Customers can achieve the goal of their journey and still feel uncertain, frustrated, or less loyal afterward.

Forrester launched an annual journey benchmarking study to understand what makes journeys so valuable to customers that they reward the brand with their positive emotions and loyalty. The study examines what drives customer perceptions of value across different journey types and how this influences business outcomes.

Our annual journey benchmarking study includes three types of journeys:

  • New product journeys (e.g., opening a bank account or getting a credit card)
  • Issue resolution journeys (e.g., replacing a lost or stolen card or resolving fraud)
  • Account management journeys (e.g., paying bills, sending money, or getting help using digital tools)

This blog showcases findings on journey emotions from the first iteration of our benchmarking study and focuses on UK banking customers.

If you are a Forrester client, follow the report links below to learn more, or you can request analyst guidance to find out more about this and other data. If you aren’t a client but are curious to get more details, please get in touch with us.

1. Positive Emotions Translate Into Better Brand And Business Outcomes

How customers feel after a journey affects whether customers continue the relationship with a brand. Across all three journey types, customers who felt positive after their journey reported stronger brand perception, higher loyalty, and a greater likelihood to buy additional products. The effect was strongest for issue resolution journeys, where 68% of customers who felt positive reported improved brand perception, compared to just 17% of customers who felt neutral or negative. Customers who felt positive after issue resolution journeys were also almost twice as likely to stay with the bank compared to those who felt neutral or negative.

The findings also reveal that emotions differ by journey type. While over half of customers felt positive after their journey, issue resolution journeys generated positive emotions most frequently, with account management journeys the least often. Banks such as Monzo and Nationwide Building Society consistently generated positive emotions across journey types, particularly during account management journeys.

For more details, read Use Four Lenses To Assess Journey Value Beyond Goal Achievement (Forrester Decisions access required).

2. Journeys Usually Improve Emotions — But Not Always

Overall, positive emotions increased and negative emotions decreased over the course of most journeys. Account management journeys created the fewest emotional shifts, generally keeping customers emotionally stable. New product journeys reduced anxiety but often failed to increase confidence. Issue resolution journeys proved the most emotionally volatile, with customers reporting both positive and negative emotional shifts. Given the relationship between emotion and loyalty, those negative shifts represent a substantial business risk.

For more details, read Improving Customers’ Baseline Emotions Doesn’t Guarantee Customer Loyalty (Forrester Decisions access required).

3. The Strongest Drivers Of Emotion Vary By Journey

The drivers of customer emotion also differ depending on the journey. We analyzed 27 potential drivers of emotion. For new product journeys, product fit and speed mattered most. Speed was also the strongest driver during issue resolution journeys, but speed was simultaneously one of the weakest-performing drivers for both journey types, creating a significant improvement opportunity. For account management journeys, product fit and useful tools mattered most, but customers gave the highest performance ratings to speed and ease of use.

For more details, read The Drivers Of Emotions In Customer Journeys Reveal Opportunities For Improvement (Forrester Decisions access required).

Firms that understand how customers form their feelings about journeys can identify improvement opportunities that customers genuinely value and that they reward with their loyalty.

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