By now, you have probably seen the first in a series of reports we are publishing about the state of customer experience in Europe — "The Forrester Customer Experience Index, UK 2014." The second installment — "The Forrester Customer Experience Index, France 2014," paints a similar picture of how French companies are mostly disappointing their consumers. In both the UK and France, no brand was given an “excellent” score, and in France, the majority of consumers rate their experiences as “very poor,” “poor,” or “OK.”

By asking some 2,000 French consumers if their experiences with leading brands met their needs, were easy, and were enjoyable, we are able to provide a benchmark of the quality of customer experience for 38 French brands across eight industries — including airlines, banks, electronics manufacturers, hotels, retailers, TV service providers, wireless service providers, and insurers.

As in the US and the UK, retailers lead the field in France with French consumers rating the average customer experience at French retailers “OK.” Retail is in fact the only sector to score “OK” in France. TV service providers trail in the French Customer Experience Index (CXi), with only the highest-ranking TV service provider — Free — scoring in the “poor” bracket. In fact, Free leads two service provider industries: TV and wireless.

The two French banks La Banque Postale and Crédit Mutuel top their industry. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, mutual insurance companies GMF, MAIF, MAAF Assurances, and Macif, which are owned by and operated for the benefit of their policyholders, outshine publicly-owned AXA Assurances in the French index.

If French companies want to get and keep high marks from consumers they need to start treating customer experience as a business discipline and become customer-obsessed. It is not surprising that customer-obsessed Amazon, with a mission to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” tops the chart in the CXi for the US, UK, and France.

What’s next?

  • Read the recommendations in "The Forrester Customer Experience Index, France 2014" (Forrester clients can access the report here).
  • Look out for "The Forrester Customer Experience Index, Germany 2014."
  • Join our complimentary webinars to learn more about the European CXi (the CXi UK webinar takes place on April 15, the CXi France webinar on April 16).
  • Look out for more European CXi coverage in Q2 and Q3 — we will be reaching out to the top-scoring brands to understand how they have managed to create and deliver experiences that their customers love

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha