Your Competitive Edge: Design Frictionless Experiences
I'll bet you used an app or website this week (or even today) where you thought "Why didn't they design it like this instead? It would make so much more sense"
If you work in CS or product, you have a rare superpower: you can design software that doesn’t make people feel frustrated.
All too often, minor points of friction are left unresolved and quietly erode the customer experience. This could be as simple as a buried feature, a lack of knowledge about what to do the first time a user sees your app, or something that is a bit unclear about your app’s set up instructions.
We can build a culture where everyone strives to remove all points of friction in our products. It's a continuous process and you'll probably never eradicate every single one, but committing to that effort represent a large opportunity.
One of the ways we do this at one of my clients is by leveraging usage data that shows what is happening, as well as NPS comments and support conversations. This is a great approach when you’ve got scale and can’t talk to every client 1:1. We make a point to proactively dig through them to surface points of friction, small or large. And most importantly, we dedicate time every week to think of solutions and make those changes. These of course are not the only feedback channels you can leverage, there are other customer signals you can leverage.
I call these meetings Friction Elimination sessions, with a clear goal of removing at least three friction points each time. That simple target gets team members to think about the customer exeperience more. We all start to actively look for issues we might otherwise ignore, and it creates an environment where surfacing problems and proposing solutions is expected and encouraged.
And when you systematically remove friction early, everything improves downstream:
→ faster time to value
→ better retention
→ easier growth later
What are some ways you reduce points of frictions for your customers? I’d love to hear from you!
