The value of a frictionless customer experience

People remember the bad much more than they do the good, which is why it is so critical to build a baseline of flawless service into your customer experience strategy. Businesses need to review the touch points they have at each stage of their customer journey to identify where friction could occur and potentially disrupt the process. While no one area may stand out, friction over time with unnecessary steps or inefficient processes negatively impacts your bottom line, and that doesn't just cost money in lost sales. This disruption can impact the perception of your brand too, but customers who have experienced negative interactions are much more likely to talk about it.

Friction comes into play anytime the customer's experience is adversely affected. The interruption in an experience can come from anything, be it long wait times, inconsistent service, or poorly handled customer service. Friction isn't relegated solely to the service sector; it also exists in marketing and sales, where poor handling of technology can cause delays in processing orders and lead to client frustration.

Within the customer journey, friction can be broken down into different main causes:

• Time: The amount of time that a customer has to spend dealing with an issue or just completing a transaction.
• Efficiency: How well organized is your team at responding to customers? Do you provide consistency from experience to experience? There is nothing worse than calling three different times and being given a different or contradictory response each time.
• Data and personalization: Being able to recognize customers and their needs goes a long way toward reducing friction.
• Prevention: The best way to avoid friction is to stop it before it starts. Anticipating customer needs is one way to do this. But so is having a robust response when problems inevitably do occur.

A demand for exceptional CX is paving the way for a frictionless future

There are numerous ways in which modern organizations are providing exceptional customer experience by integrating technology and innovative solutions into how they interact and engage with customers. Reducing the time and increasing the quality of interactions is the best way to achieve frictionless CX and build a loyal customer base. The future-proof solution to achieving exceptional CX is through the integration of technology to best serve the customer, while also achieving new levels of personalization via the deep analytics and insights that data can provide. A few examples include:

• Offering an omnichannel experience: Studies show that companies are twice as likely to be high performers if they offer an omnichannel communication solution. This makes it worthwhile to invest in a combination of support that uses telephone, chat, bots, and self-service. With the new and advanced technology now available, omnichannel experiences are even possible for smaller teams and businesses.
• Using automation to save time: Remember that the greatest cause of friction in any customer journey is always going to be time spent in interactions. Using automation to concentrate on reducing the duration of customer encounters is key. Combining this with personalization can help further.
• Empowering your team with processes and tools: Empowering your team with tools and processes will enable them to help customers faster with fewer steps. Leveraging analytics and using data is the best way to achieve personalization, which is one of the best ways to reduce friction and achieve loyal customers during required engagements with your staff.

By focusing on the goal of achieving a seamless customer journey, you can reduce friction at each touchpoint and make a dramatic difference in the customer experience you provide. This means providing customers with more dynamic ways to get the information they need and empowering them to find solutions to their problems more easily. Technology provides the added benefit of truly personalizing experiences, tailoring each engagement to the specific needs of the customer and building a loyal customer base.

Your customer experience should be frictionless, consistent, and personalized to meet the evolving needs of your customers. At TTEC Digital, we provide the insights, and expertise to build a strong customer experience at scale.