Exclusively sponsored by SAP, this unique digital news product is designed to deliver insights and analysis on the ways that companies optimize data, technology, and design to drive successful interactions with their customers and employees. It will create thought leadership around experience through up-to-the minute news, interviews, explanatory journalism, and videos.

A weekly update will be emailed to subscribers every Wednesday, delving deeper into analysis and insight on how companies optimize data, design, and technology to drive success with consumers and employees.

As the sponsor, 51·çÁ÷will supplement the news coverage with custom content around experience management (XM), 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA, and other key solution offerings. It will focus on helping companies of all sizes and in all industries understand what is happening in their business, why it is happening, and what will happen next, as well as using that data to deliver the best experiences possible to customers and employees.

This unique collaboration serves as a cutting-edge resource for understanding the world of XM. In the Experience Economy, capitalizing on data, tech, and design is paramount to drive success. 51·çÁ÷is best positioned to equip readers with the intelligence they need to win in an experience-driven world.

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Alicia Tillman is chief marketing officer of SAP.

This article first appeared on the 51·çÁ÷News Center.

The post 51·çÁ÷and The Wall Street Journal Present The Experience Report appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

By now, you probably know the elevator pitch: By bringing together experience data (X-data) with operational data (O-data), decision-makers can understand not only what is happening with their business, but also why. It’s all about closing the experience gap for customers.

Ever since 51·çÁ÷acquired Qualtrics in January 2019, it has made experience management (XM) a key growth catalyst for the Intelligent Enterprise strategy and is on a quest to make every company understand and apply the power of X+O. But don’t the same principles apply to SAP?

What few may be aware of is that 51·çÁ÷has launched its own XM journey. The print was still fresh on the acquisition when Christian Klein, then chief operating officer and now also co-chief executive officer, put SAP’s Transformation Office to work on ways Qualtrics software could be used to improve its own processes. The goal: to create a world-class XM practice at SAP.

Turning insight into action through experience management at SAP is a multi-year journey, but much has been accomplished inside the company over the past year, and the team from the Transformation Office has even more ambitious goals for 2020.

To find out more, 51·çÁ÷News talked to Oliver Staudenmayer, program manager for the company’s TopX Experience Management program and head of Employee Experience Management at SAP, and Christian Koenig, operation expert and project lead for TopX XM at SAP.

Q: What is the goal of the Best Run TopX Experience Management Program?

Staudenmayer: Our goal is to actively design and improve experiences that our customers, partners, and employees love and enable them to run at their best. Ultimately it means transforming SAP’s internal processes by using new technologies and trends.

Q: How did you begin?

Staudenmayer: After the closing of the Qualtrics acquisition at the end of January 2019, we wanted to move fast to show benefits of combining O-data and X-data. But before we could forge ahead on the many promising use case ideas, we first had to set up one consolidated platform, establish a process for incoming X+O ideas, and build a governance model for compliance and legal requirements — for example for GDPR and data privacy.

Second, we had to by educating employees about how to “Listen, Understand, and Act.” Qualtrics software is not just a research tool or data collection exercise, it requires us to follow up and act based on the input. After laying the foundation, we now need to put even greater effort into education.

Despite the large number of requests, by July 2019 we were able to select the top 10 use cases. Several are already live and some were moved into 2020 because of the steep learning curve. But this is merely the beginning, and we are already working on additional uses cases.

Q: Where did the top 10 use cases come from and how were they evaluated?

Koenig: Some ideas came from the field while others came from the Transformation Office. We scored each use case by asking: (1) Is it a strategic fit? (2) Is it a true X and O use case, rather than just X data? (3) Can it improve our top or bottom line? (4) How much effort is involved? A matrix depicting impact versus effort helped us identify the quick wins and choose the top 10.

Q: What were the most promising use cases?

Koenig: That’s hard question to answer, because great use cases are still rolling in, but here are a few:

• For customers, Net Promotor Score (NPS), which is conducted quarterly, indicates on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely a customer will recommend 51·çÁ÷to others. Customer NPS is one of SAP’s main KPIs and is reported in our Annual Integrated Report.
• For products, 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud integration means customers can give direct feedback to help product engineers improve the user experience. Experience data helps developers gain insight into what users are thinking as well as whether functions, features, and design choices are actually hitting the mark.
• For employees, MyTeam Dashboard is a tool available to team managers at 51·çÁ÷to support their HR-related management tasks. Based on 51·çÁ÷Analytics Cloud, data is collected from managers to find out how helpful the dashboard is during compensation rounds and to identify training needs for managers to support them in their roles.
• The Feedback Catcher enables any employee to give feedback on whatever they like. It will be installed on the computer and on mobiles, and employees can give feedback on anything they like, whether it’s the purchasing process, online conferencing, cafeteria food, bicycle stands, etc.

Q: Do you think that Experience Management solutions from 51·çÁ÷(Qualtrics) will change the way employees work in the future?

Koenig: The solution alone will not help us to become the experience management company. This is a journey that doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is that there is a great deal of interest in the topic and goodwill among employees. Every transformation requires a cultural change, and to become an experience company, we need to focus on the third imperative of “Listen, Understand, and Act.” Acting on the feedback, showing results and transparency are key to a successful XM program.

Q: What plans do you have for 2020?

Staudenmayer: We have big plans to deliver what we are calling our “flagship” use case that seeks to integrate experience data across all four Qualtrics pillars: Customers, Products, Employees, and Brand. The goal is to achieve a holistic view over how employees are experiencing the processes across a company and then provide management with the data to act on it. The idea is that happy employees leads to happy customers – a goal that applies to every company, not just SAP.

Q: Speaking of experience management, what’s your experience been as project lead?

Staudenmayer: The good news is that there’s a great deal of attention on how XM can be applied in our daily work with customers, employees, and products. People are working together very constructively across SAP, focused on the larger goal of getting the use cases launched, so it’s been very exciting to be a part of this journey.

This article first appeared on the 51·çÁ÷News Center.

The post How 51·çÁ÷Is Using Experience Management to Make Itself Run Better appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

Leading-edge consumer brands have transformed reactive, legacy service into proactive care-focused experiences, establishing a new consumer expectation benchmark.

Now, this transformation is rewriting the rules for customer experience (CX) in the insurance industry. In the highly competitive industry, delivering best-in-class customer experiences can be a critical differentiator. Combining operational data (O-data) with experience data (X-data) provides the insights that enhance the customer experience offerings and give insurers a competitive edge.

CX Imperative: Why the Insurance Industry Lags Behind

Customers typically have few – if any – interactions with their insurance company. In fact, without a claim or policy change, there is often no interaction at all. This means when an interaction does occur, it takes on a greater level of importance. Furthering this challenge, consumers are becoming more discerning and less forgiving. One in three customers will walk away from a brand they love after just a single bad experience, .

How can insurers get a broader picture of the customer journey? The first stop is O-data, which reveals the what. Policy renewal rates are decreasing, attrition rates are increasing, new customer acquisitions are decreasing. This data tells us the insurance company has a problem, but we don’t know why the problem exists.

This is where X-data comes into play, revealing customer pain points — a difficult claims process, a poor digital experience, a slow reimbursement process — that are causing the problem. Together, this data can help insurers uncover the causes of customer churn and identify actions to best address pain points, such as automating the claims process, reducing call wait times, or optimizing digital channels for claims submission.

Combining O-data and X-data makes it easier for insurers to unlock powerful business outcomes and:

• Improve the claims process, reducing attrition and increasing renewal and revenue
• Deliver a superior digital experience, increasing revenue and acquisitions
• Strengthen insurer-broker relationships, increasing policy renewals, revenue, and acquisitions

Bringing X- and O-Data Together for True Insight

three components critical to customer experience in the insurance industry: effectiveness, ease, and emotion. These components are critical to building a strong customer relationship, shoring up existing market share, and capitalizing on new business opportunities. And they are best assessed through a combination of X- and O-data.

Consider what happens when a customer files an insurance claim. This process can be emotional: Property may have been lost or damaged and a customer’s day-to-day life is directly impacted. O-data tells us about how the claims process is handled while X-data tells us what the customer feels about the claims process.

The X- and O-data from these interactions must be part of a customer’s profile. No matter with whom a customer is speaking, this agent or representative is empowered with the background knowledge they need to be as responsive as possible to a customer’s concern. When insurers have these insights at their fingertips, agents and other front-line employees can provide a better experience, improving engagement and strengthening customer loyalty. These exceptional experiences turn loyal customers into brand advocates, giving insurers a critical competitive edge.

Turning Insights into Business Success

Here’s how three companies put the power of X and O to work for them.

Allianz: Predictive Power of Democratized Insights
is one of the world’s largest insurance providers, but despite being a market leader, the company recognized it was operating in a market with excess supply and declining rates. Rather than staying the course and risk falling profits and market share loss, Allianz proactively put customer experience at the heart of its strategy to earn lifelong loyalty from clients who see them as an integral, forward-thinking business partner. Working with Experience Management solutions from 51·çÁ÷(Qualtrics), they collected experience data from customers in 22 countries and 16 languages. The company now has a wealth of insights, filtering and prioritizing based on location and function. These insights have led to new products, such as protecting customers from risks like cyber crime; new approaches, such as elevating claims processing from back-office to client-facing function; and new reputation management strategies, such as above-and-beyond consultations.

MetLife: Boosting Brand Engagement
MetLife, Inc. is a leading global provider of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs. The company is digging deeper into its data for actionable insights that drive brand engagement. For example, in a recent MetLife-sponsored Earth Week contest, participants needed to answer a series of questions to be eligible for a gift card. From the reporting, MetLife was able to determine three winners and the process sparked significant brand engagement.

SwissRe: End-to-End Customer Experience Ownership
merged all its customer experience, voice of customer, and market data from more than 11,000 clients, 25 markets, and 11 languages onto a single, secure platform. The company now has a Web-based, highly secure insights platform that gives users 24/7 access to data. The intuitive interface makes it easy for all stakeholders to become experts on customer experience. This centralized, in-house approach led to a 90 percent decrease in research costs, a five-times increase in speed and productivity, and a seven-point Net Promoter Score increase.

Next Steps: Enhancing CX with Data-Driven Insights

Experience matters. We live in a world where insurers are disproportionately rewarded when they deliver a great experience and punished when they do not. Experience Management solutions from 51·çÁ÷unlock the power of business operations data (O-data) with experience data (X-data) to transform customer experience and drive business success.

As part of the 51·çÁ÷C/4HANA suite, 51·çÁ÷now makes it easier for insurers to combine X- and O-data and gain actionable insights at every step of the customer journey. .

Toni Tomic is global vice president of Insurance at SAP.

This article first appeared on the 51·çÁ÷News Center.

The post 360-Degrees of Experience Management in the Insurance Industry appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.