Customer Experience Statistics 2026: Churn, Price & AI
The two most quoted customer experience statistics come from the same 2018 PwC survey, and neither says what it is usually quoted as saying. “Customers will pay up to 16% more for a better experience” is the premium people said they would pay for a cup of coffee, the top item on a list of ten. “One in three customers will leave after a single bad experience” is the combined figure for 12 countries; among U.S. consumers, PwC’s figure was 17%. Here are the customer experience statistics worth knowing in 2026, each sourced inline with the year noted.
The “16% more for a better experience” figure is the premium for a cup of coffee
16% is the premium consumers said they would pay for coffee from a company that provides a great customer experience, the highest of the ten products and services PwC asked about (PwC Future of Customer Experience Survey, 2018). Hotel stays and annual physicals came in at 14%, airline tickets at 10%, and car insurance and winter coats at 7%.
The question was hypothetical (“How much would you pay for the following product or service if the company provides a great customer experience?”), and the answer scale stopped at 25% (PwC, 2018). The report also disagrees with itself on the top number: its text says “up to 18% for something like coffee for customers in the U.S.”, while its chart shows 16%. PwC surveyed 15,000 people in 12 countries, 4,000 of them in the U.S.
43% of consumers would pay more for greater convenience and 42% for a friendly, welcoming experience, against 15% for engaging design (PwC, 2018).
86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience is older still. It comes from the 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report, a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by RightNow, a customer service software company Oracle bought in 2012 (Oracle, 2011). When the report sized the premium for its own revenue estimates, it used “the 5 percent extra that consumers would pay for a better experience.” Both the 86% and the 16% are stated intentions, not prices anyone was observed paying.
In PwC’s data, 17% of U.S. customers would leave after one bad experience, not one in three
32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience, across PwC’s 12 countries, and 49% in Latin America (PwC, 2018). Among U.S. consumers, 17% would walk away after one bad experience and 59% after several (PwC, 2018). Both are answers to a hypothetical question about a brand people already love.
29% of U.S. consumers say they have stopped using or buying from a brand because of poor customer experience, online or in person, and 52% stopped after a bad experience with its products or services (PwC Customer Experience Survey, 2025). PwC surveyed 5,511 U.S. consumers and 406 executives between May 21 and June 30, 2025. This is the more useful number of the two PwC surveys: it records what people did, not what they say they would do.
43% of consumers say a poor customer service experience will stop them from making a repeat purchase (Salesforce State of the AI Connected Customer, 2024), from a survey of 15,015 consumers in July and August 2024.
47% of bad experiences lead consumers to cut their spending, down 8 points from the year before, and 11% of all experiences are bad (Qualtrics XM Institute, 2026, from Q3 2025 research with more than 20,000 consumers in 14 countries).
30% of consumers don’t tell anyone after a bad experience, they just switch brands, and 15% fewer consumers post on social media after a bad experience than five years ago (Qualtrics 2026 Consumer Experience Trends, 2026).
85% of CX leaders say customers will drop brands over unresolved issues, even on the first contact (Zendesk CX Trends, 2026). That is what the people running support believe, not a measured churn rate.
Forrester says CX improved in 2026, while ACSI says satisfaction fell sharply
39% of U.S. brands declined in CX quality in 2024, leaving it at an all-time low after a third straight year of decline (Forrester US CX Index, 2024). The benchmark covered more than 98,000 U.S. customers, 223 brands and 13 industries, and Forrester’s Rick Parrish said U.S. consumers were having “the worst experiences in a decade.”
25% of U.S. brands declined again in 2025 and 7% improved (Forrester global CX Index, 2025), based on more than 275,000 customers’ ratings of 469 brands in 13 countries.
20% of brands improved their CX Index scores in 2026 and 8% declined, counting brands evaluated in both 2025 and 2026, and CX scores improved in North America (Forrester, 2026). Among U.S. brands, 53% raised their Total Experience Score, Forrester’s new combined measure of customer, brand and employee experience, and 4% fell.
76.1 out of 100 was the American Customer Satisfaction Index in Q2 2026, a decline ACSI says has been surpassed only once this century, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply shortages and large price increases (ACSI, 2026). ACSI also says customer complaints are at record levels. On ACSI’s own chart, the index peaked near 78 in 2023 and 2024 (by our reading). The index draws on about 200,000 interviews a year.
The two series measure different things. Forrester scores brands on their own customers’ ratings of effectiveness, ease and emotion. ACSI tracks satisfaction across the economy and ties the 2026 drop to inflation and companies “charging more while supplying less.”
Satisfied customers buy more, and bad experiences put $973 billion at risk in the U.S.
2.3x: satisfied customers are 2.3 times more likely to purchase more, 3.8 times more likely to trust a company and 4.1 times more likely to recommend it (Qualtrics 2026 Consumer Experience Trends, 2026).
$973 billion of U.S. sales are at risk from bad customer experiences in 2026, 4.9% of total U.S. consumption, part of $2.94 trillion worldwide (Qualtrics XM Institute, 2026).
41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth and 51% better customer retention were reported by customer-obsessed organizations compared with the rest, but only 3% of companies qualified as customer-obsessed (Forrester, 2024). Those growth figures are company-reported.
3.8x is the revenue lift from retention and enrichment for U.S. retailers that deliver a strong total experience, and 2.6x for automakers (Forrester, 2026).
73% of consumers point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, and 65% of U.S. consumers find a positive experience with a brand more influential than great advertising (PwC, 2018).
83% of consumers say customer experiences should be better than they are
83% of consumers believe customer experiences should be better than they are today (Zendesk CX Trends, 2026). Zendesk’s research covered 6,182 consumers and 5,115 CX professionals across 22 countries.
63% of customers say their demand for transparency has risen compared with a year ago (Zendesk CX Trends, 2026).
70% of executives say customer expectations are evolving faster than their company can adapt (PwC, 2025). About nine in 10 executives say customer loyalty has grown in recent years, while four in 10 consumers say the same.
73% of customers say companies treat them like an individual rather than a number, up from 39% in 2023 (Salesforce, 2024). In the same research, 72% of consumers say they trust companies less than they did a year ago (Salesforce, 2024).
Nearly 80% of U.S. consumers name speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service as the most important parts of a positive experience (PwC, 2018). What customers now count as a fast reply is covered in our customer service statistics, and how long callers wait before hanging up in our missed call statistics.
AI in customer experience: spending is up 38%, chatbot use is flat since 2022
38% is how much AI spending by customer service leaders grew, while overall service and support budgets grew 2% (Gartner, 2026, a survey of 199 service and support leaders in April and May 2026).
24% of service and support leaders demonstrated positive financial returns across their AI use cases, even though the function put a median 12% of its 2025 budget into AI, the most of the 10 business functions Gartner assessed (Gartner, 2026, from 1,303 senior leaders surveyed January to April 2026).
About 3x: customers are about three times more likely to use third-party GenAI tools than a company’s own chatbot to resolve a service issue (Gartner, 2026). Third-party GenAI use during service interactions nearly doubled in a year, while use of company-provided chatbots has been statistically unchanged since 2022.
7% of customers used a chatbot or digital assistant in their most recent service interaction, although 49% say they would have been willing to use one if the company had offered it, and only 27% would try a chatbot again after a negative experience (Gartner, 2026). The survey covered 3,566 B2B and B2C customers in February and March 2026. Bot adoption and resolution rates are tracked in our chatbot statistics.
58% of customers who use GenAI have used it to complete a task on their behalf, rising to 74% in B2B (Gartner, 2026).
87% of customers say it is essential that companies using GenAI for customer service offer an option to reach a human agent, while 50% say their interactions are easier when companies use GenAI (Gartner, 2026).
58% of U.S. consumers are only somewhat or not at all comfortable using AI tools to engage with brands (PwC, 2025). 49% say they’re likely to use AI to track an order and 29% to make a payment, while 86% say human interaction is moderately or very important to their brand experience.
13 points more consumers say AI-powered customer support gave them no benefit than in 2021, and 53% worry AI-enabled support poses privacy risks (Qualtrics 2026 Consumer Experience Trends, 2026).
72% of customers say it’s important to know if they’re communicating with an AI agent (Salesforce, 2024), and 95% of consumers expect an explanation for decisions made by AI (Zendesk CX Trends, 2026).
64% of customers would prefer that companies didn’t use AI for customer service, and 53% would consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was going to (Gartner, 2024, from 5,728 customers surveyed in December 2023). That survey is older than the 2026 Gartner figures above, which show customers warming to GenAI as long as a human stays reachable.
The 5-to-25x and 5%-to-95% retention figures trace to HBR articles from 2014 and 1990
“Acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining one” comes from Amy Gallo’s 2014 Harvard Business Review article. The sentence begins “Depending on which study you believe, and what industry you’re in,” and the article names no study for the range. We could not trace it further.
“A 5% increase in retention increases profits by 25% to 95%” comes from the same article, which credits Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company and links a 2001 Bain note. That note says something narrower: “In financial services, for example, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit.” The research behind it is Reichheld and Sasser’s “Zero Defections” (HBR, 1990), whose chart is titled “Reducing Defections 5% Boosts Profits 25% to 85%.” Its examples were a bank branch system (85%), an insurance brokerage (50%) and an auto-service chain (30%), and the figure 95% does not appear in it. More on both, with current churn benchmarks, in our customer retention statistics.
For a small team, customer experience mostly comes down to reply speed
Across these surveys the same few things keep coming up: speed, a human when it matters, and not being left waiting. For a small business, most of that happens in an inbox that is already overloaded (email statistics). Carly drafts and sends replies across all of your inboxes, including shared ones like support@, follows up when a thread goes quiet, and books the call when a customer needs one. For teams, it can also text and call inbound leads as they come in. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so the CRM and calendar stay current without anyone retyping.
FAQ
What percentage of customers leave after a bad experience? 29% of U.S. consumers say they have stopped buying from a brand because of poor customer experience, and 52% after a bad product or service experience (PwC, 2025). The famous “one in three” is PwC’s 2018 global figure for leaving a loved brand after one bad experience; the U.S. figure was 17%, rising to 59% after several bad experiences.
How much more will customers pay for a better experience? In PwC’s 2018 survey, stated premiums ranged from 7% for car insurance and winter coats to 16% for coffee, on a scale capped at 25%. The “86% will pay more” figure comes from a 2011 vendor-commissioned survey whose own revenue math assumed a 5% premium. Neither measured prices people actually paid.
Is customer experience getting better or worse in 2026? It depends on the index. Forrester found 20% of brands improved their CX Index scores in 2026 and 8% declined, after three years of decline (Forrester, 2026). The American Customer Satisfaction Index fell sharply to 76.1 in Q2 2026, with complaints at record levels (ACSI, 2026).
How do customers feel about AI in customer experience? Mixed. Half say interactions are easier when companies use GenAI, but 87% say a human must stay reachable (Gartner, 2026). Only 7% used a company chatbot in their last service interaction, and only 27% would try one again after a bad experience (Gartner, 2026).
Related: Best shared inbox tools · Best AI agents for customer support · Sales follow-up statistics · AI receptionist
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