Walmart's acquisition of Flipkart seems to be working for the e-commerce company as it has emerged as the top brand in the digital retailer's category in Forrester's Customer Experience Index (CX Index) India rankings for 2019.

Shoppers Stop, Toyota Kirloskar and HDFC Bank are among the top four brands that have scored high on the overall index.

Based on a survey of more than 10,000 customers in India in 2019, Forrester’s CX Index methodology was used to benchmark the CX quality of 39 brands in six industries. This year’s findings show that Indian brands improved their CX quality tremendously with 33 of 39 brands delivered good CX, up from 19 last year.

In the digital retailers’ category, Flipkart improved their score by almost 10 points to go from fourth in 2018 to the top spot this year, beating out other digital retailers like Snapdeal, Koovs.com, Shopclues, Myntra, Amazon and Jabong. This is the first time in the last few years, Flipkart has overtaken Amazon in terms of their customer experience. Amazon was first in 2016, and Koovs.com topped in 2017 and 2018 (Amazon was second both years).

HDFC Bank was the only brand in India that improved its CX more than the competition. The industry average for banks went up over 5 points to retain pole position, while the multichannel retail industry rose more than 7 points to go from last to second.

Despite increase in their average scores, auto and home insurers fell from third to fifth, and credit card issuers — last year's second — was at the bottom of the rankings. The digital retailer and automotive manufacturer industries were third and fourth respectively.

"We see an improvement in CX quality as firms are transforming their culture to be more customer-centric. Another trend that we see if that brands are investing in emerging technology and improving understanding of customer needs to improve their innovation ability. This is especially evident in the banking industry where many banks not just refresh their apps frequently but also redesign them from scratch," Forrester said in a statement.

“We see that Indian firms are transforming their culture to become customer-centric and adopting design practices to improve customer experiences,” said Amit Bhatia, Forrester senior analyst. “However, only brands that can differentiate themselves will reap the benefits of better CX. Brands that want to break away from the pack should focus on emotion: How an experience makes customers feel has a bigger influence on their loyalty to a brand than effectiveness or ease in nearly every industry.”

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