EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

To understand how the quality of a customer experience – good or bad – can affect consumers’ behavior, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their interactions with 294 companies across 20 industries. We then compared the results to similar studies we’ve done in previous years. We found that people are more likely to talk about bad experiences than good experiences. When consumers do tell someone about an experience, only one-fifth of consumers provide that feedback directly to the company. We also looked at how consumer behavior differs across age groups.

The data come from the Qualtrics XM Institute Q2 2019 U.S. Consumer Benchmark Study – an online study of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Survey respondents were representative of the U.S. Census based on quotas for age, income, ethnicity, and geographic region.