Why customers break up with brands

Of all the customer trends emerging at present, brand abandonment is one to keep ahead on. In fact, the percentage of customers “breaking up” with brands after a bad experience is high and rising.

When Coveo quizzed 4,000 customers across the US and UK, as many as 76 percent said they would drop a brand or service provider after three negative experiences – up three percent when compared with the 2021 version of the same survey.

CX Network assesses why customers cut the cord with brands they used to love, and what those businesses can do about it.

Impatience for excellence

Customers are impatient for excellence and Coveo’s Service Relevance Report 2022 has found fatigue and robust competition to be the top reasons. Their impatience extends to other areas, too.

However, addressing this does not have to be complex. It is possible to create excellence by leaning on the raft of digital tools at the CX practitioner’s fingertips.

When it comes to creating excellence specifically in digital customer experiences, this article on CX Network explains the five steps organizations should follow. Automation can also be used to lift specific elements of the customer journey, that organizations know are less successful than intended. This ability to pivot and refine a strategy can stop churn in its tracks.

Negative experiences

The number of customers leaving a beloved brand after three bad experiences is on the rise, however, those customers are still more patient than most. The same report also found more than one in 10 customers (12 percent) will drop a brand after a single negative service experience.

Icing the cake, 96 percent of respondents said a negative customer service experience affects whether or not they would buy from that company again.

Bad advice

Conflicting, confusing and difficult to access information cannot be underestimated. Almost one quarter (22 percent) of customers say they would be willing to abandon a brand after receiving “conflicting information from customer service and support agents”.

While this rarely presents a challenge for those customers that choose to communicate exclusively through digital platforms, there are swathes of the population for whom digital channels just do no’t match the service provided by humans.

Consider that more than 52 percent of Baby Boomers will drop a brand if they cannot speak to a person. It means the agents they do speak to need multiple sources of information at their fingertips, and that information must be accurate, readily available and pertinent.

Click here to read the full report from Coveo, and find out what the results mean for your organization