Why CX Scores Are Declining—and How to Reverse the Trend

Customer experience (CX) quality in the U.S. declined for the third consecutive year in 2024, hitting an all-time low (69.3) in the nine-year history of Forrester’s CX Index. CX scores dropped for 10 of the 13 industries and 39% of the brands represented in the survey.

To reverse the downward trend in customer experience, brands need advanced CX technology that makes it easier and more pleasant for customers to interact with brands and get their needs met. However, CX leaders must first persuade decision-makers to allocate more funding to customer experience initiatives and technology. That can be challenging, given that CX is not a key part of the brand identity at 80% of companies, Forrester found. Leaders at those companies require proof that CX investments are worth their costs.

How can CX teams encourage business leaders to prioritize CX? Keep reading to discover five best practices to show ROI for CX projects.

CX Deserves Top Billing

Why should business leaders care about declining CX scores? There’s a direct relationship between CX and revenue. According to a Forrester report, a one-point improvement in the CX Index score increases the annual incremental revenue per company by:

• $619 million – retailers
• $366 million – home and auto insurers
• $114 million – multichannel banks

Given the big impact of CX on the bottom line, Forrester expects that companies with declining CX will see “higher churn rates and diminished brand reputation, which can hinder new customer acquisition and erode market share.”

Most Brands Aren’t Meeting Customer Needs and Expectations

CX performance dropped across all three dimensions of CX quality—effectiveness, ease and emotion.

Experiences are more difficult and less effective than ever. Only 66% of customers said brands are easy to work with, down from 69% in 2023 (the previous record low). Fewer customers said brands are effective at meeting their needs (64%, down 3 percentage points from 2023’s previous record low). And fewer customers (59%) say their interactions with brands are emotionally positive, compared to last year (60%).

The percentage of customers who say brands succeed on cross-industry CX drivers also declined from 2023:

• Resolves problems and issues quickly/the first time:  65%, down 3 percentage points
• Answers all my questions: 66%, down 3 points
• Communicates with me using plain language: 62%, down 5 points

Why Is CX Declining?

Forrester identifies four root causes of the deterioration of CX quality:

1. Leaders preach — but don’t practice — customer obsession. Although most business leaders say they prioritize CX, only 3% of companies are actually customer-obsessed, defined as “putting customers’ needs, desires, and satisfaction at the forefront of all business decisions and actions.” Why the disconnect? Leaders don’t understand what customer obsession entails, and they don’t make customers the primary driver of business decisions.
2. Leaders harm CX by hurting employee experience (EX). Shifting EX investments toward efficiency—and away from enabling employee effectiveness—undermines employees’ ability to deliver exceptional customer service.
3. Digital experiences using chatbots are dissatisfying. Most customers are disappointed by chatbots they’re encountering. Almost two-thirds (63%) of customers are frustrated by self-service options using AI, ChatGPT and similar technologies. However, not all brands are leveraging AI solutions that are up to the task of satisfying customers seeking support.
4. Market pressures diminish the value that customers perceive from brands. As consumers face reduced buying power and rising debt, while becoming more concerned about social divides and brands’ positions in them, it’s more difficult for consumers to find value from the brands they interact with.

What Does It Take to Improve CX?

Real-time customer data is necessary—but not sufficient—to improve customer experience. Many brands collect and analyze vast quantities of data but don’t act on the insights derived from it. For example, CX teams know that many customers are calling with billing questions, but they don’t use that knowledge to improve their billing statements, processes, and journeys. According to Forrester, 79% of businesses lack a process (such as customer journey management) to act on insights.

The right CX technology, such as customer journey management can help brands overcome two of the systemic factors that contribute to sub-par CX. CX platforms can:

• Enhance employee effectiveness by routing inbound calls to the right agent, the first time. CX platforms can also provide agents the context and information they need to resolve customers’ needs in one call.
• Deliver more efficient, personalized and satisfying chatbot experiences.

To convince business leaders to invest in CX initiatives and technology, you must build a compelling business case for it. Demonstrating ROI for CX initiatives is often challenging. According to a Forrester study, 54% of CX leaders surveyed were unable to prove the ROI of their projects.

5 Best Practices to Show ROI for CX Technology

Align CX-improvement priorities with your business goals. Prioritize projects that have the greatest impact on customer lifetime value and business profitability. Is your company focused on reducing churn? Increasing upsell? Focus on CX-improvement initiatives that make a difference in those metrics. For example, use customer journey orchestration to proactively deliver targeted upgrade offers to telecom customers whose contracts are about to expire.

Use CX and voice of the customer (VoC) surveys as discovery tools. Use customer surveys to listen to customers and detect pain points and areas for improvement. To drive home the message that a great CX is good for business, you need to translate your benchmarks (customer satisfaction, customer effort score, net promoter score) into a language the decision-makers understand and care about: key performance indicators (KPIs) like average handle time, customer care costs, or churn rate.

Focus on quick, measurable wins. When CX teams chase impressive outcomes and staggering statistics, it can take a long time to see results. If you can’t show ROI within one budget cycle, you may not get the renewal needed to see the initiative through to the end. Instead of trying to improve every customer journey, identify journeys that quickly and significantly impact your bottom line. Sending fraud alerts or appointment reminders may be good places to start. A large national bank reduced the number of fraud cases by 25% and decreased the cost per call by 46% by sending proactive fraud alerts. A major U.S. health system reduced no-shows by 8.5% and achieved a $5M net revenue impact by sending well-coordinated appointment reminders.

Humanize your storytelling. Having the right facts and figures may not be enough to establish buy-in for new CX initiatives/technology. You must convey the impact of improving CX, bringing the problem to life. Keep in mind that you’re speaking to people, not machines that just process data. Make your story personal by weaving in real-world examples and emotions before getting down to the nitty-gritty numbers. Keep the “customer” in customer experience.

If you’re promoting a customer journey management system, try sharing this real-life example that many people can relate to: Have you ever been surprised by an internet outage, five minutes before a Teams meeting? Then you had to call your internet provider four times to find out when service would be restored? Frustrated by this time-wasting ordeal, you start researching other internet service providers. There’s a better way. A customer journey orchestration system proactively notifies customers of planned or unplanned service outages and sends regular updates via text (a channel that is still working).

Build real evidence. Demonstrate the effectiveness of your CX project by conducting a randomized, controlled trial that compares outcomes for customers who did and didn’t receive the CX intervention. Compare the results (e.g., prescription refill rates and monthly revenue) between the experimental group (who received prescription refill reminders) and control group (no reminders) to show that the reminders are working.