Customer friction is a factor that impedes the experience of your consumers as they go through their purchasing decision. These elements may include negative online reviews, poor customer service, under-skilled sales representatives, and terrible web user experience.
You’ll likely miss opportunities to raise revenue if you ignore friction in the sales process. Aside from that, you’ll lose your most loyal consumers, which will reduce your market share. In turn, you might be unable to attract high-paying leads and fail to generate enough funds to pay business costs.
This article provides you with five practical strategies for reducing friction points in the customer journey.
1. Conduct Customer Experience Research.
Modern customers demand more personalized engagements with brands on various channels. If you can consistently deliver these high expectations, you’ll gain a competitive edge and increase your market share. Thus, you must gather valuable data to help provide your clients with satisfying experiences that’ll keep them returning to your store.
When improving customer experience, you need to research to understand who your consumers are and study how they perceive your brand. This strategy allows you to map and integrate data across the customer journey to identify each user’s level of engagement. After that, you’ll be able to develop a feedback loop that’ll allow you to respond to reviews using data-driven actions.
2. Provide CTAs.
Functioning calls-to-action (CTAs) will help you guide your web visitors so you can lead them through the buying process. This element eliminates decision fatigue whenever prospects come across your promotional content because you’ll tell them what to do. In turn, you can simplify the customer journey and generate more sales, reducing friction.
When creating CTAs, you need to be straight to the point by choosing powerful statements that’ll attract the attention of online users. Another way to motivate them to take action is by giving them a sense of urgency to make them think they’ll miss out on a unique opportunity. For instance, you may add some of the most direct and time-sensitive CTAs like ‘Buy today! The sale ends on Friday.’
3. Upgrade Communication Channels.
Two-way communication is the most vital factor in improving the customer journey. Therefore, you must provide your sales representatives and customer service teams with modern tools to respond to online users’ complaints. In turn, they can immediately send effective resolutions to your client’s issues, which might prevent them from writing bad online reviews about your brand.
When upgrading communication channels, you must invest in advanced technologies like the help desk, live chat, and messaging software. Most of these tools have features like routing incoming calls and adding notes to one-on-one conversations to enable messaging personalization. Aside from that, you must also optimize your website and social media pages so your customers can easily find company information and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
4. Offer Multiple Payment Options.
Running a digital store means online users expect you to accept multiple payment options. Some of the most common methods used in eCommerce transactions include cash, credit and debit cards, and digital wallets. Once you do so, you’ll make your brand more trustworthy and minimize cart abandonment, which improves the customer journey.
As you offer multiple payment options, you have to invest in a bar code generating tool so you can create codes, save them, and print them out. Then, you’ll ask customers who are transferring cash via digital wallets to capture them so they can instantly pay their bills. In addition, you must buy a point-of-sale device to gain verification for debit or credit card transactions.
5. Develop A Mobile-Friendly Website.
When visiting your business website, online users will expect it to load fast so they can review product information or set up item orders. However, if mobile users can’t navigate through the pages smoothly, they’re likely to close them and move on to browsing other high-performing channels. As a result, they’ll have negative experiences with your website and prevent you from missing out on sales opportunities.
When developing a mobile-friendly website, you need to seek assistance from your web development team or outsource web design professionals. These experts will help you improve mobile usage experiences by enabling smooth navigation and ensuring that your blog elements fit mobile screens. In turn, they’ll be able to increase the load speed of your pages so you can shorten the customer journey by encouraging prospects to buy your offers.
Key Takeaway
As a modern entrepreneur, you should always prioritize the experiences of your prospective and existing customers. Therefore, you must consider following these effective strategies to reduce friction points in the customer journey. Once you do so, you’ll create satisfying experiences for your clients and ensure they purchase your products or services.
