Customer experience affects whether people stay, spend, and trust a brand. Recent studies show that poor experiences can end relationships quickly, while consistency, useful personalization, privacy, and appropriate human support remain central to loyalty.
Table of contents
- Customer experience, loyalty, and spending
- Service friction and channel preferences
- Personalization, privacy, and trust
- AI in customer interactions
- How organizations personalize experiences
- Global costs and frequency of poor experiences
Customer experience, loyalty, and spending
The strongest customer experience signal is behavioral: people stop buying when the interaction or the underlying product disappoints. PwC’s U.S. consumer survey, conducted May 21–June 30, 2025, found that 52% had stopped using or buying from a brand because of a bad product or service experience. A separate 29% had stopped because of poor customer experience online or in person. The two findings describe different triggers, but both show that experience is closely connected to retention.
Price comparison is also part of the experience customers evaluate. In the same PwC U.S. consumer sample, 69% said comparing prices significantly influenced their decision to engage with a brand. A smooth journey therefore does not eliminate the need for clear value; customers may judge convenience and price together.
Companies also reported weaknesses in their loyalty infrastructure. In PwC’s U.S. executive sample, 57% said their loyalty systems were not delivering the outcomes their companies needed, and 46% said their current loyalty program would be irrelevant in three years. These are executive perceptions, not observed customer behavior, but they indicate that a loyalty card or points mechanic is not automatically equivalent to a strong customer relationship.
Trust and service design can work together, but the exchange has limits. PwC found that 53% of U.S. consumers considered sharing personal information worthwhile when it made brand interactions smoother. At the same time, 93% said a brand would lose their trust if it mishandled their personal data. Human support remains important too: 86% said human interaction was moderately or very important in their brand experience.
Qualtrics XM Institute’s 2025 study of nearly 24,000 consumers across 23 countries found that consumers cut or stopped spending after 66% of very poor fast-food experiences. Salesforce reported a related global finding from a weighted YouGov survey of 15,015 adults across 18 markets: 43% would stop making repeat purchases from a company because of poor customer service. The measures and samples differ, so they should not be treated as identical benchmarks. Together, they show why experience metrics belong beside retention and revenue measures.
Service friction and channel preferences
Customers often want fewer handoffs and fewer opportunities for confusion. Salesforce found that 69% of global consumers expected consistent interactions across departments. Nearly 60% preferred using fewer touchpoints to get information or complete a task, while more than 33% said inconvenience—such as difficult returns or clunky purchasing—would make them leave a brand. A journey can be technically available and still feel broken if the customer has to repeat information or navigate unnecessary steps.
Channel preference is more specific than a general demand for “omnichannel” service. Adobe’s global consumer survey, conducted January 1–February 19, 2024, found the following preferences when respondents compared brands:
| Experience choice | Preferred option | Alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Offers | Email, 60% | Personalized text messages, 40% |
| Recommendations | Website or app, 62% | Tailored email or text, 38% |
| Brand selection | Profile-based recommendations, 56% | A well-designed app, 44% |
| Support | Online chat with an agent, 51% | Phone number, 49% |
| Support | Phone number, 51% | Question form, 49% |
The Adobe comparisons are not universal rankings of every channel. They show that preferences depend on the task and the alternative being considered. For example, a slight preference for online chat over a phone number does not mean customers want chat in every situation.
Adobe also found that recent-purchase recommendations were preferred 49% of the time compared with 51% for a comprehensive website when consumers chose between brands. This close split reinforces the value of context: recommendations based on purchase history may help, but customers still value a complete place to understand products and options.
Personalization, privacy, and trust
Consistency is a baseline expectation for digital experiences. In Adobe’s global consumer survey, 80% rated consistent experiences across online channels important or critical to meeting customer experience expectations, and 71% expected a seamless experience across a brand’s website, app, and call center. Personalization matters as well: 70% rated personalized product recommendations important or critical.
The data shows why personalization cannot be separated from responsible data use. Adobe found that 91% rated assurance that brands use personal data responsibly and securely important or critical. Another 67% said they would be more open to granting data permission if brands were more transparent about use and security. Yet 65% were worried about how much data brands held about them, and 60% were frustrated when brands knew a lot about them but did not use their preferences.
These results describe a practical tension: customers may accept data use when its benefit is visible, but they expect transparency, security, and relevance in return. Adobe found that 49% believed the more brands knew about them, the better service they could provide. PwC’s U.S. results point in the same direction while adding a sharper consequence: 93% said mishandling personal data would cause them to lose trust in a brand.
When Adobe asked global consumers about their top three personalization priorities, 31% selected timely text or email reminders, 30% selected recognition across devices, 28% selected being addressed by name, and 25% selected messages and offers tailored to them. These are shares selecting priorities, not a complete measure of demand for personalization. They suggest that useful timing and continuity can matter as much as highly customized creative.
AI in customer interactions
Customer openness to AI varies by task and generation. In PwC’s U.S. consumer survey from May 21–June 30, 2025, 58% were only somewhat or not at all comfortable using AI tools to engage with brands. Still, 49% said they were likely to use AI to track an order or delivery status, while 29% said they were likely to use AI to make a payment.
Salesforce found that 60% of global consumers believed AI advances made trust more important. Approximately 33% of its Gen Z consumers said they would be comfortable having an AI agent shop for them. Salesforce also estimated that more than $200 billion in global online sales would be influenced by AI during the 2024 holiday season. That dollar figure was a forecast, not a reported total of completed sales.
Business buyers and customers show different levels of comfort with AI agents. In Salesforce’s 2024 State of the AI Connected Customer report, 46% of global business buyers said they would work with an AI agent for faster service, while 38% of global customers were comfortable with AI agents creating personalized content. These figures come from a different Salesforce report and should be read as separate populations and measures.
The pattern is consistent across the studies: customers may be more willing to use AI for a bounded, practical task such as tracking delivery than for a high-trust action such as payment or autonomous shopping. That makes disclosure, escalation paths, and human interaction especially relevant to customer experience design.
How organizations personalize experiences
Adobe’s January 1–February 19, 2024 survey also measured what practitioners routinely did. The most common practice listed was using data and analytics to predict customer needs by segment, reported by 47% of surveyed practitioners. Data and algorithms to personalize website experiences and generative AI to personalize images, infographics, or video were each reported by 40%.
Other routine practices were less common:
- 36% made recommendations from previous purchase and browsing behavior.
- 27% updated offers in real time using recent browsing and purchase behavior.
- 25% addressed customers by name.
- 23% used generative AI to craft emails, messages, and other copy.
These practitioner figures are not the same as consumer preference figures. A 40% practitioner adoption rate does not mean 40% of customers receive an effective personalized experience, and a consumer preference does not prove that organizations can deliver it consistently. The gap between expectation and execution is itself useful for planning: prediction, recommendation, real-time offers, and content generation are separate capabilities with different data and operational requirements.
Global costs and frequency of poor experiences
Qualtrics’ 2025 study provides a view of how often very poor experiences occur and what follows. Across 23 countries, consumers reported very poor experiences after 12% of interactions. The country range was wide: the rate was 7% in Japan and 31% in India. After a very poor experience, consumers decreased spending after 38% of occasions and stopped spending entirely after 15%.
The financial response also varied by market. The share of consumers cutting or stopping spending after a very poor experience ranged from 37% in China to 70% in Hong Kong. These figures measure reported responses to very poor experiences, not the percentage of all customers who permanently churn.
| Qualtrics 2025 estimate | Amount or share |
|---|---|
| Sales at risk across the 23 countries studied | 6.1% |
| Consumer spending that would stop | $811 billion |
| Consumer spending that would be reduced | $2.18 trillion |
| Global sales at risk, extrapolated beyond the sample | $3.8 trillion |
Qualtrics estimated that 6.1% of sales were at risk from poor experiences across the countries studied. It estimated that $811 billion in consumer spending would stop and $2.18 trillion would be reduced because of very poor experiences. Its $3.8 trillion estimate of global sales at risk in 2025 extrapolated beyond the 23-country sample.
Those dollar figures are modeled estimates, not observed transaction totals. Qualtrics combined survey results with World Bank household-consumption data, so the estimates should be used to describe potential exposure rather than as an accounting of realized losses. The geographic scope and modeling method matter when applying the figures to a specific company or market.
For marketing teams, the clearest measurement priorities are therefore connected: track where customers encounter friction, whether they can move consistently between channels, whether personalization creates visible value, and whether AI interactions preserve trust and human help. The available evidence shows that each part of the experience can influence whether customers continue spending.