Welcome to the Fear and Greed daily interview. I'm Adam Lang. In the digital age, every interaction between a company and its customers and employees has meaning. Those interactions have the potential to gather data, to deliver an experience, and to leave a lasting impression of the company so it's little wonder that more businesses are paying much more attention to these interactions and how they can be used to improve the experience for both the customer and the employee. It's a huge space to operate in, and it's one that really didn't exist just a couple of decades ago. Qualtrics is a company with 17,000 organizations worldwide helping them to manage their customer and employee experience programs. Globally that includes huge brands like Coca- Cola, Ferrari, and Microsoft. In Australia, it's BHP, ANZM, and even the ATO. Brigid Archibald is the Asia Pacific and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics and my guest this morning. Brigid, welcome to Fear and Greed.

Welcome to the Fear and Greed daily interview. I'm Adam Lang. In the digital age, every interaction between a company and its customers and employees has meaning. Those interactions have the potential to gather data, to deliver an experience, and to leave a lasting impression of the company so it's little wonder that more businesses are paying much more attention to these interactions and how they can be used to improve the experience for both the customer and the employee. It's a huge space to operate in, and it's one that really didn't exist just a couple of decades ago. Qualtrics is a company with 17,000 organizations worldwide helping them to manage their customer and employee experience programs. Globally that includes huge brands like Coca- Cola, Ferrari, and Microsoft. In Australia, it's BHP, ANZM, and even the ATO. Brigid Archibald is the Asia Pacific and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics and my guest this morning. Brigid, welcome to Fear and Greed.

Thank you so much, Adam. It's such a treat to be here with you.

Thank you so much, Adam. It's such a treat to be here with you.

Oh, it's our pleasure. So Qualtrics has become a very large organization, and as I mentioned, working with some of the best known brands in the world. For those, however, who are not familiar with Qualtrics, what exactly do you do?

Oh, it's our pleasure. So Qualtrics has become a very large organization, and as I mentioned, working with some of the best known brands in the world. For those, however, who are not familiar with Qualtrics, what exactly do you do?

So Qualtrics is an experience management company. In fact, we coined the phrase and the discipline. And what that is, is the ability to listen and understand and then take action in the most meaningful ways to improve the experience of any organization. And there are four core experiences to any organization, whether it be brand experience, product experience, employee experience, and customer experience. And these are all interrelated.

So Qualtrics is an experience management company. In fact, we coined the phrase and the discipline. And what that is, is the ability to listen and understand and then take action in the most meaningful ways to improve the experience of any organization. And there are four core experiences to any organization, whether it be brand experience, product experience, employee experience, and customer experience. And these are all interrelated.

And I imagine all of them generate different sets of data and you have to work with them all. Is that right?

And I imagine all of them generate different sets of data and you have to work with them all. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. And that is one of the benefits of an integrated platform such as Qualtrics. In fact, Qualtrics is the only integrated platform that will allow you to analyze that data in the one platform to make sense of the correlation between customer experience, employee experience, product experience, and brand experience. And we are seeing in Australia some incredible reasons to focus on this. We have a thought leadership component of our business called XM Insights or Experience Management Insights. And the research that we've done in Australia has showed us that, in 2021, there was probably a hundred billion dollars worth of missed revenue opportunity because of poor experiences.

Yeah, that's right. And that is one of the benefits of an integrated platform such as Qualtrics. In fact, Qualtrics is the only integrated platform that will allow you to analyze that data in the one platform to make sense of the correlation between customer experience, employee experience, product experience, and brand experience. And we are seeing in Australia some incredible reasons to focus on this. We have a thought leadership component of our business called XM Insights or Experience Management Insights. And the research that we've done in Australia has showed us that, in 2021, there was probably a hundred billion dollars worth of missed revenue opportunity because of poor experiences.

Wow.

Wow.

And when we look at that from an APJ or Asia Pacific Japan perspective, we can see that organizations that do focus on this as a discipline see three times revenue growth, 2. 1 times profitability, and two times employee retention. And if I think about what's happening in the world today and the environments within which organizations are operating, being able to be experience led in terms of your growth strategy, driving operational efficiencies and retaining employees, that would have to be the three top requirements of any organization.

And when we look at that from an APJ or Asia Pacific Japan perspective, we can see that organizations that do focus on this as a discipline see three times revenue growth, 2. 1 times profitability, and two times employee retention. And if I think about what's happening in the world today and the environments within which organizations are operating, being able to be experience led in terms of your growth strategy, driving operational efficiencies and retaining employees, that would have to be the three top requirements of any organization.

So in terms of that, I mean you've mentioned a number of important things there, a hundred billion dollars worth of missed opportunities really sticks out. But in that experience management sense, is it all about gathering the necessary information to make the right decision? Is that what's at the core of it?

So in terms of that, I mean you've mentioned a number of important things there, a hundred billion dollars worth of missed opportunities really sticks out. But in that experience management sense, is it all about gathering the necessary information to make the right decision? Is that what's at the core of it?

Yeah. Traditionally, we have helped organizations ask the right question at the right time to get the right insight. And there is a place for that. But there's also a place, increasingly for unstructured data. Over 80% of the data that's inside an organization or available to an organization is actually unstructured, unsolicited, right? So things that are on social pages, emails, call center information, there's a lot of rich data that can be collected and we can analyze that data and help organizations get insight. But the key thing is the action that they take with it. If I think about the last 10 years, a lot of organizations would've said that their data rich and insight poor. Well, we can help them with the insight, but ultimately it's the action that they take. So rather than data rich and insight poor, what a shame to be insight rich and action poor.

Yeah. Traditionally, we have helped organizations ask the right question at the right time to get the right insight. And there is a place for that. But there's also a place, increasingly for unstructured data. Over 80% of the data that's inside an organization or available to an organization is actually unstructured, unsolicited, right? So things that are on social pages, emails, call center information, there's a lot of rich data that can be collected and we can analyze that data and help organizations get insight. But the key thing is the action that they take with it. If I think about the last 10 years, a lot of organizations would've said that their data rich and insight poor. Well, we can help them with the insight, but ultimately it's the action that they take. So rather than data rich and insight poor, what a shame to be insight rich and action poor.

That would be worse.

That would be worse.

Yeah. I'll give you one example that might bring this to life. So we are working with Flight Center at the moment and they have a real focus on coming out of this hiatus where corporate travelers didn't travel internationally and domestically. And they are really driving incredible action on the front foot with the data that they're seeing in our platform to help them make the most of this escalation of business travel. And then we have a major retail bank in Australia that came to us because they could see something was happening and they didn't know why. And that's often what happens in terms of organizations coming to us. In this particular instance, the bank thought they had a cart abandonment issue on their website. So consumers were applying for credit cards and abandoning. What they thought was a card abandonment issue was actually a lot worse. It was brand damage. It was people applying for credit cards and then thinking they'd completed the application process.

Yeah. I'll give you one example that might bring this to life. So we are working with Flight Center at the moment and they have a real focus on coming out of this hiatus where corporate travelers didn't travel internationally and domestically. And they are really driving incredible action on the front foot with the data that they're seeing in our platform to help them make the most of this escalation of business travel. And then we have a major retail bank in Australia that came to us because they could see something was happening and they didn't know why. And that's often what happens in terms of organizations coming to us. In this particular instance, the bank thought they had a cart abandonment issue on their website. So consumers were applying for credit cards and abandoning. What they thought was a card abandonment issue was actually a lot worse. It was brand damage. It was people applying for credit cards and then thinking they'd completed the application process.

But they were mistaken.

But they were mistaken.

They were mistaken.

They were mistaken.

They hadn't completed it-

They hadn't completed it-

They hadn't completed. So we put our digital customer experience platform to action onto their website. And we helped them see, in a day, that the issue was not card abandonment, but the fact that customers hadn't completed. And we gave them the data to show them that it actually was a very poorly designed website. It was in fact designed for a computer, but most people were using their phone. So on the phone they couldn't see this button to apply now on the bottom of the screen. So I like that example because often when we talk about experience management, people can think and organizations can think it's about unicorns and parades. And how can you do that at scale, right? Necessarily without a lot of costs you can. But one of the retail bank example, they already had a digital team. They already had a UX team. We just helped them with the insight to take action on that insight. And when they did credit card applications went up by 43%.

They hadn't completed. So we put our digital customer experience platform to action onto their website. And we helped them see, in a day, that the issue was not card abandonment, but the fact that customers hadn't completed. And we gave them the data to show them that it actually was a very poorly designed website. It was in fact designed for a computer, but most people were using their phone. So on the phone they couldn't see this button to apply now on the bottom of the screen. So I like that example because often when we talk about experience management, people can think and organizations can think it's about unicorns and parades. And how can you do that at scale, right? Necessarily without a lot of costs you can. But one of the retail bank example, they already had a digital team. They already had a UX team. We just helped them with the insight to take action on that insight. And when they did credit card applications went up by 43%.

Stay with me, Brigid. We'll be back in a minute. I'm speaking to Brigid Archibald, Asia Pacific, and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics. If I can just take you back before you mentioned the intentional data that you gather and some of that's more anecdotal on social media platforms, emails, et cetera. Sometimes the data you gather is tampered by the questions you ask and how you position them. How much skill is there in framing the right questions to ask in the first place?

Stay with me, Brigid. We'll be back in a minute. I'm speaking to Brigid Archibald, Asia Pacific, and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics. If I can just take you back before you mentioned the intentional data that you gather and some of that's more anecdotal on social media platforms, emails, et cetera. Sometimes the data you gather is tampered by the questions you ask and how you position them. How much skill is there in framing the right questions to ask in the first place?

Yeah. How you ask the right question and when you ask it and how few questions, in many instances, you ask is very important. We have a lot of resource in our business that helps us design into the platform the science behind asking the right questions. So we work with organizations. We just don't deliver a platform of technology. We wrap it with services to help organizations ask the right question in the right way at the right time to get the right feedback. We also have the ability to segment people that have provided feedback. So as you're not inundating and asking for feedback for anyone except for those that you want to. But the real future of this and where we're working with organizations, is augmenting that with the data that's already in an organization. If we take most retail banks in Australia, they'll probably have 40 different types of data collection already. So how can we surface that data and understand it, understand that feedback that's not even solicited, understand it contextual to what's happening and even pick up the sentiment of the word unbelievable. Was the word in a call center unbelievable? Was that sarcastic or was that-

Yeah. How you ask the right question and when you ask it and how few questions, in many instances, you ask is very important. We have a lot of resource in our business that helps us design into the platform the science behind asking the right questions. So we work with organizations. We just don't deliver a platform of technology. We wrap it with services to help organizations ask the right question in the right way at the right time to get the right feedback. We also have the ability to segment people that have provided feedback. So as you're not inundating and asking for feedback for anyone except for those that you want to. But the real future of this and where we're working with organizations, is augmenting that with the data that's already in an organization. If we take most retail banks in Australia, they'll probably have 40 different types of data collection already. So how can we surface that data and understand it, understand that feedback that's not even solicited, understand it contextual to what's happening and even pick up the sentiment of the word unbelievable. Was the word in a call center unbelievable? Was that sarcastic or was that-

Frustration? Yeah.

Frustration? Yeah.

That's the beauty of the platform, is it will pick all of that up for you.

That's the beauty of the platform, is it will pick all of that up for you.

Okay. Two of the very important customer groups in the experience management sense that I can see, it's the customer experience, the people that pay you money to experience your service or your product and the employees. Is there a link between customer and employee experience or are they two entirely separate things?

Okay. Two of the very important customer groups in the experience management sense that I can see, it's the customer experience, the people that pay you money to experience your service or your product and the employees. Is there a link between customer and employee experience or are they two entirely separate things?

Yeah, they're absolutely linked. And I think intellectually most people, most organizations will understand better engaged employees, get better customer outcomes. But what we help organizations do is really operationalize that. We can give the data points to show you that the things that you are going to do with your employees are the right things to drive better customer outcomes. For example, there's a lot of power with employees across all organizations at the moment. They're setting the tone for how they want to work with a lot of organizations. And that goes for the public sector and also the private sector. But we help... There's an organization that we work with is a tech company that B2B and B2C, and the data showed them, from our platform, that the number one thing to focus on with their field service operators, so their frontline staff, was recognizing them as doing a great job. So they could have put their money into free lunches or other things inside the business, but the data showed them all they needed to do was recognize great performance at the field level, and what they would get in return for that was that nine times more likely resolution in the first attempt with the customer.

Yeah, they're absolutely linked. And I think intellectually most people, most organizations will understand better engaged employees, get better customer outcomes. But what we help organizations do is really operationalize that. We can give the data points to show you that the things that you are going to do with your employees are the right things to drive better customer outcomes. For example, there's a lot of power with employees across all organizations at the moment. They're setting the tone for how they want to work with a lot of organizations. And that goes for the public sector and also the private sector. But we help... There's an organization that we work with is a tech company that B2B and B2C, and the data showed them, from our platform, that the number one thing to focus on with their field service operators, so their frontline staff, was recognizing them as doing a great job. So they could have put their money into free lunches or other things inside the business, but the data showed them all they needed to do was recognize great performance at the field level, and what they would get in return for that was that nine times more likely resolution in the first attempt with the customer.

Wow.

Wow.

So if you think about that. Nine times more likely to resolve at first instance with the customer. That obviously has a measurable impact to customer experience, but it also drives operational efficiency.

So if you think about that. Nine times more likely to resolve at first instance with the customer. That obviously has a measurable impact to customer experience, but it also drives operational efficiency.

That's great. That's a great anecdote. Employee requirements have changed, I think, rapidly in the last decade. How important is it for companies to stay across what their staff think, feel, and want? And yeah. You gave us a great example there of frontline service. Just being recognized, made such a meaningful difference. How are you seeing employee requirements evolve?

That's great. That's a great anecdote. Employee requirements have changed, I think, rapidly in the last decade. How important is it for companies to stay across what their staff think, feel, and want? And yeah. You gave us a great example there of frontline service. Just being recognized, made such a meaningful difference. How are you seeing employee requirements evolve?

I love how you said stay across. It's if you go back a couple of years, there'd be organizations that thought an annual survey was the way forward. Covid taught us many things. And one of the things that Covid taught us was that it's more than even continuous listening. It's a continuous dialogue with your employees. And that's what our platform does. In fact, we actually help organizations act with human empathy at scale to all of their employees and their customers as well. But in terms of your question to their employees, and we do that through constantly listening, but the key thing is acting on that feedback. So again, it comes back to a system of action.

I love how you said stay across. It's if you go back a couple of years, there'd be organizations that thought an annual survey was the way forward. Covid taught us many things. And one of the things that Covid taught us was that it's more than even continuous listening. It's a continuous dialogue with your employees. And that's what our platform does. In fact, we actually help organizations act with human empathy at scale to all of their employees and their customers as well. But in terms of your question to their employees, and we do that through constantly listening, but the key thing is acting on that feedback. So again, it comes back to a system of action.

Great advice. Now, you mentioned the data that companies already have, earlier in the interview. There must be examples of companies getting great data and just leaving it on the shelf. What could you recommend are the best steps to take when you capture good data?

Great advice. Now, you mentioned the data that companies already have, earlier in the interview. There must be examples of companies getting great data and just leaving it on the shelf. What could you recommend are the best steps to take when you capture good data?

I think the first thing is to take action. So you referenced BHP, right? So they actually use our platform to listen to, I think the last time I looked, they had 80, 000 employees. If you think about the feedback that they're getting from their frontline workers in terms of what the employees need and acting on that, if BHP does 1% better, over 80,000 people every single day, imagine the impact that they would have on their employee base. And so it's working with organizations to help them get that culture of action. Not just the insight. But what are they going to do with it and how are they going to measure that progress?

I think the first thing is to take action. So you referenced BHP, right? So they actually use our platform to listen to, I think the last time I looked, they had 80, 000 employees. If you think about the feedback that they're getting from their frontline workers in terms of what the employees need and acting on that, if BHP does 1% better, over 80,000 people every single day, imagine the impact that they would have on their employee base. And so it's working with organizations to help them get that culture of action. Not just the insight. But what are they going to do with it and how are they going to measure that progress?

Brigid, you sound like you're getting a lot out of the work you do. Are you enjoying it?

Brigid, you sound like you're getting a lot out of the work you do. Are you enjoying it?

Absolutely. I mean, honestly, human empathy at scale, there's nothing more human than wanting to be heard and understood. And you mentioned the organizations that we work with. We work with primary schools. We work with the largest financial institutions in the world. We work with everything in between. We do a lot of work with government agencies. I have to say a lot of the government agencies that we work with in Australia, using our platform in times of crisis, to help our citizens, and many of them call them customers... Help their customers at a time of absolute stress with empathy and at scale. Not only does that help the customer, but the impact in the reduction of stress on the government's frontline workers who are dealing with someone who's just lost a house because of a flood or a fire or mouse plagues ruin on their farm, just the impact for that purpose driven worker is phenomenal as well. So it's very energizing work.

Absolutely. I mean, honestly, human empathy at scale, there's nothing more human than wanting to be heard and understood. And you mentioned the organizations that we work with. We work with primary schools. We work with the largest financial institutions in the world. We work with everything in between. We do a lot of work with government agencies. I have to say a lot of the government agencies that we work with in Australia, using our platform in times of crisis, to help our citizens, and many of them call them customers... Help their customers at a time of absolute stress with empathy and at scale. Not only does that help the customer, but the impact in the reduction of stress on the government's frontline workers who are dealing with someone who's just lost a house because of a flood or a fire or mouse plagues ruin on their farm, just the impact for that purpose driven worker is phenomenal as well. So it's very energizing work.

That's terrific. Brigid, thank you so much for talking to Fear and Greed.

That's terrific. Brigid, thank you so much for talking to Fear and Greed.

Thank you so much, Adam.

Thank you so much, Adam.

That was Brigid Archibald, Asia Pacific, and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics. This is the Fear and Greed daily interview. Join us every morning for the full episode of Fear and Greed. Australia's most popular business podcast. I'm Adam Lang. Enjoy your day.

That was Brigid Archibald, Asia Pacific, and Japan Managing Director at Qualtrics. This is the Fear and Greed daily interview. Join us every morning for the full episode of Fear and Greed. Australia's most popular business podcast. I'm Adam Lang. Enjoy your day.