How hard can it be? Evaluating customer effort
The harder something is to do, the less likely it is that it will be successfully completed.
Bad news if your customer’s successful completion of a particular process or transaction is important to your brand’s own goal. Like collecting revenue, raising funds for your not-for-profit, or generating shareholder value.
Here are four things that contribute to the effort your brand could be demanding of your customers.
Physical exertion
Walking to the gym to work out. Driving to the video store to rent a movie. Climbing Mount Everest. These all require physical exertion.
The higher the level of physical exertion required, the less likely it is something will be done unless the motivation to do so is very high.
When designing low effort experiences, its also important to think about fine motor type exertion too.
Having to click multiple times to get to the information on your brands website, for example. Or moving the phone away from your face to make a selection in a voice menu — these kinds of things all require some level of effort that you should consider keeping to a minimum.
Mental agility
Making your customers use any amount of brain power adds to the overall effort they will have to expend.
Mental agility could be required of your customers if they need to remember or recall something, such as login details or a particular date.
Mental agility also includes the need to make decisions. Selecting from one or two wines suggested by the sommelier based upon the food we’re trying to pair it with, for example, takes far less effort than staring at the entire wine list.
Specialist knowledge
If your customers need any level of knowledge to successfully complete a task, the overall effort is increased.
At the extreme, that specialist knowledge could be extensive training or qualifications.
Or it could just be the need to review a tutorial or look up information on an online repository to understand what should be done.
And keep a close eye on any internal acronyms or references creeping into customer-facing interactions.
In general terms, any task that requires more than common sense to complete is likely contributing negatively to the overall effort required to do business with your brand.
Perceived delay
Waiting is hard work.
Anything that involves delay between making a decision to do it, and actually being able to get it done, will discourage your customers from getting it done.
Obvious examples include the delay between ordering something online and it landing on your customer’s doormat. Or waiting on hold to speak with customer services.
Also worth considering is any part of your process that requires manual intervention, escalation for approval, or a change in physical place or contact channel to complete.
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Stuart Lambert helps global brands stage high quality, low effort customer experiences built upon relevant, personalised, and timely interactions.
