The Customer Experience Tipping Point

Customer experience (CX) is a key battleground for companies in today’s economy. Yet this is a battleground on which many companies struggle. Advanced technology and empowered consumers have created a tipping point, where CX has become a company’s make or break moment.

To help companies better understand what they need to do, Medallia partnered with Ipsos to conduct a survey of 8,002 consumers in four countries across six industry sectors: online retail, offline retail, banks, insurance, hotels, and mobile network providers. The findings highlight a number of current trends in customer experience and indicate how companies can meet or exceed customer expectations in the coming year and beyond. The data shows that consumers are quick to both penalize and reward a brand based on their experience. In fact, 77 percent of respondents claim to have chosen a product or service from a company because of good experiences they had with it, while 64 percent of respondents said they have avoided a brand because of a bad experience they had within the last year.

According to the survey, the demand for a positive customer experience is especially high in the United States, and while loyalty is on the decline, expectations are on the rise, particularly among younger groups of consumers. For example, in banking and online retail, 30 percent of Gen Z and 22 percent of millennials surveyed indicated that their expectations of customer experience are higher today than they were two years ago. The survey shows expectations have risen in the U.S. across all six industries examined, and U.S. respondents reported significantly higher expectations than European consumers for personalized experiences, real-time response, and ability to chat with a live agent.

The study also revealed that:

• A single bad experience can cost a brand a customer.
• Every touchpoint matters.
• Customers don’t want to be responsible for fixing a company’s mistake.
• Consumers expect a personalized experience.
• Brands may be forgetting an important group of buyers.
• Women and younger generations are more likely to avoid a brand because of a bad experience.