Customer Experience Excellence Report 2021

The fourth edition of our Luxembourg Customer Experience Excellence Report marks a new era for brands across all sectors. As we move out of the survival mode brought on by the pandemic and enter a new form of reality, customers are using the best experiences of others as a baseline for when interacting with brands. Can brands keep up with these increasingly high expectations? Let’s see what the research has to say…

Research for this survey was carried out in May and June 2021. A nationally representative sample of more than 1 000 respondents were asked to complete an online survey which included 80 brands with a large customer base and a local presence across nine different sectors. 

The Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) methodology, made up of the Six Pillars, is the DNA of every outstanding customer experience and the fuel that powers business growth. And because of this, these Six Pillars represent the core of this research.

The analysis is based on quantitative research data, written customer feedback and qualitative customer experience insights provided by various brands. Together, these elements offer a detailed snapshot of Luxembourg’s customer experience performance. The characteristics of the Luxembourg market were then compared against the global market, and incorporated into KPMG’s international, large-scale customer experience study.

In this fourth Luxembourg Customer Experience Excellence report, we look at the research findings through the lens of customer expectations. While last year focused on reinventing the wheel and reconfiguring businesses as a result of Covid-19, this year’s goal was to maintain that pace and go one step further to ensure that ever-evolving customer needs and expectations were met, and possibly exceeded. 

For the fourth consecutive year, the financial services sector emerges as the number one sector in our CEE survey. This remarkable achievement is something that sets Luxembourg apart from the rest. In many countries the image of retail banks, payment institutions, direct banks and insurance companies is not often so positive and, more often than not, feedback from customers on the quality of their experience with financial institutions is rather ambivalent.

Proving to be an exception to the rule, the Luxembourg banking sector remains the best performing sector with a CEE score of 7.36. The sector’s performance also exceeds the survey’s average across all of the Six Pillars. The three pillars that really stand out are integrity, empathy, and resolution. Luxembourg banks have always scored highly in integrity, demonstrating the high level of trust and value alignment they maintain with their customers. And the same goes for empathy, banks place both employees and customers at the center of their concerns, their people management approach, and their commercial strategies. And finally, resolution. Banks and their employees have acknowledged when they have failed to meet client expectations and have made amends and come up with better-than-expected solutions.

We are no longer spared from major catastrophes in Luxembourg. From the violent tornado in 2019 (with estimated insured damages of €100 million) to the recent floods (with estimated insured damages of €120 million), insurance companies are facing increased pressure to rethink traditional models that were not devised for this new environment. Companies must ensure their clients receive support immediately after a disaster strikes by responding to claims with speed and precision. 

Mismanaging what are often highly emotional circumstances for customers during a disaster can cost insurers more than just the customers themselves. And it is clear that in Luxembourg, the insurance sector has taken the necessary steps to stay on top of their game during this time. In fact, the insurance sector’s performance ranks second just behind banks with a CEE score of 7.34. The insurance sector’s performance exceeds the average in half of the Six Pillars, and it obtains the highest score of 7.30 in 

Forced closures and dining restrictions have been the cause for a considerable drop in sales for virtually every entity in the sector. Despite this, restaurants and fast-food establishments have proved to be resilient and willing to adopt new solutions to continue satisfying their customers.

The restaurants and fast-food sector rapidly escalated to second position in terms of best performing sectors in our CEE. The performance of the restaurants and fast-food sector is 2% above the study’s average with empathy, time and effort scoring significantly above the study’s average. Personalization, integrity and expectations are also above average, while resolution is the only one of the Six Pillars to score slightly below the study’s average. 

Faced with the explosive growth of e-commerce, the grocery sector has experienced changing consumer habits and preferences. This has resulted in opportunities to innovate in such a fast-developing market. Grocery retailers are increasingly adopting new technologies to make the customer experience smoother and quicker.

Going beyond customers’ expectations means providing an experience that is more than just checking items off a grocery list. And supermarket chains with brick-and-mortar stores in Luxembourg have done just that. The grocery retail sector has performed 2% above the study’s average and has since moved up one position to reach third place in this year’s CEE report. The Six Pillars performance for this sector is above average across all pillars, with the highest score awarded for time and effort.