Frictionless Customer Experience – A competitive advantage

Last weekend I was looking for a fast broadband connectivity service for my home as my current service provider was unable to provide an upgrade in spite of multiple escalations. I found the answer in a new market entrant which offered the fastest, the cheapest and the most feature-rich service with the most convenient and fast onboarding process of less than 10 minutes. This was the experience I was looking for – completely personalized service, smooth and frictionless cross-channel onboarding process without any hassles.

I think for a truly frictionless customer experience, the right product offered at the right moment and through the best channel creates a wow moment. This ensures a satisfied customer who can advocate and promote your product.

Today, customer experience is the most important leverage a business could use to win in the market. I believe in a customer-centric approach over a product-centric approach. Companies that put their customers at the center are winners, and this has time and again been proven by companies like Google in the search engine space, Apple in smartphone market, and Uber which has shaken up the taxi-service market.

Creating a truly frictionless customer experience is a necessity for any company today. If you achieve this kind of customer experience, you gain customer loyalty which can be a major competitive differentiator for your business instead of competing on price. However, the secret lies in identifying the gaps or pain points and removing any hassles your customers face while interacting with your company. In case of banking services, the gap in customer experience can be closed by introducing self-service systems to address routine questions instead of making the customer wait in contact center queues, or launching chat-bots to address customer queries. The real challenge is enhancing your customers’ preferred way of interacting with you.

With all this in mind, here are a few rules for anyone looking to develop a strategy for frictionless customer experience.

If an organization defines a very good strategy for frictionless customer experience, it can deliver wonders in customer service. To deliver the right experience, technology is an important enabler that companies can use to define flexible processes accurately and design services such that they are not devoid of a human touch.