• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, March 10, 2022

Email teams may wonder why customers go dark for a time or disappear entirely. 

Here’s a clue: A dismaying 76% of shoppers will give up on a brand after three negative service experiences, according to a study released Thursday by Coveo Solutions Inc.: “Can You Still Bank On Customer Loyalty?” -- up from 73% last year. 

Another 12% will drop out after a single bad experience. And frequency aside, 96% say a negative service experience affects whether they will buy from the company again. 

People aren’t bothering to complain first: 46% rarely, if ever, gripe before jumping versus 44% in 2021. 

This means email marketers will lose response without ever knowing what hit them. And they will be tasked with winning those customers back, or at the least dropping them from their lists after a certain inactive period. 

The causes of complaint vary with the generations. Baby boomers want to speak to a live person, and 52% will drop the brand if they can’t. 

In contrast, 40% Gen Z will jump if they can’t resolve an issue on their own. 

But other issues also contribute to this tenuous grip on customer loyalty. For instance,  22% of customers overall will abandon a brand when they are getting conflicting information from customer service and support agents.

This speaks to the need for better information systems: 41% of the information given to the average person in customer support is incorrect.

“Service is a crucial element in keeping customers happy and ultimately, preserving brand loyalty,” says Sawan Deshpande, vice president and general manager of service at Coveo. “But every customer journey is unique and no agent can account for the nuance of every single support touchpoint alone.”

The solution is AI, Deshpande argues. 

Arlington Research, working on behalf of Coveo, surveyed 4,000 consumers in the U.S. and U.K. in January 2022, with the numbers evenly distributed between each country.