Qualtrics CEO: ‘AI will bring more humanity to business’

The world is at an inflection point on AI – that’s the viewpoint of Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin.

Speaking at the experience management (XM) giant’s digital AI summit, Serafin shared that, although it may sound strange, “AI will bring more humanity to business, not less”.

This is because, in Serafin’s view, there’s a “deeper ability to build empathy, connection and confidence through automation”.

AI does a great job at understanding human emotions, problem solving and personalizing experiences in the workplace (and beyond, in the consumer world) at scale.

Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin on stage at the tech giant’s 2023 X4 conference in Salt Lake City.

Qualtrics’ president of product Brad Anderson echoed this in his session at the summit. He said that AI’s greatest gift is not providing answers, but inspiring new questions and shortening the “mundane process” to get to the right actions.

There are hundreds of actions that HR, and people managers, could take to build a great employee experience, but it can be tricky to figure out which actions will have the biggest impact, noted Anderson.

With new, innovative AI tools, this will be much easier – employers can tap into that “low hanging fruit” and improve experience on a day to day level, in the words of Serafin.

All of this explains with Qualtrics is doubling down on AI – Anderson noted that AI is not new to Qualtrics, and it is the “cornerstone of our success” – and investing $500 million dollars over the next four years to push the boundaries of AI.

At the summit, the tech giant officially launched the next generation of its platform: XM/os2.

One example in the HR space is Manager Assist, an AI-powered coach that aims to move away from static dashboards and ensure “every manager…[is] best in class”, as shared by Paul Mayfield, chief product officer for people teams, at the summit.

Another example is the new predictive AI capabilities for XM for People Teams – the idea here to capture unstructured feedback from Slack channels, Microsoft Teams chats, as well as behavior data about the number of hours employees are working and what their calendars look like – to give HR teams oversight into employee wellbeing, experience and flight risk.

Privacy around AI must be the priority

When thinking about AI innovation, responsible, privacy-driven approaches are key.

Very personal data is on the line here, particularly in the realm of HR – for instance, employees’ bank account details, their social security numbers and tax codes, their date of birth and address, and sometimes medical information.

This is top of mind for Qualtrics.

Speaking at the digital AI summit, Ellen Loeshelle, director of AI product development, shared that the tech giant is taking a privacy and security by design approach, and has the “utmost care and integrity”.

Customers always own and control their own data – with XM/os2 offering enterprise grade security no matter which large language model the tech giant is leveraging.

Ultimately, having a focus on security and privacy around AI builds trust between HR tech vendors, like Qualtrics, and their clients – but employers also need to really focus on creating trust with employees around how they are using AI at work.

To do this, research by the OECD recommended that employers bring workers on the journey, and really involve them in the decision making.

While Qualtrics’ latest innovations, specifically the analysis of employees’ Teams and Slack messages to derive insights about employee sentiment may seem Big Brother-ish, Mayfield is clear that they aren’t.

He talked about how all the insights from XM for People Teams are anonymized and come from aggregated data.

Qualtrics’ commitment to data transparency was echoed at an in-person conference it held in London in June.

At that London show, Sally Winston, director of EMEA solutions, shared exclusively with UNLEASH that transparency is key.

Employers need to be clear with workers that they are collecting this type of data, and then, most importantly, how it is being used to inform HR changes.