Is Customer Friction getting you Fired?

Catastrophic breakdowns along a customer journey happen.  And, we usually aren't surprised if we're fired as a result of a significant failure to deliver.  But, what about the customers that fire us when there's been no significant negative interaction?

What is Customer Experience Friction?

All surfaces have irregularities and when two touching surfaces move relative to each other, they get caught in each other's hills and valleys (albeit sometimes minuscule hills and valleys).  Moving past these hills and valleys takes effort. This is how friction is created.  The fewer the hills and the smaller the valleys, the less friction created.

Friction introduced along the customer journey is much the same. Too much friction, and you can end up with a fire (or being fired)!  When a customer interacts with a company, customers can get caught in the little hills and valleys of doing business with the company. Those hills and valleys make their experience less smooth, not as easy - a nuisance.  Hills and valleys can be a result of many factors in your company:

•  Failure to focus on delivering what customers value – Are you focused on delivering quickly or low price and customers are looking for quality?
• Ineffective or inefficient technology – Do you lack of back-office/front-office integration?
• Poor team member decision-making capability, due to poor visibility into key info and lack of timely access
• Slow response times, possibly due to lack of access to accurate customer information
• Cumbersome processes that affect response times or even worse the ability to get customers what they want need and value, when they want it
• Silos that create an unsynchronized experience, adversely affect team member collaboration, hamper data sharing, and can impact consistency and reliability across touch points
• Team member goals and rewards aren’t aligned with delivering what customers value
• Team members aren’t trained on delivering the desired experience or they aren’t equipped with the tools and technology to do so
• Inadequate integration and collaboration with suppliers

1) Don’t slow customers down!

Friction: the force that causes a moving object to slow down when it is touching another object – Webster

Friction takes more work.  Customers want an easy experience.  They want an experience that is low effort on their part; the more friction your company introduces, the more work the customer must expend to get what they want/need/value.

2) Don’t fire customers up!

Friction: disagreement or tension between people or groups of people – Webster

Customers want an easy experience – they want one that is frictionless.  Most companies underestimate the amount of friction their customers experience when interacting with them.  Team members often only recognize the little hiccups customers experience at the touch point they are directly involved in. 

What they don’t recognize is the friction accumulating over time, the friction the customer may have experienced before their touch point.  Any touch point along the customer journey has the potential to drive the customer away – the potential to be the ‘final straw’ – the point where the friction that’s accumulated along a customer's journey is too much.

Failing to recognize the friction that can be accumulating along the entire journey can leave our team members without empathy for irritated customers.  Understanding the customer's experience end-to-end builds empathy and enables team members to relate to customer feelings more sincerely.  We might wish emotions weren't part of business as usual, but buying decisions can be heavily influenced by emotions. 

Walk in your customer's shoes, sit in their chair, view the customer journey from their vantage point.  Share customer feedback verbatim - the positive and the negative.  Practice empathy!

3) Don't play with friction!

Friction: the act of rubbing one thing against another – Webster

Too much accumulated friction and you are going to get fired by your customers!  Friction is costly and ignoring it is foolish.  Reduce customer friction along your customer's entire journey with your company, focusing on reducing friction at key touch points first.

• Align your people, your processes, and your technology to deliver an integrated experience
• Provide a synchronized experience consistently and reliably
• Minimize customer effort required to do business with your company
• Understand hand-offs across internal silos and minimize customer effort required to bridge the silos
• Capture and act on feedback to prioritize customer-relevant improvements

Ignore friction your customers experience at your own risk.

Reducing friction is good business

By focusing on customer experience, customer needs and building stronger relationship:

• Customer retention increases
• Existing customers spend more with companies providing good customer experience
• Existing customers become less price sensitive
• Customers are more likely to make referrals
• Customer acquisition costs decrease as you attract new customers by referral
• Customers become more forgiving of service failures when they do occur – and they will
• Loyal customers engage and provide feedback, informing continuous customer-relevant service improvements

Customer Experience can be directly linked to customer spending. If you aren’t capitalizing on customer experience, your top and bottom line are being negatively affected by your inaction!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Living in San Diego, I am the Customer Experience Practice Leader at Tribridge, headquartered in Tampa, FL. With a background in Sales, Product Management, CRM, and Customer Experience (CX) business consulting, I am passionate about working alongside customers to transform their organizations and realize their unique CX goals. I have been recognized by International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) as a Top 50 Thought Leader.  Connect with me on LinkedIn or join me on Twitter @JessicaJNoble.