CX Lessons Learned from Qualtrics’ X4 2025

Last week I attended Qualtrics’ X4, a world-class experience management summit showcasing Qualtrics’ proprietary analytics and AI products. The event prompted exciting conversations about AI and its impact on XM, bringing together the community of customers who leverage Qualtrics tools. The theme of the conference was “connection is everything,” with each speaker underscoring the importance of AI as a tool to augment human abilities rather than replace them. This emphasis on the irreplaceable value of the human touch was particularly refreshing given the technology-centric language we tend to hear when AI is discussed. 

As a whole, experience management encompasses far more than CX & EX, it offers a holistic approach to drive meaningful improvement. Qualtrics is an industry leader in XM; its products excel at surfacing actionable insights for both customer-centric and employee-centric teams.

In Salt Lake City last week, Qualtrics unveiled new additions to their product portfolio that utilize cutting edge AI to elevate the quality of experiences, including their agentic AI offering, Experience Agents. As I listened to the Qualtrics team, their customers, and thought leaders throughout the conference, a number of key themes emerged. Below I’ve distilled these ideas into actions that leaders can take to better leverage AI to generate high quality experiences. 

Recognize which choices customers don’t want to make (and which ones they do)

In the midst of the AI frenzy, some processes and touchpoints will obviously be easier to automate or augment with AI.  It may seem intuitive to make this decision based on where it’s easiest to introduce the technology – whether it be because that’s where the best data is, the team has the bandwidth to take on a new initiative, or other internal factors. However, if AI is implemented without customer needs in mind, it will likely yield the opposite results.

When we think of Agentic AI, one use case commonly used to demonstrate its potential is that of a travel agent. In the near future, agentic travel agents could be booking entire vacations for us, including multimodal transportation, hotel and hostel accommodations, dining and activities, using just a few pieces of customer information. With this example, there are clearly ways automation can make this process more efficient, but for me, the value of the automation comes down to how much I trust that a company can process the full scope of my preferences. While most customers would agree that travel and hotel booking could be simpler and easier, I find the process of researching and booking restaurants and activities to be a worthwhile experience that builds anticipation for the trip itself. This is especially true when considering the lack of a digital footprint for many businesses outside the US, and how agentic AI would be fully reliant on this digital data to make selections for you. 

In this example, expediency doesn’t outweigh the value of personal creative involvement in the vacation planning process. Decisions about where AI can improve processes should be rooted in customers’ desires, which requires comprehensive customer listening. A go-big-or-go-home approach to AI overhaul may sound exciting, but without grounding it in customer preferences it is likely to cause more harm than good. 

When it comes to mapping the customer journey, start yesterday

The sentiment echoed throughout X4’s Q&As following each session was the critical need to map the customer journey. There are plenty of rebuttals for why organizations, especially large companies, shouldn’t have to map their customer journey: no budget for it (or not sure which budget it would come out of), they’ve completed a similar initiative recently, there’s no immediate ROI for such elaborate coordination efforts, or there’s no one with bandwidth to lead the project. Even if your customer’s journey has been mapped in the past, with the amount of innovation having taken place in the last few years, it’s worth repeating. 

Mapping the customer journey with leaders from all of your functional team will illuminate touchpoint redundancies, messaging inconsistencies, and process inefficiencies that are near impossible to identify from the inside of any one department. The collaboration this practice demands will fortify necessary communication channels that will help your teams achieve customer-centric goals more efficiently.

The quality of your customer experience can never outshine your employee experience

As much as customer experiences tend to take the spotlight when we talk about experience management, CX will always be beholden to the experience of employees. Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, referenced the “virtuous cycle” of stakeholder management in his keynote speech. “It’s not a totem pole,” he said of the business’ stack of stakeholders (customers, employees, community, suppliers, investors), “If you break that virtuous cycle anywhere, you break the whole thing. The single best way to take care of our employees is when they get raises and promotions. That only happens when you have really happy investors.” 

This holistic way of seeing the employee’s role, not only as a core, indispensable part of the business, but as an asset the company cannot succeed without, is a relatively new and progressive way of thinking. Until recently, front line customer service employees and agents were seen by many large organizations as disposable, with high turnover expected to be built into budgets. Technology that allows leaders to listen closely to the thoughts and feelings of employees, and then track the quality of service when employees' perceived conditions improve, has been a major transformative force across industries. Ultimately, if Walmart can manage to collect and act on feedback from over 1 million of their associates, your business has no excuse to not step up your employee experience: for the well-being of your employees, for the quality of your customer experiences, and for the interests of your investors. 

It’s never too late to right a bad experience

One of the most compelling use cases for Qualtrics’ Experience Agents is agentic AI applied to surveys. When a customer provides a survey response detailing some kind of negative experience, the Experience Agent can jump in, seek out more information, and initiate the process of making the situation right. While we suspect this is exactly what the future of customer service will look like, there’s a way to put this type of service into practice now, before even implementing agentic AI.

It’s a well-held principle in CX that customers who have been disappointed and then recovered are likely to become more loyal customers if they are to continue their business with a brand. Knowing this, it’s shocking how many organizations are quick to let their customers go without a fight. If it’s not within your company’s purview to use advanced analytics and reach out immediately to upset customers, a robust listening program can be transformative, even if it's analog listening. Not only has the changing tide of customer expectations led to make-goods being anticipated when something goes awry, but with the sheer amount of feedback customers share online, it’s easier than ever. 

After hearing about the forthcoming and available capabilities of the XM platform, it’s no wonder 86 of the Fortune 100 are Qualtrics customers. Even beyond the XM portfolio, though, customers across verticals shared hopeful and ambitious goals that use AI to advance efficiency and innovation while keeping human connection at the center of everything. 

Image courtesy of Qualtrics PR.