What is Frictionless Customer Experience?
The customer travels along a so-called journey when buying a product or service. Friction happens when a customer hits a roadblock that slows them down from completing the journey This roadblock normally results in customer dissatisfaction and may stop or negatively affect the buying experience.
How Frictionless Customer Experience Boost Sales
Automation and the customer experience
Automation is a good way to ensure that your customer buying experience is seamless and quick, with no ‘friction’. Delivering seamless user experiences with digitization is important but can be challenging. Channels that are not integrated will not get your customer seamlessly to the end of the journey.
What Causes Fiction During the Customer Journey?
Friction may be caused due to issues relating to a company’s systems and processes including marketing, sales, fulfillment and even after sales. However, today, I will cover the marketing side, specifically the website. A buggy or bad user interface (user experience / design UX) and absence of automation can result in snags along various touch points in customer experience journey. Automated FAQs, clear prompts for the customer and a thank you email informing the customer of when and how they will receive their purchase, are simple ways to provide a frictionless experience. Here is a typical customer journey map that you can adapt and use in your business.
Get more repeat business, increase customer retention and see your sales go up by automating the customer journey
The customer recognizes that they have a need for your product. You may enhance the customer’s experience by offering curated options based on their browsing history for instance. Curating options for customers are a bit more complex than I have explained here. It requires a deep knowledge of your customer and an established customer relationship. The customer then makes a request after recognizing they have a need – for example add an item to their cart or sends a request by email. How will you ensure the customer has a great experience during the ‘request’ phase? Easy to navigate e-commerce page is an easy to achieve automation. You then respond by providing a seamless way for them to pay. Respond also continues into after-sales services. The process is then repeated.
Why Prevent Friction in Customer Experience?
A dissatisfied customer may result in loss of revenue because they either did not complete the journey or they were so dissatisfied they decided never to buy from you again and to also dissuade their friends from doing business with you (referral and reputation damage; and negative social proof)
A buggy website may also result in customer churn, where your subscribers do not continue or your customers do not conduct repeat purchases
Cash flow problems may result because your income will be inconsistent depending on the customer experience on a given day
How to Create Frictionless Customer Experience?
Implement self-service options as much as possible. Allow the customer to save time by solving issues they can do themselves instead of waiting on your customer service process
Automate and integrate your online marketing systems, such as shopping cart, confirmation messages, apps and content
Good internal tracking and customer service processes and systems
Next Steps
We hope you are better equipped to map your customer journey and ensure their experience is always quick and delightful.
If you would like a customer journey strategy, I would be happy to take a look under the hood of your business and provide you with a solution that is uniquely for your business.
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