Anderson envisions AI as a tool to "fundamentally change the value experience management produces," introducing transformational change to the market. He emphasizes that businesses should measure their success in introducing AI by how widespread its use is across the organization.