66 Customer Service Stats That Are Actually True

Good stats can help CX leaders make the case for additional investment in customer support.

But 90% of customer service stats you find on the Internet are invented out of thin air.

Ok, we made that up. But if you look at the customer service stats that you can find all over the Internet, and try to track them to their original source, you’ll often come up with a bunch of hot air.

We can’t be the only ones who actually cares about data being accurate. So we put together a list of 66 (and growing!) customer service stats that are actually true. They come from real surveys and studies, with legitimate sources like McKinsey, Zendesk, Qualtrics, and PwC.

Take a look!

The ROI of Good Customer Service

1. A 5% increase in customer retention could increase profitability by 25%. – Forrester

2. Investing in customer obsession should yield at least a 700% ROI over 12 years. – Forrester

3. Customers are willing to pay up to 16% more for products and services from brands who provide great CX. – PwC

4. 73% of all people point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions. – PwC

5. Across all the industries surveyed, an average of 48% of U.S. consumers point to friendly, welcoming service as uniquely defining success in an industry. – PwC

6. 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services. – Salesforce

7. 88% of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again. – Salesforce

8. 85% of customers are willing to go out of their way to do business with a company that has better customer service. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

9. 51% felt customer service was more important than price. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

10. 90% of respondents indicated that customer service is important to their choice of and loyalty to a brand. – Microsoft Azure

Customers Stop Doing Business with Brands Because of Bad Customer Support

11. 80% of customers said they have switched brands because of poor customer experience. – Qualtrics

12. 43% of respondents said they were at least somewhat likely to switch brands after only a single negative customer service interaction. – Qualtrics

13. In the U.S., even when people love a company or product, 59% will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience. – PwC

14. In Latin America, 49% say they’d walk away from a brand after one bad experience. – PwC

15. One in three consumers (32%) say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. – PwC

16. 39% of customers say that in the last 12 months, they had such a terrible customer service experience that they stopped doing business with the brand even though they liked the product. – Shep Hyken and Ring Central

17. 69% of consumers have abandoned a brand because of a negative customer service experience. – Freshworks

18. 63% of customers have stopped doing business with a company or brand because of the inability to connect with someone from customer support. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

19. Poor customer service was the number one cause for customers to switch brands, in a Qualtrics study. – Qualtrics

20. Nearly two-thirds (58%) of consumers will sever a relationship with a business due to poor customer service. – Microsoft Azure

21. 79% of customers would switch to a competitor if they found the other company/brand provided a better CX. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

Drivers of Bad Customer Support

22. 54% of U.S. consumers say customer experience at most companies needs improvement. – PwC

23. 55% of customers feel like they generally engage with separate departments rather than holistically with one unified company. – Salesforce

24. 43% of customers say they had more bad customer service experiences in the past year compared to previous years. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

25. 61% of customers think that when they call customer support, the company doesn’t value their time. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

26. 72% felt anger toward a company or brand that provided a poor customer service experience. – Shep Hyken and RingCentral

27. Nearly 2/3 of those with a problem experienced customer rage. – Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

28. 55% expect a company response to a complaint posted on social media, and almost half do not get a response. – Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

29. Only 34% of customers felt they were consistently treated with empathy when interacting with customer service. – Qualtrics

30. 63% of consumers said companies need to get better at listening to their feedback. – Qualtrics

31. 62% of consumers said that businesses need to care more about them. – Qualtrics

32. 3 in 10 agents cannot reliably access customer information, leading to irritated customers. – Zendesk

Customers share their experiences with others

33. Dissatisfied complainants tell twice as many people about their negative experience than satisfied customers do. – Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

34. 45% share bad customer service experiences via social media but only 30% share good customer service experiences via social media. – Zendesk

35. More than half, 54%, indicated that they had shared their bad customer service interaction story with more than 5 people. – Zendesk

36. 37% either abandon a purchase or post a negative review with a poor digital shopping experience. – Sitecore

37. Social media users post on product/service experiences an average of 16 times a year. – Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

38. 61% of consumers have written a bad review after a negative customer service experience. – Freshworks

39. It takes 12 positive reviews to make up for 1 negative review. – CommBox

Lost revenue due to bad customer experiences

40. U.S. companies risk losing $1.9 trillion in consumer spending every year because of poor customer experiences. – Qualtrics

41. Corporate America is risking $494 billion in revenue by doing customer care the wrong way. – Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

42. Estimates of the cost of poor customer service range from $75 billion to $1.6 trillion per year. – Midlands Technical College

43. 9.5% of your revenue is at risk due to bad experiences. – Qualtrics

44. Consumers are 3.5x more likely to purchase from a business after a positive customer experience. – Qualtrics

45. Consumers are 5.1x more likely to recommend an organization after a positive customer experience. – Qualtrics

Overall perception of customer experience

46. 80% believe customer experience needs to be improved. – Qualtrics

47. Globally, 63% of respondents believe customer service is getting better. – Microsoft Azure

CX industry trends

48. 57% believe that chat will be heavily influenced by generative AI, compared with 53% for email and 42% for phone. – Zendesk

49. Only 22% say that their chatbots are like digital agents today, but 58% expect that to change in 2024. – Zendesk

50. 72% of CX leaders say that they’ve provided adequate training on generative AI, but 55% of agents say they’ve gotten no training at all. – Zendesk

51. Of the agents who have gotten generative AI training, only 21% say it’s adequate. – Zendesk

52. 48% of customers say it’s gotten more difficult to tell the difference between AI and a human. – Zendesk

53. 75% of CX leaders say transparency in AI usage and decision-making processes is important for customer loyalty. – Zendesk

54. More than 80% of CX leaders at companies >250 employees believe they are responsible for data security , compared with 61% or fewer at smaller companies. – Zendesk

55. 56% of CX leaders say their company experienced a data breach targeting customer data in the last year. – Zendesk

56. Consumers say they can make purchases directly through chat 34% of the time, but just 33% of companies have tried conversational commerce. – Zendesk

57. More than 60% of companies are planning to increase their investments in livestreaming shopping and conversational commerce this year. – Zendesk

58. Around 33% of CX leaders say revenue generation is now a priority, up from less than 10% in 2016. – McKinsey

59. Around 58% of CX leaders say customer experience is a priority, up from 70% in 2016. – McKinsey

60. Engaging with customers is increasingly important to CX leaders. Only 11 percent of respondents say reducing contact volume is important to them, a 20-percentage-point drop over 12 months. – McKinsey

61. 57 percent of leaders expect call volumes to increase by as much as one-fifth over the next one or two years. – McKinsey

62. One financial-services company reports that its Gen Z customers are 30 to 40 percent more likely to call than millennials, and they use the phone as often as Baby Boomers. – McKinsey

63. Premium-segment customers of all ages also prefer the phone, with many saying that live phone support is part of the premium service they are paying for. – McKinsey

64. 71% of Gen Z customers say they use phone support, compared with 74% for email, 75% for chat, and 57% for social media. – McKinsey

65. Baby Boomers are the heaviest users of phone support – 94% use it, compared with 86% for Gen X, 81% for Millennials, and 71% for Gen Z. – McKinsey

66. Social media is the least popular channel for support. It’s used by more than 55% of Gen Z and Millennial customers, but only 34% of Gen Xers and 19% of Baby Boomers. – McKinsey