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3 Questions with Bob Evans: Ryan Smith, owner of Utah-based company Qualtrics

Posted at 10:17 PM, Jan 13, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-14 00:17:09-05

Since its creation in a basement in Provo 17 years ago, Qualtrics has become a leader in the corporate feedback industry.

The company collects data from customers, employees and others, regarding their experiences with companies and their products. It then delivers that information in real time to those companies.

Now, German-based business operations and customer relations giant SAP is buying Qualtrics for $8 billion.

Bob Evans sat down with the CEO and founder of Qualtrics Ryan Smith, and asked him three questions:

  1. When a company is able to anticipate what their audience is going to do; their customers, their employees, what the brand is, how the brand is going to be received, and how the products are going to be received - what kind of an advantage does that give them in the marketplace, and conversely, what happens if they ignore all that information?
  2. Can you give me a specific instance, let's say, in the hospitality industry, where information and data from Qualtrics, gathered by Qualtrics, synthesized, and fed back to the company, led that company to make changes that changed their result?
  3. Early on, when Qualtrics was just getting started, did you find it a difficult sell when you approached companies with this kind of "in the moment" data?

The full interview with Smith can be seen below: