Senior Hire and Promotion Speed AI Growth for Qualtrics

In the US, experience management specialist Qualtrics has announced two senior appointments designed to accelerate its development of AI. Mark Hammond joins the company as SVP, Core AI, while Jeff Gelfuso is promoted to SVP, Chief Product Experience Officer.

Qualtrics provides solutions for clients to continually assess and improve the four 'core experiences': Customer, Employee, Product and Brand. In 2023 it was acquired by investors for around $12.5bn from its previous owner SAP, and taken private. Last week longtime CEO Zig Serafin announced he was leaving the role, and the company is now searching for a replacement.

Qualtrics says more than a third of its customers have upgraded to its AI offers, including Conversational Feedback and Experience Agents, while 90% of its top 50 customers use at least one AI capability. The firm claims its purpose-built synthetic model Qualtrics Edge Audiences produces results 'nearly identical to human responses'.

Hammond (pictured above) brings deep experience in AI, applied neuroscience, machine learning, autonomous systems, and human-centered design. He is the founder of Bonsai, an AI company pioneering machine teaching and reinforcement learning for industrial applications - when this was acquired by Microsoft, Hammond served as a GM, VP, and Corporate VP at the software giant, working on AI for autonomous systems, infrastructure for bridging physical and virtual assets, and the firm's innovation incubation framework.

Gelfuso (pictured below) becomes the company's first Chief Product Experience Officer, overseeing a unified product, research and UX design organization focused on delivering human-centered experience management technologies. His previous work at Workday, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft gives him expertise in leading large-scale integrated product, design and development organizations.

Brad Anderson, Qualtrics' President of Product, Engineering, UX and Security, says the company is moving beyond the early stage of AI introduction where the focus was on efficiency, and now wants to help 'fundamentally transform how organizations interact with customers and employees.' He states: 'In this new era, context matters more than personalization, connection matters more than efficiency, and a deep understanding of the people you serve is a competitive advantage. Purpose-built AI for experience management is critical to delivering these outcomes, and Qualtrics' accelerating investments, enhanced expertise, and enterprise-grade security allow us to move faster and deliver greater value to customers.'

Web site: www.qualtrics.com .