Forrester Customer Experience Index For India Ranks Flipkart Ahead Of Amazon In 2019

In a major boost to the efforts of businesses to ensure customer satisfaction, a Forrester analysis of customer experience in India by brands has noted that 33 brands delivered good CX, up from 19, and only two brands continued to provide mediocre CX.

The survey was of more than 10,000 customers in India in 2019. Forrester’s CX Index methodology was used to benchmark the CX quality of 39 brands in six industries.

In the digital retailers’ category, Walmart-owned Flipkart improved its score by almost 10 points to go from fourth in 2018 to the top spot this year.

The company won over its major competitor Amazon, who was first in 2016 and second both in 2017 and 2018. Flipkart’s close competitors were players such as Snapdeal, Koovs.com, Shopclues, Myntra, Amazon and Jabong. This is the first time in the last few years, Flipkart has overtaken Amazon in terms of their customer experience.

Forrester research noted that the industry average for banks went up over 5 points to retain pole position, while the multichannel retail industry rose more than 7 points to go from last to second. Despite increases in their average scores, auto and home insurers fell from third to fifth, and credit card issuers – last year’s second – was at the bottom of the rankings. The digital retailer and automotive manufacturer industries were third and fourth respectively.

Amit Bhatia, Forrester senior analyst said, “We see that Indian firms are transforming their culture to become customer-centric and adopting design practices to improve customer experiences.

The research noted that despite improved scores, most brands were unable to differentiate themselves and the quality of their CX remained on par with their competitors. Only HDFC Bank managed to emerge as a true CX leader, according to Forrester.

He said, however, only brands that can differentiate themselves will reap the benefits of better CX. “Brands that want to break away from the pack should focus on emotion: How an experience makes customers feel has a bigger influence on their loyalty to a brand than effectiveness or ease in nearly every industry,” Bhatia said.

The company said that even a minor improvement to a brand’s CX quality can add crores of rupees of incremental revenue by reducing customer churn and increasing share of wallet. Additionally, superior CX leads to reduced service costs and lowers the cost of customer acquisition through word of mouth. CX leaders grow revenue faster, drive higher brand preference, and charge more for their products, Forrester said.

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