When a customer tries to interact with your business and comes up against an unexpected obstacle, this friction can cause them to disengage and seek out one of your competitors for a smoother service. Here’s how you can minimize friction and retain customers.
When Does Friction Occur?
The opportunities for friction to arise within the customer journey are rife at every stage. Unclear copy on your social media, a confusingly laid out website, or a clunky checkout process can all get in the way of a potential customer fulfilling the customer journey from start to finish. You can’t ignore the possibility of friction occurring anywhere along this chain.
What is the Cost of Friction?
The lost sale of one moment of friction isn’t the only problem your business could face. Reliability and smooth customer journeys are crucial to building strong customer relationships that encourage future interactions. The reputation of any business is at risk when the customer journey becomes too unpleasant to follow.
Identify the Main Areas of Friction in Your Business
Gather as much detailed data as possible to identify where along the customer journey users have experienced the most friction. Break it down into small segments and resolve issues with particular attention to detail based on your data findings.
Streamlining and Automation as Solutions to Friction
Figuring out how to streamline various processes within your business and the customer journey itself will reduce friction in a meaningful way. The better each element functions on its own, the smoother your entire operation will be. For example, when putting together your marketing strategy, omnichannel automation ensures that the customer experience is as seamless as possible. Of course, there are so many areas where automation can significantly improve the function of your business; it’s up to you to identify these areas and come up with possible solutions.
Adjust Metrics and Evaluate Results at Each Stage
Trying to solve a friction issue from a bird’s-eye view won’t have successful results. To truly deal with each moment of customer friction, you must separate the metrics and make adjustments accordingly. Arrange to evaluate the results on a regular basis so you can see if the changes are having a positive effect or not.
Offer Customer Support Throughout the Journey
Friction alone is not the reason for customers becoming frustrated with the journey and detaching from your business. This is proven by companies that offer excellent customer support at each stage.
When customers feel heard and their problems are addressed, they are more likely to forgive the previous friction. Of course, this doesn’t mean that customer support is the only solution to friction worth implementing. Rather, it’s a valuable addition to other important solutions.
Knowing where friction can occur throughout the customer journey and identifying where it takes place in your business will help you start to smooth out the issues. Understand the risk that excess friction poses to your business to fully appreciate the severity. You will need to look out for trouble spots and make meaningful changes if you want to improve the customer journey and keep your business healthy.