Customer Experience Excellence report 2024

Ensuring excellence: the symbiosis of AI and humanity

Growing customer expectations and advancing technology including AI are the driving forces behind new customer experience benchmarks.

The bar continues to rise for seamless customer experience, value for money and privacy. However, even though customers say they would pay more for a better experience, organisations today are struggling with gaps in capability and investment.

Now in its 15th year, KPMG’s Customer Experience Excellence report 2024 examines consumer experience locally and globally, identifying the top 10 brands and sharing findings in the Australian retail, financial services and utilities sectors.

This report explores how leading organisations are using AI and human ingenuity to power Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) within Australia. We take a look at how leaders and movers across sectors are leaning into these opportunities and overcoming challenges and seeing improvements in customer experience excellence.

Humanising the customer experience

Regular interaction with advancing technologies has customers putting a higher value on ethical and honest business practices. This year’s report finds Integrity (19.6%) to be the biggest driver of NPS (net promoter score). Personalisation (23.1%) is the biggest driver of Loyalty, which highlights the importance of tailored customer interactions.

KPMG has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Experience (CX) Strategy Consulting Services, Q4 2024 evaluation published on 26 November 2024. KPMG received one of the top three highest scores in the strategy and current offering categories.

Shift customer expectations

35% of customers

are willing to pay a premium for a better experience
85% of customers

report being moderately, significantly, or extremely impacted by increases in the cost-of-living
44% of customers

are quite or extremely willing to pay more for an organisation that is ethical and gives back to society

Customers remain concerned over AI

The top 3 concerns mentioned are:

55% not being able to interact with a human
54% the security of personal data
46% replacing jobs

Six pillars of customer experience excellence

KPMG’s Six Pillars of Customer Experience Excellence defines the DNA of outstanding customer experiences. Our research shows how Australian respondents rank their importance – and how digital transformation and AI can enhance and support them.

Integrity

Being trustworthy and engendering trust.
Resolution

Turning a poor experience into a great one.
Expectations

Managing, meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
Time and effort

Minimising customer effort and creating frictionless processes.
Personalisation

Using individualised attention to drive an emotional connection.
Empathy

Achieving an understanding of the customer's circumstances.

Australian customer experience by sector

Leading the customer experience in Australia, seven of the top 10 Australian brands are retailers.

Leading Australian retailers are delivering value through superior service, great experiences, exclusive access and lower prices. They are enhancing digital shopping and payments and focusing on omnichannel orchestration for seamless customer experience.

Through Voice of Customer programs, retailers in Australia are capturing holistic data for deeper, actionable insights. They are focusing on brand loyalty through customer personalisation and targeted engagement, driving repeat purchases and higher basket sizes. They are transforming physical stores and differentiating through their instore shopping experience.

Australian retail leaders are finding ways to reduce supply chain and operations costs for reinvestment in customer experience and offer value outside lower prices. They are embedding AI in customer experience to forecast demand, manage inventory, make predictive product recommendations and provide support.

Three of the top 10 Australian brands are financial services brands.

Financial services brands continue to invest in digital technologies, with several Australian brands developing AI-enabled customer service strategies for personalised customer experience, and better resolution of queries.

This year’s survey found the Australian financial services industry had improved its Empathy score, with a growth rate 30% higher than the national average. This can be attributed to a renewed focus on meeting customer service expectations during major events and hardships, increasing face-to-face services, providing richer and more targeted product education, and using Voice of Customer insights to identify and address issues.

Utilities providers in Australia are making focused gains in customer experience.

Although it continues to lag the national average, the sector has made considerable progress, reflecting ongoing transformation and a renewed focus on building customer trust.

The utilities sector has made improvements across all six pillars of customer experience excellence, most notably in its Integrity score, through efforts to build stakeholder and customer trust.

With continued change and growing competition, energy and water providers are seeking ways to invest in customer centricity for ROI, moving beyond ‘service to the meter’ to provide customer experience. These include innovative digital apps, self-service and omnichannel support, transparency in utility consumption, predicting and resolving outages and supporting vulnerable customers.

Water suppliers have shown strong performance as they prepare for population growth against ageing infrastructure and climate change related risks such as droughts and floods. Innovative water suppliers are embedding AI in customer experience to monitor and advise on issues and resolution times. They are also supporting customers experiencing financial hardship, and improving data privacy.

How KPMG can help brands create customer excellence

KPMG’s Customer & Operations Advisory team supports organisations across all industries to uplift customer experience for long-term value.

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Sustainable growth with customer-centric digitisation

KPMG’s Connected Enterprise is a customer-centric, agile approach to digital transformation. Tailored by sector, it connects the front, middle and back offices with value streams, customer journeys, processes, functions and relationships. With enablers for enterprise, operational and technology transformation, Connected Enterprise allows organisations to respond quickly to market signals, opportunities and customer service expectations, and drive sustainable growth.

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Deeper insights with AI-enabled Voice of Customer

Data and insight are critical to achieving excellence in customer experience. KPMG’s Voice of Customer service combines our knowledge of customer and employee experience management with a leading-edge, AI-enabled platform. This helps organisations make data-led, impactful decisions, focus on what matters most to customers and unlock commercial value.