New Study Reveals Significant Gap Between Canadian Consumer Expectations and Businesses’ Ability to Deliver on a Great Customer Experience

While 41% of consumers are prepared to switch brands due to poor experience, only 11% of Canadian business leaders consider themselves customer experience leaders

New research released today by Medallia, the global leader in customer and employee experience, reveals a significant gap between consumers’ customer service expectations and Canadian businesses’ ability to deliver on those expectations. Medallia and IPSOS will discuss insights from the report today with a panel of customer experience professionals.

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“Every brand in Canada has the potential to drive a phenomenal customer experience. It’s a top priority among consumers today. However, our survey shows that the majority of Canadian businesses are falling far short of consumer expectations when it comes to delivering on that promise”

In July of this year, Medallia and IPSOS surveyed 300 Canadian experience professionals across 12 industries and 2,000 Canadian consumers. The resulting State of Experience in Canada Report examines the implications of COVID-19 on Canadian businesses, looks at changing Canadian consumer expectations surrounding customer experience, and reveals that the majority of Canadian businesses are still playing catch up when it comes to delivering on a consistently strong, omni-channel customer experience.

“Every brand in Canada has the potential to drive a phenomenal customer experience. It’s a top priority among consumers today. However, our survey shows that the majority of Canadian businesses are falling far short of consumer expectations when it comes to delivering on that promise,” said Shannon Katschilo, Medallia AVP and country manager for Canada.

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The research reveals:

• Canadians today are using more channels than ever to communicate, presenting new customer experience challenges for business
  • 41% of Canadians say a poor customer experience will drive them to purchase from another brand
  • 16% of Canadians will pay more for a great customer experience
  • Only 23% of Canadian consumers strongly agree that they receive a consistent service across all channels
  • Against the backdrop of COVID-19 only 28% of consumers felt companies have mastered contactless interactions and engagement

• Canadian businesses don’t feel that they have kept up with changing consumer expectations regarding customer service and consistency of experience across channels
  • Only 11% of organizations surveyed consider themselves CX leaders, meaning their organizations are:
    • Is CX obsessed
    • Has fostered a customer and journey centric culture
    • Is using data to constantly improve the customer experience
  • Almost 50% of employees strongly feel that their biggest challenge today is customers moving to new channels

• While the value of CX is well-recognized by business leaders, far fewer use advanced analytics to identify the financial value of CX improvement
  • Less than 1/3 of executives believe that their organization obtains and analyzes customer data well
  • Only 27% believe the tools being used to collect and analyze customer sentiment are adequate
  • Only 33% of employees are aware of customer feedback programs within their organization and only 43% of those employees are engaged with those programs
  • 60% of employees feel they lack the necessary tools to deliver an exceptional customer experience

“Our research shows that greater than 50% of businesses who invest in CX see positive returns in customer experience and 35% of those companies realize gains in financial performance and yet, universally the executives, employees and customers all agreed that more needs to be done in the customer experience space to meet changing consumer expectations,” continued ​​Katschilo. “Leading customer experience organizations understand the power of using real-time data to predict and alert the business to issues they need to resolve before their customers decide to leave.”

Today, Medallia and IPSOS will host a panel of customer experience professionals from financial, retail, telco, research and hospitality sectors who will discuss how leading Canadian businesses are turning to customer experience best practices to:

• Adapt and innovate to remain competitive
• Leverage customer data to predict and alert businesses to potential churn risks
• Deliver a consistent omni-channel experience

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