The quality of your product or service is far from the only thing a customer remembers about your brand. Every moment along the customer journey—from the first time they scroll through your brand’s website to the emails they receive after their purchase—shapes customer satisfaction.
In a competitive consumer landscape, a frictionless customer experience is a crucial part of setting your business apart. Removing pain points for customers encourages a first-time purchase and keeps people coming back.
Learn how to identify potential causes of friction, better meet customer needs, and create a customer journey that leaves a positive, lasting impression.
What is a frictionless customer experience?
A frictionless customer experience describes an uninterrupted, smooth, and effortless customer journey from start to end. It requires getting rid of potential roadblocks or challenges and making the shopping journey as easy as possible for prospective and returning customers.
Creating a seamless customer experience matters before, during, and after a customer makes a purchase:
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Before. Before a purchase, this might look like providing clear, accessible information about your product and designing a user-friendly website. This allows a customer to make an informed decision about choosing your brand over other businesses.
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During. During a purchase, reducing friction includes streamlining the ordering and checkout process, so it’s simple for a customer to complete a purchase.
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After. Ensure the final product or service lives up to its promise, and invest in positive, efficient customer service agents in case of negative experiences or escalated service inquiries.
A frictionless customer experience helps give your company a competitive edge, increase conversion rates, and build customer loyalty. Providing an excellent experience through the whole process turns people into repeat consumers—and potentially brand advocates.
Common sources of friction for customers
The way a customer feels about their experience with a brand is based on the entire customer journey, so friction points can come up at any point. Here’s a checklist of common moments where people encounter friction:
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Poor website design. A customer’s first direct interaction with your brand is often navigating your website. If your site is difficult to navigate, slow to load, or not mobile-friendly, you risk losing people’s time and interest.
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Inaccessible information. When deciding whether to make a purchase, customers want information quickly. Make sure your product details across different channels—from social media to your web pages—are consistent and clear.
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Long wait times. Slow response times for emails and customer chats, or long holds on phone lines, might prevent someone from converting. These kinds of negative experiences can erode trust and turn customers off from a brand.
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Lack of personalization. A lack of personalized experiences can actively cause friction by filling a customer’s inbox or feed with irrelevant information. Your email promotions, site banners, push notifications, discounts, suggestions at checkout, landing pages, and post-purchase communications can all be tailored to each customer. Segmentation tools make messaging feel more meaningful and relevant for customers—whether they are new, returning, or lapsed.
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Inefficient ordering process. An inconvenient or confusing ordering process—such as one that includes too many steps, long information forms, unexpected added costs, or a poor user interface on mobile devices—presents a significant barrier to customers.
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Shipping difficulties. Unexpected costs, a lack of shipping options, or extended shipping times can all present points of frustration for customers at checkout. Customers should also find shipping information for their order readily available after making a purchase.
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Post-purchase challenges. After a customer has decided to buy your product, they expect regular communication and a quality product. Watch out for common post-purchase sources of friction, such as delayed shipping, damage during shipping, short or complicated returns processes, extensive product assembly needs, lack of thorough product documentation, slow response times, or a lack of friendly service when consulting on product issues.
How to create a frictionless customer experience
- Chart the customer experience
- Analyze causes of friction at each touchpoint
- Implement solutions
- Regularly audit the customer journey
Use these steps as a guide to create your own effortless customer experience:
1. Chart the customer experience
A comprehensive understanding of the customer journey with your brand will help you understand where customers may be encountering friction. Identify each time and place that a customer interacts with your brand, from the moment they first learn about it through an ad or social media to the communications they receive post-purchase.
2. Analyze causes of friction at each touchpoint
Once you’ve mapped the customer journey, audit the customer’s experience of each touchpoint. Analyze customer behavior and collect data on where new or existing customers are failing to convert along your sales funnel. Use tools like Google Analytics or your ecommerce platform’s built-in dashboard, like Shopify Analytics, to identify pages on your site that are underperforming.
For example, are there certain points where you notice customer drop-off or slowed engagement? What are your most common customer support questions? All of this information will help you identify areas that aren’t working as intended.
3. Implement solutions
After you’ve pinpointed where customers are encountering friction, it’s time to fix the problem. The solution to different points of friction will vary, but walk through every point in the customer journey and consider what would make this easier for the customer. The answer may be automating a process like abandoned cart emails, adding new technology like a chatbot, or updating your website to reflect your new shipping policy. In many cases, a customer support customization app can help smooth out some of these touchpoints.
It can often be helpful to prioritize the most serious sources of friction, so you can focus on the issues that are costing your business the greatest amount of money. For example, being unable to complete checkout on a mobile phone will directly prevent many customers from converting, whereas a buggy navigation menu is frustrating with a less immediate impact on sales.
4. Regularly audit the customer journey
New sources of friction may arise as customer needs change, so it’s important to keep track of how consumers are feeling. Offer automated opportunities for post-purchase customer feedback, and conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys to identify moments that may be prompting a poor customer experience. Once you identify new opportunities to reduce friction, sort them by priority in a project management tool so you can stay on task without getting overwhelmed.
Tips for creating a frictionless customer experience
Developing a seamless customer experience is all about streamlining. Anywhere you can eliminate an unnecessary step or provide information more quickly for customers is an opportunity to reduce friction. Here are tips to help you get started:
Make the buying process as quick and easy as possible
Minimize the number of pages that customers need to click through and the information they need to enter before finalizing an order. Clicking through multiple pages and entering information like an address more than once can feel repetitive and may feel frustrating to a customer, especially if they’ve placed an order previously.
Shopify Checkout is an excellent example of a one-page buying process that collects all of the customer’s information in a single step and supports one-click checkout options for returning customers.
Use automated chatbots to provide proactive support
FAQ pages and automated responses for chatbots should cover all of the most common customer queries your support team receives, providing self-service options to help customers receive answers to their questions as soon as possible. Leverage automation tools like Shopify Inbox to add chatbots to your contact center, which will allow you to supply automatic responses for frequently asked questions and use generative AI to give customers suggested replies based on your store information.
Even while using automated chatbots, you should always offer the option for customers to escalate their issues to live agents, giving them an alternative path to resolution if desired.
Share transparent reviews and ratings
Any opportunity to demonstrate transparency will help build customer trust in your brand. One good example of this is the ability to see reviews and ratings for a product or service. If a product page for an article of clothing includes detailed reviews with notes on sizing, then customers can trust that they’re purchasing an item that will likely work for them.
In addition to showing reviews, make any policies about returns or shipping immediately clear so that customer expectations align with what you can provide.
Frictionless customer experience FAQ
What is an example of customer friction?
Let’s say a prospective new customer is considering placing an order but has a question about the materials used in your product. They email the customer service team and don’t receive a response until 10 hours later. This delay in access to information presents a significant obstacle in placing an order and gives the customer time to choose another company or change their mind.
Why should you remove friction from customer experiences?
Removing friction from customer experiences gives your business a competitive edge, increases conversion rates, and develops customer loyalty, in addition to more efficiently using your customer service resources.
How do you identify customer friction?
Map your customer journey and look for any touchpoints where customers report feeling frustrated with the purchasing process. You can also use on-site analytics from platforms like Shopify to determine where in the sales funnel customers are dropping off.
