29. What customers really want in 2025 (3 surprising truths from the State of the Customer Report)

EPISODE 29 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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If your customers had to choose between speed, clarity, or delight, what do you think they’d pick? In this special insights-packed episode, I answer that very question based not on gut instinct, but on hard data from my 2025 State of the Customer Survey.

I reveal 3 powerful (and surprising!) truths about how business owners view their own customer experience, and how that stacks up against what customers actually value. From the automation gap and personalization pitfalls, to the truth about acquisition vs retention across business models, this episode is your data-backed wake-up call to do CX differently.

What we cover:

The gap between confidence and reality in customer experience delivery

What customers say they value most (it’s not what you think!)

The unexpected retention patterns across different business types

The critical role of automation and personalization in shifting patterns (and your success!)

How to use this data to create your own customer-first playbooks for 2025

Soundbites:

“Business owners feel pretty confident about the customer experience they deliver. The score was an average of 3.64 out of five, five being, I’m smashing it. That’s pretty solid! But personalisation levels in their marketing don’t match those ambitions. When it comes to how personalised is your approach to marketing, that came in at 2.94 average out of five which shows that, while we are confident, we’re not necessarily executing that confidence. And there’s that misalignment between ambition and reality.”

“Business owners who have automations, systems, personalization in place naturally shift towards retention. That’s when repeat purchases become a reliable income source for your business, and looking after existing customers becomes a priority. People who have those systems in place see more success, more recurring income through their membership, more repeat purchases, and clearly understand that while I have to get new audience members into my orbit to keep this business afloat, looking after the people that have already said yes to me is a sustainable long-term growth opportunity for my business.”

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Your next steps:

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Episode Transcript:

Nadine Nethery (00:00)

Here’s a quick question for you. If your customers had to choose between speed, clarity or delight, which one do you think they’d pick? As it happens, I went straight to the source to find out and the answer might just as well surprise you. Today I’m giving you a sneak peek at three big shifts and

big revelations that are shaping the customer experience in 2025 and beyond. The insights I’m going to share in today’s episode are based on my recent State of the Customer survey, which I ran a few months ago and have been analysing and diving into ever since.

Why did I run this survey? Well, because I’m curious by nature. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you’d know that I love my data. I love to go straight to the source and I am obsessed with the customer experience and finding out what makes both online business owners and customers tick. So as business owners, and I’m totally guilty here,

we can so often get caught up in our own bubbles, right? We think we know what our customers want. We think we know where the online space is heading and we think we’re on top of things. We’ve got this, but when it comes down to it, we’re often acting on our own assumptions and we assume a lot of things that can be detrimental to the success of our business and also to the customer experience, which in turn impacts our customer retention.

So as part of this survey, I set out to capture a powerful dual perspective. I went to online business owners and asked them for their insights, both as business owners and as customers who move themselves in the online space and buy courses, join memberships,

join masterminds, all the things. And if you were one of the generous respondents, thank you so much for sharing your insights. It was super interesting and super amazing. So the survey itself covered various aspects of the online business space from memberships to courses, from services to digital products. And I have just

published the findings in a whopping 30 page state of the customer report, which you can download now via the link in the show notes. I highly recommend grabbing your free copy because it can absolutely help you understand where your customers are coming from and then take action based on real data so you stand out for the right reasons in 2025 and beyond. Personally, I’m using the data

to create actionable playbooks inside my membership Retention Lab, also obviously inside my business. And as it happens, I’m hosting a live session in Retention Lab for my members where we are going to unpack the findings in even more granular detail than in the report and in this episode. We’re also going to look at the step-by-step approach that you can adopt in your business today based on various offer types, memberships,

courses, services, and a blend of all the above to set yourself apart based on those findings. If you want to join us for this live session on the 16th of September, now’s the time to join Retention Lab so you automatically get that invite.

If you’re tuning in after the live session, don’t stress, you can join and catch the replay in your member portal for those actionable playbooks as well. But now I’m going to dive into three super interesting findings from the survey that might surprise you. And you’ll have to download the report or join me for the free live session to find out all the juicy details. So insight number one:

Ambition ambition versus reality. What I found out is that often they don’t necessarily stack up. So business owners feel pretty confident about the customer experience they deliver for their consumers. So the score was an average of 3.64 out of five, five being, I’m smashing it.

That’s pretty solid, right? So business owners feel confident that their customer experience is amazing. But personalisation levels in their marketing don’t match those ambitions. So the score here when it comes to how personalised is your approach to marketing.

That came in at 2.94 average out of five. So well below the confidence levels, which shows that, while we are confident, we’re not necessarily executing that confidence. And there’s that misalignment between ambition and reality. Also, when it comes to automation, which sort of links into personalization, obviously, automation is still

underutilized. You’d think in 2025 when we have access to so many amazing tools at our disposal that we are actually as online business owners tapping into these amazing tools to help us automate personalization on the back end. It’s actually not the case. So 44 % of respondents said that they are using light automation in their marketing, in their business.

38 % said they’re using moderate automation. 14 % still approach their marketing manually, while only 4 % said that they are leaning into AI led personalization in their business, which let’s face it is going to be increasing in the future. Teaser number two. So what customers actually reward is

super interesting and might not necessarily align with your expectations. So customers as it happens, according to the data I uncovered value, speed and clarity first and foremost, they really want quick results and they want clear communication. They’re going to buy from you again if you can deliver on a promise quickly.

save them time and energy and headspace and help them achieve the goal or solve the problem. When it comes to customer delight so those unexpected moments, that is definitely important. They appreciate that they act on elements of delight, but it is secondary to the actual structure and the nature of the product. So whether the product, your service is delivering on that promise.

You can delight and surprise as much as you want if your foundations and if your offer promise and the way you deliver it doesn’t stack up, the best surprise and delight moments won’t make a difference. So some quotes here for you because I also gave people the opportunity to give me a little powerful one-liner and explain their insights. So one respondent said that,

I want to have products that are easy to use and provide real results, which again leads into that clarity and wins and speed, right? Someone else said they want online business owners to be really consistent in the level of delivery. So again, being able to predict what’s going to happen, anticipating their needs and giving them what they need before it becomes a problem. So they want good quality, good responses to issues with accurate guidance and communication.

Keep in mind that you can go above and beyond for your customers, surprise and delight. If that foundation, for example, the onboarding sequence, those first seven days in the membership don’t stack up, it is going to put a dampener on the whole experience right from the start. And then insight number three: acquisition versus retention. So I asked respondents to

choose between acquisition or retention. They could only choose one thing for their business. What do think they picked? Well, most people picked acquisition over retention, but there was a twist to it. Out of all respondents drilling down into the different offer types and business types, digital product and course creators, are most

retention focused. 38 % of those business owners, if they had to choose, would choose to focus on retention, which shows me that they are super aware of the power of customer retention. Digital product and course creators often have multiple products, so that means they can swirl their customers and their audience in their ecosystem. So for them, it is super, super beneficial to have automations and processes in place,

and behavior driven email funnels to introduce that next product to their audience. On the flip side, what really surprised me is that membership site owners are the least likely to preference retention

even though keeping their customers is what is going to make their membership rewarding in the long run. So membership site owners were very acquisition heavy with only 29 % of respondents preferencing retention. The tipping point comes overall when businesses systemize

the onboarding experience and gathering customer feedback on a regular basis. Business owners who have automations, systems, personalization in place naturally shift towards retention, which again shows the power of strategic automations and having a powerful retention system in place. That’s when repeat purchases

become a reliable income source for your business and looking after existing customers becomes a priority. People who have those systems in place see more success, more recurring income through their membership, more repeat purchases, and then clearly understand that while I have to get new audience members into my orbit to keep this business afloat,

looking after the people that have already said yes to me is a sustainable long-term growth opportunity for my business. So three powerful insights but there are so many more inside the report. If I have made you curious now’s the time to hit up the show notes and download the free 30 page report,

read it over a cup of coffee, sit down and dive into what is actually happening in our space. Once you’ve downloaded the report, I would absolutely love, love, love to have you join us for the live session inside Retention Lab on the 16th of September, where we take a closer look at how the customer experience unfolds for different offer types. We’re going to read

between the lines, we’re going to uncover patterns and we’re going to look at actionable playbooks and use them to your advantage.

Remember this live session is only available to Retention Lab members. So join us today via the link in the show notes and I’ll see you at the live session. If you can’t make it live or you tune in after the 16th of September, no worries, simply catch the replay in the member portal as soon as you join.

If you’ve enjoyed these insights, the concept of the report and this episode in general, I would love you to subscribe, leave a review and also share this episode with your connections so even more online business owners just like you can lean into the findings. Thanks so much for tuning in. See you next week and hopefully see you at the live session in the Lab on the 16th of September.