The statistics library

499 sourced numbers on customer support

The figures cited across reports, landscape guides, benchmarks, and dispatches — each traceable to its linked source and context. Repeated figures stay separate when their publication context differs. Copy a citation or share a number straight to LinkedIn.

499 numbers

46%

of agents aged 18-34 are likely to leave within six months — versus just 8% of agents 45 and over

Verint, The State of Agent Experience 2026 (via No Jitter) Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

>80%

of call-center workers say the pressure of the role weighs on their mental wellbeing, with 95% reporting it lowers their productivity

DigitalGenius / Censuswide survey (via Customer Experience Dive) Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

47%

of agents name unrealistic performance expectations their biggest frustration (45% cite a lack of schedule flexibility)

Verint, The State of Agent Experience 2026 (via No Jitter) Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

r = 0.42

the correlation between emotional labour (emotional dissonance) and affective discomfort among inbound call-center agents

Frontiers in Psychology, 'Inbound Call Centers and Emotional Dissonance in the Job Demands-Resources Model' Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

9 in 10

of CX leaders say human-handled calls are getting more complex as automation absorbs the routine volume

Cresta contact-center leader survey (via CX Current) Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

20%

global employee engagement in 2025 — the lowest level since 2020

Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report Insight: Burnout in support: the numbers, the causes, what actually helps

C$812

in damages the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal ordered Air Canada to pay after its website chatbot invented a bereavement-fare refund policy — rejecting the airline's claim the bot was a 'separate legal entity.'

CBC News, Feb 2024 Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

the price a Chevrolet dealer's ChatGPT-backed chatbot agreed to sell a ~$76,000 Tahoe for — 'a legally binding offer, no takesies backsies' — after a user steered the conversation.

VentureBeat, Dec 2023 Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

0.8-2%

the hallucination rate of top models even when asked only to summarize a single document handed to them — grounding lowers the rate, but never to zero.

Vectara Hallucination Leaderboard Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

1 in 6

queries on which purpose-built, retrieval-backed legal AI tools still hallucinated — despite marketing that promised 'hallucination-free' citations (Lexis+ AI >17%, Westlaw >34%).

Stanford HAI / RegLab, 2024 Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

$290K

the value of the government report Deloitte's Australian firm partly refunded after it was found to contain AI-fabricated academic citations and an invented quote from a Federal Court judgment.

Fortune, Oct 2025 Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

84%

of consumers said human representatives gave them more accurate information than chatbots did.

BusinessWire consumer survey, Apr 2025 Insight: When the Bot Makes Things Up

76.9 / 100

the US national customer satisfaction score — essentially flat and no higher than 2017, despite a decade of dashboards

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), National Q4 2025 Press Release Insight: How to build a support scorecard your team doesn't hate

7 minutes

the industry benchmark average handle time — a useful number that turns toxic the moment it becomes a target on its own

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: How to build a support scorecard your team doesn't hate

70%

the average first-call resolution rate across industries — the counter-metric that keeps handle time honest

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: How to build a support scorecard your team doesn't hate

88%

the benchmark internal quality score from QA conversation reviews — proof quality can be a number, not a vibe

Zendesk QA (Klaus), Customer Service Quality Benchmark Report 2023 (cited on Zendesk blog) Insight: How to build a support scorecard your team doesn't hate

63%

of consumers will switch to a competitor after just one bad experience — up 9% year on year

Zendesk CX Trends 2025 Report Insight: How to build a support scorecard your team doesn't hate

of CX leaders are confident their measurement system enables real strategic and tactical decisions - even though 93% rely on surveys as their primary CX metric

McKinsey, 'Prediction: The future of CX' (survey of 260+ CX leaders) Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

of CX leaders say their measurement system lets them calculate the ROI of a CX decision

McKinsey, 'Prediction: The future of CX' Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

5 in 100

share of customer interactions a transactional survey program actually captures feedback on

Forrester, 'Many Surveys, Small Impact' - 2023 State of VoC and CX Measurement Survey Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

1 in 26

unhappy customers who bother to complain - the rest just leave without a word

ThinkJar (Esteban Kolsky), via Customer Experience Magazine Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

27%

of VoC and CX measurement programs communicate their insights to stakeholders in a timely way

Forrester, 2025 State of Feedback Management (VoC) and CX Measurement Survey Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

50%

of VoC teams can successfully link their CX metrics to business outcomes

Forrester, 2025 State of Feedback Management (VoC) and CX Measurement Survey Insight: The Voice of Customer program that actually changes something

Below 10%

Recommended call transfer rate target — every transfer adds time, drops customer effort score, and risks a dropped call

JustCall, 30 Essential Call Center Metrics & KPIs to Track in 2026 Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

16%

Lower first-contact resolution when a call needs a second agent to resolve it ('agent-assisted') — and that happens on roughly 1 in 5 calls

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

56%

Customers who say they routinely have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives

Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, 6th Edition (2023) Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

55%

Customers who feel they generally engage with separate departments rather than one unified company

Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, 6th Edition (2023) Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

96%

Customers with a high-effort service interaction who became more disloyal — versus just 9% of low-effort ones

Dixon, Freeman & Toman, 'Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers,' Harvard Business Review (CEB/Gartner research) Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

63%

Consumers who say they'll switch to a competitor after a single bad experience — up 9 points year on year

Zendesk CX Trends 2025 Report Insight: The transfer rate nobody watches

8.59 / 10

average CSAT across every response collected through Nicereply's surveys

Nicereply, Benchmarking CSAT, NPS, and CES (2024) Insight: Your CSAT response rate is lying to you

76.9 / 100

US national cross-industry customer satisfaction, essentially flat and no higher than 2017

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), National Q4 2025 Press Release Insight: Your CSAT response rate is lying to you

63%

consumers willing to switch to a competitor after just one bad experience — up 9% year on year

Zendesk CX Trends 2025 Report Insight: Your CSAT response rate is lying to you

78%

industry-average call-center CSAT (good = 75-84%, world-class = 85%+)

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks (2024) Insight: Your CSAT response rate is lying to you

satisfaction yes; behaviour no

What the largest meta-analysis of recovery studies found the paradox moves: a significant lift to satisfaction, but no significant effect on repurchase intention, word-of-mouth, or corporate image

de Matos, Henrique & Rossi, 'Service Recovery Paradox: A Meta-Analysis,' Journal of Service Research 2007 Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

5.4%

Share of real service encounters in which the paradox actually occurred, across 11,000+ retail-banking interviews — and only when initial service was merely 'satisfactory,' never 'very satisfying'

Michel & Meuter, 'The Service Recovery Paradox: True but Overrated?,' Journal of Service Management 2008 Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

4 conditions

The paradox appears only when the failure is minor, the customer's first with the firm, caused by an unstable one-off, and outside the firm's control — change any one and it collapses

Magnini, Ford, Markowski & Honeycutt, 'The Service Recovery Paradox: Justifiable Theory or Smoldering Myth?,' Journal of Services Marketing 2007 Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

~80% of price

How large a make-good had to be — roughly 80% of the original price — before post-recovery satisfaction beat an error-free experience, in a 2022 study of the compensation threshold

Edstrom et al., 'Where service recovery meets its paradox,' Journal of Service Theory and Practice 2022 Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

1.5M riders; cash > apologies

In a field experiment across ~1.5 million ride-hailing customers, monetary compensation beat verbal apologies and repeated apologies sometimes did worse than none — a failed recovery is worse than the failure

'Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Apologies,' NBER Working Paper 25676 Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

1.6x

How much more likely a customer is to buy again when you move them from a 1-2 star experience up to a merely-fine 3-star one — the realistic recovery target, not delight

Qualtrics XM Institute 2024 (reported by CX Dive) Insight: The service-recovery paradox, tested

70%

Average first-contact resolution across call-center industries (good = 70–79%, world-class = 80%+)

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

34.4 seconds

Benchmark average speed of answer for call centers, against the 80/20 service-level rule

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

Average NPS for B2B software and SaaS — the lowest-scoring B2B vertical in the benchmark

Retently, What is a Good Net Promoter Score? (2026 NPS Benchmarks) Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

14%

Share of service issues customers fully resolve in self-service, with no human (only 36% even for 'very simple' issues)

Gartner survey, Aug 2024 (reported by destinationCRM) Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

88%

2023 industry benchmark internal quality score (IQS) from QA conversation reviews

Zendesk QA (Klaus), Customer Service Quality Benchmark Report 2023 (cited on Zendesk blog) Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

76.9 / 100

US national cross-industry CSAT — essentially flat and not materially higher since 2017

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), National Q4 2025 Press Release Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

78%

Industry-average call-center (phone) CSAT — higher than most async channels

SQM Group, Call Center Industry Standards / KPI Benchmarks Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

Average NPS for financial services, the top-scoring B2B industry in the benchmark

Retently, What is a Good Net Promoter Score? (2026 NPS Benchmarks) Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

63%

Consumers willing to switch to a competitor after just one bad experience (up 9% year-on-year)

Zendesk CX Trends 2025 Report Insight: What good looks like: support benchmarks by team size and industry

The Support Brief

The most useful new numbers, sourced in one monthly issue.

Monthly. No ads. Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy