If you want your business to grow, streamlining the customer experience is 100% essential. There should be as little friction as humanly possible. If you have a clunky client onboarding process, people will often look for similar services elsewhere, even if they’re not quite as good as yours.
So, what can you do to create more efficiency and improve customer satisfaction?
Audit your friction areas
The first place you want to start is by auditing your friction areas. The easiest way to do this is to hire a mystery shopper and get them to go through the customer conversion process themselves. They can report back to you on their experience and what it was like.
You’ll often find that there’s a lot of “ghost” friction in the system. It might be difficult for your internal team to identify these points, which is why it’s so important to use third parties. Look for things like:
- Asking for phone numbers when you only need an email
- Using five-page checkouts when one will suffice
Use a one-click rule for frequently asked questions
You also want to use the one-click rule for frequently asked questions. The idea here is that customers should be able to access the information they need on your website by clicking one button. If your information is hidden at the back of your website or it’s difficult to find, then it’s of no use to you or your customers. All of the critical data should be presented up front to reduce friction and streamline your service.
Pre-empt pivots with proactive upgrades
If you know there are holes in your customer experience and you’re not providing them with the best service, it can be a good idea to preemptively pivot by offering your clients proactive upgrades. The idea here is to remove the dead air that occurs after a support request or a purchase. Customers want to know that you’re still looking after them and taking care of their order. For example, you could:
- Provide them with updates on where their order is in real time.
- Offer them a special bonus on their next purchase once they’ve made the first one.
These little touchpoints can go a long way to building loyal customers.
Streamline purchasing
It might sound obvious, but many companies still aren’t streamlining their purchasing processes. Given modern technology, it should take nothing more than for customers to tap their device on a Bluetooth credit card terminal to buy from you.
If they can’t do this, update your systems. Go to a provider who can give you a low-friction service. Make sure that they deal with businesses of your size and in your industry.
Remove CAPTCHA and simplify your logins
Finally, you’ll want to remove CAPTCHA from your logins so that people can sign into their accounts more easily. The best way to do this is with magic links, where you create a login link that you email directly to them. This massively reduces the pain of signing up for emails.