Remove Frustration and Fatigue from your Customer Journeys

Increasingly organisations are facing the challenges of digital adoption and retention. But are organisations truly focusing on both in equal measure?

I always have in the forefront of my mind the “Netflix Moment”. At the beginning Netflix only incentivised and rewarded adoption of the Netflix subscription. Admirably the same Executives, after seeing customers leave, realised that the reward was not balanced because as quickly as they were onboarding customers they were also losing customers. They subsequently changed the reward metrics to focus on both and suddenly Netflix changed for the better. Both adoption and retention should be at the forefront of any organisation when plotting their product roadmap.

If we bring that down a level, customer frustration when carrying out interactions in the digital world is a key reason for not retaining your customers in the digital swim lane and importantly converting that sale or deflecting from your more expensive analogue experiences. Research and our own experiences of poorly designed customer journeys tell us that if we are not getting the outcomes we wish for in a simple and speedy manner we get frustrated and abort the transaction.

Organisations can help themselves with design principles such as:-

• simple and secure sign on
• never asking the customer details you already know
• pre population
• sign posting what is required
• immediate and effective prompts when customers are struggling
• to the point communication
• always apply confirmation to build confidence in the journey progress

Then there is journey fatigue, easily overlooked not always understood. Journey fatigue is simply when your customer gets bored of the journey. Journey boredom can manifest itself from repetitive usage of the same journey or product and there becomes a need to excite to maintain engagement with your customer. We refer to it as hedonic adaptation, after the flurry of positivity in an experience they then return to a more steady state of emotive reflection of the experience. A great example of combatting this is how Tesla delight their customers with new and fresh deployments of upgrades to their software. This is shown in the flurry of group conversations across social sites around new observations and experiences of the newest releases that supports the effortless experience that is of owning a Tesla.

So in summary, to truly realise your goals in regards to your customer journeys, measuring adoption, retention and completed transactions is critical. Making things seamless, personable whilst being supported along the way will all help.

Don’t forget! ….Never walk away from the journeys you create, you constantly need to look at ways to improve and re-engage with the customers that liked it in the first place too!