Merge two sets of strategic data and form a high-level mindset that can boost customer experience, digital marketing and management excellence.
Experience Management (XM) is a new term referring to “the discipline of using both experience data (X-data) and operational data (O-data) to measure and improve the four core experiences of business: customer, employee, product, and brand.”
The company that created this term, Qualtrics (part of SAP), believes that there is often “an astounding disparity between how you think customers feel about your products and services, and how they actually do feel.”
Operational data (O)—such as costs, revenues, and sales—show what is happening in your business. But you also need experience data (X) to understand the feelings of the people involved and why things are happening. By analyzing X-data and O-data, businesses are actually collecting experience data at every meaningful touchpoint to understand experience gaps and determine and automate strategies to drive improvements in customer, employee, product, and brand experiences.
Simple as it sounds, XM requires much training and engagement, and Qualtrics has committed to its beliefs by setting up the Qualtrics XM Institute—the only community and resource destination for XM professionals, practitioners, and leaders.
Led by Bruce Temkin, founder of the Temkin Group, former VP at Forrester Research, and one of the earliest customer experience visionaries, the institute offers members around the world the opportunity to learn and share XM best practices through thought leadership insights, networking opportunities, specialized training and curriculum, and more. Membership to the XM Institute is free.
“The success of any organization is based on how effectively it interacts with people, whether it’s customers, employees, students, patients, citizens, suppliers, or partners. Our team of experts helps organizations build the capabilities to continuously learn what their key stakeholders are thinking and feeling, propagate those insights to the right people in the right form at the right time, and rapidly adapt to those market signals. Experience Management isn’t about doing this once or twice. Instead, we help organizations embed XM as a discipline that’s woven across their operating fabrics,” said Temkin.
XM Institute members are offered benefits such as exposure to thought leadership, admission to a like-minded community of professionals; and training/certification from the institute.
The institute draws upon a dedicated full-time staff of experts along with dozens of subject-matter experts across Qualtrics, and has attracted over 10,000 global followers in working with hundreds of companies to develop differentiated XM programs.
