Qualtrics names Singapore as Southeast Asia HQ

With an investment of US$ 2.7 million, Qualtrics has made a commitment to grow its presence in the Singapore market.

In a media brief at the Fullerton Hotel, Bill McMurray, the managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan, explained why Qualtrics is entering the Singapore market with a product around experience management.

Citing a report from Bain, McMurray shared that two-thirds of workers around the world now are disengaged from their employers.

"Engaged means they want to work for the company, they want to do their best, they want to serve the customers properly, and they are excited and enthusiastic about it," McMurray elaborated.

The trend, he says, has resulted in a worldwide phenomenon whereby over 2 million people change their jobs every month.

On the customer side, the report from Bain indicated that only 8 percent of customers were engaged, which implied a higher likelihood of customer churn for the companies in the report.

To solve the issues, McMurray pointed to the Qualtrics Customer Experience Management Platform, a data collection and analysis tool.

"We can help our customers capture employee data, customer data, brand data, and product data," McMurray said.

The platform boasts a predictive element, taking in the variables across four experience points. it claims to offer its users the ability to foresee outcomes based on the data.

In less than a year, the Australia-based team at Qualtrics secured 70 clients in Southeast Asia, 40 of which are from Singapore, operating across a range of consumer and enterprise verticals, according to the company. With the minimum viable product validated, a dedicated setup for Singapore became justified.

Mao Gen Foo is the newly appointed head of Southeast Asia, charged with leading Qualtrics in Singapore and taking over growth in neighboring markets, such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

"We are projecting that in three years time, we will have 500 customers," Foo speculated, sharing the targets of his 2020 vision. "Today we are two employees, by then we should be 50 plus."

He was referring to Sunil Pamnani, the regional lead at Qualtrics, who moved from Australia to work with Foo to grow the Southeast Asia market.

Yap Si Guan, the head of customer experience management at OCBC Bank, presented a technical endorsement for the Qualtrics XM, detailing the operational framework that improved customer experience.

To better understand the bottom line impact of the Qualtrics XM platform, we inquired about the improvement in customer and employee churn rate experienced by OCBC, given the Bain report of 8 percent customer satisfaction. Guan would merely share that since implementation, OCBC Bank had acquired new customers and managed to retain them at a pace that exceeds industry standards.