Imagine if, whenever you wanted to order something from Amazon, you had to re-enter your credit card and address details. Then you had to scan in a bank statement and recent utility bill to prove your identity. Then the sales confirmation process took thirty-something clicks, including multiple CAPTCHA security checks. Maybe throw in a few failures along the way, when it turned out that the product you wanted to buy wasn’t in stock after all. Only after all of this was your order placed – prior to a 45-day delivery process.
If this was the case, Amazon would be highly unlikely to be one of the world’s biggest retailers. It probably wouldn’t have survived the days of the dot-com bubble, and certainly wouldn’t be winning over too many customers in terms of its quality of service.
Thankfully, this isn’t how Amazon actually is to use. Pioneering steps like one-click shopping and one-day delivery (not to mention the possibility of drone deliveries within an hour in the possible future) mean that Amazon has created a seamless customer experience that’s easier than virtually any other shopping experience out there. And it has reaped the rewards.
Of course, not every company out there is going to be the next Amazon. But every company out there should pay attention to some of the lessons Amazon (and plenty of other top retailers) have taught about a friction-free customer experience. If you want to remove pain points from the journey of your customers, here are five points to consider – from better engaging customers to incorporating tools like Customer Effort Score (CES):
