Data & Analytics

Qualtrics Expands Experience Management Platform with New and Enhanced AI and Analytics Tools

• By David Nagel
• 03/21/18

At its annual user conference this month, Qualtrics revealed a slew of new features for its flagship Experience Management (XM) Platform, a data collection and analysis tool used in some 2,000 colleges and universities and 6,800 schools. All told, Qualtrics has about 1.2 million education users in 90 countries.

The XM Platform is designed to capture and analyze experiential data from students, faculty/staff and alumni for a wide range of purposes, from measuring campus engagement and classroom satisfaction to professional development and onboarding to conducting research and longitudinal analyses. The use cases in K–12 and post-secondary education are extremely broad, ranging from anonymous bullying reporting to social-emotional learning, from program evaluation to event management, from community engagement to role-based dashboards.

There are two major new additions to the platform:

• Predict iQ and
• iQ Directory.

Predict iQ is a retention tool designed to predict, using "neural network, open-source algorithms," which "customers" will be leaving you and to intervene to stop that from happening. It uses Qualtrics Actions to set up triggers defined by the user to create a ticket, send an e-mail or trigger a third-party tool to act when certain parameters are met. According to Qualtrics, the system is "deeply integrated into existing feedback collection, so there's no need to move data around to get predictions. Predict iQ also complements Stats iQ, allowing companies to use Stats iQ to understand and fix systemic issues while leveraging Predict iQ to save individual customers."

iQ Directory, meanwhile, is a "live, organized chronicle that captures the emotions, sentiments, beliefs and preferences of an audience," according to Qualtrics. "The iQ Directory contains all experience data, collected over time, creating a system of record of all interactions and opinions each person has of an organization." In short, it's designed to make interactions with students, faculty, staff and alumni "smarter," with interactions building upon each other, and to predict how a given "customer" may respond to new situations.

In addition, Qualtrics has launched Certified XM Solutions, which provides pre-packaged Qualtrics solutions developed by third parties. According to Qualtrics: "Designed by the world's leading researchers, practitioners and consultants, Certified XM Solutions are packaged projects and programs with expert content, workflow and automation — built directly into the Qualtrics platform. These community-driven solutions provide complete industry-specific experience management programs including everything from best practices to content to technical implementation to survey design to contact frequency guidance to data analysis — and recommended next steps. Qualtrics Certified XM Solutions currently include experience management solutions that span employee engagement solutions, customer experience solutions, product and brand experience solutions for many industries," including education.

Further information about the XM Platform can be found at qualtrics.com. Certified XM Solutions can be found at qualtrics.com/xm-solutions. Free trial accounts are available at qualtrics.com/free-account.