On any given day, the amount of customer data points a Fortune 500 company takes in is mindboggling. Making sense of it, analyzing it, and then acting on it to improve the customer experience can be a herculean feat.
AI has made data analytics easier, but the technology alone doesn’t empower companies to improve the experience. That still requires human judgment, executives from Uber, Kaiser Permanente and Dell Technologies told attendees at Qualtrics’ X4 event in Seattle Wednesday.
“When it comes to signals and data and technology, we are data rich, but insights poor in healthcare,” Jason Guardino, CXO at the Permanente Medical Group. “For us, it's about removing friction. How easy was it for you to get the care that you need in whatever venue that is?”
One of the key forms of that care is e-visits. But its experience management platform, provided by Qualtrics, uncovered a problem: “People hated our e-visit,” Guardino said.
That problem wasn’t the form of visit — what they discovered was that waiting for a physician to call you within a day wasn’t working for patients, many of whom were women suffering with urinary tract infections.
“So we took those insights and we completely revamped it,” Guardino said. “Now when you go on, if it's a simple UTI, it takes you about 10 minutes, and your medications will be ready in the pharmacy about 30 minutes after your first click.”
Dell Technologies at one point decided to cut its very large sales force and direct potential buyers to self-service options, according to Michael Valanzola, voice of customer and NPS operations at Dell Technologies.
“Historically, when a customer was looking to make a large purchase, they relied very heavily on their account team and a whole series of technical resources to help them arrive at the appropriate decision making in terms of what type of solution they were going to purchase,” Valanzola said. “What we quickly found out was that the portal was not at all prepared to deal with the kinds of questions and the kinds of thinking that our customers are doing when they're going to make a large purchase.”
The company realized they had to act quickly to get the self-service system to a place where it was truly automated and a value add.
“The reality of it is you're going to get a whole bunch of feedback,” Valanzola said. “Whether you're forcing your customers to use a virtual assistant or a digital concierge, they are going to have feedback for you, and in some instances, the volume of feedback is going to be heavier and higher than anything you've ever had with personal interactions. And you have to be prepared to take action on that in a really rapid manner, otherwise you'll lose credibility on those digital experiences.”
