Dive Brief:
- Customer satisfaction with businesses across the nation neared an all-time high in the third quarter of 2024, according to American Customer Satisfaction Index data released Tuesday.
- The score, which is based on surveys of over 220,000 consumers, climbed from a low of 73 on a 100-point scale in the second quarter of 2022 to 77.9 in the third quarter of 2024.
- The growth marks a return to normal from the pandemic, according to Forrest Morgeson, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI. “We saw real significant deterioration and satisfaction during the COVID crisis and everything that went on there,” Morgeson said. “And as things started to get back to normal, people started to, once again, really appreciate the quality of the goods and services that they were consuming, and that translated to higher satisfaction.”
Dive Insight:
Consumers might still be grumbling about inflation and increased prices, but their satisfaction with the services and products those businesses provide is on the rise.
Consumer confidence and sentiment indexes measure consumers’ assessment of their current economic situation and what they expect it to look like in the future — both of which are heavily influenced by prices, Morgeson said. As a result, those indexes and consumer satisfaction scores can diverge.
“While price is a component of what we're asking, we're predominantly asking, ‘How good did you find the products and services that you bought? How satisfied are you with those, and how likely are you to continue doing business with those particular companies?’” Morgeson said.
Morgeson urges CX leaders to look at national indexes to understand customers’ expectations across industries as economic conditions shift.
“Looking at national trends is another good practice to keep as a CX leader. Look at how the economy is changing over time and best calibrate what you're doing to that changing economic landscape,” Morgeson said. “Companies have to currently be on the lookout for not just how they're doing, but for how their competitors are doing. So it's always a moving target and what level of satisfaction you need to provide your customers.”
If a CX leader is in an industry that scores poorly, being the best among the worst may be enough. But if a business is competing with Amazon, which has had high customer satisfaction for years, CX leaders will need to hold themselves to higher standards.
“Keeping an eye on what's going on out there in the marketplace, how well your companies are doing with satisfying its customers relative to those competitors is a really important piece of information to keep in mind,” he said.
