Poor customer experiences are threatening brand loyalty, with nearly one-third (31 percent) of consumers opting to take their business elsewhere after a single dissatisfactory interaction last year. New research from Genesys, a global cloud leader in experience orchestration, also reveals the number one challenge for organizations is keeping up with rising consumer expectations — putting their bottom line at risk as they struggle to deliver relationship-building experiences.
In the third edition of this Genesys global benchmarking study, The State of Customer Experience examines how consumer preferences for personalized, empathetic experiences, rapidly increasing digital channel use, and declining satisfaction with automated interactions create mounting pressure for organizations worldwide.
Expectations for what makes a great customer experience (CX) are rising faster than most organizations can keep up with — and consumers aren’t afraid to walk away when their needs aren’t met.
- Most consumers (86 percent) believe a company is only as good as its service — a staggering 16 percentage points increase from 2021. But only 13 percent of businesses have the tools and technology in place to deliver the experiences people want.
- Less than half (43 percent) of consumers have felt highly valued after a call, while a quarter of consumers have lost their temper, and some (12 percent) had experiences so bad that they were driven to tears.
- These bad experiences are worse than frustrating — they’re loyalty killers: 77 percent of consumers will switch brands after five or fewer negative interactions with a brand’s customer service.
“Consumers today have little tolerance for fragmented, inefficient and transactional interactions, which they’re demonstrating by leaving for the competition,” said Barbara Holzapfel, chief marketing officer of Genesys. “The most innovative organizations are proactively addressing these rapidly changing expectations by redefining what’s possible using digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). For organizations, this study underscores the importance of strengthening customer and employee relationships by orchestrating personalized, empathetic experiences at scale.”
For organizations to meet the increasing expectations of consumers, they need to understand the preferences and motivations that are driving their behaviors.
- The experience and values-driven generations – Gen Z and Millennials’ loyalty is won and lost in the experience. These generations are quick to stop doing business with a company after a poor customer experience: 34 percent of Gen Z consumers switched brands last year, compared to just 25 percent of baby boomers. But those younger consumers are even quicker to become brand ambassadors for companies that provide excellent customer service: 43 percent — an increase of 13 percentage points from 2021 — will recommend to their network, compared to less than 33 percent of baby boomers.
- Strategic personalization drives loyalty and revenue – Marketing deals are less important to consumers (16 percent) than receiving a personalized experience for services when they need them on the channel they want (62 percent). Organizations that get it right have the potential to unlock new revenue opportunities: More than 80 percent of consumers say they would purchase additional items from companies that consistently personalize the customer service experience — an increase of 10 percentage points from 2017.
- Response time and issue resolution efficacy – More than 50 percent of those surveyed ranked fast responses and having their issue solved during the first interaction as the most valuable elements of customer experience.
- Dropped calls and dead-end automation – In contrast, consumers reported dropped calls as the most frustrating thing that can happen while engaging with customer service, followed closely by the inability to reach a live agent from a chatbot or reaching a dead-end from a phone menu.
Across industries, many companies are rethinking their approach to customer service by planning to increase their related budgets by 25 percent in 2023. Among key spending priorities are enabling end-to-end experience orchestration by implementing a CX platform to integrate systems (71 percent), and connecting technology and data for omnichannel experiences (50 percent).
Increasingly, businesses are recognizing the intrinsic connection between their customers and employees. According to nearly half of the business leaders surveyed (47 percent), the number one CX priority is investing in technology or connecting systems that improve the employee experience. Key focus areas over the next one to two years include simplifying the employee user experience and helping them better respond to customer needs with enhanced knowledge management capabilities.
As organizations invest, consumer preferences and attitudes should play a key role in determining which technologies and tools to use:
- Better chatbot and employee connections start with knowledge – While chatbot use for customer service is on the rise, so is consumer frustration. Only 21 percent of consumers were highly satisfied with a chatbot, citing not being able to reach a live agent from a chatbot and having to repeat a conversation they had with a bot to an agent as their top frustrations. For organizations to reap the potential of bots, they’ll need to focus on creating a more seamless flow of the right information across channels and interactions, making it easier and faster for customers to accomplish their goals.
- Connected customer experiences are key – According to CX leaders, the biggest challenge to delivering seamless experiences is the lack of carryover of customer context from one channel to another (44 percent). To resolve this, most organizations recognize they need stronger capabilities to coordinate every consumer touchpoint: 71 percent are prioritizing an integrated customer experience platform this year to connect data, improve engagement and increase visibility across channels.
- Voice is no longer the leading channel – With digital channel use accelerating, for the first-time email has overtaken voice as the most used method to reach customer service (72 percent vs. 68 percent). However, given the typically slower response times of this channel and consumer preferences for speed, it’s not their most preferred channel.
To learn more about the insights, download the study here. For more information, visit www.genesys.com.
