Customers expect interactions with a brand to be quick and easy. Anyone who has ever ordered from Amazon (and who hasn’t?) understands this expectation. According to a survey of 484 global customer experience (CX) leaders, 57% said that customers expect departments to be seamlessly integrated for quick resolution and support.
According to the PwC Customer Loyalty Survey 2022, 26% of respondents stopped using or buying from a business in the past year. More than half (55%) of respondents would stop buying from a company after several negative experiences, and 8% would stop after just one bad experience.
Banks, insurance companies, communication service providers, healthcare organizations and retail businesses must deliver convenient, frictionless customer experiences–or lose customers.
What Causes Customer Friction?
Customer friction is any interaction in a customer journey that slows them down or makes it harder to buy, use or manage a product or service. Customers may encounter friction at any point in the CX lifecycle (discover, buy, onboard, use and manage, support and resolve, grow). Anything that interferes with a customer completing a sale, paying a bill, or solving a problem is a source of friction. Common pain points include:
A website with minimal resources. Customers search your website and social media to learn about your company’s products and services. If they can’t find the information quickly, they will move on to another brand. Website personalization makes it quicker and easier for customers to locate relevant facts. Optimizing the website and adding links, product descriptions, reviews and blog posts also help consumers make informed decisions.
A convoluted buying process. When customers add a toy to their cart, they expect to complete the purchase in less than a minute. According to a survey of 2,000 American consumers, most people start to have second thoughts about buying items in their shopping cart after 22 seconds. And 50% of shoppers are less likely to buy something online if the entire checkout process takes more than 30 seconds. If they have to create an account, providing unnecessary information, people may abandon their cart instead of wasting time on the extra steps. A streamlined checkout experience reduces the amount of time for second-guessing, so customers are more likely to immediately press the “buy now” button.
Poor customer service. Customers expect to reach contact center agents immediately, without being placed on hold or waiting hours for an email response. They want your staff to have all the answers and solve their problems right away. By proactively deflecting calls and providing agents with the information they need to assist customers quickly, your contact center can eliminate lengthy waits and provide [deliver?] first call resolution.
Friction Damages Customer Loyalty
Customer experience includes how an individual feels when interacting with your brand before, during and after a transaction. If friction causes people to feel frustrated or annoyed while trying to purchase something or resolve a problem, they may look for another bank or internet provider.
Customers perceive each interaction with your brand to be
A low-effort experience. The process requires little input from the customer. They may be able to autofill information, use one-click buying, pay their cable bill using an IVR payment system, or present a QR code to return an item.
Or
A high-effort experience. The customer has to make a lot of effort to get results. They may have to visit several pages on your website to find information, answer personal questions to create an account, explain the problem to four contact center agents or call several times to resolve a problem.
People prefer the path of least resistance. If they have to work too hard to buy your products or services, apply for a credit card, make a medical appointment or pay their bills, consumers may abandon their shopping cart or application, choose another healthcare provider, and/or delay paying their bills. According to Gartner research, 96% of customers with a high-effort customer service interaction (characterized by channel switching, repeating information, transferred calls, and repeat calls) become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience.
Designing a low-effort, frictionless CX is an important strategy to improve customer loyalty.
What Is a Frictionless Customer Experience?
Consider your best shopping or customer service experience. What made it wonderful? If you’re like most people, that “wow” experience probably involved fast, helpful service and an intuitive buying process. Now, compare that to your worst experience. Why does that one stick out in your mind? Were the staff rude or incompetent? Was the buying process slow or frustrating? Perhaps the online shopping experience was so inconvenient that you didn’t complete the purchase and get what you came for.
In essence, a frictionless experience is:
Convenient: Customers should not have to jump through hoops to accomplish their objective. The more steps involved in reaching their goal, the more likely they are to become frustrated and seek solutions–or take their business–elsewhere. More than half (51%) of consumers said they’re less likely to be loyal to a brand if its online shopping experience isn’t as easy or enjoyable as shopping in person.
Fast: People want to find information, complete their purchase, pay their bills, and/or resolve problems quickly. If it takes too long, they’re likely to navigate away and find a competitor that meets their needs more quickly.
Helpful: Your website, self-service options and customer service representatives—must guide customers to meet their needs—whether they’re buying a cell phone, paying a bill, making a medical appointment, or reporting a stolen credit card. goals. Of the 1,065 PwC survey respondents who stopped using a business in the past year, 32% did so because of a negative customer service experience.
Create a Frictionless Customer Experience Journey With Customer Journey Management
To create a frictionless CX, you must eliminate pain points and deliver quick, convenient interactions that encourage customers to continue doing business with your brand. Customer journey management helps you deliver frictionless experiences by:
Developing unified customer profiles. A customer data platform collects and manages data about customer interactions with your company across channels (website, email, text) and departments (sales, billing, customer service), building a real-time customer data profile for each customer. This profile allows the creation of personalized, relevant communications.
Determining customer intent. Customer journey analytics tracks and measures every customer interaction with your brand, helping you understand customer needs, desires and expectations. Journey analytics also measures intent indicators (such as intent to purchase or cancel), providing information needed to guide customer interactions. For example, when a customer visits a product page several times in a 3-hour period (demonstrating intent to buy), the journey orchestration system encourages them to take action by triggering a pop-up offering a limited-time sale on that item.
Orchestrating customer journeys. Customers control their interactions with your brand, but you can guide them toward the next best action to meet their needs. Customer journey orchestration is a decision engine that uses real-time customer data to analyze current behavior, predict future behavior and deliver the right personalized messages at the right time. For example, if the CJO system detects that someone abandoned their shopping cart, it selects the right message to deliver via the customer’s preferred communication channel (email or text), encouraging the customer to complete the purchase
CSG Xponent Ignite Creates Frictionless Customer Experiences
CSG Xponent Ignite, our customer experience solution, includes pre-built customer journeys for four industries: telecommunications, financial services, retail, and healthcare. The foundation of Xponent Ignite is CSG Xponent, our industry-leading, award-winning platform that includes a feature-rich and fully embedded customer data platform (CDP), customer journey orchestration and journey analytics to analyze customer behavior, sentiment and preferences and deliver frictionless customer experiences.
Contact us to learn more.
