Customers Are Giving Brands The Silent Treatment

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Brad Anderson is the President of Products and Engineering at Qualtrics. Brad previously spent 17 years as a key leader at Microsoft.

Businesses will risk $3.8 trillion in sales this year because of poor customer experiences, according to my company's findings. And this is just the dollar figure—it doesn't take into account the longer-term impact on loyalty, brand awareness and trust.

The point is that poor customer experience (CX) can be incredibly damaging to the bottom line. Organizations urgently need the ability to fix issues and identify unmet needs before they arise, but there's one problem: Increasingly, consumers are choosing not to share their feedback with brands directly—regardless of whether they've had a good or bad experience.

Since 2021, according to my company's research, the volume of consumers sharing negative feedback on their CX through a customer survey or feedback form has fallen 8 points . It's a similar story for feedback on a positive experience, which has dropped 7 points.

You might think fewer customers reporting a bad customer experience indicates they are happy. This is wrong. Consumer trust, satisfaction and loyalty are all down over the last 12 months. While feedback rates are falling, the volume of customers choosing to cut spending after a bad experience is increasing, according to the study.

It means we have a situation where the cost of bad CX is increasing, yet the insights needed to fix the problems are decreasing.

In a world increasingly defined by high consumer expectations and competition, the absence of direct feedback undermines organizations' efforts to adapt and respond to consumer needs.

In 2025, brands need to think beyond just the traditional survey as a feedback platform if they're going to truly understand and address the diverse needs of their customers.