Australia’s traditional retailers continue to be customer experience laggards and their digital-only peers performed only slightly better in 2016, according to research from Forrester.

Based on a survey of nearly 9000 adult online consumers that measures and ranks the CX quality at 34 brands in Australia, Forrester’s 2016 data shows zero aggregate improvement year on year.

Australian customers said that the CX of 76 per cent of the brands they interacted with was just OK.

No brands in Australia fell into the very poor category this year, but none made it into the excellent category either.

“The Australian market is poised for CX-fueled disruption,” said Tom Champion, senior analyst at Forrester and lead author of the report.

“The natural progression of CX maturity is that once a company meets the fundamental needs of customers, it seeks to improve those interactions so that customers can obtain the value ever more easily. We can begin to see the emotional connection opportunity on the horizon, providing greater differentiation and advantage for firms in Australia that are aware of and ready to seize it.”

Out of the 5 industries examined, firms in the Financial Services industries performed the best, followed by traditional and digital-only retailers. Comparing to scores from 2015, the averages for banking, traditional retail, and digital-only retail remained statistically unchanged from 2015, while the credit card and insurance industries moved up and down respectively.

The Good Guys and JB Hi-Fi led traditional retail but have yet to attain good scores according to Forrester.

The Good Guys and JB Hi-Fi again led the traditional retail category but were unable to improve upon last year’s OK scores. Meanwhile, the CX at brands like Kmart, Big W, and Myer improved noticeably.

Kmart had the biggest gain this year, moving from poor to OK. Forrester said Kmart has reversed its fortunes over the past seven years under CEO Guy Russo and is also improving the quality of its CX.

Amazon slipped but still led the digital-only retail category, which Forrester asserting the e-commerce giant is busy eyeing a full-fledged entry into the Aussie retail and grocery market. The research showed Amazon has lost ground in Australia over the past 12 months, but its mediocre, undifferentiated CX still managed to lead the digital-only retail category.

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