Creating a Frictionless Customer Experience

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Top Takeaways:

• There are now more channels for customers to contact companies, making it easier than ever for them to do so. But, what most companies aren’t asking is: Why do they need to contact us? Who can address these issues in the organization?
• Frictionless is something that often goes unnoticed. It means that everything is going so well that customers don’t need to contact the companies they are doing business with. For the business, it means the contact rate goes down, and the Net Promoter Score and customer loyalty go up.
• When customers experience a frictionless experience with another company, they may say something to you, like, “Why aren’t you as easy as Amazon?” or, ‘When I had to return something to Nordstrom, that was really easy, and it’s really hard when I try to return something to you.” Recognize these comments as opportunities to improve and meet your customer’s expectations.
• Identifying why customers are contacting you makes it easy for anybody on the receiving end to pick it up, whether in sales, customer service, or an AI bot.
• By looking at the frequency and reasons customers contact you, you can figure out the issues that frustrate them the most.
• If an issue is frustrating for your customers and solving it is time-consuming and expensive, businesses need to do a root cause analysis and eliminate it from happening. Companies need to figure out how to engage all areas and departments of the business to find the solution. By engaging the “whole of business,” an organization can eliminate the most frustrating and frequent issues its customers face.

Quotes:

“The best service is no service. The best thing to do for our customers is to set up everything so well that they don’t need to contact us for help and support.”

“It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have. What matters is that customers just want things to be easy for them. They want things to be frictionless.”

“If you don’t make it really simple and easy for customers, someone else will do it for you.”

About:

Bill Price was Amazon’s first global vice president of customer service and is the founder and president of Driva Solutions, a consultancy dedicated to creating highly effective customer contact strategies and operations. He is the co-author of The Best Service Is No Service, Your Customer Rules! and The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:

1. What does “whole of business problem” mean?
2. What is a frictionless customer experience?
3. How do you eliminate the most frustrating issues for your customers?
4. What does a frictionless experience mean for the business?
5. How can you remove friction from your business?