One of the aims for anyone who works in customer experience, service design, product design, is to create frictionless service/product experiences. The theory is if the experience is effortless, customers will keep coming back because it’s so easy, effortless and quick.
But. What if this is wrong?
Who doesn’t like effortless transactions? Who doesn’t like quick and easy service experiences? The thing is, in the effort to make everything perfect; do we in fact make it vanilla? If we try and make the perfect experience for everyone, does it become less interesting, dare I say boring?
An example. I was speaking to my bank a couple of weeks ago. It was all very cordial and helpful around getting a new loan. They answered all my questions. It was frictionless. I spoke to our mobile provider, I had a query on bundling services. They answered all my questions. It was frictionless. The thing is the experience was the same for both. You could have swapped the people over and it would have been the same. There was nothing distinctive to separate them. Some might argue this is a good thing, but I couldn’t help feeling that an opportunity was missed. To say "we’re not the same" as everyone else.
It’s no different to airlines. When was the last time you really paid attention to the compulsory safety information? They’re all the same. Even Qantas’s new attempt of trying to be different, which does kind of work – but feels like enforced viewing of an advertising commercial. However, there is one airline that really did do things differently. Virgin Blue – they actually made the safety information interesting (see previous post). It was engaging and almost funny. And made the service feel genuinely Virgin.
The intention to create frictionless services is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely should be aiming to make services quick, easy, and pain free. The challenge is how to make the experience feel ‘unique’ to your brand. For the experience to reflect your brand values, and more specifically your brand personality.
This might seem strange your ‘brand personality’ – but this is really how your brand comes across to the customer when they deal with you/your staff/your technology platforms, etc. The problem is too many businesses present a corporate personality. It probably feels like this is the safe and ‘responsible’ option. But, if you think about it a “corporate personality” is bland, and so feeds into bland service experiences. Do you know any friends who have a corporate personality? Not many, hopefully none. Because those that do, are usually the most boring people in the room.
This is where I think far more effort needs to go. Into understanding what your brands/business exterior personality is and how that should be translated into the experience. Then (and I would say this being a researcher) understand how the new experience is impacting on your customers and potential customers.
Open for discussion. I’m sure you won’t all agree.