8 Customer Experience Statistics You Need to Know

Pandemic fatigue has taken its toll, chatbots are gaining ground, but for now the phone is still king of customer service channels.

Customer experience has taken on a new level of importance for brands in 2022. Post-pandemic fatigue has taken its toll, and customers are expecting and demanding an exceptional, omnichannel experience across the channels of their choice. Let's take a look at eight customer experience statistics you need to know. 

Not All Industries Are Equal When It Comes to CX

The customer experience impacts businesses in all industries, as well as B2B businesses whose customers are businesses themselves. That said, not all industries are prioritizing customer experience as they should. According to the 2021 Statista Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, only 29.2% of organizations in the education sector worldwide said that they viewed CX as a primary competitive differentiator. 

In the financial and insurance services sector, 62% of respondents see CX as a primary competitive differentiator for their organizations. Interestingly, for some industries that one would think would have a primary focus on CX, such as retail and wholesale, only 39.9% believe CX to be a primary differentiator, while conversely, in the manufacturing industry, 47.4% believe it to be so.

AI Is Predicted to Improve CX

A 2021 Statista report on the factors likely to reshape and improve CX revealed that 45% of brands said that they thought artificial intelligence (AI) solutions would reshape their CX in the next five years. AI is able to provide the technology and advanced predictive insights that are required to deliver an exceptional, hyperpersonalized customer experience. 

Swapnil Jain, CEO and co-founder of Observe.AI, provider of a conversation intelligence platform for contact centers, told CMSWire that technologies like AI and natural language processing (NLP) are not only enabling chatbot/self-serve customer experiences, but empowering human call center agents to become truly customer-centric by tapping into real-time conversation intelligence. “Through the use of AI, call center agents are able to pinpoint unmet customer needs, identify key make-or-break conversation moments, accurately gauge sentiment and understand precisely how to improve the customer’s experience.” 

Related Article: Drive Growth by Improving Your Customer Experience Strategy

Customer Service Is Key to Exceptional CX

Although AI-powered chatbots have gained in popularity, according to a 2022 Calabrio report, nearly 80% of consumers still rank phone interactions as their preferred customer service channel. Additionally, bad customer service experiences have a huge impact on brand loyalty — 60% of consumers indicated that they’ve switched brands due to a negative contact center experience — and most have left after only two negative experiences.

The study also revealed that there is a significant gap between customers’ experiences and the service that contact center managers believe they are delivering. For example, 80% of contact center managers think they are meeting or exceeding customer expectations for access to live agents; however, only 37% of consumers agree. The same can be said for response times: 79% of managers think they are meeting or exceeding customer expectations for response times, but just 45% of consumers agree. Additionally, 84% of managers believe that they are meeting or exceeding customers’ needs to feel heard and understood by the brand, but only 45% of consumers agree.

Customer service agents need to be agile when it comes to solving customers’ issues. Sitecore's 2022 Brand Authenticity Report showed that 82% of US customers would be more loyal to a brand with customer support agents who have the autonomy to ditch the script and effectively solve customer issues.

Customers Want to Be Understood by Brands

A 2022 Redpoint Global survey revealed that 74% of consumers feel that brand loyalty is about feeling understood and valued, rather than discounts and loyalty perks. Additionally, 64% of those polled would rather purchase a product from a brand that knows them, and 34% would spend more money on a product to do so. 

Personalization is very important to customers today, as the results of this survey showed that 49% of respondents were more likely to consider a purchase from a brand that does personalization well, and 32% are willing to overlook a single bad customer experience for those brands that are trying to understand them as a customer. Additionally, 52% said that the No. 1 way brands make customers feel understood is by offering relevant product and service recommendations, followed closely (at 44%) by making it easier to navigate in-store and online. Interestingly, 65% of those polled stated that they love fewer than three brands — and 9% claim not to “love” any brands at all.

John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer at Redpoint Global, told CMSWire that according to this year’s Harris Poll commissioned by Redpoint, 39% of customers surveyed said they will not do business with any company that fails to offer a personalized experience. “The brands that have found success in the past two years (and are continuing to succeed now) are largely the ones that prioritize personalization at scale, adapting to the fact that consumers are now increasingly in control of their experiences, their data and more, and expect high degrees of personalization,” said Nash.

This article was published on CMSWire originally. 

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Lauren James, Head of Communications, GBG

lauren.james@gbgplc.com

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