How Jeff Gelfuso And Qualtrics Are Closing The Gap Between Insight And Action

[00:00:04] - [Speaker 0]
Welcome back to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast, and today's conversation was recorded in Seattle at the Qualtrics x four summit. And I sat down with someone who is right at the center of how experience is being redefined inside modern businesses. It's a word we hear a lot about, but what does it mean, and what does it mean to do it right? Well, my guest today is Jeff Joe Fuso. He's a chief product experience officer at Qualtrics, and he spent his career across companies like Workday, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

[00:00:41] - [Speaker 0]
But he's always been focused on one thing, improving how people actually experience products and services. So in our conversation today, we're gonna unpack what does experience really mean in a business context. Because I think for a long time, it has been treated as a soft metric, something measured in surveys, but disconnected from real outcomes, taking real action. And Jeff will challenge that thinking and explain how experience is now being tied directly to retention, to churn, and time to value. All the things that boards and CFOs actually care about, and I think there's quite a big shift going on here.

[00:01:22] - [Speaker 0]
So I wanna talk about that and also explore, yep, how AI is shifting experience management from something reactive to something happening in real time, and why context is becoming the difference between useful automation and just more noise. So if you or your business are finding yourselves right now trying to understand how experience is evolving from dashboards into something far more operational and measurable. Or if you keep sending out feedback surveys but not taking action on the results that you're getting, today's conversation will give you a a more clearer and practical perspective on how to move forward. But enough from me. Let me beam your ears all the way to Seattle where you can sit down with myself and Jeff right now.

[00:02:11] - [Speaker 0]
So thank you for joining me on the podcast here at the x four summit in Seattle. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:02:20] - [Speaker 1]
My name is Jeff Scholfuso. I'm the chief product experience officer here. It's a weird title, but it just basically means I look after all things that help our customers use our products and use them in the most efficient and effective way. I've spent my career at a bunch of different companies, everything from Workday to Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, all those basically doing the same thing. Really, really focused on improving product experiences for for customers.

[00:02:44] - [Speaker 0]
Fantastic. And when we talk about experience, in some circles, look at it as a maybe a soft metric because it's largely misunderstood. What does experience mean to you? Do you?

[00:02:54] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. I I would say, typically, folks have thought about that as, hey. How do I connect something to a survey or a study or something that may drive to a metric like NPS or CSAT? And while those are good metrics, you would think about those things as not necessarily being the core things that would help drive the business. They're interesting to know if people look at them and they go up and they go down, they might take action on those.

[00:03:17] - [Speaker 1]
But it's not really the things that the overall business cares about, the CEO cares about, the CFO cares about. What we're starting to see more and more now is the ability to connect experience and the results of that as we kind of go through this journey of listening, understanding, and acting. The acting part of that, we're really starting to connect more deeply to being able to drive greater retention, reducing churn, increasing time to value, all of these things that actually affect the bottom line in a really impactful way. And so when I was just up on stage and we had the CFO from TruGreen talk, and he came and gave just an incredible incredible presentation about some of the results that they've seen so far, and it really, really has changed the way that they operate their business.

[00:04:01] - [Speaker 0]
It really has. I had a guest on from TruGreen yesterday. The results are just phenomenal there. 30%, I think it was, reduction in escalation calls. And and also, I've read that TruGreen found that the service quality and not the price.

[00:04:16] - [Speaker 0]
That was the real reason customers were canceling. Why did it take AI powered analysis to reveal this? And one of the reasons I wanted to bring it up is there's lot of focus on AI and agents, etcetera, but not ROI measurement, and that's very different here. It's all about measurement and taking action.

[00:04:30] - [Speaker 1]
Well, that's in our DNA. Right? When you think about where Qualtrics came from and and how we moved from a more academic market research into commercial market research and then into CX or customer experience and employee experience, and now we service all all customers across all of those those areas. We've always had measurement at the heart of everything that we do. But I think it felt a little bit disconnected in the past.

[00:04:52] - [Speaker 1]
So was talking about that kind of framework of listen, understand, and act. It's a lot of great listening, some really great analysis and insights, lot of great understanding. A lot of times it took weeks, months, sometimes before you were actually taking action on that. The biggest change for AI and how we're using it across the platform is shifting from that after the fact, after the event, after the experience measurement to more in the moment and real time improvement. And so the Marriott example is such a great one.

[00:05:22] - [Speaker 1]
Right? So literally, we can now help them when they do a survey, after your stay, but they send you a message during your stay instead of it saying something like, how was it? It's how's it going? And so you check into your room and you're like, oh, the pillows are great. The view is awesome.

[00:05:39] - [Speaker 1]
Maybe the air conditioning's a little loud. We can fire off a ticket right from that that goes to their operational team that literally has somebody to come and improve your experience right there in the moment. And so that's a huge, huge shift as we move into more real time experience management, so to say, and in a way where we actually believe we have a unique differentiator greater than anybody else because of being in the space so long, understanding all that data for decades, and now being able to move in a way that we can help our customers act on it.

[00:06:10] - [Speaker 0]
And another word I hear a lot here refreshingly, Sarah, I don't hear it at other tech conferences when talking about AI and AI agents is context. Yeah. And it's so important and so often missed, isn't it?

[00:06:20] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. That's right. We talk lot about context, and it's really key to that understanding part and acting part. I think a lot of software companies right now are talking about agents, and agents can do all these things and we could thousands and thousands of agents talking to each other. That's all fine and great, but for what reason?

[00:06:38] - [Speaker 1]
And so if you're doing that in a sense, I always start to think about, like, whether it was the the hotel example or say maybe it's an ecommerce transaction or a return or something. We have this understanding of what we call the x data or that experience data so that we know not only is it the things that you prefer, your your history, how you felt about the experience, connecting that to operational data so then that transaction can happen is really where we're focused. So it's not about can we solve every problem from every customer. It's about what are the things that we know, we can understand, and then we can take action on so that we're connecting the dots between those two areas and helping customers to be able to deliver on that end result. If we see that we we call it close the loop more in the moment, we see greater satisfaction.

[00:07:27] - [Speaker 1]
We've actually seen more engagement in our surveys. You'd think if you if you stepped into the middle of a of a survey conversation and asked people more follow-up questions, you think it would actually decrease engagement or results. It's actually increased it and increased it in a really positive way and resolved the issue in the moment. And so those are really, really key focus areas for us.

[00:07:49] - [Speaker 0]
And I think one of the beautiful things about attending in a live event like this, what nearly 10,000 people, is there's so many different conversations

[00:07:56] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm.

[00:07:57] - [Speaker 0]
That it's not just about the keynotes and the breakout sessions. It's those serendipitous moments of meeting someone on the show floor, for example. I'm curious. What are the themes in the conversations that you're having with customers? And maybe even people are coming up with different ideas that you've not thought of, but but what are people talking to you about and asking for help with?

[00:08:14] - [Speaker 1]
Another big focus that we're really trying to help customers is around what we call maturity. And so we think about many of our customers are still in early states of of measuring the experience in that kind of listening and understanding phase. Our more advanced customers are the ones that usually at the heart have have corporate presence, have digital presence, probably have a locations, you know, retail or or some kind of physical presence, and then frontline in place. Those customers are the ones where we're really connecting all the signals, all the data, helping them see across those different inputs and helping them take action. Those are the ones we'd call our more mature customers.

[00:08:53] - [Speaker 1]
The ones that are still on that early part of the journey, we're helping them to take the right steps in much more of a prescriptive way. So you can say if you took this survey, you you did this analysis in the in this dashboard, oh, by the way, you're an insurance company in this these are the next three steps you should take. And so we really haven't had that more prescriptive focus in the past, And so that conversation's coming up a lot over and over again as we talk about how we've reduced the time to value. It used to take months and months, hundreds of thousands of dollars to connect all those signals and make that work. We've brought that down to now tens of thousands of dollars and weeks of time, so it's made it so much more approachable for all kinds of customers to do this, not just the biggest and and the most complex.

[00:09:38] - [Speaker 0]
And just to bring to life what we're talking about here, you work with some big names. We've mentioned a few already, Marriott, TruGreen, Inspire, etcetera. Can you walk me through how you're working with them and how you're ensuring that they have better relationships with their customers just to get people listening that maybe at the early part of their journey to understand where they were and where they are now.

[00:09:56] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well, I'll give you an example with Marriott. It we literally Peggy, who's the chief customer officer, she was here two years ago at X4, and we started on that journey at that time. And in just that short amount of time, we've been able to help them go from just a basic kind of VOC type survey to connecting all those signals, understanding and and doing that analysis, acting in real time, connecting some of our operational systems so that they can send you that that text or that that message in the moment, and really deliver on that overall promise. But it's been a lot of work.

[00:10:29] - [Speaker 1]
If you can imagine thinking about any organization that has frontline associates, whether that's in a retail environment, it's in hospitality, they use all kinds of different systems. Right? So everything from how they schedule their shifts, how they might, like, request time off, their HR, and kind of IS background, like, to everything that they use to operate within their environment during their work. And it's not consistent at all. It's really, really varied.

[00:10:55] - [Speaker 1]
So for some of those more complex customers where we're doing, it's a lot of partnership and co innovation together, doing the work and working through connecting those systems, doing pilots that we would run. Before that, we would run it out and scale it more globally. And so we've got this kind of stair step approach with each of them to help go from where they're using more the basic parts of what we offer all the way until the more complete and complex across that whole framework.

[00:11:21] - [Speaker 0]
And also when we're talking around AI, I think every AI project now is under close scrutiny for ROI. What we're making better here because there's been a lot of bad examples over the last couple of years. And, again, to tackle that, I mean, you've got that striking stat with Truegreen, who I mentioned I interviewed yesterday. One point of retention equaled $10,000,000. How did you do this?

[00:11:42] - [Speaker 0]
It's phenomenal.

[00:11:43] - [Speaker 1]
It was a great partnership with them, and they they came to us, and and we started talking about some of these challenges that they had both with retention, with employees, and churn. And and we were working with them both on the on the CX side or the customer experience side, on the employee experience side. And so we started in these areas with the way we're doing, I think, about 300,000 surveys a year. Ross can keep me honest on this. And we started thinking about how we could connect those surveys to to greater signals, and we moved that up to something like, I don't know, 300,000,000.

[00:12:13] - [Speaker 1]
Like, it's a crazy amount, like 10 x the number of ways that they could listen across those different channels. And I think that's when it pinpointed for them where they thought it was maybe one problem just because they were getting a very narrow, slim view of their customers. When they started to see more of those signals across more of those channels and being able to use AI to summarize and and analyze that altogether, they started to see, hey. Here's where some of the real issues are. So then that and our partnership that we were co innovating with them, that gave us a signal where we wanted to do development.

[00:12:46] - [Speaker 1]
So that's where we were like, okay. We could start by intercepting in the survey. We could start by blah. And then we just went for it. Like, honestly, we were piloting it.

[00:12:54] - [Speaker 1]
We put our engineers on it, their engineers on it. We focused on developing and delivering it together, putting it out there in pilot, and then we started to see really strong result. And so that led us to the next phase. And that's really how it's working right now. I think if a lot of people tell you, especially with AgenTeq, that it's all scalable and it's all happening, you gotta question it a lot.

[00:13:13] - [Speaker 1]
It it really isn't. It's taking a lot of work identifying the right use cases, understanding which ones should be the ones that we should solve versus somebody else, and then how do we really think through making that impact by connecting the data and then working through it together to get to a pilot or some type of proof of concept, testing it, seeing where it's going. Sometimes it doesn't it doesn't pan out as much as it won't. We pivot, and we focus on the areas that we know that we're making an impact.

[00:13:41] - [Speaker 0]
And if we put the tech aside for one moment for the business leaders that are listening, one of the other things that stood out to me was that you mentioned CFOs are now championing experience investment, which is something I never thought I'd hear. But what's changed in how you're helping companies connect connect experience metrics to financial outcomes in that language that resonates in the border?

[00:14:00] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. It's a big shift for a lot of companies, including Qualtrics, and we've been going on this journey now for quite some time. When you start talking about customer outcomes that lead to business outcomes, that's when you get the attention of the boardroom. That's when you get the attention of the CEO. And those conversations aren't just about an increase in CSAT or NPS or even at the levels that are what we would call more inputs, engagement, usability like interaction, those types of things.

[00:14:29] - [Speaker 1]
Those are all super important, but it's about lining those things up that help connect you to the how do we then increase greater retention, or how do we increase satisfaction engagement with employees, which we know then has an impact on customers. And so when you start getting to that upper end of those outcomes, defining those first, quite honestly, and working backwards from them, then you start to tie together to the areas where your CEO can come in and say, yeah. NPS is down. That that's great. But what we really see is a retention issue or what we really see is a churn issue in this specific segment.

[00:15:03] - [Speaker 1]
And then we can target those areas, target those use cases, and really help drive results. When you start having that conversation in that language, everybody listens. Like, everybody in the sweet seat is now like, oh, this is just something that happens in, you know, research or in marketing or in operations. It's now important to the entire company.

[00:15:23] - [Speaker 0]
And for those same business leaders, many are overwhelmed with the so much noise around AgenTik AI right now. But what does that actually mean in the context of experience management, and how is it different from just having another smarter dashboard? Because you busted a few myths this week. But for people that can't attend, what does it mean to you at Qualtrics here?

[00:15:41] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. You know, I don't wanna get too far out in the future, but Yeah. All the traditional ways that we think about listening across those different channels, gathering in that data, analyzing that data, summarizing that data, and then acting on that data still is true. I think the ways that people are doing it now are changing rapidly. So if you think about just the expectations that the average consumer has about how they can ask chap GPT a question or use Gemini to go from just what would have been typical results to actually really learning and engaging something.

[00:16:15] - [Speaker 1]
The bar for that has really changed. It's become something that is less about having that deep subject matter expertise to do that analysis on a dashboard versus I wanna have a conversation. Just like you and I are having a conversation now, but I wanna have a conversation with that data. And I wanna do it in a way that then I can help summarize it that it helps it be actionable. That bar has changed radically.

[00:16:39] - [Speaker 1]
So I think in the future, we're gonna still see practitioners, like deep practitioners use those areas that are tried and true in our platform, but you're also gonna start to see it evolve in a way where a lot of those things may become even more headless. Like, maybe we send you an email every Monday morning with the five key actions that you need to take based on understanding and analyzing that data over the weekend. Not I've gotta go to Qualtrics. I've gotta log in to Qualtrics. I've gotta go to my dashboard.

[00:17:05] - [Speaker 1]
I've gotta analyze that data. I've gotta take action on that data. I think it's gonna become much more of a push type system where then it becomes a conversation that you have and highlights the things that are gonna be most critical for you in your business and your role to take action on.

[00:17:21] - [Speaker 0]
And, again, there'll be many people listening that have maybe been burned in the past. Their organization is stuck in what many call pilot purgatory, loss of AI experiments that have failed to scale or go into live. What what are you seeing that separates companies that are genuinely getting value from those that are still exploring, still struggling to get out of there?

[00:17:40] - [Speaker 1]
Well, one of the big themes that you'll hear here at x four this year is everything that we're talking about, everything we're demoing, everything that's on the main stage, all of that work is live today, and a lot of it has been in production for several months. And and that's really important. I think there's a lot of hype where you can go talk about the future and what AI can do for you, and then customers say, great. Show me how. I wanna start it today.

[00:18:01] - [Speaker 1]
And you go, well, we're not exactly ready with that. So we're very, very clear about what work is is live in our platform today, how they can use it, and giving them literally step by step blueprints to go do that. At the same time, we're taking a small slice of those areas and saying, okay. On these specific kinds of use cases, and this is where I think the companies that are doing it right actually are advancing and seeing real great value, is they're not trying to solve every single problem. They're really if if they're doing it in the right way, and we believe that we are at this at this time, we focus on the area that we know is core to our customers and the products that they're using today.

[00:18:37] - [Speaker 1]
The value that we're getting and they're that we're delivering that they're getting out of it, and how do we increase that? Right? So if we can help them in a way that they already know, they already use, and we improve it, amplify it, and make it better, we see much greater results. If we were off trying other other areas that that we'd have to convince our customers, like, why would Qualtrics even do this? It's really a nonstarter.

[00:19:00] - [Speaker 1]
And I think that the companies that are casting really wide nets and just saying it's agentifying everything, I think they're struggling in a lot of areas because some of those are not only are they expensive, unless they take a lot of development time. When you're training these kind of models, it doesn't happen just overnight. You gotta learn and experiment and grow from it. They're not seeing as much value. When you focus in on the areas where you know you have true differentiation and then you solve a real customer problem, a real use case that connects directly to that business outcome, that's where we usually see it being very successful.

[00:19:32] - [Speaker 0]
And finally, for people listening, maybe they're inspired by some of those ROI metrics and big stats that we've dropped today, but they don't know where to start, where to begin. Any advice that you'd give to those those business leaders listening or or some of the big takeaways from the event this week?

[00:19:46] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well, of course, I would say connect with us, have the conversation with us, and especially if you're a an existing customer and have that relationship, we wanna bring you into that conversation and and show you and and and go on that journey with you. I think the big takeaway that it's gonna sound a little maybe pie in the sky or a little bit maybe abstract is the shift from thinking about being in your own silo in your own program running the thing that you've always run and thinking much more about that business outcome. How do I really if if you think about I've got my CEO in the room or my chief customer officer, right, chief marketing, like, what matters most to them? And you start there and you work backwards.

[00:20:27] - [Speaker 1]
A lot of the the hard, hard challenges we hear many practitioners talk about is they're they got a small team. They're in a big company. They're running a program. Right? And they're constantly trying to prove their value.

[00:20:38] - [Speaker 1]
Like, they're trying to kinda push that rock up the hill instead of thinking about what are the things that are really core to our business strategy. Defining those outcomes, maybe it's a churn problem. Again, maybe it's something that, is super specific to helping drive retention. Starting there and then connecting that back to the programs that they have, and this is where we can step in and help. Maybe we help them listen across more channels than they are today.

[00:21:03] - [Speaker 1]
Maybe we help them understand how to improve their survey results. There's all kinds of things that we can help them do, but today, that's really been the gap is going from where they're at in their current program and how to understand and connect that to a bigger business outcome.

[00:21:17] - [Speaker 0]
And finally, before I let you go, you've just come straight off stage, straight into a podcast interview, back to back me in so many different conversations. On that journey home, before you allow yourself just to crash out, what are you gonna be reflecting on next fall?

[00:21:30] - [Speaker 1]
You know, I love the energy of our of being with our customers, and it's one of the things that I get the most satisfaction out of my job. And what I love more than anything is just these anecdotes that I hear when having those conversations. So you said earlier, like, yes. We have meetings, and, we have these sessions, and we're talking about, like, the next phase in their evolution. The best discussions are we're just walking through the hall, and someone grabs me and says, hey.

[00:21:54] - [Speaker 1]
I'm struggling with this thing. I heard you talk about blah. And we have a five, ten minute conversation, and it real I can see the light bulb go off in their head, and I know, like, oh, now now they know how to take that next step, or now they know how to make that next connection. That always super inspire inspires me and makes me feel good. I also have this, like, very deep sense of pride in what we do here that it isn't just another software company.

[00:22:17] - [Speaker 1]
It isn't just about driving efficiency, productivity. It really is about improving the human experience, and all of us deeply believe that. So when I see companies and customers, like, make that connection and really see, like, that they're going beyond this transaction into something that's driving loyalty, lifetime value, that's really satisfying.

[00:22:39] - [Speaker 0]
And I think that is a powerful moment to end on. Your passion and enthusiasm for this really shines. I'll include links to everything that we've talked about today. I encourage people listening to check that out.

[00:22:49] - [Speaker 1]
For having me. Appreciate it.

[00:22:51] - [Speaker 0]
One of the things that stayed with me from this conversation is how that definition of experience is changing. This is no longer about tracking scores or watching dashboards. It's actually about connecting exactly what customers feel to what businesses do next And doing it in the moment rather than weeks later, and most importantly, taking action. And it's that shift from listening and understanding to actually acting. That's where the real value is starting to show up.

[00:23:22] - [Speaker 0]
And Jeff made a great point there about AI as well. Yep. There is a lot of noise around agents and automation, but without context, it doesn't lead anywhere meaningful. So the real opportunity is connecting experience data with operational data so businesses can respond in a way that actually improves outcomes. And perhaps the biggest takeaway of all, the companies seeing real results are not trying to solve everything at once.

[00:23:54] - [Speaker 0]
They're focusing on specific use cases that tie directly to business impact. Whether that's reducing churn, improving retention, or increasing engagement. There are very real business metrics here. So if you'd like to learn more about Jeff and the work that's going on at Qualtrics and the big announcements this week, I'll include links in the show notes. But as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:24:19] - [Speaker 0]
Is experience still being treated as a metric in your organization, or is it starting to shape very real business decisions? I wanna hear what you're doing and if today's conversation will change any of that. As always, techtalksnetwork.com. There are over 4,000 interviews there, a myriad of ways that you can contact me, send me audio messages, and there'll be links to everything that we talked about. And, hey, if you enjoyed yourself, why not meet me back here tomorrow?

[00:24:49] - [Speaker 0]
We've already got another guest lined up for you. You're all cordially invited, so, hopefully, I will be speaking with you again tomorrow. But that's it for today. Bye for now.