Last year a new trend emerged in the workplace: quiet quitting.
Dissatisfied employees, unhappy in their roles, stopped communicating with their employers and kept their complaints and feedback to themselves. Instead of raising their concerns, these disenfranchised employees are now doing the bare minimum to avoid being fired. This results in a worse work environment for everyone involved.
However, the quiet quitting trend is not limited to the workplace. Today, businesses and brands face a similar situation with the way customers communicate their own dissatisfactions. Enter the quiet critic.
Who are the quiet critics?
Today’s CX professionals allocate significant resources to capturing feedback through surveys, reviews, and “Voice of the Customer ” programmes. But despite these efforts, feedback mechanisms remain skewed towards individuals who actively take the time to leave feedback. More introverted customers, who are less open about sharing their views, often get left behind – along with the insights about their experiences.
With more than half of the world’s consumers identifying as introverts (57%), reluctance to share feedback is a major problem for CX. For introverted customers, existing feedback mechanisms simply aren’t working.
According to research, 70% of these introverted consumers will simply abandon an app or site if it fails to meet their expectations. They won’t comment. They won’t leave a review. They’ll just leave. These are the ‘quiet critics’ who struggle in silence, failing to respond through traditional feedback mechanisms.
These quiet critics represent a massive unseen part of your typical customer base, with their needs rarely being captured, met, or even understood. As a result, businesses risk losing introverted clients to their competitors, as bad digital experiences often result in consumers abandoning their websites or apps. In fact, FullStory’s research suggests that half of those who leave will never return.
Simply put, to remain competitive, businesses must prioritise understanding their introverted and disengaged customer base and their needs better.
Actions speak louder (and more clearly) than words: Detecting a quiet critic
To better understand introverted consumers, customer experience professionals must go beyond conventional feedback methods and use data to analyse consumers’ digital behaviour.
Every time a user interacts with a website or app, they leave behind a trail of digital experience intelligence (DXI) data that can provide important insights about their attitudes, objectives, and experiences. This data is available regardless of whether consumers are introverts or extroverts, providing an essential window into the attitudes, mindsets, and experiences of quiet critics.
By using DXI analytics to trace these subtle digital footprints, brands can improve their products, services, and experiences to accommodate customers’ needs — even if unspoken.
4 signs you’ve spotted a quiet critic
- Rage Clicks: When a user repeatedly taps or clicks a screen because it’s not doing what they want. These are a great signal that your site or app didn’t react the way your customer wanted, a vital non-verbal signal of dissatisfaction or frustration.
- Thrashed Cursor: Users move their mouse erratically or in circles. Mouse thrashing is a great indicator that the customer has become confused, lost, or is waiting on a page to load.
- Error Clicks: Error Clicks surface sessions with a click or tap right before a client-side JavaScript error or console error occurs. If your customers’ clicks are triggering back-end error messages, something clearly isn’t right.
- Pinch-to-Zoom: When a customer uses pinch-to-zoom to zoom in or out, it may indicate that your content isn’t rendering at an appropriate size, or that a mobile-friendly version isn’t available. This can be a key source of frustration for mobile users.
DXI — Giving a voice to quiet critics
In an era of economic uncertainty and increased competition, online businesses cannot afford to ignore the importance of a seamless customer experience. With 54% of global consumers cutting back spending due to the current economic landscape, retaining customers is critical.
However, with 64% of global consumers likely to abandon a transaction if they encounter any form of friction or frustration while using a website or app, businesses must prioritise optimising their digital experiences to avoid losing valuable customers. This means streamlining the user interface, simplifying navigation, minimising load times, and addressing any pain points that can interfere with the customer experience.
By using DX intelligence data to deliver frictionless and engaging experiences, digital businesses can unlock the silent majority of customers going unseen and heard across their sites and apps.