Key Findings

As part of Qualtrics XM Institute’s 2024 Global Consumer Study, we asked nearly 24,000 consumers around the world whether they’ve recently had a poor experience with an organization in 20 different industries. For those who had, we asked what caused the bad experience and how they changed their spending afterward. From their responses and the analysis from our 2023 Global Consumers Study, we found that:

More than 1 in 10 customer experiences are negative. Consumers reported that 12% of recent experiences were very poor, ranging from 22% among government agency experiences to 4% among streaming and supermarket experiences. However, the rate of poor experiences has declined, dropping 1.2 percentage points over the past year. Consumers reported fewer negative experiences across every single industry and across all but five of the 23 countries.
Consumers cut spending after bad experiences. Over half of negative experiences lead consumers to either reduce or stop their spending with the organization. The percentage of consumers who cut their spending ranges from a high of 66% of fast food consumers to a low of 41% of public utility consumers. Consumers in Hong Kong are most likely to cut spending after a negative experience (70%), while those in India are least likely (37%).
Poor experiences put sales at risk. Organizations risk 6.1% of revenue due to poor experiences. After government agencies (11%), mobile phone providers have the highest percentage of sales at risk (9%), while supermarkets have the lowest (2%). Risk is highest among Indian organizations and lowest for those in Japan.
Service delivery issues and communications problems are the most common causes of bad experiences. When asked what made their recent bad experience bad, consumers most frequently cited service delivery issues (46%), followed by communications issues (45%). Communications problems was top-cited in seven of 20 industries and in 13 of 23 countries.