Packaged Goods Reign Supreme in Customer Satisfaction Says New Research

New research from Boston-based software company, CustomerGauge, shows the median NPS® across industries — CPG leads the pack with a median NPS of 54 with all other industries at 45.

Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is the standard voice of the customer (VoC) tool used by CPG and other industries to collect feedback from their customers and determine overall satisfaction and loyalty.

The experience data set pulls from 996,000 responses from B2B clients of CustomerGauge during the period of September 2022 to August 2023. Their customers used the standard 0-10 scale, with the question, "Would you recommend this brand to a colleague?"

The higher median Net Promoter Scores for CPG are indicative of a wider market shift in a post-COVID world. While growth rates during COVID skyrocketed for CPG brands of all sizes, new problems quickly arose: pinches on supply chains, rising costs, and shortages of raw materials wreaked havoc on manufacturers and value chain partners alike.

As a result, there was, and still is, a rush to digitally transform their businesses with online ordering portals and customer feedback programs for fully optimized buying experiences.

Critically, top CPG brands are taking steps to ensure deeper connections with their customers more than ever before. CustomerGauge's research shows CPG leaders are now collecting feedback from B2B customers in an 'always-on' fashion. This feedback is then sent to their front-line sales teams in real-time to triage issues or upsell happy customers.

This method of 'closing the loop' on customer feedback pays big dividends in overall satisfaction. According to the research, 61% of CPG leaders close the loop with all 'detractors' or unhappy customers within 48 hours.

In stark contrast, non-CPG industries follow up with just 38% of detractors. CustomerGauge claims there is a direct link between the percentage of detractors followed up with and higher Net Promoter Scores.

In 2024 and beyond, modern and traditional trade businesses will continue to face margin pressure from rising raw material costs. CustomerGauge believes there will need to be emerging innovations in production and selling processes to combat shrinking margins.

For example, the integration of real-time customer feedback into the overall route-to-market strategies can help increase margins in two ways—sell more to happy customers and fix customer issues hampering value-chain growth. According to the research, both of these feedback benefits help increase margins and overall market share.

If you would like to access more of this Consumer Packaged Goods Experience Benchmarking Data, the report is available free of charge on the CustomerGauge website: https://customergauge.com/ebook/cpg-experience-benchmarks-report

CustomerGauge is widely recognized as the leading Voice of the Customer (VoC) software for Consumer Packaged Goods, trusted by top CPG brands like Heineken, Anheuser-Busch, AB InBev, Coca-Cola Hellenic, Just Eat Takeaway and more.

*Account Experience™ is a trademark of CustomerGauge. Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, and Fred Reichheld. Copyright CustomerGauge © 2023