Key takeaways
- An average customer experience impacts higher churn, fewer repeat purchases, and lower lifetime value over time.
- Causes of average CX come from slow or inconsistent workflows, capacity, and channels that are designed around internal limits rather than customer effort.
- Average CX can be improved with the right systems, not just more effort.
Why average CX can hurt your business
CX that’s merely “okay” leads to frustrated customers, lost revenue, and diminished lifetime value.
Strong customer experience is directly linked to revenue growth, as satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and refer others. In fact, customer-centric brands are 60% more profitable than those who fail to prioritize customer experience.
Beyond lost revenue, average CX can undermine overall business success by reducing competitiveness and hindering the achievement of strategic goals. Improving CX delivers measurable benefits, such as increased retention, reduced churn, and tangible financial gains. Yet, some assume “good enough CX” is enough.
But in today’s competitive market, it’s not.
Almost 9 out of 10 say even if your product is great, if the customer experience (CX) is frustrating or average, they’re left unsatisfied. And the consequence is predictable: Only satisfied customers are more likely to buy again.
Customers who are not satisfied are less likely to purchase again. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) goes down. Thus, the need to upgrade a so-so CX is critical.
The cost of being satisfied with average CX
Average CX means that nothing in the customer experience you deliver breaks. When the customer experience isn’t well managed, companies have little control over consumers’ brand perceptions. Most companies still struggle to deliver exceptional CX, often falling short of customer expectations.
But nothing delights either. It’s like a business just trying to get through the interaction instead of genuinely caring about rising customer expectations and customer pain points.
Here’s how an average customer experience can impact your business:
Impact on customer retention
Customers always want something done with the least effort possible. When your CX is average, customer retention becomes more challenging because they have to work to stay with you in small but exhausting ways:
- They have to follow up to get answers.
- They have to repeat themselves when switching channels.
- They have to tolerate delays, confusion, or generic responses.
Sadly, customer loyalty won’t be solid when alternatives require less effort. Nearly one in four (23%) customers who rate their experience as “average” say they’re unlikely or will never return. This is clear evidence of churn caused by poor customer experience.
Retaining existing customers is typically the least expensive way to keep revenue up. A key objective of improving the average customer experience impact is to reduce customer churn.
Effect on repeat purchases and LTV
Acquiring customers is only the beginning. Retaining customers is the other half the story.
The bigger loss happens inside the customers you keep. (Even when customers don’t churn, they can still become less valuable.)
Average CX teaches customers how to behave: to buy only when necessary, stick to familiar products, and avoid add-ons. Purchase frequency drops. Basket sizes shrink. Upsells and cross-sells feel intrusive. That’s a big deal because repeat customers, especially loyal customers who make recurring purchases, spend about 67% more than new ones, highlighting the impact of CX on customer lifetime value even more.
A positive customer experience not only increases the likelihood of repeat and recurring purchases but also helps build a loyal customer base amidst evolving customer expectations.
Damage to brand perception
Poor-to-average CX sparks indifference and indifference to brand perception is worse than dissatisfaction. It can manifest as these situations:
- Customers don’t feel strongly enough to talk about you. So they’d stop recommending you.
- Testimonials lose their spark.
- Even word-of-mouth fades and loses enthusiasm.
Exceptional customer experience, on the other hand, fosters customer loyalty by optimizing every customer interaction and delivering personalized engagement at key touchpoints like onboarding, social media, and after-sale service.
Being satisfied with average CX can be really damaging to your brand because, social proof reduces friction in buying decisions. Yes, almost every buyer (93%) looks at online feedback. 73% of consumers cite a good experience as the primary factor influencing their brand choice.
To compensate, your business will end up spending more on ads, promotions, and sales time. That extra spend leads to an increase in acquisition cost, which is yet another form of CX-driven revenue loss.
Common reasons behind average CX
Below, we’ll explore the most common CX gaps that drive customer attrition:
Slow or inconsistent responses
Customers expect things to move quickly, for them to receive excellent customer service, and for everything to work the way it did last time. Thus, it’s the CX team’s primary role to enhance customer satisfaction in order to keep retaining customers.
So when responses drag or outcomes vary from one interaction to the next, the experience starts to feel unreliable.
Responsive customer care is crucial here, as it demonstrates attentiveness and strengthens customer relationships. Fast resolution of issues is often the most important factor in customer experience, as delays lead to frustration and churn.
Limited multichannel support
Do you still only offer one or two ways for customers to get help when customers today expect flexibility and engage on the channel that’s easiest for them at the moment? A recipe for revenue erosion from poor customer service. That setup shifts the effort onto the customer and needing to figure out how to contact you, or even wait longer than necessary.
Effective customer engagement requires interacting with customers across multiple channels and touchpoints throughout the customer journey. Additionally, proactive outreach, such as regular check-ins or anticipating customer needs, can further improve engagement and retention.
Ineffective personalization
Personalization is what powers the CX and customer loyalty correlation. It can be considered a grave misuse of customer data to not use it to provide superior customer experience.
This is exactly how average CX is created. No ticket is mishandled, no purchase is lost outright, but every touchpoint feels “meh.” Lack of meaningful personalization trains customers to expect low relevance from every interaction.
Overburdened teams
When customer support teams are overburdened, instead of focusing on solving customer problems thoroughly and proactively, agents just keep running after incoming tickets or requests. The priority becomes closing tickets quickly. Poor employee experience in these situations directly impacts customer experience (CX), as disengaged or stressed agents are less likely to deliver high-quality service.
Additionally, an inefficient organizational structure can hinder internal processes, making it harder for support teams to access resources or escalate issues, which further affects operational efficiency and service delivery. Supporting employees with the right systems and structure not only improves their experience but also leads to better customer outcomes.
5 strategies to go beyond average CX and reduce churn
The good news? Reducing churn through better CX is possible. These strategies for improving customer retention, including proactive improvements, can turn average customer experience impact into an advantage that reduces churn, increases repeat purchases, and maximizes lifetime value.
1. Implement rapid response workflows
Average CX often begins with either slow or inconsistent responses. The solution isn’t just “be faster.” It’s about speed without chaos. Speed without chaos means responding quickly in a structured way. To implement rapid response workflows:
- Ditch the strict first-come, first-served queue. Prioritization in tickets ensures urgency and impact drives workflow. Thus, high-value issues and high value customers don’t get buried under FAQs.
- Use customer surveys to proactively identify dissatisfied customers and issues that require rapid response before they lead to churn.
- Automation is another key element. Repetitive tasks, like confirmation emails, status updates, and password resets, should be handled automatically.
2. Invest in multichannel & omnichannel support
First, limited channels are no longer acceptable. Second, consistency across your multiple support channels is a must. Removing fragmentation from customer interactions makes experiences faster and easier so customers naturally return, buy more, and trust your brand. Investments in multichannel & omnichannel support means:
- Use of centralized dashboards so all customer interactions (from email, chat, phone, social, or self-service) are visible in one place.
- AI-assisted routing makes sure that critical problems get immediate attention while routine requests are handled efficiently.
- All channels are connected, with a unified customer history. Agents see the full context of every interaction, regardless of the channel used.
Effective multichannel support not only improves customer satisfaction but also provides a competitive advantage by differentiating your brand in the market. This gives businesses greater control over consumer perceptions, creating a competitive advantage.
3. Personalize customer interactions
Many businesses gather a lot of customer information through emails, purchase history, browsing behavior, support tickets, survey responses, and more. But if you don’t actually use that data to make the customer’s experience easier or more relevant, it doesn’t help. Here are some tips to personalize customer interactions and meet customer expectations:
- Use customer data to suggest products, services, or next steps that are relevant to the specific needs of your target customers and ideal customers. The goal is to make the experience effortless and helpful.
- Track past support tickets to reduce customer effort and prevent average CX caused by repetition.
- Automate follow-ups after purchase or support interaction, but customize content based on previous behavior.
4. Monitor CX metrics and feedback loops
A feedback loop in CX is simply a system where customer behavior along with customer feedback and opinions inform future actions. You collect signals, analyze them, act, and repeat. Over time, this loop continually refines the experience, catching small issues before they become stuck in the average CX loop.
- Measure how happy customers are immediately after an interaction. Tracking CSAT and monitoring customer sentiment through online conversations, social media, and review sites identifies which touchpoints are frustrating or underperforming.
- Analyze why promoters stay happy, and detractors stop buying or renewing. Use this data to improve brand loyalty.
- Pay attention to pain points revealed in feedback to address specific customer issues or frustrations.
- Map churn to specific touchpoints (maybe checkout, support response, or onboarding) then fix the friction before more customers leave. You can also explore the use of predictive analytics.
- Understand what drives repeat behavior and what blocks it, so you can act to improve CX and revenue.
5. Leverage outsourced support strategically
The average customer experience impact disappears when every interaction meets the same high standard. When outsourced support is integrated thoughtfully, it doesn’t replace your team. It reinforces your standards. To leverage outsourced support strategically:
- Add external resources to make your internal team more effective and scalable, allowing you to better serve new customers and support customer acquisition efforts. Retaining existing customers is also more cost-effective. It costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does to keep an existing one.
- Your internal agents focus on complex, high-value tasks that require deep knowledge or relationship-building.
- Together, internal + outsourced teams work as a single, coordinated unit, delivering faster, more consistent support without overloading anyone.
Fix average CX before it costs you above-average loss
Average customer experience impacts cost you money. Customers leave, spend less, and fail to advocate. Exceptional CX? It does the opposite. It keeps customers, increases their lifetime value, and turns them into loyal advocates by fostering loyalty.
Improving customer experience not only reduces churn but also helps expand and maintain a stable customer base, which is crucial for business growth.
Ready to transform your average customer experience impact to an exceptional one? LTVplus consistently delivers higher CSAT scores and faster response times. Audit your CX processes and discover how LTVplus can help scale your support for measurable impact.
FAQs
How does average CX cause customer churn?
Average CX creates indifference and indifferent customers don’t hesitate to switch when a cheaper or easier option shows up. Addressing customer churn is essential. Do this by actively monitoring and managing churn rates helps improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
What metrics show the impact of CX on repeat purchases?
Customer experience (CX) affects repeat purchases. Key metrics that show the impact include Repeat purchase rate (how often customers return), customer lifetime value (LTV), and churn rate.
How can a CX team improve service without increasing headcount?
Improving CX doesn’t always require more people. Automate repetitive tasks, prioritize tickets by urgency and value, and leverage outsourced support strategically.
Can outsourced support help elevate CX quality?
Yes. When done strategically, outsourcing handles routine or high-volume tasks, freeing internal teams for high-value work.
What are the first steps to turning average CX into exceptional CX?
The transition begins with auditing your CX processes. Then prioritize improvements: rapid response, multichannel support, personalization, and a well-designed onboarding process. Effective onboarding processes are critical for customer experience, as they set the tone for the customer relationship and can significantly impact retention rates. Implement feedback loops, address customer churn, and leverage outsourcing strategically.
