Here's Why You Should Combine 'X and O' Data to Get a 360 View of Your Customer

When customers do business with you, their expectations are shaped by the best-in-class experience they’ve had across all industries. That’s why perks like two-day shipping, AI-assisted webchat and bespoke mobile apps for conferences are becoming standardized.

In many cases, however, even companies that provide a service ultimately have limited control over the final outcome of the customer experience because there are too many intervening factors at play.

“When a customer walks off the airplane we don’t know if the human had a good experience or not,” Webb Stevens, general manager for CX at Qualtrics, told CCW Digital. “With SAP plus Qualtrics now, we have a complete picture of all the work that came to that culminating point of someone taking a flight from New York to Salt Lake City – was that actually a good experience for that human on the other side of the service delivery,” Stevens added, referring to SAP’s recent acquisition of Qualtrics.

There’s often a disconnect between how the business perceives its performance and how customers feel about it, which is what Qualtrics dubs an “experience gap.”

One way to get a complete picture of the customer journey is to combine experience data (X-data) with operational data (O-data) – namely, how the customer felt about the experience layered with enterprise data from the business side.

“I can know from all of the operational data that I have from my shipping logistics systems about how quickly a package got somewhere,” said Stevens, “but what I don’t know is what is the expectation that someone had for the speed in which that would be delivered.”

When an experience gap arises, the goal is for the business to act upon it in real-time. This week, SAP announced it is introducing the Qualtrics CustomerXM to the SAP C/4 HANA product suite to make it easier for organizations to combine X and O data and gain actionable insights at every step of the customer journey. The company is rolling out this solution for sales, customer service and marketing functions.  

• SAP Qualtrics CX for Commerce: Organizations can now gather feedback across all digital interactions to provide premium experiences that increase conversion, loyalty and satisfaction. It also helps organizations gain the insights they need to improve ease of use, website layout, mobile app experience and navigation, and personalization. This will help businesses deliver a premium eCommerce experience that reduces cart abandonment and improves conversion rates.
• SAP Qualtrics CX for Sales: Organizations can now assess the strength of their client relationships, improve the sales productivity of their Account Executives, and provide a premium sales experience. The software helps organizations drive the internal alignment and focus needed to deliver meaningful experiences across purchase, installation, support and contract renewals.
• SAP Qualtrics CX for Customer Service: Organizations can now design and deliver seamless service experiences to customers across every support channel including phone, chat, in-person, and digital. It combines CustomerXM contact center solutions with the SAP Service Cloud so customer care teams can quickly close experience gaps and provide personalized support to their customers over the phone and out in the field.
• SAP Qualtrics CX for Marketing: Marketing teams can now collect feedback to better understand their customer segments, target audiences, and customer behavior. The software enables marketing teams to build more effective automated campaigns that tie investments directly to the bottom line.