Using AI to Elevate Employee Experience with Qualtrics and SAP SuccessFactors
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant concept, it is already reshaping how HR teams listen to, understand, and act on employee needs. From improving process efficiency to surfacing insights in minutes rather than weeks, AI opens new possibilities for HR leaders to drive meaningful change. And that’s exactly what the three recent Qualtrics sessions on AI demonstrated: “What is Possible with AI – CX”, “What is Possible with AI – EX”, and “AI in Action: Practical Use Cases for HR-Leaders”, featuring Experts from Qualtrics and SAP SuccessFactors. Our XM expert Catarina Abert joined the sessions and summarizes the input in this blog post.
While Matt Evans (Head of Employee Experience Product Science at Qualtrics) showcased how Qualtrics embeds AI to process massive volumes of feedback, detect trends, and recommend actions, Franka Feiler (Product Marketing at SAP SuccessFactors) brought in the SAP SuccessFactors perspective, linking AI innovation to the broader HR technology landscape and showing how both platforms together can enable smarter, faster, and more impactful employee experience initiatives.
AI at the Core of Experience Enablement
Qualtrics’ vision is clear: move from simply collecting feedback to enabling action at scale. AI-powered capabilities like sentiment analysis, topic detection, and (soon) Personalized Action Recommendations are reducing the manual effort required to process feedback and allowing leaders to focus on impact rather than administration.
One compelling customer example came from KFC. Operating in a complex global franchise model, KFC used Qualtrics AI to analyze sentiment from open-ended employee and customer feedback and connect engagement data directly to customer satisfaction initiatives. The results were impressive:
- Customer satisfaction in India increased by 347% within three months.
- Satisfied customers were 54% more likely to return compared to dissatisfied ones.
These insights, surfaced in minutes rather than weeks, would have been impossible to uncover at this speed without AI.
From Data to Dialogue: Qualtrics Assist
One of the hardest things for managers is communicating results from employee feedback in a clear, constructive, and actionable way. As Matt Evans explained, it’s not just about having the numbers – it’s about knowing how to share them in a way that sparks productive conversation.
That’s why Qualtrics built Qualtrics Assist – an AI partner for both analysis and communication. Managers can interrogate their data and, in seconds, generate a ready-to-send summary email: an intro paragraph, key strengths, opportunities, relevant KPIs, and a closing note inviting the team to discuss next steps.
This turns what used to be hours of manual interpretation into a few clicks, while still allowing managers to refine the message in their own voice.
Tackling the “Zero-to-One” Problem with Personalized Action Recommendations
Another major pain point? Managers get survey results but don’t know what to do next. Launching broadly in Q3, Personalized Action Recommendations will bridge that gap by using AI to provide context-specific next steps. Instead of generic advice, the system considers:
- Quantitative survey results
- Qualitative feedback from employees
- Context added by the manager (what’s been tried, what hasn’t, current challenges)
- Best practices from Qualtrics People Science
The output? Three tailored, practical recommendations – each with a step-by-step plan. For example, if a nursing manager receives low scores on work-life balance, the AI would propose solutions compatible with a 12-hour shift environment, rather than irrelevant generic ideas.
This is augmentation, not automation: managers remain in control, but the barrier to action is dramatically reduced.
Insights that Drive Change (Faster)
The power of AI for EX is equally evident in the Community Health Network, a healthcare provider with more than 17,000 employees. By using Qualtrics AI to process thousands of open-text responses, they saved over 1,000 working hours, the equivalent of 25 full-time weeks, and identified a previously overlooked trend: challenges during shift-change handovers. This discovery led to process changes that could quite literally save lives.
Beyond efficiency, these examples show how AI enables leaders to spot patterns and opportunities for action that would otherwise remain hidden – and act on them quickly.
Governance, Literacy, and Human-Centered Change
Technology alone is not enough. As Franka Feiler emphasized, 67% of surveyed organizations have no AI governance in place. Employees with low AI literacy are 4.3 to 11.8 times less likely to have used AI at work. Most company rules today focus narrowly on what data can be used in AI, but give little guidance on how and when to use AI to improve work. Without this clarity, adoption stalls.
The lesson is clear: AI must be introduced transparently, with clear governance and a focus on building literacy – helping employees understand how AI fits into their workflow and positioning it as a tool to remove repetitive tasks, increase autonomy, and enable better decision-making.
From Vision to Real-World Impact
For many HR leaders, the challenge isn’t seeing AI’s potential. It’s knowing where to start. With Qualtrics and SAP SuccessFactors offering a broad range of AI features, the temptation is to try everything. But the biggest value comes from starting where it matters most, aligning to strategic priorities, and delivering early wins. At sovanta, we help clients connect the strengths of Qualtrics, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP BTP to create employee experiences that are intelligent, connected, and actionable – today. By combining governance, literacy, and the right technology, AI can move from a buzzword to a driver of measurable change in both EX and CX.
Would you like to discuss the potential with us? Feel free to reach out. As a long-standing Qualtrics partner, we’re closely connected to the latest developments and support you in setting up your Qualtrics project.
