Brands Should Invest In App Experience to Improve Customer Loyalty

One bad experience is all that it takes for a user to vent his ire on their smartphone app. According to a new Cisco report brought out by its subsidiary AppDynamics, smartphones users now have a zero tolerance policy for poor application experience.

The global study, which examines the digital behaviors of more than 13,000 global consumers, also said that customers blame the brand when their application experience fails.

The study notes, since the start of 2020, consumers have experienced a sudden and total reliance on digital services, altering how they engage with brands, consume goods and services, and make purchasing decisions. The research shows that people are using 30% more applications today than they did before the pandemic. Because of their increasing reliance and use of digital services, 76% of consumers say their expectations of digital services have increased since the start of 2020.

Alarmingly for brands, when their expectations aren’t met 60% of consumers automatically blame the application and the brand no matter where the issue actually lives. Whether it’s within the application itself – such as pages loading slowly, downtime, or security failures; or external factors like internet connectivity, slow payment gateways or technical issues with third party services – to the consumer there is no distinction and they will now place responsibility firmly on the brand.

Nearly three-fourths of people believe it’s the responsibility of the brand to ensure that the digital service or application works perfectly and nine out of 10 say they expect digital services to have reliable, consistent performance.

Consumers have not only come to rely on applications and digital services to function in everyday life, but they also used them to facilitate social interactions in the absence of traditional ways of connecting in person.

“Applications have become the lifeline to normality for people in every corner of the world and consumers are no longer willing to settle for anything less than a perfect digital experience,” said Linda Tong, vice president and general manager of Cisco AppDynamics.

“IT leaders are now under more pressure than ever to deliver the ‘total application experience’ to users within their first interaction,” says Tong, adding that CIOs must understand, and optimize what happens inside and beyond their IT architecture – all through the lens of business impact.

The research found that the majority of consumers (85%) say that digital services have become a critical part of daily life, with 84 % stating they helped them get through the pandemic in a positive way. Additionally, consumers are now loyal to brands based on how significantly they invested in digital services during the pandemic.

Nearly 72% appreciate brands that invested in digital during the pandemic so they could get access to the services that they wanted. And over 67 % say they feel more loyal to brands that went above and beyond with the quality of their digital service during the pandemic.

The research points out that brands have just one shot to get the ‘total application experience’ right. The research goes on to find that 72% of consumers believe it’s the responsibility of the brand to ensure that digital services work perfectly, and more than half (57%) state that brands have one shot to impress them with their digital experiences before they switch to another provider.

Seventy-two percent say they simply don’t care who is responsible for problems with digital services, they just want them fixed and to work and 68% consider it disrespectful to users for brands to offer a poor digital experience in this day and age.

Nearly three-fourths of consumers stated that even as life returns to normal, they know they will continue to rely on the digital services they utilized during the pandemic. This means the pressure technologists are under to tackle the complexities of modern architectures in order to deliver flawless digital experiences isn’t going away.