Qualtrics' president of product has a vision for agentic AI in the workplace: 'We're going to operate in a multiagent world'
Brad Anderson is the president of product, user experience, and engineering at Qualtrics.
Courtesy of Qualtrics
Qualtrics, which collects data on consumers, employees, and brands, is leaning into agentic AI.
Its product president said the tech helps companies act on feedback faster and make better decisions.
This article is part of "CXO AI Playbook" — straight talk from business leaders on how they're testing and using AI.
Brad Anderson, the president of product, user experience, and engineering at Qualtrics, an $11 billion company that helps businesses collect and analyze data, believes organizations are at a turning point in how they apply AI.
"AI is no longer just in the back office," he told Business Insider. "It's front and center in every customer and employee conversation, and it's being brought to organizations in ways they can tangibly see and benefit from."
At the heart of this shift is agentic AI, he said. While generative artificial intelligence helps companies interpret data to better understand customer behaviors and trends, agentic AI goes a step further by "unlocking action at scale," Anderson said. This allows businesses to respond to those insights quickly and effectively.
Last year, for example, Qualtrics, which made its name in customer surveys, introduced conversational feedback, using AI to analyze responses and generate real-time follow-up questions. Today, the company works with over 20,000 customers across industries — including tech, retail, and airlines — and is using agentic AI to help them turn feedback into actionable insights and respond more effectively.
Some organizations are leading the way, while others are more cautious. "Some are carefully evaluating how it benefits their customers and employees," Anderson said, "while others see it as transformative not just for their business but for the world — and they're eager to get after it."
BI spoke with Anderson about how companies could use agentic AI.
The following has been edited for clarity and length.
You say that agentic AI drives "action at scale." Can you give an example?
Imagine an airline passenger's flight is canceled and they're unsure about the refund process. When they respond to a survey, they might say, "I searched online but still don't know if I'll get my money back or just a credit."
With agentic AI, we personalize responses in the airline's tone and act based on the customer and their situation. Instead of a generic reply, the system confirms refund eligibility, gives a timeline, and tailors responses based on loyalty status and lifetime value. A highly profitable, loyal customer gets a different experience than someone who booked through a discount site. This turns a routine survey into a real-time service, resolving issues instantly.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
12 minutes ago
- Business Insider
A YouTuber created a $75 grill scrubber to experience the challenges of making stuff in the US — and it sold out
A really nice grill brush will cost you about $25 at your local big box store, but YouTuber Dustin Sandlin is betting he can get customers to shell out three times that amount for a Made-in-America version. Sandlin traces his passion for US manufacturing to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when he was bothered by the lack of American-made essential goods. "Everybody wanted N95 masks and face shields, and they couldn't get it," he said in a recent YouTube video. "This revealed to me how anemic our manufacturing capacity in America has become, because I was waiting on some billionaire to come save us, and it didn't happen." So began a yearslong deep dive into the challenges of making products in the US, which Sandlin documented for his series on YouTube called "Smarter Every Day." After working with John Youngblood, the owner of a local specialty grill accessories company, Sandlin got excited about the idea of developing a better scrubber. Sandlin and Youngblood wanted to produce it in the US with as many domestically sourced components as possible, and sell it at a retail price. In a video that went live Sunday and has since amassed more than 2 million views, Sandlin shares why he decided to get serious about US manufacturing, explains how he navigated the design process, and makes a sales pitch for viewers to buy it for themselves. On Tuesday, Youngblood told Business Insider the $75 scrubber has sold through its initial production run of several thousand units within a day, and his company is now taking pre-orders. "We're going to have a backlog for a while," Youngblood said. Most grill brushes are meant to be thrown away. This one isn't. Many lower-cost grill brushes aren't typically designed to last more than a year of use — grill-maker Weber recommends changing them after each grilling season. Another problem is that the bristles have been known to come off and can end up in grilled food. Sandlin and Youngblood found that welded chain mail — like the material of a medieval knight's armor — was highly effective at cleaning grill grates without breaking. There was one problem: "We could only find it in China." After a few tries, the team managed to find a US supplier who could make about 2,000 units a month and a supplier in India to augment the rest. Attaching the chain mail to a handle proved to be another adventure. Sandlin said the average one-inch industrial bolt costs around 9 cents when imported, but that jumps to 38 cents for versions made in the US. "Most machine shops I talked to directly, they said, 'Yeah, we can't even get the material for the price of the finished bolts that you're getting from a foreign supplier,'" Sandlin said. Then there was the process of making injection-molded parts to provide support and flexibility, which required machining custom tools and dies (the metal forms that shape a material) for shops to use in production. "This is the moment where this whole experiment came into focus for me," Sandlin said. "I realized at that moment we're screwed." American manufacturing has exported the smart part of making stuff The reason for Sandlin's pessimism is that many of the shops he spoke with send tool and die design files to China to be made and imported for use in US production lines. "I don't want my intellectual property in China, I want to make it here," he said. "And they said, 'Good luck.'" The problem illuminated by this episode goes far beyond a seemingly simple grilling accessory. "We're screwed as a nation if we can't do the intelligent work of tool and die: making the tools that make the things," Sandlin said. "We have flipped it. We are now to the point where the smart stuff is done somewhere else." Sandlin and Youngblood eventually found US suppliers for all of their custom components. They're working to get every piece sourced here. The video shows two instances where Sandlin was surprised by the apparent country of origin being different from what he says he was led to believe: The first batch of knobs arrived in packaging stating they were made in Costa Rica rather than the US. Several boxes of chain mail (ostensibly from India) had markings that suggested they were instead from China. "I'm shocked," Sandlin said. "It's pretty weird to set out to try to make a thing completely in America and to find out towards the end of the process that you made something in China anyways." Sandlin says he's not interested in having America be the dominant world player — he wants more opportunities for people here to have good jobs that allow them to take care of their communities. "If you are ever, ever in a position to make a decision about where your thing is manufactured, take a second and consider making a little less profit, maybe in order to invest in your local community," he said.
Business Insider
20 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Ukraine's defense industry says the fight against Russia has shown it that the West's approach to weapons is all wrong
Ukraine's defense industry is urging the West to abandon its longtime fixation on sleek, expensive weaponry in favor of cheaper, mass-produced arms, the kind needed to survive and win a grinding war of attrition against Russia. Serhiy Goncharov, the CEO of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries — which represents around 100 Ukrainian companies — told Business Insider that the West's longstanding focus on fielding limited numbers of cutting-edge systems could be a serious disadvantage in a protracted conflict. Those systems are good to have, but mass is key. An argument for mass The war in Ukraine shows you don't need a handful of ultra-precise, expensive weapons, Goncharov told BI. You need a massive supply of good enough firepower. He said that the expensive weapons like the US military's M982 Excalibur guided munition (each shell costs $100,000) "don't work" when the other side has electronic warfare systems and the kind of traditional artillery rounds that are 30 times cheaper. Goncharov pointed to the M107, a self-propelled gun that was first fielded by the US in the 1960s, as an example of inexpensive firepower that can be effective in large numbers. "You don't need 10 Archers from the Swedish that are probably one of the best artillery systems in the world," he said, referring to the artillery system made by BAE Systems that was given to Ukraine by Sweden. Instead, you need 200 cheap howitzers like the Bohdana one that Ukraine makes. The "enormous rate of damage," the significant rate of ammo and equipment attrition, in a fight like this means you need a constant supply of weaponry to keep fighting, especially when there isn't any guarantee the high-end weapons will be the game changers promised. Russia's grinding attritional warfare Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been one marked by extensive use of artillery and tremendous ammunition expenditure. The war in some ways resembes the huge, destructive battles of World War I and World War II, with high casualties and substantial equipment losses. Russia has one of the world's largest militaries backed by a large population. The country has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to pursue an attritional style of warfare, committing a lot of troops and weaponry to a fight to slowly wear down its foe. Russia's invasion has chewed through equipment. The UK Ministry of Defense said in December that Russia had lost over 3,600 main battle tanks and almost 8,000 armored vehicles since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. The Russians have the mass to absorb those losses. Ukraine has struggled with weapon and ammo shortages, as well as deficiencies in manpower. Ukraine turned to small, cheap drones as an asymmetric warfare alternative; Russia has employed uncrewed systems in battle as well. China, another concern in the West, has built a similar kind of force, one with the mass to take losses. The West, on the other hand, has spent the last two decades and change fighting lower-level adversaries where its forces can win the day with superior capabilities. European and NATO are waking up Goncharov's warning is one that has been echoed by other Western defense officials and companies. Countries have been keen to learn lessons about fighting Russia from the conflict in Ukraine, particularly in Europe, where many countries warn Russia could pursue further aggression in the future and defense spending is growing rapidly. Gabrielius Landsbergis, the former defense minister of Lithuania, a NATO ally bordering Russia, previously described the war to Business Insider as one of "high quantities." He said that while the West has largely focused on new and expensive weaponry that takes a long time to manufacture, Russia has been "building something that's cheap, that's expendable, that's fast." He said the West has "been preparing for a different kind of war" than what it would face in one against Russia, focusing on impressive equipment that is "very expensive." Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, previously told BI that "one of the lessons" from Ukraine is that the West needs far greater quantities of inexpensive weaponry to meet the threats posed by Russia and China. The head of NATO, Mark Rutte, urged countries to take similar learnings earlier this year, saying the alliance is too slow at developing weapons. He said the alliance works toward perfect, "but it doesn't have to be perfect." He said that Ukraine will go ahead with equipment that is a "six to seven" out of 10, while NATO militaries insist on reaching "nine or 10." He said it wasn't about getting rid of the expensive weaponry completely, but about finding a balance. It's about "getting speed and enough quality done in the right conjunction." That's something warfare experts have also told BI. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and the director of research in the foreign-policy program at the Brookings Institution, said the West's approach needs to change. The American military, for instance, is far more used to wars where "the whole point is you're not going to be slogging it out for months and years on end." But he also said that doesn't mean the West needs to completely abandon the development of advanced systems. "Those things have not become unimportant just because we realized that other things are also important," he said. The UK's armed forces minister also warned last month that the war showed the West needs to change how it procures weaponry. Luke Pollard said Ukraine's fight showed NATO "the way we have run our militaries, the way we have run our defense, is outdated." He said NATO militaries "build and procure really expensive high-end bits of kit. And it will take you five, 10 years: five years to run a procurement challenge, another 10 years to build it." Industry has taken note, too. Kuldar Väärsi, the CEO of Milrem Robotics, an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle company in NATO ally Estonia, told BI in May that "we need to learn from Ukraine, and we need to get more pragmatic about what kind of equipment we buy." He said Europe needs to learn that "having a hundred more simple pieces of equipment is better than having 10 very sophisticated pieces of equipment." He said countries need to start buying less-sophisticated pieces of weaponry en masse so industry can adjust. "Industry has to manufacture what the customer is buying. And if the customer is still buying only a few very sophisticated items, then the industry just aligns with that." And the reality is that may not work.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
Qantas is pulling the plug on Jetstar Asia — and 500 jobs
Qantas is shutting down Jetstar Asia, its Singapore-based budget carrier, blaming rising operating costs and a crowded market. The budget airline will cease operations on July 31 after more than two decades. Jetstar Asia will continue flights until then on a "progressively reduced schedule," Qantas said in a statement on Wednesday. "Despite delivering exceptional customer service and operational reliability, Jetstar Asia has been impacted by rising supplier costs, high airport fees, and intensified competition in the region," the Australian company said. Jetstar Asia flies 16 routes from Singapore to destinations in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, China, Sri Lanka, and Australia. Jetstar operations in Australia, New Zealand and Japan will not be affected. Customers booked on canceled flights will be offered full refunds, and Qantas will try to move them to other airlines where possible. The shutdown will also result in the loss of more than 500 jobs, a Jetstar Asia spokesperson told Business Insider. Affected employees will be given redundancy benefits and assistance with other roles within Qantas and other airlines. Qantas added that 13 Jetstar Asia Airbus A320 aircraft will be progressively redirected to Australia and New Zealand. Qantas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Competition among budget carriers in Southeast Asia was "brutal," Alan Tan, a professor specializing in aviation law at the National University of Singapore's Law School, told Business Insider. "The departure is a great loss from the viewpoint of price and service competition for travellers," he said. Virgin Australia IPO The closure comes on the same day that Virgin Australia announced its intention to list on the stock market in Sydney on June 24. The shares will be priced at A$2.90, raising A$685 million and valuing the company at A$2.3 billion. The IPO will allow some existing investors, including Bain Capital, Qatar Airways Group, and the Virgin Group, to realize part of their holdings. Investors participating in the offer are expected to hold about 30% of shares on issue, with the remainder being held by existing investors. Virgin carries about 20 million passengers a year on more than 100 aircraft. It operates 76 routes to 38 destinations across its domestic and short-haul international airline business. From next week it will start long-haul international services between Australia and Doha in partnership with Qatar Airways, which has a 25% stake in Virgin. Budget model is 'dead' United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby earlier this month criticized the budget airline model and called it "crappy." He told the "Future of Everything" event that the low-cost carrier model was "dead." "The model was screw the customer," he said. "It was like trick people, get them to buy, and get them to come, and then charge them a whole bunch of fees that they aren't expecting … disclosures buried in legalese," he continued. "Their problem is they got big enough that they needed repeat customers. They don't get them." His comments came the same day that United announced a new partnership with JetBlue, which some consider to be a budget carrier.
