Quantum Metric Research Names a Widening Customer Listening Gap as Digital's Next Big Business Problem.

New Customer Voice Benchmark finds brands are investing more in customer feedback, but half of consumers have stopped giving it.

MONUMENT, Colo. — [September 2, 2026] — Quantum Metric (https://www.quantummetric.com) today released its 2026 Customer Voice Benchmark (https://www.quantummetric.com/resources/2026-customer-voice-benchmark), revealing what it calls the customer listening gap: the disconnect between the effort brands put into collecting feedback and whether customers believe that feedback will lead to meaningful action. The report finds that half of consumers haven't given a brand direct feedback in the last six months, even as 45% of digital brands say they've increased investment in feedback channels over the last year, and 56% of consumers have already left a brand that continued to ignore the feedback they did provide.

"Customers haven't stopped having opinions. They've stopped believing brands will do anything with them," said Mark Treschl, General Manager of Voice of Customer at Quantum Metric and cofounder of OpinionLab. "Somewhere along the way we made customers do the work to improve how we understand them, and created a gap between listening and actually taking action. You don't win that trust back with a better survey. You win it back by having the right process in place to share that feedback across the organization, act on it, and build the best experience for your customers."

What do the findings show about the state of customer listening today?

• Customers don't trust the channels built to hear them: Fewer than 1 in 5 consumers see surveys as an effective way to get feedback heard, and a third say they don't feel heard by digital brands at all.
• Digital teams struggle to move from listening to action: Just 1 in 4 digital leaders have daily access to recent customer feedback, and 52% have no formal process for acting on the feedback they do collect.
• Unheard customers impact retention and revenue: 56% of consumers have left a brand that continued to ignore their feedback, and 31% say they'd skip a brand entirely if an AI assistant flagged known site or app issues before their visit.
• Employees are going quiet too: 51% of digital employees have stayed silent about a broken internal tool because they didn't think it would change anything, and 45% say broken tools get in the way of helping customers at least weekly.

What should digital teams do to close the customer listening gap?

With survey response rates declining and less than half of leaders having a formal process for acting on the feedback they do collect, closing the gap will require moving past treating customer listening as a siloed, survey-first program. That means combining qualitative feedback with the behavioral data teams already have, and creating opportunities to expand access to VoC insights across the enterprise.

Speed matters just as much as process. As more consumers turn to AI to discover and evaluate brands, the cost of a slow or absent response to feedback compounds quickly. Digital teams that can act on a customer signal in days, not weeks, will be better positioned to retain the customers AI is sending their way, and to prove that listening to a customer still means something.

Quantum Metric is addressing this gap with the upcoming launch of Quantum Metric Voice of Customer (VoC) (https://www.quantummetric.com/events/quantum-metric-voc-launch-2026), a solution that connects customer feedback directly to behavioral session data. Built natively into the Quantum Metric platform, VoC gives every enterprise team a way to combine direct and indirect customer feedback with observed behavior. This allows digital teams to understand what customers need, quantify how many customers are affected, and act on it, all from within the same platform. Quantum Metric will offer an in-depth look at the VoC solution during a virtual event held on Sept. 16.

For more information and to register visit: https://www.quantummetric.com/events/quantum-metric-voc-launch-2026 (https://www.quantummetric.com/events/quantum-metric-voc-launch-2026)

What is the report's methodology?

Findings from the 2026 Customer Voice Benchmark are based on a survey of 1,500 consumers and 750 digital leaders across the US and UK, combined with aggregated, anonymized behavioral data from the Quantum Metric platform.

The full 2026 Customer Voice Benchmark is available at: https://www.quantummetric.com/resources/2026-customer-voice-benchmark (https://www.quantummetric.com/resources/2026-customer-voice-benchmark)

Key findings summary:

• Customer feedback is declining even as 45% of brands invest more in feedback channels, creating a growing “customer listening gap.”
• Half of consumers haven’t provided direct brand feedback in the past six months, with fewer than 1 in 5 viewing surveys as effective.
• More than half of digital leaders lack a formal process for acting on customer feedback, limiting their ability to turn insights into improvements.
• Failing to act has real business consequences, with 56% of consumers saying they’ve left a brand that continued to ignore their feedback.
• Closing the gap requires connecting direct customer feedback with behavioral data and enabling teams to act on those signals faster.

About Quantum Metric

Quantum Metric is the leader in agentic digital analytics for the enterprise. The company provides the industry's most complete digital experience data, helping enterprises understand why customer behavior changes and act with the required speed and confidence for today's digital demands. Combining the industry's richest, most actionable data set with agentic AI (https://www.quantummetric.com/platform/felix-ai/agentic), Quantum Metric delivers a simple, contextual understanding of customer behavior, technical signals, and impact as it relates to unique business goals and objectives. Global enterprises rely on Quantum Metric with the company supporting billions of digital interactions each month and reflecting insights from roughly half of the world's internet users. For more information, visit www.quantummetric.com (http://www.quantummetric.com).