Customer friction is anything that causes your customer to hesitate as they move through (or completely leave) your conversion funnel or your company. Whether you’re B2C or B2B, selling a product or a service, creating a frictionless experience for your customer is essential to longevity, increasing conversions, and building brand loyalty. 
Source: Salesforce While friction varies from business to business, here’s a short list of examples:
- Poor website quality
- Long wait time on services
- Uninformed sales staff
- Slow (and/or expensive) delivery fees
- Limited business hours
- Slow or aggravating payments
Frictionless is the present. And the future.
Millennials demand frictionless experiences with no barriers to converting. Because digital innovation has been the norm for much of their lives, Millennials have higher expectations for brands to deliver simplicity. To them, being always on the go is an everyday reality, and they have been the ones to push technology to make transactions faster, simpler and more convenient.
Brands that provide frictionless experiences will benefit from millennial loyalty, while those whose conversion path is aggravating or difficult will not.
But just because millennials are driving this bus don’t think Gen X and Baby Boomers aren’t interested – and that’s not even touching on Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2010). An entire generation raised on Google may be too young to properly define, but you can expect friction to not be on their wish lists. And since they make up 33% of the US population in 2020, it’s worth threading Gen Z into your long-term forecasting now. How to Identify Customer Friction
Reducing customer friction is vital
Your customers are on a journey through your conversion funnel. Your job is to anticipate their next step. In fact, they want your help: Your customers are looking for bread crumbs and you should be there holding a big bold sign. It isn’t enough to offer good customer service when an issue occurs. Yes, you have to do that too, but it’s crucial to prevent the issue in the first place. You need to reduce customer friction and provide them with an effortless and convenient experience. In research conducted by the Harvard Business Review, it was determined that exceeding expectations with customer service when an issue arises is not as good as simply meeting their needs in the first place. Removing obstacles makes it easy for your customer to do what they want to do – which should also be what you want them to do.
Let’s sum it up.
- Customer friction is anything that prevents your customer from moving through your conversion funnel.
- Millennials and Gen Z are leading the demand for frictionless experiences.
- It’s vital to reduce customer friction, providing as friction-free an experience as possible, to increase conversions and build brand loyalty.
