Friction. It slows down customer success. The more friction, the less likely you will have happy customers/clients. Brian Halligan spoke about the importance of minimizing friction last year at Inbound 18. How easy is it to do business with you?
It makes complete sense to me. And yesterday, I experienced my own service-related friction. Here's my story.
FRICTION
Staples made it very hard for me to print out a few photos (yes, some people still do this). There was so much friction. Twenty (20) minutes later, I walked out of Staples frustrated and determined there is no need to go back there, still in need of printing out a few photos.
NO FRICTION
Walgreens, on the other hand, minimized the amount of friction by allowing me to easily place an order to print a few photos, self-serve, happy to help me, within 3 minutes. I walked away happy. It was an exceptional customer experience.
WHERE'S YOUR FRICTION?
Think about your own company's customer experience. Where is there unnecessary friction? How can you minimize it? How can make your customers happier?
There's a reason I am a customer of Dollar Shave Club, shop on Amazon and Vuori, Inc., listen to my music via Spotify, get my air filters from FilterEasy, and take Lyft. They excel at minimizing friction. It's easy to get what I need.
SERVICE EXAMPLE
Leveraging technology like HubSpot and creating new processes will help minimize friction.
Take foodservice equipment service for example:
Traditionally, an end-user or dealer calls - yes, calls - the manufacturer rep (who they trust) to initiate the service request. The rep then has to call the factory and relay the information. Neither the rep nor the end-user knows when and what's going on with that service request. There is so much friction between everyone involved because of this outdated process.
THERE'S A BETTER WAY
Let's think differently, use technology, and minimize friction. It is proven that making it easy to do business equates to happy customers who will refer you more business.
Your thoughts?
