While half of Australian firms say that improving customer experience is their top strategic priority, no company delivers excellent customer experience, according to The Australia Customer Experience Index, 2015 by Forrester Senior Analyst Thomas McCann. Worse still, 52% of firms evaluated on the Customer Experience Index deliver merely mediocre experiences, according to the study.

While none of the brands evaluated fell into the “very poor” category, 31% landed in the “poor” category, and only 17% qualified as “good.” The report, based on a survey of nearly 9,000 Australian consumers, ranks the quality of customer experience and its impact on customer loyalty of 58 brands in eight industries by assessing three dimensions of CX quality: effectiveness, ease, and emotion.

Firms in the financial services industry performed the best, with the top 10 brands belonging to the banking and insurance industries. Retailers follow, with technology service providers bringing up the rear.

Leading the banking industry as well as the overall CX Index ranking is Bendigo Bank, a traditional branch-based community bank that performed exceptionally well across all three dimensions of CX quality.

While all of the Australian brands evaluated do better at providing an easy or effective experience than delivering the right emotional experience, Forrester’s analysis shows that, of the three E’s, emotion has the most influence on customers’ perception of their experience, making them feel more valued. Customer experience leaders made customers feel valued almost twice as often as CX laggards did.

Why Does This Matter?

According to another study by Forrester, comparing the revenue growth of companies with superior customer experience to that of their direct competitors with comparatively inferior customer experience shows that CX drives business growth.