Qualtrics and Bain & Company have unveiled plans to broaden their strategic alliance and integrate Bain's customer experience strategies with Qualtrics' advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. The aim is to push the boundaries of customer experience innovation and provide businesses with more robust tools to gauge, control, and enhance both customer and employee experiences.
"Deeper customer loyalty and higher NPS are keys to accelerating revenue and profit growth. Qualtrics and Bain are at the forefront helping organizations across the globe unlock the significant value of customer experience, and together are uniquely positioned to help organizations deliver greater impact in today's AI world," said Brad Anderson, President of Product, UX and Engineering at Qualtrics.
The deepened collaboration will merge the AI-driven solutions from Qualtrics with Bain's deep consulting expertise in achieving sustainable, profitable growth through optimizing customer value. This builds upon a history of successful partnerships aimed at boosting customer engagement, promoting learning and action across organizations, and increasing the value of customer bases. The partnership has already yielded exclusive Bain modules integrated into the Qualtrics XM Platform, streamlining the more uniform application of enhancements derived from feedback.
With this partnership expansion, Bain and Qualtrics will enhance the way organizations map out and refine customer and employee experience journeys. They will integrate continuous learning and action into daily business operations. By incorporating Bain's Net Promoter System methodologies within the Qualtrics platform, companies will be better equipped to achieve sustainable growth, drive faster innovation, and provide superior experiences that are more cost-effective.
The collaboration will lead to the development of AI-driven tools that deliver instant feedback and coaching to frontline employees on almost all critical customer interactions, enhancing learning and job satisfaction. In addition, new AI-driven interventions will be crafted to strengthen customer relationships alongside AI resources aimed at boosting the productivity and effectiveness of customer experience (CX) teams through strategic suggestions based on data from customer and employee experiences.
Initially targeting sectors like financial services, retail, automotive, and airlines, the partnership plans to eventually broaden its focus to additional industries, addressing specific needs for customer-centric organizations.
"Bain research has shown that enduring loyalty leaders—companies that lead their industries in Net Promoter Score® or satisfaction rankings for three or more years—grow revenues more than twice as fast as their industry peers. By combining Qualtrics' outstanding experience analytics software, Bain's customer strategy expertise, and both firms' extensive AI skills, we will continue to create innovative delivery approaches to help our clients deliver more value to their customers, grow the value of their customer base, and set new standards of customer-centric excellence," said Rob Markey, a partner at Bain & Company.
Boosting its QPN
Qualtrics has bolstered its Qualtrics Partner Network (QPN) through a $500 million investment in AI, engaging partners like AWS, Bain, Deloitte, EY, Farlinium, Kipsu, and WorkJam to innovate and enhance customer and employee experiences globally. Leveraging Qualtrics' sophisticated AI capabilities, these partners are creating scalable, AI-driven solutions tailored to various industries. These solutions range from enhancing real-time feedback and coaching for frontline employees to integrating customer sentiment analysis into service centers, all aimed at improving customer loyalty, operational efficiency, and strategic decision-making.
At the X4: The Experience Management Summit, Qualtrics and its partners showcased new AI-powered products and collaborations. For instance, AWS enhances customer service through AI-driven sentiment analysis, Bain integrates its customer experience methodologies with Qualtrics AI to advance CX innovation, and Deloitte’s Discover.ai platform uses Qualtrics AI to analyze feedback across multiple channels to improve public sector service. These initiatives underscore a joint commitment to harnessing AI for transforming customer and employee experiences, delivering significant value across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, retail, and government.
Elsewhere, Qualtrics and Dow have embarked on a digital journey that yielded an impressive $300 million value and a remarkable 20% enhancement in Dow's customer satisfaction metrics.