6 reasons SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics confirms “the CX Revolution” as the new “Quality Movement”

For years now I have been saying that the best way to consider the rise of CX is to think about the Quality Movement of the 80’s and 90’s

1. CX is a discipline that is applied everywhere to make businesses more successful (as is Quality)
2. CX is a discipline supported by specific techniques (Journey Maps, Personas, Experience Design, CX Metrics) which have taken 20-30 years to prove (JD Power and Satmetrix compared to Deming, Toyota etc)
3. As CX’s importance and associated adoption rises it is only scalable, predictable, improvable and investable when it is enabled by technology (CX Measurement technologies like inQuba, Medallia, Qualtrics, Satmetrix and CX Execution technologies like Adobe, Nice, Oracle, Pega, Sitecore, Salesforce, SAP, Verint parallel the Quality driven Baan, SAP, Oracle rise of ERP, Process Management and Quality)
4. Enterprises adopt CX by creating a small CX change / adoption team (2,3,5,10 people) whose job is to activate customer centricity as a philosophy, approach and cultural norm)
5. Every major company initiative will have a part time CX specialist to add to the Quality and Technology specialists, project managers etc.
6. CX is not optional. You will get it or die. Todays leaders already get this (Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, BCBS) and 20 years from now companies who adopted CX driven customer centricity will be the only ones left .. those who fail to adopt CX will follow Sears and Blackberry.

As someone who early in my career joined a startup US Services company (Cap Gemini in 1991) who were partnered with a very different young German software company (SAP) committed to the Quality movement I now find myself partnered with Qualtrics who SAP just acquired.

It’s truly Deja Vue. Here we go again!  How exciting.