Temkin Group Publishes New Research Showing That Many Consumers Stop Spending With Companies After a Bad Experience

WABAN, Mass., Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Temkin Group, a leading market research and consulting firm that helps organizations improve their customer experience, released a new research report: "What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience?" The study, based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers, analyzes feedback and purchase behaviors after good and bad experiences.

The report shows that consumers encounter bad experiences most frequently with TV service providers, retailers, and Internet service providers, but report the fewest bad experiences with grocery chains. Consumers respond differently to bad experiences across the 19 industries in the study. More than one-third of consumers who had a bad experience with a rental car agency, credit card issuer, computer company, or auto dealer completely stopped spending with the company. Fortunately for retailers and Internet service providers, their customers are the least likely to abandon them after a bad experience.

The research also examines how consumers respond to a company's service recovery efforts. When consumers feel that a company responded very poorly after a bad experience, almost three-quarters of them stopped or decreased their spending with the company. On the other hand, when companies had a very good response, less than one out of five decreased their spending and more than one-third increased their spending.

"Every company delivers some bad experience, but the good ones build loyalty by quickly responding to these issues and learning from their mistakes," states Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner of Temkin Group.

Here are some additional findings in the report:

• ING Direct, Holiday Inn Express, Whole Foods, and Holiday Inn have the fewest occurrences of bad experience, while Best Buy, QVC, Gap, and eBay have the most.
• More consumers give feedback directly to the company after a very bad experience than they do after a very good experience.
• The use of Twitter to communicate about a very bad experience has more than doubled over the last year. Consumers who earn at least $100,000 are more than twice as likely to tweet about a bad experience than those making $50,000 or less.
• More than one-third of consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 write about their good and bad experiences on Facebook.
• Cox Communications, Symantec, ING Direct, and TracFone are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Facebook, while Cablevision, AOL, Kaiser Permanente, and Holiday Inn are the most likely to have positively biased comments.
• Verizon and GE are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Twitter, while Avis and Edward Jones are most likely to have positively biased tweets.

The report "What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience?" can be downloaded from the Customer Experience Matters blog, at ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com as well as from the Temkin Group website, www.TemkinGroup.com.

About Temkin Group
Temkin Group is a leading customer experience research and consulting firm with one simple goal for its clients: increase customer loyalty by becoming more customer-centric. The company combines customer experience thought leadership with a deep understanding of the dynamics of large organizations to help senior executives accelerate their results. For more information, contact Bruce Temkin at 617-916-2075 or send an email to [email protected].

About Bruce Temkin
Bruce Temkin is widely recognized as a customer experience thought leader and is Customer Experience Transformist and Managing Partner of Temkin Group. He is also the author of a very popular blog, Customer Experience Matters® (ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com). Prior to forming Temkin Group, he was a VP at Forrester Research for 12 years. Bruce is a highly demanded speaker who consistently receives high marks for his content-rich, entertaining keynote addresses. He is also the co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org), a global non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of customer experience management.

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SOURCE Temkin Group