The State Of Customer Experience: Key Statistics And Trends For 2024

Customer experience (CX) has become a top strategic priority for businesses of all sizes. Studies show that positive customer experiences drive loyalty, word-of-mouth referrals, and long-term revenue growth. On the other hand, poor CX risks losing customers to competitors.

With CX now essential to business success, companies are investing heavily in improving customer interactions across the entire customer journey. This comprehensive guide examines 24 key CX data points and trends that business leaders should understand for 2024, including personalization, emerging channels, journey analytics, loyalty metrics, response times, technologies, employee experience, and more.

1. 81% of Companies Plan to Compete Mainly on CX

In today‘s digital marketplace, product and price differences are minimized, making the customer experience a key competitive differentiator. In fact, 81% of business leaders say their companies will be competing mostly on the basis of customer experience in the future.

Focusing innovation, investments, and strategy around CX is now a business imperative. Companies able to deliver personalized, frictionless journeys will pull ahead of the competition.

81% of executives believe customer experience will be their primary competitive differentiator. (InMoment)

2. Personalized Experiences Influence 64% of Purchase Decisions

Customers have come to expect tailored recommendations and relevant content catered specifically to their preferences and context. Personalization is no longer a "nice-to-have" — it directly impacts conversion and loyalty.

In fact, 64% of customers say personalized engagements from brands and retailers influence their purchasing decisions. Individualized cross-channel experiences are hugely important, especially for younger demographics.

Types of Personalization

Personalization takes many forms, including:

Personalized product recommendations – Algorithmic recommendations based on purchase history, browsing, and dealer interactions. 75% of consumers want recommendations from their dealers.
Custom segmented content – Creating personalized content like videos and guides to nurture high-value customer groups. Luxury brands seeing 2x engagement rates.
Predictive analytics – Understanding potential lifetime value to tailor offers. Predicting risk of churn by journey stage abandons.
1:1 messaging – Unified profile data enables custom messaging across all touchpoints based on individual interests and needs for 5X higher conversion.
Personalized pricing – Adjusting pricing in real-time based on willingness to pay derived from behavioral data and machine learning.

Personalization Technologies

Advanced technologies now enable brands to gather data and respond with personalized offers and recommendations in the moment across digital touchpoints:

AI Recommendation Engines – Sophisticated algorithms analyze attributes and behaviors to serve up tailored product/content recommendations. Market to reach $6.5B by 2024.
Machine Learning – Rapidly tailors models to detect patterns and applies that learning to optimize 1:1 personalization at scale. Natural language generation creates custom content.

The Data Behind PersonalizedCX

71% of consumers frustrated by impersonal shopping experiences.
43% of companies see 20%+ increases in sales from personalization.
Segment of one personalized marketing achieves 5-15X ROI over mass marketing.

Implementing personalization requires consolidating customer data across systems and touchpoints to build unified profiles. Advanced segmentation matched with contextually relevant messages and product recommendations drive more positive experiences.

3. 66% of Customers Will Switch Brands After One Bad Experience

Delivering seamless, satisfying customer experiences consistently over time is extremely difficult. Even companies with leading CX practices see complaints and mistakes. How brands respond to mistakes and service issues directly impacts loyalty and advocacy.

In fact, 66% of US customers say they will likely switch to a competitor after just one bad customer experience. For retailers and consumer brands, recovering from negative experiences before losing customers is essential.

Empowering service agents with the data, tools, and latitude to resolve issues promptly can turn dissatisfied shoppers into loyal promoters. But brands must also address systemic CX issues triggering bad experiences in the first place.

4. 60% of Customers Expect Service Response in 5 Minutes or Less

Response time continues to be one of the most important service metrics influencing satisfaction. Customers expect brands to be accessible across channels and responsive when issues arise. For 60% of consumers today, acceptable first response times are 5 minutes or less.

Quick responses require brands to meet SLAs (service level agreements) on digital engagement channels. Common benchmarks include:

Live Chat: 60 seconds
Social Media: 30-60 minutes
Text/SMS: 5 minutes
Email: 6-12 hours
Phone Support: 60 seconds

Brands are also providing callback request options, chatbot assistance, and additional self-service touchpoints to improve response times.

Emerging Digital Engagement Channels

While traditional channels still dominate, new digital touchpoints are changing how customers engage:

Smart speakers & voice assistants – Allow hands-free interactions in moments of need. To reach 30% of households with 100M devices by 2022.
In-vehicle assistance – Dashboard touchscreens with intelligent assistants and services. Revenue to top $1.2B by 2024.
Connected consumer products – Enable proactive replenishment, product usage analytics, and premium digital experiences. Market hits $29B by 2026.
Messaging/chat apps – Allow asynchronous and mobile-friendly conversations. The top 4 apps see 12 billion messages daily between them.

Optimizing experience across these emerging channels poses technology and orchestration challenges but allows brands to engage customers in more environments.

5. Customer Experience Now Extends to Employees

There is a strong correlation between happy employees and happy customers in terms of experience. Employees interact with technology, processes, and policies that directly impact their productivity and engagement.

In fact, 80% of executives believe employee experience impacts customer experience. As a result, more brands focus on EX or employee experience as part of their CX improvement strategy.

EX Influences CX In Many Ways:

Engaged employees 3x as likely to recommend the brand
Improved EX drives 11% better CX metrics
Positive EX makes employees 4x more likely to feel equipped to deliver better CX

Leading organizations take an outside-in approach – seeing EX through the customer‘s eyes. By removing internal pain points, they enable employees to deliver better customer experiences.

6. 75% of Companies Want Omnichannel Personalization

Customers engage with brands across many different channels and touchpoints during their journeys. They expect consistent and seamless experiences when moving from online to offline channels.

In one survey, 75% of companies said the ability to personalize omnichannel engagements is an extremely high or very high priority. But less than 15% of brands feel they are delivering very effective omnichannel personalization.

Top obstacles to seamless personalization include:

Disconnected data across channels and systems
Organizational and process siloes
Lack of unified customer identity
Inability to respond contextually in real-time across touchpoints

Achieving this goal requires a unified customer data foundation with analytics matched to orchestration tools for contextual interactions. Integrating data and technologies remains the primary obstacle brands face. But those able to connect experiences across channels will lead markets.

7. $641B Will Be Spent on CX Technologies by 2023

Investments in customer experience technologies continue to accelerate as brands strive to deliver personalized journeys. Worldwide spending on CX platforms, analytics, customer service applications and more will grow at 12% CAGR, reaching well over $600 billion.

Top categories driving this growth include:

Customer Experience Platforms
Orchestration, personalization and journey analytics tools for $23 billion market

VoC & Customer Analytics
Voice of Customer, journey analytics, predictive, customer data platforms at over $30B

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Sales automation, marketing automation, customer service tools at over $200B

Commerce & Sales Enablement
Product visualization, configure-price-quote tools, virtual selling at $15B+

The push to consolidate technologies into integrated CX stacks will also fuel more cloud adoption, with over 65% of CX spending on SaaS solutions by 2025.

Worldwide spending on customer experience technologies will exceed $641 billion by 2023. (IDC)

8. Journey Orchestration Powers 21% Higher Satisfaction

While many CX technologies focus on touchpoints, journey orchestration takes a more expansive, cross-channel view. Journey orchestration applies analytics and intelligence to guide customers through preferred paths across touchpoints.

Orchestrating journeys around milestones, events and complex customer needs powers more cohesive, impactful engagements. Companies using journey orchestration solutions enjoy 21% higher customer satisfaction on average.

Journey orchestration capabilities include:

Mapping cross-channel customer journeys
Applying data and predictive models to uncover fallout risks
Automated next-best action recommendations
Optimizing paths based on past customer behavior
Personalizing flows based on customer attributes
Executing contextual interactions across channels

As journeys grow more complex in the digital age, orchestration will become pivotal in CX improvement programs.

9. 74% of Brands Use Journey Mapping

Journey mapping visualizes the end-to-end processes customers go through across touchpoints and channels when engaging with a brand. Mapping exposes pain points, bottlenecks, and experience gaps that companies can address.

In fact, 74% of brands report actively using journey mapping to better understand and improve CX – making it one of the most widely adopted CX methodologies.

Common steps in creating journey maps include:

Identifying key personas and scenarios
Capturing detailed cross-channel steps
Documenting pain points
Designing ideal state experiences
Formulating optimization plans

Journey analytics tools can help teams develop maps faster and glean more data-driven insights from them. Companies update maps continually to guide ongoing CX optimization.

10. 66% of Customers Complain About Inconsistent Experiences

When business processes, technologies, and teams lack cohesion internally, customers feel the impact through fragmented, inconsistent engagements across channels. These broken experiences frustrate customers, requiring them to repeat actions.

In fact, a majority of customers (66%) complain about inconsistent cross-channel experiences. And this frustration leads nearly 75% of consumers to purchase less from a brand.

Achieving seamless omnichannel personalization at scale remains difficult. Three out of four CX professionals call it an extremely challenging undertaking. But brands able to connect data, systems, processes and teams will pull ahead. Developing an integrated CX technology stack is key.

Loyalty & Advocacy Metrics

To benchmark CX progress, brands track metrics like:

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Would you recommend this company to a friend? 50+ is excellent.
Customer Effort Score (CES) – How much effort was required to get an issue resolved? 70+ is best practice.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – What is your satisfaction with the brand? 80+ is the goal.
Emotional Loyalty Index (ELI) – Quantifies emotional brand attachment driving future spend and retention.

Leaders set goals for improvement and correlate these metrics to growth. Some leverage text analytics and voice of customer analysis to quantify sentiment and derive operational insights.

Vertical CX Best Practices

While all brands aim for superior CX, tactics and technologies differ across industries to deliver meaningful personalization.

Retail

Localized mobile offers when nearby
Endless aisle with kiosks and handhelds
Product visualization and digital displays
Smart fitting rooms with custom recommendations

Financial Services

Personalized risk models and investment plans
Secure digital account opening and lending
Omnichannel engagement via chat, video, etc.
Wealth management relevance through life events

Healthcare

Personal health dashboards and patient portals
Remote patient monitoring devices
Digital therapeutics and conversational AI
Improved access via telehealth platforms

Hospitality & Travel

Trip planning and hospitality concierges
Digital key and automated services via mobile
Interactive in-room engagement
Personalized recommendations and offers

These examples showcase how specialized journeys arise by industry that require tailored orchestration and technologies. But the end goal remains relevant, frictionless experiences.

11. Journey Analytics Predict Switching 24% More Accurately

As customer journeys become increasingly complex, analytics and data science reveal optmization opportunities. Models can detect patterns predicting churn risks or customer lifetime value more accurately.

In fact, journey analytics algorithms focused specifically on predicting customer switching deliver 24% greater accuracy compared to traditional customer analytics. Journey analytics encompass tools like:

Customer journey mapping
Touchpoint behavioral analysis
Channel attribution modeling
Predictive fallout and churn models
Recommendation optimization

By determining high-value moments that matter most in complex journeys, analytics guides CX improvement investments to maximize impact. And integrating predictive insights with orchestration systems enables proactive interventions.

12. 61% of Brands Personalize Offline Environments

Digital channels expedited a personalization revolution the past decade. But leading retailers now bring that one-to-one relevance offline as well. Data-driven interactions in physical stores, events, and contact centers improve engagement while linking online/offline data.

In fact, 61% of brands actively personalize brick-and-mortar experiences today by tailoring:

On-site recommendations via apps and associates
Contextualized offers through geofencing and beacons
Loyalty incentives and customized promotions
Store layouts and merchandise based on local demand
Interactive in-store digital experiences

Connecting online/offline data for true omnichannel personalization delivers 360-degree customer perspective. IBM estimates this can increase sales 15-20%.

Key Takeaways and Conclusion

Customer experience statistics clearly show CX accelerating as a boardroom priority. Delivering personalized, frictionless journeys increasingly determines which brands pull ahead in competitive markets.

Key trends to focus CX strategies and technology investments around include:

Omnichannel personalization – 75% of companies struggle to consistently customize engagements across touchpoints at scale.
Faster response times – 60% of customers today expect service response within 5 minutes across digital channels.
EX and CX alignment – 80% believe better employee experience is key to customer experience.
Journey orchestration – Coordinating touchpoints around personalized journeys lifts satisfaction 21%.
Journey & predictive analytics – Uncovering friction risks and optimization opportunities 24% more accurately.

Mastering these capabilities requires integrating data, systems, and processes while applying cloud-based software suites for instrumentation and intelligence. The result is the consistent orchestration of seamless journeys that turn customers into loyal advocates over time. Brands that transform CX along these leading-edge frameworks will pull ahead of competition still anchored in the past era of customer service.

Sources:

Aberdeen Group: https://www.aberdeen.com/

Forrester: https://www.forrester.com/

Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/en

IBM: https://www.ibm.com/services

IDC: https://www.idc.com/

InMoment: https://www.inmoment.com/

McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/

PracticalEcommerce: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/

SuperOffice: https://www.superoffice.com/

Think with Google: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com