Meet the ‘Quiet Critic’: Relative Of The ‘Quiet Quitter’ Costing Brands a Fortune

New report form FullStory reveals how consumers’ lack of feedback proves costly to businesses

Despite half of consumers (50%) being frustrated by the experiences they receive online, 43% say they will never share any feedback so brands can address their shortcomings. That’s according to a new report from FullStory, the market and technology leader in Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI).

The Quiet Critics report, based on a survey of 7,000 consumers across Asia, Europe, and North America, also found that two-thirds (65%) of consumers will simply abandon a website or app when confronted with a digital frustration–and only 16% are “very likely” to give a brand a second chance.

This influential group of silent but dissatisfied customers—“quiet critics”—mirror the workplace trend “quiet quitting,” where disgruntled or ambivalent employees do not inform their bosses of their dissatisfaction, and instead do the bare minimum work required to not get fired.

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The findings highlight the importance of flawless first-time digital experiences, whilst also demonstrating the incompleteness of traditional customer feedback mechanisms. Brands across all industries have spent millions in recent years to elicit feedback through customer surveys, reviews, CSAT, and Voice of the Customer programmes, but these fail to capture the opinions of millions of consumers who abandon websites and apps without saying anything.

Discussing consumers’ unwillingness to complain, author and expert in customer complaints Helen Dewdney said: “Consumers often lack the confidence to complain. They worry what will happen if they complain. Will they be banned? Will they be told they are wrong? Will they feel worse? Will they get a staff member into trouble? These things are rarely true, but it is a fear of the unknown or basing their belief on a previous bad experience.”

Explaining how businesses can tackle this worrying trend, Andrew Fairbank, VP EMEA, FullStory added: “Regardless of industry, brands that solely rely on feedback from customers are losing ground to the competition, as consumers will often simply go to a competitor in favour of a simple and intuitive CX.

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 “The emergence of quiet critics globally emphasises the clear imperative for brands to look beyond proactive feedback to truly understand the experiences their customers are having and build a CX that works. Investment in understanding and improving digital experiences is a necessity for long-term success.”

FullStory’s digital experience intelligence platform enables businesses to continuously improve their digital customer experience across sites and apps. The platform proactively surfaces actionable insights from billions of data points, helping thousands of companies, including Fortune 100 companies and the world’s most innovative consumer brands, make evidence-based digital improvements that reduce costs and reclaim revenue. The company is headquartered in Atlanta and London and privately held with backing from Permira, Kleiner Perkins, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Stripes, Dell Technologies Capital, and Salesforce Ventures.

FullStory’s research was conducted by 3Gem, an independent research agency. It incorporates data from 7,000 consumers across the UK, USA, Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Research was conducted between December 2022 and January 2023.

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