Vendors talk plenty about getting companies closer to customers through big data trends, but are they delivering? Can data really pry open the skulls of customers and see what they think about products and services?

A new customer-experience domain is open up called the “experience economy,” according to Scot Henney (pictured, left), global vice president of sales and general business at SAP SE. It brings the front office and back office together and adds in “experiential data” on end-users, he explained.

“Not only do we understand implicit data and explicit data, like … how many people have just seen that mail, but also how they react to you,” Henney said. “But we could also say, ‘What do they feel about you? What else would they like you to do? What relationship do they currently have with you? And what would they like to see improve?'”

SAP is partnering with IBM Corp. on technologies that integrate the back office and front office. And they recently acquired experience-management software company Qualtrics International Inc. for $8 billion. This is a crucial piece in SAP’s move to dominate the new customer-experience market.

Henney and Marcus Venth (pictured, right), global vice president of S/4HANA business and market development at SAP, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think event in San Francisco. They discussed the Qualtrics acquisition and the crucial importance of customer experience in the digital age. (* Disclosure below.)

CX Gold Rush

Many companies are shifting from products to subscription-based services. This is a sign of these new customer-experience times. Many choices available through digital delivery modes give customers a great deal of power to switch brands easily. Their feedback is now golden.

In fact, 80 percent of customers have switched brands because of poor CX; and companies that deliver better customer experience have more than 200 percent more shareholder value, according to Henney. 

The 360 customer view that leads to stellar CX is not achieved with applications, data and professionals in silos, Venth added.

“One of the biggest challenges we see [is] … where we have a highly customized environment with lots of disparate applications that really are poorly integrated,” he said. SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise suite focuses largely on integrating applications on one platform. 

The total addressable market for CX technology, including, commerce, marketing, sales and service, is more than $30 billion per year, Henney pointed out. “If you combine experiential data with operational data, we’re going to blow past the competition and create a whole new market category,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think event. (* Disclosure: SAP SE sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither SE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE