After two years of growth, overall customer satisfaction dipped slightly in the second quarter of 2024, according to data released last week by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
The national economic indicator measures and analyzes customer satisfaction with about 400 companies in about 40 industries. Customer satisfaction dropped 0.1% to 77.9 on a 100-point scale.
“It's a small change given the scope and the quantity of data that we're collecting,” said Forrest Morgeson, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI. “This may, in fact, be signaling a slowdown or even a downturn or a prolonged downturn, and it may just be a blip. We don't know quite yet.”
The dip or plateau could be the result of expectations leveling out after the pandemic, the impact of pricing or it could be a sign customer experience leaders need to reassess their efforts, Morgeson said.
At the national level, satisfaction was on the decline before COVID hit, according to the ACSI. The pandemic accelerated that decline before it bottomed out, and around 2022, as services returned to normal, satisfaction began to steadily increase. Now, customers may be accustomed to the services and experiences of post-COVID businesses, putting a damper on their satisfaction.
Pricing can weigh a lot on customer satisfaction, and is likely in part to blame for the dip.
“We generally find in our data that the quality of goods and services received are more important in determining customer satisfaction than prices or the value perception,” he said. “But when quality remains constant and prices go up significantly because of something like inflation, that's going to weigh significantly on satisfaction, and it's going to depress customer satisfaction.”
Do CX leaders need to reassess?
Amid these broader economic conditions, businesses have made large investments in CX over the past 10 years. But satisfaction still hasn’t grown all that much.
“To put it bluntly, at least at a national level, the ACSI hasn’t really budged much in over a quarter century, despite all the investments that companies have been made in quality management, big data, predictive analytics, self-service tools, voice of the customer programs, and, more recently, AI technology,” Jon Picoult, founder and principal of Watermark Consulting, a customer experience advisory firm said in an email.
Experts say investments in technology and data accumulation isn’t the issue — it’s strategy.
“It's a question not just of, ‘Can we get the data? Do we have lots of data?’ We live in the big data world, and everyone can get data,” Morgeson said. “Make sure that you're using that data in a way that gives you the best strategy for maintaining and improving your customer satisfaction relative to your competitors.”
Sometimes, that just means focusing on doing the fundamentals well.
“What companies forget is that no matter how much they invest in new products and technologies, it’ll never overshadow the basics of customer experience: being responsive, taking ownership, doing what you say you’ll do, and making the customer feel cared for,” Picoult said.
The ACSI’s results, however, should be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, just one quarter.
“So, my advice to anyone interpreting this data is: don’t overreact to quarterly results, and keep your eye on the longer-term trajectory,” Picoult said.
