Accelerating accurate responses and proposals for thousands of Qualtrics users with Responsive AI and Professional Services

The gist

Qualtrics sought a reliable AI-powered Strategic Response Management (SRM) platform to better meet the company’s evolving and increasing needs. With rising RFX volumes and public sector clients prohibiting AI in proposals, Qualtrics needed flexible, secure, and comprehensive AI-led proposal management. 

Responsive AI enables faster accurate proposals while scaling the ability to respond confidently to all information requests from thousands of Qualtrics® users. Responsive Professional Services ensured seamless onboarding, content migration, and ongoing enterprise-level support, making Qualtrics feel like a marquee client. Field sellers and subject matter experts (SMEs) use tools like Ask by Responsive and Responsive LookUp to save time sourcing organizational knowledge and maintain consistency. According to Becky Beard, Global Proposal Team Manager at Qualtrics, “We wanted to give Sales the very best solution, and that’s Responsive.”

The rundown

Qualtrics’ response challenge

• Qualtrics needed an enterprise solution that could continually adapt to the company's evolving and growing needs.
• Seamless implementation and enablement to minimize disruption and accelerate time to value.
• Global Proposal Team needed a solution that would allow them to respond to 1,000+ RFXs per year in addition to acting as an ad hoc resource for field sellers. The number of questions in information requests doubles on a quarterly basis because clients are using AI to generate RFXs.
• Needed flexible AI that could be turned on and off to accommodate prohibition of AI use in proposals by public sector clients. 

Impact and results

• Responsive AI accelerates Qualtrics’ time to a tailored first draft by as much as 50%. 
• Responsive Professional Services and Onboarding teams implemented the Responsive Platform, trained the Proposal Team, and continues to ensure white glove support as Qualtrics evolves. 
• Field sellers and subject matter experts (SMEs) tap into Qualtrics’ curated knowledge base using Ask, a conversational Q&A-style Responsive AI.
• Advanced content management capabilities combined with Responsive AI ensure consistency in responses from thousands of users while giving Sales and Proposal teams more time to spend on fine-tuning and strategy.

Searching for the right AI partner and best enterprise-level support

Qualtrics is trusted by thousands of the world’s best organizations to power exceptional customer and employee experiences that drive business success. To keep up with Qualtric’s growing and evolving response management needs, the company sought a dependable AI-led Strategic Response Management provider. To find the right fit, Qualtrics issued a detailed RFP. 

“As a proposal manager, I appreciate a well thought-out response,” Becky said. “Responsive was the only vendor that provided a comprehensive, thoughtful, non-boilerplate, strategic response that was clearly written for us. It answered every question thoroughly. Nothing was glossed over, and we really appreciated that, as the primary evaluators were a team of proposal managers.”

Becky spearheaded the evaluation process, establishing clear criteria for the RFP. A centralized knowledge base was table stakes, as her experience had shown that a single source of truth drives response efficiency. She also prioritized advanced AI capabilities, a robust AI product roadmap, and a reputation for comprehensive support — key factors to ensure a better experience than her previous provider had delivered.

Scaling response speed, accuracy, and confidence with Responsive AI

Becky already understood the value of a centralized proposal content library. With her SRM upgrade, Becky wanted to add AI to increase her team’s efficiency and help scale access to the library to every field-facing employee at Qualtrics.

For AI, Qualtrics required:

• A clear roadmap for AI that augments an already effective solution: “ We needed a tool that has AI at the forefront of their offerings and deeply integrated throughout their capabilities. We needed a tool that not only has a complete understanding of SRM but an understanding of when and how AI can enhance our work.”
• Flexibility to opt out of AI: Many of Qualtrics’ public sector clients bar the use of AI in proposals. Qualtrics needed a solution that allowed selective use of AI. “We need the ability to pick and choose when and how AI is used,” Becky said.
• Source citations: To ensure trust in AI-generated outputs, Qualtrics had two requirements for AI tools. One, provide source citations — something already included in Responsive AI. Two, restrict AI’s access to only Qualtrics-approved sources.
• A secure platform: While Qualtrics embraces AI internally, every solution had to pass a stringent security audit. Responsive was one of the few that raised no concerns with the Qualtrics Security team.

Responsive AI is making an impact at Qualtrics

Qualtrics selected Responsive AI because it is proprietary, fully operational, and purpose-built to enhance Strategic Response Management (SRM). “The real value of Responsive AI lies in the time it saves,” Becky explained. “When you have limited resources, giving back time to people is invaluable.”

At Qualtrics, Responsive AI:  

• Accelerates proposal creation by producing initial drafts up to 50% faster, giving response managers and SMEs more time to focus on strategy and fine-tuning.  
• Enhances efficiency by auto-completing answers as users type.  
• Improves knowledge access by connecting field sellers to the proposal Content Library through tools like Ask and LookUp, eliminating the time wasted chasing down one-off answers for emails, presentations, and calls.  
• Provides source citations and remains within the boundaries of the Qualtrics Content Library for all AI-generated responses.

Responsive AI enables Qualtrics to respond faster and more accurately to RFPs, VSQs, ad hoc questions, and other information requests. This includes helping new employees, who may not yet be familiar with all of Qualtrics’ products, respond confidently and accurately.  

“Enabling our teams with the knowledge they need allows them to quickly deliver value to the clients they serve.” Becky shared. “Responsive becomes a de facto learning tool because they can quickly ask, ‘Do we do this?’ Responsive AI provides an explanation and sourced information that they can pass along to the customer in real-time rather than having to ask for help or search in internal resources.”

Partnering with enterprise-level support you can grow with

When evaluating new providers, Qualtrics prioritized finding a partner that could offer reliable, marquee-level support. 

The criteria included:

• Proactive and responsive communication: Qualtrics wanted assurances that feedback would be valued, with regular meetings and acknowledgment of feature and enhancement requests.
• Seamless content migration and training: The Proposal team had invested heavily in centralizing their content, so migrating it and ensuring that it could be used immediately was critical.
• A long-term consulting partnership: Qualtrics viewed implementation as just the beginning. The company needed a support team they could rely on to continually optimize the platform for Qualtrics’ evolving needs.

With Responsive, Qualtrics found a partner that checked all these boxes. Responsive Professional Services expertly migrated proposal knowledge base and set up the platform. While that was taking place, Responsive provided onboarding and training to the Qualtrics team. Of the primary Onboarding and Professional Services Consultants, Becky said, “I cannot speak more highly of those two fantastic people. We were able to be hands-off, and they consistently put us at ease.”

Qualtrics works closely with Responsive’s executive team, including CEO Ganesh Shankar, and regularly collaborates with the Responsive Product team to explore product enhancements and features tailored to her team’s needs. 

Solving knowledge dystopia to unlock profitable growth

Different teams interact with potential and current customers throughout the pursuit lifecycle. Sales teams qualify leads and build relationships. Proposal teams create bids. InfoSec teams answer security questionnaires. Legal teams handle contracts…The longer the sales cycle, the more people are involved.

If these teams don’t work from the same knowledge base, each handoff increases the risk of mistakes, delays, or lost deals. When information is scattered, connected, and difficult for these teams to access and leverage, it creates “knowledge dystopia.”

Knowledge dystopia is too much information in too many places — that’s always changing as your business grows and evolves. It’s why Qualtrics worked to establish a single, centralized proposal knowledge base that could be trusted across all field-facing teams. It’s also why the company wanted control of how AI interacts with the knowledge base. In Responsive, Qualtrics has effective AI that blows open the doors to the democratization of organizational knowledge via the Responsive Content Library.

“If you are client-facing, you have access to Responsive,” Becky said. While response and content managers work predominantly within the Responsive SRM platform, SMEs and sellers use Ask and LookUp to find or generate answers, all of which is supported with source citations. If Responsive AI does not have sufficient information to generate an answer based on your knowledge base, then it will NOT hallucinate one.

The advanced taxonomy of the Responsive Content Library fits Qualtrics’ needs because they have so many different solutions, features, and functionalities. The option to use or not use AI combined with the ability to restrict Responsive AI to specific content gives Qualtrics ultimate control over response quality, accuracy, and consistency.

Helping the Sales team drive revenue with “the very best" solution

For Qualtrics, finding the right AI-powered SRM platform was about more than just features — it was about trust, collaboration, and results. Responsive has not only met but exceeded Qualtrics’ expectations, enabling the team to deliver faster, more accurate responses while scaling controlled access to the Responsive Content Library to thousands of users through Responsive AI. “The Proposal team’s customers at Qualtrics are Sales,” Becky said. “We wanted to give them the very best platform to do their job effectively and efficiently, and that’s Responsive.” 

From seamless onboarding to reliable enterprise support, Responsive has proven to be a partner that listens, evolves, and delivers. The result is unified, efficient management of proposals and knowledge, ultimately helping Qualtrics drive more profitable growth faster while maintaining the consistency and excellence its global reputation demands.