Customer Experience Benchmarks Australia

Q: How are your benchmarks different from star rating comparisons?

Star rating comparisons tell you what customers think. 10 THOUSAND FEET's benchmarks tell you why — through research-grade coding of customer feedback into structured themes that reveal the specific drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in each category.

Q: Which industries do you have live benchmarks for?

Live benchmarks are currently available for fitness and health clubs (85,000+ consumers, 24 brands), sporting goods retail (20,000+ consumers, 38 brands), pharmacy (6 brands), coffee and made-to-order beverages (19 brands), and bakery cafés (18 brands). Additional industries can be benchmarked on request.

Q: Can I see how individual locations compare within the benchmark?

Yes. The benchmarks surface performance at both the brand level and the individual location level — identifying top-performing locations, understanding what they're doing differently, and comparing specific locations to other brands in the same local market.

Q: How often are the benchmarks updated?

The benchmarks are live and continuously updated, giving brands a current view of their competitive position and the ability to track performance trends over time.

Q: Can you benchmark an industry that isn't currently in your portfolio?

Yes. The research-grade coding methodology can be applied to any consumer-facing category where customer feedback exists. Contact 10 THOUSAND FEET to discuss building a benchmark for your industry.

Customer Experience Benchmarks Australia: See How You Compare

Knowing your customer satisfaction score is useful. Knowing how it compares to every other brand in your category and understanding exactly why customers rate you the way they do is transformative.

At 10 THOUSAND FEET, we have built live customer experience benchmarks across a growing range of Australian industries. Our benchmarks go beyond overall customer satisfaction scores. Using our enterprise quality open text coding methodology, we identify the specific themes that drive five-star experiences and the friction points that trigger one-star moments for your brand and for every competitor in the benchmark.

The result is a clear, evidence-based picture of where you stand in your market, why customers feel the way they do, and exactly where to focus to improve.

What Is Customer Experience Benchmarking?

Customer experience benchmarking is the systematic comparison of your brand’s customer experience performance against competitors and industry standards; covering not just overall satisfaction scores, but the specific drivers of positive and negative customer sentiment across your category.

Genuine customer experience benchmarking answers the questions that actually matter to brand and operations teams:

How does our overall customer satisfaction compare to competitors in our category?
What are the specific themes driving our best and worst customer experiences?
Where do competitors outperform us and where do we have a genuine advantage?
Which friction points are costing us customers, and how significant are they compared to the market?
How is our performance trending over time relative to the category?
Which of our locations are driving our benchmark position positively or negatively?

Our benchmarks answer all of these questions with the depth and rigour of market research, not just surface-level data.

What Makes Our Benchmarks Different

Most customer experience benchmarking tools aggregate KPI scores and track trends. Our benchmarks do something more valuable, they explain the experience behind the scores.

Research-grade theme coding: Our analysts code customer feedback into structured themes identifying the specific experience drivers behind satisfaction and dissatisfaction in each category. This means you don’t just see that customers are unhappy; you see exactly what is making them unhappy, how frequently it occurs, and how your brand compares to competitors on each theme.

Category-specific benchmarks: Our benchmarks are built within specific industries, not across a generic “Australian average.” What makes customers genuinely loyal to a fitness brand is fundamentally different to what builds loyalty in a pharmacy; and our benchmarks are built around those category-specific drivers.

Brand and location-level insight: Our benchmarks surface performance at both the brand level and the individual location level so you can see not just how your brand compares to competitors overall, but which of your locations are driving your benchmark position and where location-level improvement opportunities exist.

Ongoing tracking: Our benchmarks are live and continuously updated, allowing you to track how your performance and your competitors’ performance evolve over time and measure the impact of the changes you make.

Our Live Industry Benchmarks

We currently have active customer experience benchmarks running across the following industries. Each benchmark draws on coded customer feedback from real consumers across multiple brands and locations.

Fitness and Health Clubs

Our fitness benchmark is one of the most comprehensive in Australia covering 24 brands. It reveals the experience themes that drive membership loyalty and the friction points that lead members to leave across leading national chains, growing boutique operators, and everything in between.

Sporting Goods Retail

Our sporting goods benchmark covers 38 brands; spanning global retailers, national chains, and specialist independents. It identifies what drives purchase decisions, where the in-store experience excels or falls short, and how brands are perceived relative to each other on key experience dimensions.

Pharmacy

Our pharmacy benchmark covers 6 major brands; tracking the themes that shape customer trust, service satisfaction, and loyalty in a category where the stakes of a poor experience are high.

Coffee, Juice, Tea and Made-to-Order Beverages

Our beverage benchmark covers 19 brands; revealing what drives the loyal daily customer and what causes them to switch, across the full spectrum of made-to-order beverage experiences.

Bakery Cafés with Baked Goods

Our bakery café benchmark covers 18 brands; identifying the specific experience drivers that turn a first visit into a regular habit, and the friction points that prevent it.

Don’t see your industry? We’re adding new industry benchmarks regularly as our methodology continues to grow. Our benchmarking methodology can also be applied to any consumer-facing category; so if your industry isn’t listed get in touch and we can discuss what a benchmark for your category would look like.

Six Ways to Use Customer Experience Benchmarks

1. Benchmark Your Customer Experience

See the full picture of where you stand in your market. Understand your strengths on positive sentiment and your improvement areas from negative feedback with full visibility of how your category is performing around you. Identify the gaps that matter most and the advantages worth amplifying

2. Track Trends Over Time

Monitor your ratings and key experience themes over time to see how your performance and the broader market are progressing. Understand whether improvements you’ve made are shifting the metrics and whether competitor moves are changing the landscape you’re operating in.

3. Improve the Customer Experience

Use coded feedback themes to pinpoint exactly what drives positive experiences in your category and what is creating friction. Move beyond gut feel and anecdote to evidence-based priorities that your team can act on with confidence

4. Get Location-Level Insights

Analyse performance location by location identifying your top performers, understanding what they’re doing differently, and building that into case studies and training materials. Compare individual locations to other brands in their local market to understand what is driving exceptional and below-average experiences at a hyper-local level.

5. Train and Coach Your Frontline Teams

Use insights from feedback themes to design targeted frontline training that directly improves the customer experience. Give managers real examples of what “great” looks like in your category and what’s consistently falling short so coaching conversations are grounded in evidence rather than opinion.

6. Refine Your Brand Positioning

Leverage your authentic strengths; the experience dimensions where you genuinely outperform competitors; to sharpen your messaging and market positioning. Benchmark data gives you the evidence to make claims your customers will recognise as true, because they’re based on what real customers are already saying.

Who Is Customer Experience Benchmarking For?

Our benchmarks are most valuable for multi-location brands in consumer-facing categories where the customer experience varies across locations and the competitive landscape is well-defined. They’re particularly useful for:

Marketing and brand teams: seeking an evidence base for positioning and messaging that reflects real customer perceptions
Operations and CX teams: needing specific, actionable insight into where the experience is falling short and why
Franchise and network management teams: wanting to understand performance variation across locations and identify where to focus improvement effort
Senior leadership: requiring a clear, objective view of competitive position and the trends shaping your category

Frequently Asked Questions

What is customer experience benchmarking and why does it matter? Customer experience benchmarking is the systematic comparison of your brand’s customer satisfaction performance against competitors and industry standards including not just overall scores, but the specific themes driving positive and negative sentiment. It matters because knowing your own score in isolation tells you very little. Knowing how you compare to competitors, and understanding exactly why customers feel the way they do, gives you the evidence base to make meaningful improvements and sharpen your competitive positioning.

How are your benchmarks different from star rating comparisons? Star rating comparisons tell you what customers think. Our benchmarks tell you why through research-grade coding of customer feedback into structured themes that reveal the specific drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in each category. This depth of insight is what allows brands to move from knowing they have a problem to understanding exactly what it is and how to fix it.

Which industries do you have live benchmarks for? We currently have live benchmarks for fitness and health clubs, sporting goods retail, pharmacy, coffee and made-to-order beverages, and bakery cafés. We are regularly adding new industries so if your industry isn’t listed, get in touch; our methodology can be applied to any consumer-facing category.

Can I see how individual locations compare within the benchmark? Yes. Our benchmarks surface performance at both the brand level and the individual location level so you can identify your top-performing locations, understand what they’re doing differently, and compare specific locations to other brands operating in the same local market.

How often are the benchmarks updated? Our benchmarks are live and continuously updated, giving you a current view of your competitive position and the ability to track performance trends over time. The frequency with which you get updated benchmarks, is dependent on your budget, with options to suit all budgets.

Can you benchmark an industry that isn’t currently in your portfolio? Yes. Our research-grade coding methodology can be applied to any consumer-facing category where customer feedback exists. Get in touch and we can discuss what building a benchmark for your industry would involve.

How do I access the benchmark for my industry? Contact our team to discuss access to the relevant industry benchmark. We’ll walk you through what the benchmark covers, what insights it contains, and how it can be applied to your specific business questions.

See how your customer experience compares and understand exactly what’s driving the gap. Get in touch to access the benchmark for your industry.

Request Your Industry Benchmark or book a complimentary strategy session; we’d love to show you what the data reveals.

Let’s start a conversation

We’ve helped other clients transform their organisations and would love to be part of your story.

Address

Level 6, 275 Alfred Street North,
North Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2060

Email

info@10thousandfeet.com

Phone

02 8080 7544