Guest Post by Cyndi Thomason of bookskeep

To generate loyalty from customers and employees, Easy customer service is better than Exceptional customer service. This is a major tenant of Roger Dooley, author of the recent book, Friction, and previously, Brainfluence. Dooley was recently a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at this year’s ProfitCon event. He made several important points, but this one really surprised me.

Dooley pointed out one of the reasons this tenant matters to eCommerce sellers. According to a 2016 Business Insider study, over $4.6 trillion dollars were left in abandoned shopping carts each year. That’s an incredible amount of un-purchased items, and you have to wonder why that is.

His data showed that for repeat purchases, if the effort involved in purchasing was low, the rate of purchase was 94%. However, if the effort was high, the rate of purchase was 4%. In addition, if the effort was high, 88% would “Say bad things about the brand.” I specifically asked about the value of using a Net Promoter Score. Dooley said I would do better to replace the NPS with a system measuring my client’s ease in using our system.

While it’s difficult for me to completely ditch the idea that customer satisfaction is important, Dooley did show that only 5-7% of our brains are used in our decision making. As a result, most of our decisions are emotional and subconscious rather than rational.

One antidote he shared that relates to our Amazon experience was about the One-Click ordering. When Amazon first developed this technology, they patented it because they believed in the concept of Low Friction and Easy. When Barnes and Noble added One-Click ordering to their website, Amazon protected their patent by filing a lawsuit, and they won. Barnes and Noble was required to add a “Confirm Order” button to their checkout process. When iTunes launched, Steve Jobs saw the value of One-Click ordering. He paid Amazon $1 million dollars for the rights to use that technique.

There are several things that contribute to high friction, as Dooley pointed out in his presentation. These include complicated forms, many steps in a process, instructions, confusion about what to do, and slow problem resolution.

If you think your business has issues with customer or employee loyalty, pick up a copy of Friction and learn how easy it is to interact with your business. As you read it, you will start to see your everyday experiences in two camps: High or Low Friction.

Cyndi Thomason is the author of the bestselling book, Profit First for Ecommerce Sellers. She is a Mastery Level Certified Profit First Professional, and the founder and president of bookskeep. Her company consists of a virtual team located across the United States, providing bookkeeping and Profit First consulting services to ecommerce clients all over the world.

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