If a company wants to send customers to a competitor, serving up a negative online experience is a good way to do it, according to survey results released Monday by a quality testing company.
In a study of 500 U.S. consumers, Sauce Labs discovered more than 50% of them say they’ll bolt to the competition if they have from three to four negative online experiences with a company. More than a quarter of the respondents (27%) were even less tolerant of shabby service, saying they’d desert a company after one or two negative experiences.
“This report shows the magnitude of consequences when a customer’s digital experience goes awry,” Marcus Merrell, principal test strategist at Sauce Labs, said in a statement.
“Issues like malfunctioning apps, security breaches, and an oversaturation of ads and pop-ups will deteriorate brand loyalty and put your financial health at risk. It’s not enough to handle these reactively from a customer service perspective; companies need to have a good offensive strategy.”
Tech More Than Convenience Tool
Micah Solomon, a customer experience consultant in Seattle, maintains that the Sauce Labs survey is undercounting consumers who will give companies a short leash when it comes to negative online experiences. “You can’t predict how people are going to act based on how they predict they are going to act,” he told CRM Buyer.
Solomon added that the percentage of those who say they’ll go to a competitor after three to four negative experiences sounds high, while those in the one to two group seem low.
There’s a warning in the survey results for companies that don’t pay close attention to their customers’ online experiences, observed Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm in Bend, Ore. “They need to monitor their interactions and rapidly correct problems with their websites, or they’ll bleed customers,” he told CRM Buyer.
“They need to see every digital touchpoint and user interaction as a reflection and extension of their brand,” added Greg Sterling, co-founder of Near Media, a news, commentary, and analysis website.
“Too many companies simply see technology as a tool or convenience for their customers and put too little thought and effort into the user and customer experience,” he told CRM Buyer.
Purchasing Impacted by Security Concerns
The survey also revealed that security significantly impacts consumer purchasing, with 70% of respondents saying security issues had a moderate to extreme impact on their purchases. However, more than one out of four (28%) had no idea if the e-commerce websites, cloud software, or mobile applications they used had a history of security breaches.
The impact of security on purchasing may be connected to the increased coverage in the media of issues like data breaches and ransomware. “The coverage on breaches and thefts has been relatively high lately, driving up security concerns,” Enderle said.
Security concerns appear to rise with age, according to the survey, with nearly a third of Gen Z respondents (32%) and more than half of baby boomers (54%) saying unsafe digital experiences significantly or extremely impacted their purchase decisions.
Boomers may be more concerned about security because they’re made more aware of it. “Some baby boomers are in the cohort that gets warned repeatedly about telephone and online scams by AARP and the government, so that may be a factor,” Solomon noted.
Boomers are also more aggressively targeted by scam artists. “A high percentage of them are infirm and have funds that aren’t well protected,” Enderle said. “Gen Z is likely to be both harder to cheat and less affluent.”
“Gen Z may be more blasé about security because they’re more resigned to the inevitability of hacks and data breaches than boomers, who are of an age where this kind of thing was rare,” added Sterling.
Freebie Allure
Sterling also noted that patience may influence Gen Z’s attitude toward security, which can affect a user’s online experience. “Gen Z is more frustrated and impatient with poor or slow-to-load experiences than older people,” he said.
That was also born out by the survey. It found that 82% of the respondents thought sites or apps contained too many steps. That underscores the fact, the study noted, that Gen Z is the most interrupted demographic group, with 4.2 ads or pop-ups per experience.
Overall, 54% of respondents said they are interrupted by ads or pop-ups three or more times per experience.
One way to reduce the ire created by ads and pop-ups? According to the study, offer a reward. Some 71% of respondents said getting a “freebie” would persuade them to interact with an ad or pop-up.
Bad Digital Experiences Lead to Lost Sales
Sauce Labs also found that over half of respondents engage in digital experiences more than 20 times per month. Of those respondents, 45% said things malfunction sometimes, often, or always.
The survey reasoned that poor online experiences could translate into millions or billions in lost sales because 70% of respondents said poor digital experiences have a moderate, serious, or extreme impact on their purchasing.
While the survey suggests customer dissatisfaction is generally high, all is not doom and gloom. “Some brands are doing a good job with their sites and mobile apps, which can enhance user interactions with the brands and improve brand perception and loyalty,” Sterling noted.
“The great ones — USAA, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft — are working every single day to improve, even if they already get high marks,” Solomon said.
“And smaller ones,” he continued, “tend to obsess about this as well because they understand how essential a good web presence is to growing their businesses to date and how critical it will remain in the future.”
Other companies working to improve their customer experiences include Temu, eBay, HP, and Amazon.
“Temu and eBay have both aggressively gone after visitors who don’t buy with enhanced offers in attempts to close business,” Enderle noted. “HP is doing a better job directing customers to products that specifically meet their needs, and Amazon uses past behavior to serve up curated offers tied to past interests.”
He added that AI will eventually make a massive difference in the customer experience space. “I expect,” he continued, “eventually we’ll get more dynamically created customized web experiences because AI can do this relatively inexpensively, and trials have shown this can significantly increase sales, close rates, and revenue.”
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