One of the many ram­i­fi­ca­tions of COVID-19 is how the virus has altered the way that peo­ple inter­act with fun­da­men­tal insti­tu­tions like gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion enti­ties. These two sec­tors have been at the cen­ter of a lot of debate over the past few months. Cit­i­zens are obvi­ous­ly curi­ous about how their local, state, and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments are track­ing and con­tain­ing COVID-19. At the same time, few issues have gen­er­at­ed as much recent atten­tion as the deci­sion to reopen schools or not. 

Through­out the pan­dem­ic, Qualtrics has been work­ing with both gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion enti­ties. The expe­ri­ence man­age­ment soft­ware com­pa­ny pro­vides a pow­er­ful asset, keep­ing track of vital infor­ma­tion and pro­vid­ing valu­able feed­back on how these insti­tu­tions are func­tion­ing. ASUG sat down with Dr. Chelsie Bright, the glob­al indus­try leader for gov­ern­ment at Qualtrics, and Omar Gar­riott, the glob­al indus­try leader for edu­ca­tion at Qualtrics. The two talked about Qualtrics’ recent efforts over the past year to devel­op solu­tions for these two sec­tors as they nav­i­gate COVID-19. 

ASUG: Who are your cus­tomers in the edu­ca­tion and gov­ern­ment sectors?

Omar: The ori­gin sto­ry of Qualtrics is root­ed in edu­ca­tion. We pro­vid­ed a world-class research tool for many stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics, and as they began grad­u­at­ing and start­ing their pro­fes­sion­al careers, they took Qualtrics with them. And now, though our roots are in research, we’ve grown into an entire sys­tem of action where edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions around the world can lever­age Qualtrics to not only do research, but to also bet­ter under­stand the expe­ri­ences of stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and staff. Insti­tu­tions lever­ag­ing Qualtrics include 99 of the top busi­ness schools, a vari­ety of K‑12 edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tions, and about half of the top 100 largest school districts. 

Chelsie: My Qualtrics sto­ry is very sim­i­lar to the company’s ori­gin sto­ry. I was first intro­duced to Qualtrics as a grad­u­ate stu­dent. I did a lot of my dis­ser­ta­tion research on the plat­form and then used it in the class­room as a pro­fes­sor. A num­ber of my stu­dents use the plat­form as well. When I went over into gov­ern­ment, I was look­ing for tools to bet­ter col­lect data and went back to using Qualtrics. So, I was on the cus­tomer side before I joined the Qualtrics team. We’ve seen that kind of tran­si­tion across the board. Qualtrics now has around 350 state and local gov­ern­ment cus­tomers in the U.S. We work with all the cab­i­net-lev­el fed­er­al agen­cies, which totals about 90 agen­cies. Qualtrics has been for­tu­nate to part­ner close­ly with a num­ber of those enti­ties to dri­ve inno­va­tion for­ward and help gov­ern­ments think about how to use feed­back data from con­stituents and key stake­hold­ers to dri­ve the mis­sion and pur­pose of gov­ern­ment ser­vices across state, local, and fed­er­al agencies. 

ASUG: In what ways are your cus­tomers lever­ag­ing this solu­tion and how has it changed their oper­a­tions?

Chelsie: COVID-19 has high­light­ed how crit­i­cal expe­ri­ences are. On the gov­ern­ment side of things, most agen­cies are try­ing to fig­ure out how they do a very rapid shift from a lot of in-per­son and paper-based ser­vices to dig­i­tal ser­vices. We’ve been part­ner­ing with them not only to help them under­stand the core expe­ri­ence of engag­ing with a gov­ern­ment ser­vice but also how it relates to the con­stituents’ rela­tion­ship with gov­ern­ments. Those expe­ri­ences build your trust (or lack there­of) in gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions. When you engage with the gov­ern­ment and the expe­ri­ence goes poor­ly, that then col­ors your per­cep­tion of that agency and impacts the lev­el of trust that you had. We’ve seen that high­light­ed through­out the pandemic. 

Qualtrics has been part­ner­ing with sev­er­al agen­cies on COVID-19 solu­tions that help com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate the pan­dem­ic and safe­ly admin­is­ter a vac­cine. Mon­i­tor­ing this expe­ri­ence, under­stand­ing the pain points and unique needs of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, and look­ing at those groups across dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ic fac­tors and char­ac­ter­is­tics become impor­tant when look­ing to safe­ly admin­is­ter the vaccine. 

Omar: Edu­ca­tion is one area that has been hit with so much uncer­tain­ty that it’s hard to keep up. I’m proud of how Qualtrics was able to iden­ti­fy where edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions across K‑12 were feel­ing the pain and quick­ly adapt our tech­nol­o­gy to be a part of the COVID-19 solu­tion. And what has res­onat­ed most with cus­tomers is how our tech­nol­o­gy can be lever­aged as a sys­tem of action to help them quick­ly adjust to ever-chang­ing situations. 

Right now, schools don’t have the lux­u­ry to rumi­nate on a prob­lem. They have to act quick­ly to keep peo­ple safe. And Qualtrics has been able to pro­vide solu­tions that solve their pain points much quick­er than many oth­er com­pa­nies (and maybe even any solu­tions they might already have in place). 

ASUG: Can you point to a spe­cif­ic instance where Qualtrics has pro­vid­ed a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic? 

Omar: There are a vari­ety of exam­ples. In high­er edu­ca­tion, one of our first and most inno­v­a­tive cus­tomers was the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi. The uni­ver­si­ty was at the epi­cen­ter of the cri­sis. It had to get its stu­dent-ath­letes and fac­ul­ty back on cam­pus. It turned to Qualtrics, and we were able to build a symp­tom-check­ing and con­tact-trac­ing tool for staff and stu­dents. This met the university’s unique needs, like inte­gra­tions with spe­cif­ic sys­tems. At the same time, we were ask­ing our­selves, how can we build a broad­er solu­tion that can help oth­er schools keep their com­mu­ni­ties safe? That’s exact­ly what we pilot­ed with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi. Now we have many schools on board, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty, Iowa State, Cal­i­for­nia Poly­tech­nic State Uni­ver­si­ty, and South­ern Methodist University. 

In K‑12, I would cite exam­ples from Fort Worth Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict (ISD) in Texas and Van­cou­ver Pub­lic Schools in Wash­ing­ton. In Fort Worth and Van­cou­ver, we found that par­ents want­ed to give feed­back on what their children’s edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence look like. What­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion was — reopen­ing schools or stay­ing vir­tu­al — the school dis­tricts were con­stant­ly reach­ing out to their employ­ees and their stu­dents’ fam­i­lies to gauge how the process was going. That just leads to bet­ter decisions. 

Chelsie: On the gov­ern­ment side, Qualtrics has part­nered with sev­er­al state and local enti­ties to help them with this process. We’ve been focused on how we can help auto­mate the tra­di­tion­al, man­u­al process. We are always think­ing about that end user, mean­ing the per­son who tests pos­i­tive or their fam­i­lies. How do we make it as easy as pos­si­ble for them to engage with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and opt into pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion so they feel like their data is pro­tect­ed? Then on the back­end, we were automat­ing a lot of those work­flows so that we’re lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to do the heavy lift­ing, and we don’t have to use near­ly as many front­line responders. 

Case in point, we’ve done some work with the state of Ari­zona. When we first start­ed work­ing with the state, its response rate to con­tact trac­ing was about 10%. With­in two weeks of launch­ing Qualtrics, that num­ber jumped to 45%, which is huge in terms of the num­ber of peo­ple that were imme­di­ate­ly reach­ing out. The state was keep­ing its com­mu­ni­ties safer and sav­ing a lot of mon­ey by using tech­nol­o­gy instead of peo­ple mak­ing phone calls. Because the state decreased that response time, it was able to slow down the pandemic. 

Qualtrics also has some cool projects in Los Ange­les Coun­ty, where the Qualtrics sys­tem was being used to send dai­ly text mes­sages to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pop­u­la­tion. The coun­ty has over 20,000 peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing and has seen response rates for that project upwards of 70%. It was using those respons­es to under­stand the mar­gin­al­ized needs of the com­mu­ni­ty and how COVID-19 has been impact­ing them. We’ve also part­nered with the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau and have nation­al stud­ies that are going out. The U.S. Cen­sus Bureau is using all of that feed­back to bet­ter under­stand the eco­nom­ic and men­tal health impacts of the virus and then shar­ing that data with oth­er fed­er­al agencies. 

ASUG: Omar, what are the spe­cif­ic actions that Qualtrics pro­vides cus­tomers in the edu­ca­tion industry? 

Omar: For schools, the num­ber one job is safe­ty. We have hun­dreds of insti­tu­tions and sys­tems using Qualtrics across K‑12 and high­er edu­ca­tion. They are large and small, pub­lic, and pri­vate insti­tu­tions who are using us to guide their reopen­ing efforts and fig­ure out what the sen­ti­ment is on reopen­ing. They need to fig­ure out how this expe­ri­ence is going to look. Qualtrics is help­ing them iden­ti­fy hotspots and prob­lems before they become wide­spread issues. As you can imag­ine, this is hard on col­lege cam­pus­es. There are still cas­es pro­lif­er­at­ing because COVID-19 is so com­mu­ni­ca­ble. It’s real­ly hard to keep peo­ple prop­er­ly isolated. 

Job num­ber two for schools is to restore pub­lic trust. Schools need to be more trans­par­ent by ask­ing how the expe­ri­ence is going and then show­ing how they are act­ing on that feed­back. A cou­ple of months ago, we launched the COVID-19 School Response Dash­board. This is the nation­al dash­board track­ing case pro­lif­er­a­tion and the mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies that are hap­pen­ing. We have hun­dreds of mil­lions of stu­dents that are impact­ed by the schools already par­tic­i­pat­ing. We just got off a webi­nar with sev­er­al super­in­ten­dents from around the coun­try about the next phase of this project, which is going to allow dis­tricts to con­tex­tu­al­ize their infor­ma­tion. They’re going to be able to see how they are doing com­pared to oth­er dis­tricts. They have access to a lot of fil­ters that will help them make bet­ter deci­sions about reopen­ing or stay­ing closed. 

ASUG: Chelsie, what are the inno­va­tions Qualtrics is work­ing on to address the chal­lenges being expe­ri­enced with­in the gov­ern­ment sector? 

Chelsie: Sim­i­lar to what Omar was talk­ing about, we’re very focused on help­ing gov­ern­ments get into the recov­ery phase of this pan­dem­ic. We are think­ing a lot about the vac­cine and some of the chal­lenges that are going to be posed by that. The key thing that we’re see­ing arise is that com­mu­ni­ties want to be able to reopen safe­ly. They know that with­out achiev­ing some sort of herd immu­ni­ty, it’s going to be hard to reopen. 

Then there’s a lack of trust, over­all, in the vac­cine right now. Qualtrics con­duct­ed a nation­al study on this and found that 40% of Amer­i­can adults are say­ing they are unsure if they will take the vac­cine or aren’t plan­ning on tak­ing it. The biggest con­cerns dri­ving that men­tal­i­ty are the vaccine’s effec­tive­ness, any adverse effects, and both state and local gov­ern­ments’ abil­i­ties to safe­ly admin­is­ter the vaccine. 

Qualtrics can help those local enti­ties be respon­sive to the needs of their com­mu­ni­ty, to under­stand those needs, and then be able to admin­is­ter the vac­cine in a way that makes peo­ple feel safe and builds con­fi­dence for the next phas­es. Qualtrics is think­ing about those in many dif­fer­ent areas. One is admin­is­ter­ing the vac­cine and help­ing gov­ern­ments do it effec­tive­ly. This involves stream­lin­ing the process, allow­ing peo­ple to go online, sched­ule their appoint­ments, and lever­ag­ing tools like QR codes. Through­out that entire process, we are help­ing our cus­tomers ask for feed­back so they can quick­ly adjust if a poor expe­ri­ence is being deliv­ered. We are also try­ing to keep it as sim­ple as pos­si­ble for the end users. We know that if we make things eas­i­er, peo­ple are more like­ly to engage with the process. Final­ly, Qualtrics is try­ing to make the solu­tion as user-friend­ly and cit­i­zen-focused as pos­si­ble. Rather than opti­miz­ing for com­pli­ance-based pro­grams, we are encour­ag­ing gov­ern­ments to think about this from the cit­i­zen perspective. 

ASUG: What are some of the com­mon prob­lems that are fac­ing both the gov­ern­ment and the edu­ca­tion indus­tries? How is Qualtrics work­ing with those indus­tries to try to fix those shared problems? 

Chelsie: We’ve touched on this, but trust­ing in insti­tu­tions is so vital. It’s impor­tant to con­nect the user expe­ri­ence to trust and under­stand that the inter­ac­tions peo­ple have with insti­tu­tions do impact their con­fi­dence in those insti­tu­tions. If we’re not mon­i­tor­ing and under­stand­ing what those expe­ri­ences are in the moments when they hap­pen, it’s going to be hard to address those needs. Often, insti­tu­tions take a point-in-time view where they con­duct these big stud­ies, six months lat­er they pro­duce a report, and then they try to use that to meet res­i­dents’ needs. The world is mov­ing so fast now. I think COVID-19 has shown insti­tu­tions that they need to be more agile and respon­sive. Qualtrics has been focused on help­ing gov­ern­ment enti­ties get feed­back from their stake­hold­ers, under­stand their needs, and then be able to take action on that data in a respon­sive fashion.

Omar: That’s true, Chelsie. These are two sec­tors that are often used for deep analy­sis. I had the school dis­trict super­in­ten­dent of a large school sys­tem tell me they need to get out of the motions of year­ly impact stud­ies and con­duct more fre­quent touch­es. That’s how the rest of the world works and how con­sumers are ori­ent­ed. One big prob­lem that COVID-19 is caus­ing is enroll­ment loss­es. We’re see­ing bud­get cuts in K‑12 and high­er edu­ca­tion. We know this is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ing low-income stu­dents and stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties. That’s where that trust we’ve been talk­ing about comes in: fam­i­lies need to trust that these insti­tu­tions are going to keep their kids safe. 

ASUG: Is Qualtrics using the feed­back of these cus­tomers to improve the soft­ware? If so, how? 

Omar: We are. Going back to what I was dis­cussing ear­li­er, we ini­tial­ly built these solu­tions in coop­er­a­tion with high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions. The solu­tions were built to meet not only their unique needs, but also their shared needs across the sec­tor. I think in both gov­ern­ment and edu­ca­tion, we’ve been keep­ing our ears close to the ground for how those needs are evolv­ing. The great thing about expe­ri­ence man­age­ment is if you under­stand that con­cept, then you can run with it and accom­plish your goals. Qualtrics is pro­vid­ing the base set of tools. Peo­ple need to mod­i­fy them for their spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tions. If there are some tech­ni­cal ques­tions that we need to help them with, then we have lots of lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to assist our customers. 

Chelsie: Just to reit­er­ate, it’s real­ly because of that close part­ner­ship that we’ve had with so many of these insti­tu­tions that we’ve even been able to build these solu­tions out. It’s thanks to a lot of those front­line work­ers and gov­ern­ment agen­cies that have been at the tip of the spear deal­ing with this pan­dem­ic and the feed­back that they’ve giv­en us as to what their needs are. It’s been a big jour­ney for us, and Qualtrics is thank­ful to all of them for their con­tin­ued sup­port and col­lab­o­ra­tion on this work. 

Omar: They are the real innovators. 

Want to see how the pub­lic sec­tor and gov­ern­ment enti­ties are fur­ther uti­liz­ing Qualtrics and SAP prod­ucts? Reg­is­ter for the ASUG Pub­lic Sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment Influ­ence Coun­cil launch on Jan. 29, 12:30 p.m. ET/11:30 a.m. CT. If you are an ASUG vol­un­teer, don’t miss the 2021 ASUG Vol­un­teer Meet­ing to net­work with peers and hear what ASUG has in store for 2021. Reg­is­ter to attend the event on Jan. 22, 11:30 a.m. ET/10:30 a.m. CT.