Customer experience in Singapore remains weak, as brands struggle to “delight” a market of consumers with a reputation for high expectations when it comes to brand interactions.

According to research firm Forrester’s Singapore 2019 Customer Experience Index rankings, the overall quality of customer experience (CX) in Singapore has remained flat at 55 points out of 100 since 2018 and the brands remain undifferentiated in their CX.

The multichannel banking industry continued to have the highest average score of 58.9. The average scores in the auto/home insurance industry and government rose to 55.8 and 52.2 respectively, while the average in the airline industry fell to 55.1. For the second year in a row, the Singapore government remained at the bottom of the rankings. Singapore Airlines achieved the highest score this year, overtaking DBS Bank and OCBC Bank.



The report revealed that brands in Singapore disappoint customers on the three dimensions of CX:

  • Effectiveness: The experience delivers value to customers.
  • Ease: It’s not diffi­cult to get value from the experience.
  • Emotion: Customers feel good about their experience.
On average, only 39% of customers found their experiences emotionally positive, 41% of customers found brands easy to interact with, and 38% of customers said that they were able to accomplish their goals when interacting with brands.

Presenting the report’s findings at Forrester's CX Singapore Forum, Vikram Sehgal, VP, data strategy, APAC for the company pointed out that the emotion that has the biggest negative impact on CX in Singapore is disappointment. Among customers that are likely to leave, 47% are disappointed with their brand.

“The real challenge for Singaporean brands is that we've become so transactional in the way we interact with our customers, that customers say, ‘I have very limited positive emotion when I'm interacting with you’. So therefore, they're not necessarily extremely happy, or extremely satisfied. They're just neutral,” he said. “And that's the reason why scores are low and not as differentiated from one provider to another.”

Tom Mouhsian, principal analyst at Forrester noted that brands that want to move the needle on their CX quality 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 every industry.”

Conducted in Singapore for the second year in a row, Forrester's CX Index results are benchmarked on a survey of 4,027 Singaporean adult customers across 16 brands in 3 industries and the government sector.

Sourced from Forrester