How to reduce customer friction & build trust along the digital customer experience journey

Think about the word friction. What does that mean to you? For your customers, friction means not getting what they need, when they need it, in a seamless and pleasant way.

Friction points along your customer’s journey slow them down and chip away at the overall experience. Friction creates an interruption, or worse, an exit in the customer’s journey.

The goal of business leaders today should be to reduce friction by designing proactive, positive customer experiences. The only way to do that is to understand where these points may occur and do your best to provide a journey that supports customers, reduces their effort and provides seamless ways for them to get to the next destination.

And while most customer journeys are digital journeys today, it’s important to remember the way customers interact digitally is simply part of an overall experience. Customers buy tickets for experiences online, then attend the concert in person. They might purchase a product online, then receive it at their home, and then go back to the digital channel to provide a customer review. The digital experience IS the customer experience.

Have you considered the pain points along your customer’s journey? How do you know where to find them?

Here is one way to discover the obstacles in your customer’s digital journey and how to design better experiences.

Listen to the emotional feedback from customers

Collecting customer feedback is a fairly common practice now. Measuring the feedback with metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Rates (CSAT) helps show patterns and identify where the journey requires improvement. For example, customers may be asked to participate in a one-question survey at the end of a specific transaction, like a customer service call. By tracking the overall CSAT rates, leaders may identify where friction lies within the journey. It’s important for leaders to review these metrics with an eye towards action. What can be done to improve the overall experience for the customer? Leaders who ask that question and track CX metrics will likely find areas where the customer experience is slow, clunky or just not very delightful. Fixing those moments can help reduce friction.

And smart leaders also look for what the customers are really saying. Watch for emotional words, like “frustrated” or “irritated.” This is especially helpful in transactional feedback, since it’s connected to a specific point on the customer’s journey. Words like that often indicate the customer was feeling interrupted by unexpected points of friction. Emotional responses like those highlight when a customer is dissatisfied. Those words, and the specific interactions they highlight, should point to where to look on your customer’s journey to reduce friction.

Customers today want you to respect their time and their freedom of choice. Customers prioritize speed-to-resolution when deciding on which channel to use, according to Gartner’s 2021 Customer Service and Support State of the Customer Survey¹ That same survey shows how customers express disappointment when the time to resolve an issue or achieve a goal takes longer than expected. In 2021, 75% of customers who use the phone for service reported the interaction taking longer than expected.

Source: 2021 Gartner Customer Service and Support State of the Customer Survey. Retrieved on November 12, 2021.

They want options for shopping, specifically around when and how they shop via digital channels or in-person. More than six out of ten online adults reported trying digital transactions, like ordering groceries or other purchases, according to Forrester.² And now, some Gen X customers enjoy shopping in a store much less than they did two years ago, according to Forrester’s June 2021 Consumer Energy Index.

They also want options around payment, because individual customers often have preferred and trusted ways to pay.

Look and listen for feedback with words like “I wish you offered…” to find what choices you might not be offering that create friction for customers.

The idea is to identify these points of friction and then make the moments easy. And then, make them even easier!

Payment is an important place to reduce friction for customers. How can you make something that needs to be easy even easier for customers?

Here are some ideas:

• Greg Lisiewski, VP and GM, Global Pay Later Products at PayPal, discussed how ideally, payment should be as unobtrusive as possible in the customer journey on our Crack the Customer Code podcast.³ He even described this part of the journey as ideally being “almost not noticeable.” The payment experience can feel seamless and provide ease throughout the entire customer journey, if it’s offered in a way that reduces friction for the customer.
• Consider how Fandango⁴ reviewed and updated the entire experience of buying movie tickets. They were a disrupter that made moviegoers feel secure about having tickets for a popular movie before getting to the theatre. Now, they are helping to reduce the payment process friction by offering options like options to split payment to make going with friends even easier.

Are you ready to create a better customer experience by reducing points of friction?

• Review customer feedback for emotional responses to zero in on where friction points appear along the customer journey.
• Listen for when customers are saying they feel like their time was wasted or their preferred payment options aren’t offered.
• Identify and offer preferred payment offerings as part of the customer journey.

Your customers interact with your brand via digital channels, but that doesn’t mean they are purely “digital customers.” They are responding to needs and wants, experiencing and engaging with your brand across multiple shopping channels to get something done. The best way to support them is to think about each step in their journey.

Reducing friction for customers means delivering better experiences for them.

Make it easy. Then make it easier!