Consumers spend 42% less time on digital experiences that degrade by 2%
Every one per cent decline in the quality of a digital experience leads to a corresponding increase in customer churn, according to research published by Conviva.
The Foster City, Calif.-based provider of operational data platforms commissioned a survey of more than 4,000 consumers across the U.S. and the U.K., along with data from user sessions across its platform, to produce its 2025 State of Digital Experience Report.
Conviva provided an example of what it called the growing “patience gap” among consumers by pointing to a video streaming service that wasn’t playing properly or going through other performance issues. Based on its calculations, 20 per cent of the streaming service’s customers would not return for a week.
Churn levels off when around 60 per cent of a digital experience’s services are considered good, according to Conviva. This was defined as experiences where an app doesn’t crash and starts within one second, or when web pages load within five seconds.
In contrast, consistently good services could boost the time consumers engage with a digital experience by three hours, the report said.
Other potential issues included challenges logging into a digital experience, a slow or failed checkout process, poor search functionality or items regularly showing up as out of stock.
“Users expect basic functionalities to work flawlessly; anything beyond this, such as personalization, is a bonus,” the report’s authors wrote. “Their top irritants include broken webpages, sudden crashes, and login failures, underscoring their lack of patience for sporadic issues that hinder them from transacting.”
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Conviva’s report goes beyond the hypothetical possibility of digital performance quality issues. Its data (presumably from its user sessions) showed 38 per cent of consumers are struggling with slow-loading web pages or apps that crash. A quarter are also running into problems at the payment processing stage of an e-commerce transaction.
Overall, fewer than 60 per cent are satisfied with their digital experiences. That said, it often seems to take an outpouring of angry customers complaining on social media for brands to notice any degradation in service qualities. That could explain why 49 per cent of consumers said they feel companies don’t care whether they’re running into challenges with a digital experience.
Conviva’s report is coming out at a time when the hype around agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching a fever pitch, but looking at this data suggests companies need to get more of the basics right before they allow agents to autonomously handle everyday business processes.
This 16-page gated report offers some helpful numbers for internal benchmarking purposes, which customer experience (CX) teams should periodically do across both their physical as well as digital products and services. Conviva’s data is not all doom and gloom: there is much in here that could make the business case that improving digital experiences will lead to growth and long-term loyalty.
