A new survey on customer expectations reveals that companies can no longer separate their product from the customer experience they offer, and that low customer expectations signal fresh opportunities for businesses to find a new approach to delight customers.

The findings are contained in a report from Freshworks, the consumer-focused business software firm based in San Mateo, California, that bills itself as a provider of easy-to-use software-as-a-service (SaaS). The report, Deconstructing Delight: Understanding the Complexity of Consumer Expectations, also disclosed complicated consumer attitudes that appeared, at times, to be contradictory or paradoxical, especially when they had to do with engaging with companies.

In its most salient portion on consumer expectations, the report said that just a small segment—only 14%, to be exact—of consumers expected “to be wowed” when interacting with brands, and 56% of consumers said a brand’s customer service often does not match the image being portrayed. These sentiments are true, even though customers have shown empathy, adjusting their expectations of what companies can do, given the challenges wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Stacey Epstein, chief marketing officer (CMO) at Freshworks.

The report also said that consumers expect brands to understand their personal causes, given how social justice and sustainability issues dominate global news. A full 63% of consumers are willing to hand over personal details, including relationship information, as well as browsing and purchasing data, in exchange for better CX, the report added.

Not all the findings add up, however, toward creating a consistent picture of what customers want. For instance, 71% of consumers would rather speak with a person than use self-service technologies, but 39% prefer to take the self-service route than speak with a company using any other channel. Moreover, slightly more than one in four—26%–do not enjoy communicating with companies, but nearly
half—49%–want to hear from firms.

The overall takeaway from the report, Freshworks’ CMO Epstein said, was that many legacy systems used for customer engagement are broken, and that the business imperative for companies today is to make it easy to delight customers through “thoughtful, easy, and speedy interactions that reflect customer values.” The report findings are the result of a survey conducted in June this year by Opinium, a market research and insight agency headquartered in New York City and London, carried out among more than 11,500 adults from 10 countries—namely, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.