Feature
The Gist
- CX crisis insight. The 2024 Forrester CX report reveals U.S. businesses facing their lowest customer experience ratings ever.
- Strategy overhaul required. Businesses need revamped CX strategies to combat rising customer dissatisfaction and market competition.
- Seamless service essential. Effective omnichannel strategies are crucial for providing consistent, efficient customer service across all touchpoints.
The Forrester report on customer experience (CX) for 2024 painted a bleak picture, highlighting a significant and persistent decline in CX quality across U.S. businesses. Leaders across various industries are now weighing in, offering insights and strategies to address the alarming trends identified in the report.
As the conversation shifts from diagnosis to action, exploring practical solutions to reverse this downturn and reinvigorate customer satisfaction becomes imperative.
This article looks into industry leaders' reactions and the steps businesses can take to fix the faltering state of CX, ensuring they can build and maintain meaningful relationships with their customers.
Forrester: CX Is in a Consistent Slump
The 2024 Forrester CX report revealed a concerning trend that has emerged: The quality of customer experience among U.S. businesses has plummeted to its lowest point ever, marking a third consecutive year of decline. This report highlights a systemic issue affecting a wide range of industries, with significant drops in CX scores indicating widespread customer dissatisfaction. The implications are profound, as businesses that fail to deliver exceptional CX risk losing customer loyalty and market share in an increasingly competitive environment.
Addressing this decline is crucial for business success. Exceptional CX is not just a competitive advantage but a fundamental requirement for building and maintaining customer relationships. As the report reveals, the stakes are higher than ever — businesses must urgently reassess and revamp their CX strategies to meet evolving customer expectations and foster long-term loyalty.
Related Article: US Brands' CX Quality Declines for Second Consecutive Year
Identifying the Core Issues
Sabina Brdnik, marketing specialist at Swedish technology consultancy tretton37, told CMSWire that the Forrester report highlights several critical factors contributing to the decline in CX quality. Fragmented data systems and outdated technology lead to inconsistent customer interactions, she said, preventing businesses from delivering personalized experiences.
Additionally, Brdnik noted that the report cited operational inefficiencies that cause significant delays in service response times, frustrating customers and diminishing their overall satisfaction. Low employee engagement further exacerbates these issues, as disengaged employees often provide subpar service. Finally, Brdnik pointed out that the minimal use of AI and automation limits businesses' ability to respond efficiently and effectively to customer needs.
Experts emphasize that while many businesses have expanded their omnichannel options, they often fail to guide customers to the most effective channel for their specific needs. This lack of direction leads to customer frustration as they hop between channels or use multiple channels simultaneously without resolving their issues. Effective omnichannel strategies should seamlessly integrate various touchpoints, ensuring customers receive consistent and efficient service regardless of the channel they choose.
Digital and self-service platforms, designed to offer convenience, often place undue burdens on customers, diminishing a business’ Customer Effort Score (CES), which determines the amount of effort a customer makes to do business with a brand. These platforms frequently lack proactive assistance and intuitive design, forcing customers to exert significant effort to accomplish tasks. When issues arise, customers must restart processes and explain their situation to human agents from scratch, increasing their frustration.
Customer service agents frequently rely on rigid scripts, limiting their ability to engage empathetically and effectively with customers. In addition, these agents often lack the authority to address issues that fall outside standard procedures, leading to unsatisfactory resolutions for customers seeking personalized solutions.
Other issues, such as economic uncertainty, also have an effect on consumer expectations for what makes a customer experience exceptional or even just average. Sam Ngo, director of product marketing at BlueConic, a customer data platform (CDP) provider, told CMSWire that economic uncertainty and political leanings are making folks more careful about where they want to spend their money and what brand values they want to support. "With consumers being more intentional about where they spend their money, their expectation of what the customer experience will be like also increases," said Ngo.
Related Article: The Worst CX Ever?
Strategies for Improvement
To reverse the downward trend in CX quality, experts recommend a range of strategies aimed at addressing the root causes identified in the Forrester report. These strategies focus on leveraging technology, improving data integration, and enhancing employee engagement to create a more cohesive and responsive customer experience framework. By understanding and targeting specific areas of weakness, businesses can implement targeted improvements that not only resolve current issues but also anticipate and mitigate future challenges. This proactive approach enables businesses to adapt to evolving customer expectations, ultimately building greater satisfaction and loyalty.
“By addressing the primary factors contributing to the decline in CX quality and adopting these actionable strategies and innovative technologies, businesses can significantly improve their customer experience and foster long-term loyalty,” said Brdnik, who emphasized investing in advanced analytics platforms such as Salesforce Customer 360, which allows companies to integrate customer data and gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers.
Boris Dzhingarov, CEO of ESBO, a branding and marketing company, told CMSWire that he has noticed a common trend — brands often struggle to align their products or services with their customers. Businesses should focus on creating seamless customer journeys across all channels. This involves ensuring that customers are efficiently guided to the most appropriate channel for their needs.
Effective omnichannel strategies should prioritize consistency and ease of transition between channels, enabling a smooth and satisfactory customer journey. "While brands may use an omnichannel marketing approach, they often fail to maintain consistent brand exposure across these channels,” said Dzhingarov. “This often happens because of resource limitations, leading them to seek external help from agencies. Unfortunately, this reliance on external support makes maintaining a unified brand experience challenging and contributes to a compromised customer experience."
Dzhingarov suggested that brands must enhance their cross-department communication and data organization. “If some processes are managed externally, companies must have access to customer-related data, such as behavioral and preference insights for internal analysis, that will further help address arising issues.”
Improving digital and self-service platforms is critical to reducing customer effort. Industry leaders and researchers consistently recommend simplifying interfaces and workflows to make them more intuitive and user-friendly. Additionally, Brdnik suggested that leveraging AI and automation through chatbots and predictive analytics can handle routine inquiries and anticipate customer needs, freeing up human agents to address more complex issues.
Incorporating proactive assistance, such as AI-driven recommendations and real-time support, can prevent customers from encountering obstacles that lead to frustration. By making digital interactions straightforward and supportive, businesses can enhance the convenience and efficiency of self-service options, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
Another vital element of the customer experience is customer service. Customer service agents are on the front lines of CX and play a pivotal role in shaping customer perceptions. Moving beyond rigid scripts and empowering agents with the authority to handle a broader range of issues can significantly improve the quality of customer interactions. Brdnik emphasized that enhancing employee training programs focused on product knowledge and soft skills can significantly improve the quality of customer service by equipping agents with advanced problem-solving skills and the ability to personalize their approach.
When agents are empowered to act independently and address unique customer needs, interactions become more empathetic, effective and satisfying. This empowerment not only boosts customer satisfaction but also enhances employee morale and engagement, creating a more positive and productive work environment, which in return, enhances CX.
Implementing these strategies can help businesses address the key issues highlighted in the Forrester report, leading to meaningful improvements in CX. By enhancing omnichannel strategies, streamlining digital platforms, and empowering customer service agents, businesses can build stronger, more loyal customer relationships.
Innovative Approaches and Technologies
Embracing cutting-edge technologies and innovative approaches is crucial for businesses seeking to enhance their customer experience. Fortunately, several promising advancements can drive significant improvements in how businesses interact with and serve their customers.
AI and machine learning (ML) are at the forefront of transforming CX. These technologies enable businesses to analyze vast amounts of customer data and generate insights that lead to highly personalized interactions. By leveraging AI and ML, businesses can predict customer preferences, anticipate needs, and offer tailored recommendations and solutions in real-time. This level of personalization not only improves customer satisfaction but also fosters deeper loyalty and engagement.
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Laurence Buchanan, EY global customer & growth leader and CEO at international design consultancy EY-Seren Limited, told CMSWire that with technologies such as ML, natural language processing (NLP) and AI, it’s now easier than ever to listen to the voice of the customer (VoC) to better understand them, such as being able to analyze their key frustrations and critical moments of truth. “Data that was previously unstructured from say voice calls or free texts is now very easy to analyze. Typically, listening to the Voice of the Customer is always the best starting point for CX,” said Buchanan.
Advanced customer relationship management (CRM) and customer data platforms (CDP) that are equipped with predictive analytics capabilities are essential tools for modern businesses. These systems can process large datasets to identify patterns and trends, helping businesses understand and predict customer behavior. By using predictive analytics, businesses can proactively address potential issues, personalize marketing efforts and enhance overall service delivery. CRM and CDP systems that integrate AI and ML further enhance these capabilities, allowing for more accurate and actionable insights into customer needs.
Creating user-friendly digital interfaces is critical to ensuring customers have a seamless and enjoyable experience when interacting with a brand online. Investing in intuitive design and user experience (UX) principles can simplify navigation and enhance accessibility. Additionally, incorporating AI-driven chatbots can significantly improve digital interactions. These chatbots can provide instant, accurate responses to customer inquiries, handle routine tasks, and escalate complex issues to human agents when necessary. By offering 24/7 support and reducing response times, AI-driven chatbots enhance the convenience and efficiency of digital customer service while allowing customers to control their own narrative and reduce the effort required to solve their problems.
“Several of our customer service clients are now using speech analytics to quickly analyze all voice calls, measuring satisfaction, emotion, and agent performance,” said Buchanan. “Early pioneers are also turning to AI as a co-pilot to support customer service agents in suggesting resolution paths and reducing post-call admin. In addition, we are seeing many clients looking at Gen AI to transform their content supply chain in marketing, driving out cost, but also improving hyper-personalization.”
“Companies that do CX really well tend to have an over-arching and top-down belief in CX,” said Buchanan. “They don’t treat CX like another internal initiative, such as implementing and rolling out a new payroll system, for example.” Buchanan emphasized that CX leaders who consistently deliver better experiences have a material financial advantage at every stage of the customer journey and they make delivering differentiated CX an integral part of the company’s mission and strategy.
Final Thoughts
The alarming decline in CX quality highlighted by Forrester's report demands urgent action from businesses across industries. By addressing core issues such as fragmented data systems, operational inefficiencies, and underuse of technology, companies can begin to reverse this trend. As businesses navigate this challenging discrepancy, the focus must remain on creating personalized, efficient and empathetic customer experiences.
Ultimately, those who successfully adapt and prioritize CX will thrive in an increasingly competitive and disrupted market, building long-term customer loyalty and driving sustainable growth.
