93 Customer Experience Stats and Quotes for 2019 and Beyond

There is one common goal for those in the know; to center our businesses, objectives, internal teams and measures of success around delivering for the end customer, and ultimately, the experience they have with our brands.

Halfway through 2019, digital technology is still evolving faster than organizations can adapt, and it’s more vital than ever before to focus on digital experience. In fact, as I wrote last year, experience is a point of real differentiation – it’s the most effective way for businesses to stand out from the competition.

Customers’ experience expectations have changed significantly. Advances in technology and their adoption by the majority of consumers have opened so many new opportunities, but they have also added a layer of complexity to what is an already confusing landscape.

So here are some compelling statistics and thought-provoking quotes to add to presentations, raise at meetings or share with your colleagues to show the true value of experience in 2019. From industry leaders, research houses and brands alike, the following quotes are more relevant for CX strategies than ever before:

On Customer Experience 

1. Nearly half of brands (48%) have introduced a dedicated digital experience team to help shape their customer experiences and journeys across digital channels – Clicktale
2. “The tools available today for brand marketers to be able to monitor digital touch points, such as website performance or an app, are commonplace, so there’s really no excuse for a shoddy experience—and the customer knows it.” –  Kevin Lindsay, Director of Product Marketing, Adobe
3. “You’re not behind your competitors; you’re behind your customers — behind their expectations.” – Brendan Witcher, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester
4. “If you care about the state of CX, it’s time to stop stating ‘how great it’s going to be’ and start working on solutions” – Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corp
5. “The good news is, more and more company leaders are starting to get that they need to focus on the customer experience; the bad news is, most are still struggling with the concept” – Annette Franz
6. “Being customer-first does not mean being company-second – it means being company-also.” – Augie Ray, Gartner
7. “People are descending on the topic of customer experience … but when you really listen to what they’re saying, they’re just talking about a new campaign” – Maxie Schmidt, Principal Analyst at Forrester
8. “Digital allows brands to analyze data and see how consumers shop while physical stores can boost digital sales with customer service.” – Noam Paransky, SVP of Digital, Gap Inc.
9. “Good CX is easy to recognize, but it can be difficult to deliver.” – Linda Saindon, Founder & Principal Consultant, Alchemic Group
10. “A good customer experience is actually less expensive to provide than a poor one and customers will pay more for a good one than for a bad one. Nothing drives profitability like an excellent customer experience does.“ – Dan Hesse
11. “What we’ve seen is that although binary conversion is very important, it’s not as important as the whole journey, conversion only gives you a descriptive view of any issues but not a diagnostic one”  – Alex Allen, CMO, Spring Venture Group
12. Customers who had an unpleasant experience on your site are 88% less likely to return to your website – Adobe
13. 85% of the adult believe that the company’s website should be as good as or better than the desktop website – visual.ly
14. “Get to know your customers. Humanize them. Humanize yourself. It’s worth it.” – Kristin Smaby
15. Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 7x as likely to try a new offering, and 4x as likely to refer – Temkin Group
16. “15 years ago, the average consumer typically used two touch-points when buying an item and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touch points, with 50% regularly using more than four.” – Marketing Week
17. 50% consumers are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t anticipate their needs – Salesforce
18. 2018 will be the year of servicing consumer needs before they even arise. Brands leveraging the right data and analytics to deliver impactful customer experiences will rise to the top – Andy Yost, CMO, Gannett
19. “Welcome to a new era of marketing and service in which your brand is defined by those who experience it.” – Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist, Altimeter
20. “The term ‘customer experience’ won’t exist in the organization of the future. It will be so deeply entrenched in a company’s product, process, and culture that it will be synonymous with the brand and represent the only way to do business” – Ann Lewnes, CMO, Adobe
21. “The customer is still king, and in the tech-driven experiential age, Customer Experience—not service—is the king-maker” – Richard Shapiro, founder of The Center For Client Retention
22. “The customer is now highly educated about the brand. The customer drives the experience and that experience is not entirely transactional.” – Robert Burke
23. “Reaching the promised land of customer trust and loyalty starts not from a single transaction or a snappy slogan, but from a desire to build customers for life through a series of value-driven exchanges that align with their interests.” – Patrick Salyer, General Manager, SAP Customer Data Cloud
24. “Companies that provide a simplified, yet rich, online experience to customers are perceived as being more progressive, more nimble, and easier to work with.” – Peter Armaly, Strategic Advisor for Customer Success, Oracle
25. “A marketer’s job, first and foremost, is to help generate revenue for the business. Getting the user journey right should, therefore, be a top priority.” – Maggie McKosky, Head of User Experience & Product Design, Shutterstock
26. 44% marketers said the biggest challenge they face this year is ‘difficulty getting a holistic view of customers across all interactions’ – Adobe
27. “The ideal scenario is that we start by solving customer problems – but we are often hit with business problems first. Our mantra has become ‘Solve your customers’ problems, and they will solve your business problems.’” – Vab Dwivedi, Director of Design Analytics, Dell
28. “Modern digital experiences are extremely complex, and knowing exactly what’s going on everywhere is very tough. To truly understand digital customers, you need to have a holistic understanding of their behavior – and achieve that at scale.” – Giles Richardson, VP Digital Journeys, T-Mobile
29. “If experience isn’t your strategy, you’re doing it wrong” – PwC
30. “Help your shoppers journey throughout the retail experience, effortlessly wherever possible, but always – always – on their own terms.” – Alasdair Lennox, Executive Creative Director, FITCH
31. “If you can make it simpler for people to achieve what they are trying to do, everyone wins.” – Roger Woods, Director of Mobile Product and Strategy, Adobe

On Understanding Human Behavior 

32. Over half of brands (54%) surveyed don’t believe they have a strong understanding of their customers’ behavior across digital channels – Clicktale
33. 76% of consumers think companies should understand their expectations and needs – Salesforce
34. 65% of consumers research products online before stepping foot inside a store – Retail Dive
35. “It’s really important that you don’t reduce your customers to data on a spreadsheet. A lot of digital retailers miss the mark by only looking at the data and reports.”  – Traci Inglis, Brand President, JustFab and Shoedazzle at TechStyle Fashion Group
36. “Customers are changing far faster today than organizations are. Customers are setting the agenda.” – Gerry McGovern, CX Expert, CMSWire
37. “Think about every touchpoint your company has with its prospects and customers, and ask yourself if you are talking in their language, or yours” – Dan Gingiss, CX Author and Keynote Speaker
38. “Consumers are redefining brand value on their terms, demanding greater convenience and relevance from every engagement and every device.” – Chris Pemberton, Gartner
39. “Think of your customer base as the foundation of your house. … Fixing the foundation should be the first renovation project you undertake.” – Michelle Yaiser, CCXP, Director, CX Analytics at Forrester
40. “People do not always know what they want and aren’t always aware of what persuades them.” – Martin Roll, Business & Brand Strategist
41. “In 2018 we’ll see more frank public discussions about what it means to bring humanity back to business. Customers and employees, alike, are craving more trust, respect, civility, and meaningful connection” – Megan Burns, CEO, Experience Enterprises

42. “CX of the future should be designed like a Disney or Pixar movie, complete with character and story development, storyboarding, and integration into a thoughtful and methodical universe where the experience is consistent, integrated, and enchanting in every moment of truth” – Brian Solis, Principal Analyst and Futurist, Altimeter
43. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie
44. “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos
45. “Brands that demonstrate “true empathy” in the experiences they deliver will win. These experiences build powerful memories that can disrupt categories” – Alan B. Hart, Managing Partner of ATOMCK & Host of Marketing Today podcast
46. “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs
47. “Customers remember the service a lot longer than they remember the price.” – Lauren Freedman
48. “Regardless of the size of the brand, customers are seeking relevant points of connection.” – Noam Paransky, SVP of Digital, Gap Inc
49. “Organizations must accelerate their own pace of understanding buyers, and the quest that they are on.” – Tony Zambito
50. “The core of marketing is still fundamentally about human behavior —but it’s also now about how human behavior has been changed by technology and interacts with it.” – Amy Fuller, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Accenture 
51. “Instead of focusing on ‘something’, we need to be focusing on the person that’s reading or watching.” – Orlando Baeza, CMO at BuzzFeed
52. 20% of marketing and CX professionals feel they will “never truly understand” their customers’ buying decisions – Clicktale
53. “Companies need to understand three things: WHAT happens, WHY it happens, and HOW to either make it stop happening or make it happen more frequently.” – Eric Stine, Chief Innovation Officer, SAP North America

On Mobile and Omnichannel Experience 

54. Over a third (33.5%) of all purchases during the 2018 holiday shopping season were made on smartphones, with another 10% coming from tablets – TechCrunch
55. 50% of mobile users will abandon a mobile transaction because of a poor experience – Google
56. “By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family.” – Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner
57. 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site – SocPub
58. Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead – McKinsey & Company
59. 69% of digital media time is spent on mobile – comScore
60. Companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omni-channel strategies – Aberdeen
61. By 2020, the demand for an omnichannel customer experience will be amplified by the need for nearly perfect execution – PwC
62. 75% consumers expect a consistent experience wherever they engage (e.g., website, social media, mobile, in person) – Salesforce
63. “The shift to mobile is driven by habit…people are often at home surrounded by devices—desktops, laptops, smart-TVs—that are all objectively better for content consumption than mobiles. But people reach for their phones because they’re habitualized to them” – Tom Grinsted, Google

64.“Visualize all touch points across the digital and physical world. It is most important to ensure that you are providing customers with what they need, when they need it the most.”  – David Clarke, Global Chief Experience Officer at PwC

65. 60% of companies think they’re providing a good mobile experience, but only 22% of consumers feel the same – Qualtrics
66. 40% of online purchases happen on mobile, and brands are having to figure out how to best convert consumers on smaller screens – Google
67. Over the past six years purchases from PCs have dropped from 27% to 20%, while smartphone commerce has swelled from 7% to 17%. Tablets comprise about 12% of purchases – PwC
68. 65% of consumers expect consistency of service on both digital and physical stores – eMarketer
69. 95% of our purchase decisions take place unconsciously – Gerald Zaltman, author and Professor at Harvard University

On New Technologies

70. “Too many [customer experience] decisions are driven by shiny object syndrome and panic. There is too much of a focus on doing the same things competitors are doing in a better way, rather than developing a framework that delivers maximum results and returns for a specific company.” – Peter S. Fader, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
71. 21% of brands are looking to adopt a behavioral analytics platform in the next two years – Clicktale
72. 80% of marketers predict artificial intelligence will revolutionize marketing in the next few years – Econsultancy
73. 70% of consumers say technology has made it easier than ever to take their business elsewhere – Salesforce
74. “Becoming the default brand choice in a preprogrammed, AI and IoT-enabled world will make or break businesses” – Constellation research
75. Investment in AI will increase more than 300% this year – Forrester
76. Eight out of 10 businesses have already implemented or are planning to adopt AI as a customer service solution by 2020 – Oracle
77. 67% of people expect to see/use messaging apps when talking to a business – Chatbots Magazine
78. 40% of adults now use voice search at least once per day – Branded 3
79. Intelligent automation will manage 85% of businesses’ customer relationships by 2020 – Gartner
80. “There is a rule of digitization, which says that 80% of everything you put online doesn’t work in the way that you think it would do. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, but it just doesn’t work in the way that you think it would do.” – Giles Richardson, VP Digital Journeys, T-Mobile
81. “Implementation of technology in retail will only be successful when it helps customers to have a more fulfilling experience based on their expectations.” – Robert Hetu, VP Analyst Retail at Gartner
82. “Technology, data and digital is also expanding at an exponential rate, that makes it hard to get in front of. We must recognise the customer lifecycle is comprised of a series of customer journeys, which span those silos.” – Gene Pfiher, VP, Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Research

On Getting The Most Out of Data

83. “We don’t provide spreadsheets and data and reports, we provide answers. That means that we’re answering the right questions that people need, and not just providing KPIs.” – Luke Horgan, Director of Digital Experience Delivery, USAA
84. “Data analytics is ultimately about making good decisions. It doesn’t matter what business you are in or what your role is at your company, we all want to — need to, really — make smart, informed, evidence-based decisions.” – Amy Gallo, Contributing Editor, Harvard Business Review
85. “The data marketers receive is absolutely overwhelming, but to get value out of it, CMOs have to understand how that information is relevant to consumers’ lives.” – Frances Yu, Deloitte
86. “Track every customer touchpoint. Collect data to identify individual personas. Make sure they’re on the correct path, and use that data to programmatically scale amazing experiences across the entire customer lifecycle.” – Mathew Sweezey, Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce
87. “A good place to start is with listening projects, where customer data and analytics are used to find the voice of the customer and identify where they are satisfied and dissatisfied”  – Jenny Sussin, Managing Vice President for Sales and Customer Experience, Gartner
88. “A data-inspired framework is absolutely essential for modern marketers.” – Josh Mueller
89. More than 40% of all data analytics projects will relate to customer experience by 2020 – Gartner
90. Data-driven organizations perform better on a wide range of metrics. They are 23 times more likely to acquire customers than non-data-driven companies, six times as likely to retain these customers, and, therefore 19 times as likely to be profitable – McKinsey & Co
91. 81 percent of companies believe that data should be at the heart of everything they do – EY and Nimbus Ninety
92. Top retailers and consumer brands will hire nearly 50 percent more data scientists over the next three years – Dan Tynan, AdWeek
93. 34% of marketers and CX professionals are unable to unite data between their web and mobile-optimized sites to create a single customer view – Clicktale

Make sure to bookmark this page, as I’ll be storing up more gems like these and adding them in periodically throughout the year.