XM Knowledge Base
Customer Experience
30 customer experience statistics to know for 2022
A product is a product is a product is a product - except when it’s more than that.
In a market inundated with choices for every product imaginable, it’s no longer enough for companies to rely on unique selling points or brand strength as their competitive advantage. Almost more than a product or service, a company must sell a brilliant customer experience to beat out the competition and develop their revenue growth.
Read on for useful customer experience statistics on:
- How CX affects the bottom line
- Customer experience trends in 2022
- The importance of omnichannel service
- Mobile customer experience statistics
- How great CX increases satisfaction and customer retention
- Customer experience statistics on customer care
- Word of mouth statistics (resulting from customer interactions)
Related: Understand the ROI of CX in our guide
What is customer experience?
Customer experience (CX) is the way in which your customers view your brand, based on their involvement with you.
Customer experience covers the entirety of your customers’ knowledge of your company and the interactions they’ve had with you. This includes your product or service, your marketing, and sales, their experience with your purchase process, and their post-sale participation with your brand.
Customer experience transcends just one brand platform. It’s a perception developed across social media, phone calls, customer care center messages, in-person store visits, and more. It’s also the responsibility of more than just your corporate strategists - customer experience is in the hands of every representative of your business.
Measuring customer experience is a nuanced process that involves various types of CX metrics, customer data, and internal information. Read our ultimate guide to CX to understand how to tailor and measure your customer experience effectively.
What is the value of customer experience?
Creating a great customer experience is vital for developing customer loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value. Calculating and increasing your ROI of CX can help you to scale your business and outdo your competition.
Related: Understand the ROI of CX
The data bears this statement out. The following customer experience statistics clearly indicate how valuable customer experience can be to a business's bottom line. Use these customer experience statistics to guide your plan for customer retention in 2022.
Customer experience statistics
How CX affects the bottom line
- Consumers are 3.5 times more likely to purchase more from a brand after a positive customer experience (XM Institute 2021)
- $35.3B is lost by US businesses annually whose customers left due to a bad experience (CallMiner 2020)
- On average, brands risk losing 9.5% of their revenue as a result of bad customer experience (Qualtrics 2021)
- B2B and B2C brands that use innovative CX strategies are three times as likely to significantly outperform financial goals (Adobe 2020)
- More than half of customers say they are likely to decrease or stop spending with a brand after a bad customer experience (Qualtrics 2021)
- Customer experience-focused businesses have a 1.5x higher year on year growth than other companies in customer retention, repeat purchase rates, and customer lifetime value (Adobe 2018)
Business growth can be significantly bolstered by efforts to improve customer experience. Companies investing in banishing poor experiences and creating a dedicated customer focus can generate better revenue expectations.
Creating consistent experiences that are measurable and memorable does take financial input, but in the long run, it’s much easier (and less costly) than convincing new customers to come on board. The ROI of CX is proven - and brands that do invest create a potent competitive differentiator.
See how developing the ROI of CX helps your bottom line
Customer experience trends in 2022
- 8 out of 10 people believe customer experience needs to be improved across prices and fees, customer service, product capabilities, and ease of use (Qualtrics 2021)
- Approximately six in 10 US consumers believe that most companies should have resolved COVID-related disruption issues by now (Forrester 2021)
- Over 60% of consumers feel that businesses need to care more about them and that they’d buy more if this changed for the better (Qualtrics 2021)
- Brands’ spend on customer experience-enabling technology will reach $641 billion by 2022 (IDC 2019)
- 66% of customers expect brands to be able to understand and meet their personal needs and expectations (Salesforce 2020)
Customer experience is going to be the focus of many leading brands for 2022 - and customers are demanding more than ever from their experiences. Business leaders will need to prioritize customer experience and transform their brands into customer-focused companies to develop or maintain a competitive advantage.
Get the latest on global CX trends in our 2022 report
The importance of omnichannel service
- More than 60% of US adults made online transactions for the first time as a result of the pandemic (Forrester 2021)
- 50% of large organizations will have failed to unify engagement channels by 2022, leading to a disruptive omnichannel customer experience (Gartner 2021)
- 90% of B2B customers will switch to the competition if digital channels can’t service their needs (Avionos 2021)
- Brands using three or more channels in a campaign saw a 287% higher purchase rate than campaigns using only one channel (Omnisend, 2020)
With a wider audience than ever across multiple channels, an omnichannel approach is vital for capturing customers and offering them an experience that suits their preferences. Customer-centric companies don’t just focus on the channels that they’d like to operate - they develop sophisticated customer journey maps and communication channels that capture audiences’ attention.
Of course, it’s not enough to provide an omnichannel experience - a customer journey has to flow naturally from mobile, to in-store, to website, and more. A great mobile experience and excellent payment process can be let down by a poorly designed website. Fortunately, you can learn how to leverage k/blog/turn-insights-into-action/
into your customer journey with Qualtrics Customer XM.
Mobile customer experience statistics
- 52% of website traffic takes place on mobile devices (Statista 2021)
- A one-second delay in mobile load times can impact mobile experience conversions by up to 20% (Google/SOASTA, 2017)
- 86% of marketers see speed improvements for mobile-friendly sites as driving an increase in customer satisfaction scores (Econsultancy 2017)
- Mobile experiences are connected to physical locations, with 28% of customers’ searches for something nearby resulting in a purchase (Google/Purchased 2016)
Mobile customer experiences don’t just affect your digital results or internet traffic. Mobile devices now form part of the fabric of our wider experience, meaning it’s incredibly important to ensure you’ve optimized your channels to work seamlessly on digital. The greater the effort customers undergo to meet their requirements on mobile, the less likely it is that they’ll become customers.
How great CX increases satisfaction and customer retention
- 94% of consumers who rated a customer experience as “very good” were “very likely” to buy from that brand again - but only 18% reporting “very poor” customer experiences would repurchase (Qualtrics 2019)
- 75% of US consumers are more likely to develop brand loyalty if they receive a personalized customer experience (Hyken 2021)
- Positive customer experiences lead to 20% higher customer satisfaction rate (McKinsey 2020)
- Customers who have a high-quality customer experience are 2.7 times as likely to continue their business with a company than after a bad experience (Forrester 2021)
Poor customer service has a distinctly negative impact on customer experience. When customers have a positive experience, they return to purchase more and feel more satisfied. Consistently providing a great customer experience and ensuring that your brand personalizes their interactions can go a long way to increasing customer satisfaction. Customer feedback can help guide your personalization
As evidenced by these customer experience statistics, customers will financially reward a great customer experience. It’s clear that the best way to increase satisfaction and develop retained customers while also working on revenue growth is to focus on your CX.
Customer experience statistics on customer care
- 90% of US consumers see customer service as a key factor in deciding to buy from a brand (Microsoft 2019)
- 147% more customers have a positive change in how they feel than a negative change when they get in touch with a call center, with 90% remaining loyal after a good experience with an agent (CallMiner 2020)
- 44% of consumers see a bad shopping customer experience as being due to unhelpful staff both in store and online (Oracle 2021)
- If customer care is seen as “excellent”, 78% of customers will be willing to pay your brand again even after a mistake (Salesforce 2020)
Though business leaders risk losing revenue with negative customer experiences, all is not lost. The more companies realize that positive customer experience has the power to transform, the more revenue they’ll be able to generate.
With a dedication to providing great training and actionable insights to contact centers, many businesses can transform poor experiences and create happy customers. Whether providing customer care through phone calls or self-service, your customers should feel valued.
Word of mouth statistics (resulting from customer interactions)
- 88% of consumers are likely to recommend an organization after a very good experience (XM Institute 2021)
- 65% of US customers see positive customer experiences as more influential than great advertising - meaning word of mouth has greater power (PwC 2018)
- 86% of loyal customers will recommend a brand to their friends and family (KPMG 2019)
Great customer experiences drive happy customers to advertise for you. Judging by the above customer experience statistics, your customers don’t even have to be loyal to be likely to recommend your business - and when they are, they continue to spread the word.
Rather than investing money into advertisements that consumers don’t trust, turn your loyal customers into advocates who already have trust built with a wider potential customer base. It’s much easier for customers to make a buying decision when they believe their information source is trustworthy - so let your customers do the work for you.
What’s the key takeaway from these customer experience statistics?
Though these statistics might seem as though they just highlight the important trends to know for 2022, they highlight just how much value customers continually place on customer experience.
Positive experiences - no matter when, where, or how they are delivered - are transformative. In a world where you can make impulse purchases within just a few clicks of a button, customers find it easier than ever to ditch businesses they see as untrustworthy and uncaring.
Loyalty is built by providing customers with consistent experiences that actually take customer data insights and make improvements, rather than just focusing on making your brand’s customer satisfaction statistics look better.
Though many business leaders agree that satisfaction metrics are important, often brands don’t think about why satisfaction fluctuates - and they’re not willing to pay to resolve customer experience issues.
Investing in customer experience, though it might seem an expensive outlay, is actually a cost-effective move - and changing customers’ experiences with a brand is the only way to get the most out of every interaction and keep customers happy.
The key takeaway: Invest in CX for improved business outcomes.
Want to learn more about banishing poor customer service and getting your ROI on CX?
Understanding what loyal customers want and what a potential customer needs is only part of the process of creating great CX.
More than just knowing these customer experience statistics, your brand needs to generate actionable insights that can guide your customer service team and shape your customer journey.
It can be a daunting prospect to gather data and generate insights manually or automatically - but with AI and machine learning, this process becomes easier and more sophisticated.
Qualtrics Customer XM helps you to turn customers into fans and to develop a satisfaction strategy that uses the power of the ultimate listening engine.
Equipped with predictive artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled analytics, the Qualtrics platform can help you develop the ROI of your CX with closed-loop actioning capabilities.
Read our ROI of CX Guide now