Customer Engagement with AI and Self-Service Strategies with Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics | Episode 049

The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.

Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics is a staple in the CS community and has been leading scaled motions for YEARS - which is sometime that not a lot of people can say. She also sits on Gainsight's Digital Advisory Board - so yeah, she's qualified to talk about this stuff. :-)
In this fantastic conversation, we talk about:

• Building digital first with humans coming in off of the back of those motions
• The evolution of ‘scaled’ from just email and outbound events to a push to come inbound
• Building one place portal where customers can go for everything and where CSMs can interact with their customers
• How Digital is structured at Qualtrics across various departments
• Internal cross-collaboration on digital motions
• What to look out for in a digital leader - specifically cross-collaboration and a varied background
• Focusing on Support deflection metrics and areas to automate
• Other interesting metrics in use at Qualtrics: % CTAs launched, penetration rate of closed success CTAs (conversation), Monthly Active Users, Monthly Active Customers, Flow Completion, % of Renewals Not Assisted by Humans
• Balancing being tactical and strategic as a leader
• Using special interests among the team to drive career growth and creativity - including Hackathons
• Cool examples of digital motions including customer-facing scorecards, micro-learning, AI and self-serve portals.
• AI bot & recommendation engine implementation at Qualtrics
• Letting data tell you who the customer personas are
• The dependency on operations work streams to get things done

Enjoy! I sure did...
Kari's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariardalan/
Link to Kari's post about the qualities of a Digital CS Leader: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kariardalan_digitalsuccess-leadership-recruitment-activity-7175101395631570944-qujn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Shoutouts:

• Delores Cooper (Zendesk): https://www.linkedin.com/in/delorescooper/
• Austin Kwon (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinkwon/
• Kelly Bray (MongoDB): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-bray-1684166/
• Rimple Patel (Eightfold): https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimpledpatel/

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The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Chapter

1. Customer Engagement with AI and Self-Service Strategies with Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics | Episode 049 (00:00:00)

2. Transitioning to Inbound Digital Customer Success (00:00:03)

3. Leadership and Collaboration in Digital Programs (00:15:17)

4. Digital Transformation and AI Implementation (00:22:20)

5. Collaborative Strategies in Digital Marketing (00:29:11)