Forrester's CX Index Finds Declining Customer Experiences

We read tons of press releases about boosts to technology and customer support (and fulfilled customer journeys therein), so you’d imagine that companies would've massively improved their customer experiences and that customers were thrilled to pieces about the new trends.

A new study from Forrester Research may have found that this simply isn’t the case.

In other words, unless you’re among the tiny (and declining) ranks of utterly “customer-obsessed” companies, customers just aren’t that into your customer support.

According to Forrester’s US Customer Experience Index (CX Index) rankings, customer experience (CX) quality among brands in the U.S. sits at an all-time low after declining for an unprecedented third year in a row. Several factors — brands’ inabilities to provide seamless customer and employee experiences, underwhelming digital experiences using chatbots, and consumers’ concerns about their personal financial situations, society and the economy at large — have all contributed to the decline.

In addition to 39% of brands and 10 industry averages declining in CX quality over the past year, CX performance dropped across all three dimensions of CX quality — effectiveness, ease and emotion. Only 3% of companies are currently categorized as customer-obsessed, defined as putting customers’ needs, desires and satisfaction at the forefront of all business decisions and actions. Customer-obsessed organizations reported 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth, and 51% better customer retention than those at non-customer-obsessed organizations.

In 2024, only the airlines industry saw improvement in its overall CX quality. Additionally, the 2024 “elite” brands — the top 5% of brands in the entire CX Index — Chewy.com, Edward Jones, Etsy, H-E-B, Lincoln, Navy Federal Credit Union (for both multichannel banks and credit card issuers), Subaru, Tesla, USAA and Zappos.com — struggled to maintain their status.

“U.S. consumers are having, on average, the worst experiences in a decade,” said Rick Parrish, VP and Research Director at Forrester. “Brands want to create better experiences, and they realize that putting the customer at the center of their business is the way to do it. However, organizations struggle with the scale of change that this requires. It’s worth it, though, as our research finds that firms that are customer-obsessed grow revenue, profit, and customer loyalty faster than their competitors.”