Everything HR Needs to Know About Experience Management (XM)
We talk about experiences a lot. Some of the experiences that immediately come to mind are the candidate experience, employee experience, and the customer experience. But I must admit when I think about these experiences, I lean toward the feeling that the person might have, versus data.
While an individual’s feelings about an experience are important, as business people, we also need to be focused on the data that the experience can generate for our organizations. At this year’s Qualtrics X4 Summit, I had the chance to speak with Bryce Winkelman, global growth and strategy leader for Qualtrics’ EmployeeXM product. We talked about – in general terms – what experience management is and why people need to take notice.
Bryce, let’s start with a definition. What is experience management (XM)? And when we talk about experiences, whose experiences are we talking about?
[Winkelman] Experience Management (XM) is the discipline of using both experience data (X-data) and operational data (O-data) to measure and improve the four core experiences of any business – customer, employee, product, and brand.
For decades, businesses have depended on O-data to understand what is happening – hard numbers like costs, accounting, and sales – to inform business decisions. X-data measures the human factor data – an individual’s beliefs, emotions, and intentions – that tell you why something is happening. Together, X- and O-data ensure every business decision is based on both facts and perceptions.
Why is experience management important to the business?
[Winkelman] In today’s experience economy, the value of any organization is dictated by the experiences of its customers, employees, and other constituencies, and those experiences can be shared and amplified globally and instantaneously. As a result, brand perception and reputation can shift quickly. Organizations that detect these factors and thoughtfully shape interactions with customers and employees can close experiences gaps, create differentiated experiences and sustain competitive advantage.
Originally published on Human Resources Today,
