Three-quarters of business leaders agree that improving the customer experience is their top strategic priority, yet no firm in the UK, Germany, or France delivers on superior experience, according to Forrester’s France, Germany, And UK Customer Experience Index, 2015.

Based on a survey of 13,451 EU consumers, the CX Index™ measures and ranks 203 large European brands across eight industries in the UK, six in Germany, and seven in France, based on the quality of their customer experience, and its impact on customer loyalty. Financial services providers and digital-only retailers come out on top; Internet service providers and TV service providers bring up the rear.

The majority of brands across all three countries clustered in the OK and poor categories. In the UK, 87% of the brands were OK or poor, and in Germany, 84% were either OK or poor. In France, 55% ranked poor — and unlike the other regions, not a single brand offered a “good” customer experience.

Among this year’s overall CX leaders are Nationwide Building Society, M&S Bank, and American Express in the UK; MAIF, Yves Rocher, and Crédit Mutuel in France; and ING-DiBA, DKB, and DocMorris in Germany. Amazon is the only brand to score a hat trick as the highest-scoring digital-only retailer brand in all three markets.

Forrester’s analysis shows that emotion — one of three core tenets of customer experience quality — has the biggest impact on driving customer loyalty. Emotion is the biggest lever brands have to pull in the UK and Germany. Top-scoring brands like ING-DiBa in Germany and Nationwide Building Society (banking industry) in the UK respectively deliver 35 and 14 positive experiences for each negative one. However, in France, effectiveness is the biggest driver of loyalty in three out of six industries evaluated.

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