How intel can create a frictionless customer experience

Not every interaction a business has with a customer yields revenue. However, it can yield intelligence – and intel is an important aid to creating a frictionless customer experience.

GIF credit: Run Frictionless

Friction is any obstacle that prevents a customer from making a buying decision, which consequently slows the sale. Everywhere you look, organizations try to reduce this and remain competitive. Especially during times of economic uncertainty, eliminating friction is crucial for restoring predictable revenue.

Intel is information gathered from both inside and outside the business. While buying it isn’t affordable for many organizations, particularly pre-revenue startups, every organization can be capable of collecting intel from customers by turning their workforce into an intel-gathering machine.

“The data you have about your customers is probably your most valuable asset,” says Neil Burge, CEO of Cognopia, which helps organizations improve customer experience by making better use of intel. “No other firm has this, so you must put it to work to remove obstacles from the customer journey and make it as easy as possible for your teams to serve customers.”

Indeed, the real return comes not after the closing of a sale but when an improvement is made to make the next sale frictionless.

One of the reasons why many Singapore businesses haven’t been able to reduce friction is poor decision-making regarding whom they serve today, tomorrow, and, most importantly, never. Instead of specifying these clearly, they make the mistake of serving “anyone.” But while Singapore is a small market, it is far from homogeneous, with its residents hailing from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Intel can help businesses answer the question of whom to serve, plus many more like it. Here are a few ways that they can gather intel and act on it daily.

Set up an intel board

This can be done using one of many ticketing applications available on the cloud, such as Trello or Asana.

Pre-revenue startups often struggle to get customer feedback. However, salespeople who know how to earn their keep can give them a hand by asking every customer they interact with to share something – a piece of intel – that can help make the next sales process easier. Salespeople can then post that data on a board within a few seconds from their mobile devices.

This makes intel collection easier, and the sales team can store and post what they’ve collected even during a customer interaction.

Aside from collecting intel from buying customers, salespeople can also solicit the opinions of customers who have made a purchase but have complaints, as well as those who have never bought anything.

Organizations tend to try to pacify disgruntled customers and then “bury” their complaints, as trudging through them to find insights can be too stressful. However, Tim Wieringa, a digital transformation and change management practitioner from Singapore, believes that customers who have made a purchase and then aired a complaint are also rich sources of intel.