Customer Experience is Everything. Get it Right!

The verdict is in. Today’s customers are only sticking with businesses that deliver excellent customer experiences. 

And it’s not just about the quality of service or product, it’s mostly about how the overall customer experience design, from advertising to customer service and sales, appeals to them. 

What’s more, customer experience surveyors have found that it doesn’t matter what type of business you are in. You could be a bank or coffee shop, a B2C or a B2B, your clients or customers want you to give them an exceptional experience, one that outperforms any other business they interact with.

In short, if you want higher revenue and profits and better customer retention, you must get customer experience right.

So, how do you do that?

We have all the details in this post. From what customers consider the core ingredients of a great experience to the blunders that make businesses lose customers. Let’s cut to the chase!

 

Customers Say These Are the Ingredients of Great Experiences

Every brand or business strives to get customers to purchase their products or services and become loyal customers in the long term. And if the customer also promotes their products to other prospective customers, even better. 

But to enjoy all that, businesses must deliver exceptional experiences by consumer standards.

So, which ingredients make great customer experiences?

Our discovery from different surveys, including the 2018 PWC and the 2025 Shep Hyken survey, found that consumers consider convenience among the most important ingredients of a great customer experience (CX).

For consumers, convenience means an easy, frictionless, and hassle-free experience. In addition, customer preference for a convenient experience has increased post-COVID-19. Now, 91% of US consumers consider it extremely important.

Other key ingredients of great customer experience include:

• Speed in service and delivery.

• Prompt customer service from the right person.

• Consistency.

• Kind and helpful employees.

• Friendly and knowledgeable employees.

• A personalized experience.

• Quick and easy self-service. 

• Technology use with a human touch.

Businesses that prioritize these elements reap great rewards, including price premiums. 

 

Customers will Pay a Premium for Exceptional Experience

Did you know that over half of consumers consider great customer service more important than price?

That means your business can never overrate customer experience. Investing in exceptional experience increases customer satisfaction and retention. Most importantly, it boosts customers’ willingness to spend more, growing your revenue. 

The 2025 Shep Hyken survey found that 59% of customers consider great customer service more important than price. Also, 73% are willing to pay more if the customer experience is more convenient.

And there’s a twist!

Customer willingness to pay more for an outstanding customer experience applies across service and product types. And this has proven true over the years.

For example, the 2018 PWC customer experience survey found that customers would willingly pay a price premium of 7% to 16% for services and products if the user experience (UX) was great.

Additionally, luxury and indulgence purchases such as coffee, hotel stay, sports tickets, and dinner benefited more from customer generosity to pay a premium.

The 2022 Emplifi survey also found that over half of consumers in the US and UK would pay at least 5% more if they received exceptional customer service.

In this survey, luxury products and indulgences also take priority.

 

Bad Experiences are Driving Customers Away Faster than Businesses Think

If you’ve noticed an unprecedented trend of customer churn at your business recently, you and your employees are probably sleeping on the customer satisfaction job.

Let’s start with the bigger picture of customer churn due to bad customer experiences.

Customer Experience is at an All-time Low

According to the 2024 US Customer Experience Index by Forrester, the customer experience graph is taking a downward dive every year.

While customer experience quality was at a 72 average score in 2021, it has consistently dropped over the years to an all-time low of 69.3 average score in 2024. And that drop reflects a lower score in all three aspects of customer experience quality: ease, effectiveness, and emotion.

So, how do bad experiences impact customer retention?

Awfully! Because customers will leave your brand or abandon purchases following a bad experience. 

A Majority of Customers Abandon a Brand After Poor Customer Experiences

According to the Shep Hyphen survey, 63% of UK and US consumers would leave a brand due to poor customer experience. 

In effect, 49% of customers have already left a brand they were loyal to for the past year due to bad customer experiences.

From the surveys we mentioned so far, customers seem more lenient with brands after a one-time poor customer experience today than some years back. 

In 2018, 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand after a single bad experience, compared to 18% in 2025. 

However, leniency does not apply if brands consistently deliver bad customer experiences. 

In 2018, about 48% of customers would abandon a brand after several bad experiences. In 2025, 68% of UK and US customers will abandon a brand after 2-3 bad experiences.

Interestingly, it seems that abandoning a brand for poor customer experience has a gender-specific trend. 

According to Tidio, women are more lenient with businesses after a first-time bad customer experience than men. Women are also the majority who don’t have a rule on when to leave a business with poor customer service. However, they are more likely to abandon a brand after a second poor customer experience than men.

 

Focus on What Matters to Customers (It Might Not Be What You Think)

There seems to be a significant gap between how brands perceive their ability to deliver excellent customer experiences and what consumers actually experience.

According to the 2021 Harris Poll, 94% of brands think they are getting it right with customers and are delivering exceptional customer experiences. 

Instead, 48% of consumers feel unappreciated by brands they interact with, and 55% feel they are not even noticed. Only 26% feel the brands they interact with are delivering a good job in customer experience.

Overall, there’s a 25% gap between how brands think they are performing in delivering excellent customer experiences and what customers experience.

The gap is also evident in what brands and consumers consider the most important aspects of a great CX. 

For example, given four CX aspects, consistency, privacy, customer understanding, and personalization, consumers rate consistency as the most important, while businesses only place it at no. 3. 

See how the views of business marketers and customers vary when ranking these four aspects of customer experience.

 

A similar mismatch is also noticed between what business marketers and consumers consider the main challenges in delivering great customer experiences.

So, how can businesses ensure great customer experiences? The answer is right below.

 

Excellent Customer Experience Begins with a Human Touch

In the 2018 PWC future customer experience survey, 75% of consumers from the participating countries indicated they wanted to interact with real human agents, even while technology and its use advance.

In 2025, 63% of customers “Just want to talk to a human”, according to the Shep Hyken survey. In fact, these customers will abandon a brand that doesn’t facilitate connecting with a human customer support agent. 

But it’s not that consumers don’t appreciate the advances in technology. What 73% of customers want instead is that AI automation doesn’t work in isolation. In effect, its isolated use only makes it difficult for customers to reach live support agents.

Similarly, companies that have tested automated self-service with 100% digital customer support have found that it hinders access to human support when customers prefer it. 

As such, automated customer service works better with human support backup.

So, do all generations of consumers think and feel the same about the aspects of CX we’ve discussed so far? Well, some generations stand out in their preferences.

 

Pay Customer-Centric Attention to Gen Z Consumers

While what matters to all generations of customers also matters to Gen Zers, this generation of consumers requires special attention.

Their unique connection with technology means special exposure to brands and products and, therefore, higher expectations.

It seems harder to please the Gen Zers with customer experience. According to the Shep Hyken survey, 29% (compared to 19% of boomers) won’t bother returning to your brand if the experience is only satisfactory.

A few other details also make Gen Z consumers stand out in their customer experience preferences:

• Gen Zers are more comfortable with AI use in customer support. Only 48% have had frustrating experiences with AI-aided customer support compared to 71% of Boomers.

• Overall, more Gen Z customers prefer digital self-service options than other generations.

• Gen Z values personalization more than all the other generations.

• More Gen Z consumers value customer reward programs than other generations.

• Compared to Boomers, Gen Z customers value speed and efficiency more than empathy and politeness.

 

If Customer Experience Strategy is Your Priority, You are Doing it Right

Around 19% of consumers are unlikely, and 8% will never return to your brand if they are just satisfied with the experience.

That sets the bar quite high for businesses to deliver great customer experiences. But it also means that those businesses that don’t prioritize customer experience are missing the target. 

Keep in mind that 59% of customers consider experience to be more important than price.

Luckily, businesses seem to have understood this, as 45.9% will prioritize customer experience in the next 5 years, compared to 20.5% on pricing and 33.6% on product.

Also, 71.8% of businesses are making customer feedback a key element of their customer experience design, which means they are working towards getting customer experience right.

As things stand, seeking customer engagement through feedback is the wisest move for improving customer experience. That’s because, in most cases, customers will abandon brands without complaining about poor experiences.

 

Key Summary Points

Customer experience quality is on a downward trend. If you are not prioritizing CX over other strategies like price and product bells and whistles, you are losing out on customer loyalty.

Customers are not looking for a satisfactory experience, they want excellence. Over 50% of customers have been satisfied with the brand experience, but they did not return.

AI automation and digital technologies support great customer experiences. Regardless, customers demand a balance between automation and live human support.

Convenience, speed, consistency, right support agents, friendliness, and technology are key ingredients of excellent customer experiences. Focus on them to drive revenue and profits and boost customer retention. 

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you are. If your customers are not having exceptional experiences, they’ll look for them elsewhere.