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Why 87% of Consumers Say CX Is the Most Important Element of Brand Choice
Why 87% of Consumers Say CX Is the Most Important Element of Brand Choice
Key Takeaways
By Andy Schachtel, CEO of Sourcefit | Global Talent and Elevated Outsourcing
- Research shows that 87% of consumers now rank customer experience as the single most important factor in choosing and staying loyal to a brand, a figure that has climbed 25% in the past five years, outpacing price, product quality, and brand reputation as the primary decision driver.
- The gap between what consumers expect from CX and what most companies deliver has widened, not narrowed, because customer expectations are set by the best experience they have had with any brand in any industry, not by the average experience in your specific vertical.
- CX quality is no longer a function of how many support agents you employ; it is a function of how well those agents are recruited, trained, managed, and equipped with the right technology, which is why outsourcing to a specialized CX partner frequently outperforms in-house operations that lack that infrastructure.
- Companies that invest in CX outperform their competitors financially by a measurable margin: higher customer lifetime value, lower acquisition costs through word-of-mouth, and reduced churn that compounds into significant revenue advantages over time.
In 2019, a high-volume direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand was struggling with a problem that had nothing to do with its product. The product line was strong. The pricing was competitive. The online shopping experience was smooth. But the company’s customer satisfaction scores were stagnating, repeat purchase rates had plateaued, and one-star reviews on social media increasingly mentioned the same thing: what happened after the sale. Customers who had questions waited 20 minutes on hold. Email inquiries took three days to receive a response. Chat support was available only during business hours on the East Coast, which meant half the customer base could not access it when they needed it.
The brand did not have a product problem. It had a customer experience problem. And customer experience, as the data now overwhelmingly shows, is the single most important factor in whether a customer chooses your brand, stays with your brand, or tells their friends about your brand. The company restructured its entire CX operation with a specialized outsourced partner, built a multichannel support system spanning phone, email, and chat with extended hours, and within two years achieved a customer satisfaction score above 96% across all channels. The product had not changed. The experience had.
That story is not an outlier. It is the pattern. The organizations that are winning in 2026 are not necessarily the ones with the best product or the lowest price. They are the ones that have recognized what 87% of consumers already know: how you treat people after they buy is more important than what you sold them.
The 87% Number: What It Actually Means
The statistic that 87% of consumers consider customer experience the most important element of brand choice has been circulating in industry reports and conference presentations for the past two years. Like most headline statistics, it gets cited more often than it gets examined. Understanding what it actually measures matters, because the implications for how companies should respond depend on the nuances.
The research captures something more profound than a preference survey. It reflects a structural shift in how purchasing decisions are made. In a market where product differentiation has narrowed, where price comparison is instantaneous, and where switching costs have decreased across most industries, the customer experience has become the primary remaining variable that companies can meaningfully differentiate on. Consumers are not saying they do not care about product quality or price. They are saying that product quality and price are baseline expectations that get them to the consideration set. The experience is what determines whether they stay.
The 25% increase over five years is the more striking number. It means that CX was already important in 2020, but it has become dramatically more important since. The acceleration correlates with the pandemic-era shift toward digital commerce, the explosion of subscription and direct-to-consumer business models, and the normalization of social media as a platform for sharing both praise and complaints. The customer’s voice is louder than it has ever been, and the customer’s tolerance for poor experiences is lower than it has ever been.
The Expectation Gap: Why Good Is No Longer Good Enough
The most dangerous assumption in CX strategy is that your customers compare your support experience to your competitors’ support experience. They do not. They compare it to the best support experience they have ever had, regardless of industry. A patient calling a healthcare billing department compares the experience to the last time they called their credit card company and had the issue resolved in four minutes. A B2B software buyer comparing vendors evaluates each company’s responsiveness against the standard set by the consumer brands they interact with every day.
This cross-industry benchmarking effect has created an expectation gap that most companies are not equipped to close internally. The gap is not a failure of intention. Most companies genuinely want to deliver good CX. The gap is a failure of infrastructure. Delivering the kind of CX that earns the loyalty of the 87% requires multichannel capability, extended-hours coverage, quality assurance programs, agent training that goes beyond scripts, and technology that enables fast, accurate, personalized interactions. Building that infrastructure in-house is expensive, slow, and requires expertise that is outside most companies’ core competency.
This is where the CX outsourcing model becomes not just a cost decision but a capability decision. A specialized CX partner has already built the infrastructure: the recruiting pipeline that identifies agents with genuine empathy, the training programs that develop communication skills beyond script recitation, the quality monitoring frameworks that catch issues before customers notice them, and the technology platforms that integrate multichannel support into a coherent operation.
CX Impact on Business Performance
| Business Metric | Below-Average CX | Above-Average CX |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Retention Rate | 60-70% | 85-95% |
| Customer Lifetime Value | Baseline | 2.5-5x higher than baseline |
| Referral / Word-of-Mouth Rate | 5-10% of customers refer | 25-40% of customers refer |
| Customer Acquisition Cost | High; dependent on paid channels | 30-50% lower through organic referral |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 3-5% | 1-2% |
| Price Sensitivity | High; customers switch for small savings | Low; customers pay premium for experience |
| Revenue Growth (3-Year CAGR) | 4-8% | 12-20% |
The Compounding Math of CX Investment
The financial case for CX investment is not linear. It compounds. A retained customer does not just generate one additional year of revenue. They generate referrals, they expand their spending over time, and they become progressively less expensive to serve as the relationship matures and support interactions become less frequent. The math works in reverse for churned customers: each lost customer requires acquisition spending to replace, and the replacement customer starts at the beginning of the value curve.
Consider a subscription business with 10,000 customers and $100 average monthly revenue per customer. At a 3% monthly churn rate, the company loses 300 customers per month and must replace them through paid acquisition. At a 1.5% monthly churn rate, achieved through superior CX, the company loses 150 customers per month. The difference, 150 retained customers per month, is worth $15,000 in monthly revenue, $180,000 annually. If the average customer acquisition cost is $200, the saved acquisition spending is another $30,000 per month. Combined, the CX-driven retention improvement is worth $540,000 per year, and the gap widens every year as the retained customer base compounds.
This math is why the most financially sophisticated companies in the world are among the heaviest investors in CX. They are not spending on customer experience because it feels good. They are spending on it because the return on invested capital exceeds almost any other operational investment they can make. The question for companies that have not yet invested is not whether CX pays for itself. It is how much revenue they are leaving unrealized while they wait.
Why CX Keeps Climbing the Priority List
The 87% figure will not plateau. It will continue to climb, for structural reasons that are not going to reverse. Digital commerce continues to expand, which means more customer interactions happen remotely, where the experience is the only tangible touchpoint between the brand and the buyer. Social media amplification means that one exceptional experience can generate thousands of dollars in organic reach, and one terrible experience can cost multiples of that. Subscription and recurring revenue models have shifted the economic center of gravity from acquisition to retention, making every post-sale interaction a moment that either reinforces or erodes the customer relationship.
The generational shift matters too. Younger consumers, who have grown up in an environment where personalized, responsive service is the default expectation, are entering their peak spending years. Their tolerance for hold times, form letters, and support agents who cannot actually solve problems is not just lower than prior generations. It is approaching zero. The brands that will capture their loyalty and their lifetime spend are the ones that meet their experience expectations from the first interaction.
For companies evaluating whether to invest in CX now or later, the answer is embedded in the trend data. The cost of building CX capability does not increase over time. The cost of not having it does. Every month of subpar customer experience is a month of unnecessary churn, missed referrals, and reputational erosion that compounds. The organizations that are investing in CX today, whether through in-house build-out or specialized outsourcing partnerships, are building a structural advantage that late adopters will find increasingly difficult to close.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the 87% statistic apply equally to B2B and B2C companies?
The figure is derived primarily from consumer research, but the B2B trend line is converging. B2B buyers increasingly expect consumer-grade experience from their vendors, particularly in post-sale support, onboarding, and issue resolution. Research from Salesforce and Gartner shows that B2B buyers rank vendor experience as a top-three selection criterion, behind only product functionality and price. The distinction between B2B and B2C expectations is narrowing rapidly.
Can a small company compete on CX against enterprises with larger budgets?
This is one area where outsourcing fundamentally changes the competitive dynamics. A small company that partners with a specialized CX provider gains access to enterprise-grade infrastructure, including multichannel support, quality assurance, extended-hours coverage, and trained agents, at a cost that scales with the company’s size. The CX playing field is more level now than it has ever been, because the capabilities that drive great experience are available through partnership, not just through internal headcount.
How do we measure whether our CX is above or below average?
Start with three metrics: customer satisfaction score measured through post-interaction surveys, net promoter score measured through periodic relationship surveys, and first-contact resolution rate measured through your support platform. Compare your results to published industry benchmarks from sources like ACSI, Zendesk, or Freshdesk. If your CSAT is below 85%, your NPS is below 30, or your first-contact resolution is below 70%, you have meaningful room for improvement that will translate directly into retention and revenue.
What is the fastest way to improve CX without a complete operational overhaul?
The highest-impact, lowest-disruption starting point is extending your support coverage hours and channel availability. Most companies lose customers not because their support team is bad, but because their support team is unavailable when customers need them. Adding chat support, extending phone hours into evenings and weekends, and reducing email response times from days to hours produces measurable satisfaction improvements within 60 to 90 days. An outsourced CX partner can implement these expansions in four to six weeks.
Is it better to fix CX internally or outsource it?
The answer depends on your starting point and your core competency. If you already have a strong CX infrastructure, including recruiting, training, quality assurance, and technology, and you need incremental improvement, internal investment may be sufficient. If you are building CX capability from scratch, or if your current operation is underperforming and you lack the internal expertise to diagnose and fix it, a specialized CX partner gets you to a higher performance level faster and at lower total cost because they have already built the systems that produce consistently great experiences.
To learn more about how SourceCX helps companies deliver the customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth, visit sourcecx.com or contact our team for a consultation.
