Late 2022 saw the emergence of a new workplace trend, ‘quiet quitting’.
The trend, which has amassed almost 3.7 million views on TikTok, sees employees who are unhappy in their job staying quiet about their dissatisfaction and doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
But interestingly this breakdown in communication is not exclusive to the workplace. 57% of people today identify as introverts – meaning they are not making their feelings heard in many areas of their life. For all the investment in customer satisfaction scores, feedback mechanisms and online reviews, many of today’s customers are staying quiet about their experiences — good or bad.
This is a worrying prospect for businesses. If customers are unwilling to express their views, how do brands know if they’re hitting the mark?
Meet the quiet critic…
Recent research from FullStory shows that 43% of consumers say they will never give a brand any feedback at all, emphasising the scale of the communication gap that businesses currently face.
This would be less of a problem if brands were living up to customer expectations, but 50% of people say they have had a frustrating digital experience in the past six months.
And if you combine this with the fact that 58% will never return to a website or app after a negative experience, the impact of these ‘quiet critics’ becomes brutally clear: brands are losing swathes of customers to competitors without realising how or why it’s happening.
Spotting the warning signs
Unfortunately for many, these losses only present themselves in businesses’ bottom lines, a stage where it is far too late to act. If businesses want to retain customers, quiet critics need to be identified much earlier on.
And with traditional feedback mechanisms no longer cutting it, DX professionals need to learn to understand these customers through their actions rather than relying on their words.
Every time a consumer uses your site or app, they leave behind a goldmine of digital experience data. These expressions provide invaluable insight into their mindsets, goals, and experiences—but you have to be able to both gather and understand the data.
One of the most important things to track when identifying quiet critics is frustration signals. From frenzied Rage Clicks to Error Clicks, aggressively thrashed cursors, and even mobile pinch-to-zooms, these subtle signals provide a trail of digital footprints, tracking the struggles and experiences of even the most introverted customers.
From quiet critics to happy customers
Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) allows businesses to interpret this customer data so that they can design engaging, high-conversion user experiences.
And customers who receive experiences that are smooth, efficient and allow them to get things done, are ones that will remain loyal to your brand, with 77% of consumers claiming that their number one priority when shopping online is being able to “quickly accomplish what they came to do”.
This is something that is unlikely to change in the future. Of all the age groups surveyed, Gen Z favour simplicity the most – proving that contrary to popular belief – they too prioritise efficient experiences over extravagant new features. They are also most likely to boycott your brand if they receive a bad experience on your website.
Brands that take the time to invest in the technology that allows them to better understand their customers, are ones who will provide best-in-class digital experiences that will foster brand loyalty for years to come.
