The terms ‘Frictionless’ and ‘Seamless’ have become synonymous with designing customer experiences. In many ways they are the modern brief. Make it so smooth, so intuitive, so expected that people get what they want instantly. But is that good?

I worked with Michael Canning (Co-Founder Exceptional Alien) for many years and one thing he joked about was wanting to invent ‘Mental-Shazam’! You just think it and the song plays, a kind of cure for an earworm. I think he was joking, but as we are now fast approaching that reality maybe he wasn’t?

Scott Belsky (Founder of Adobe Behance) writes in his new blog Implications.com that with the introduction of AI “it is striking just how much friction will be ironed out of human existence…We’ll eventually be abstracted from daily transactions…we'll increasingly feel like “guests” in our everyday experience”.

Friction in general gets a really bad wrap. Here are just a few examples of headlines you’ll find:

• The Top 10 friction points in your customer journey and how to eradicate them

• Best Practices For Creating a B2B Frictionless Customer Experience

• Friction is a bastard and you need to pound it with an iron until it’s flat on its arse!
   

Ok, I made that last one up but let’s just say more ‘friction’ isn’t the plan.

The prevailing logic is that anything slowing or stopping a customer from purchasing - from poor website design to an unknowledgeable sales staff - is an existential issue that needs to be addressed immediately!

However, there are undeniable advantages to preserving a degree of friction within the Customer experience. As @Scott Belsky also noted, “Friction adds texture to time as it passes, which makes us remember the experiences we have.” And it is this trade-off that we need to balance in marketing. When friction is eliminated to the point of having no lasting memory of the experience then as marketers we’ve gone too far.

What is friction? And is it all bad?

Bad friction comes in the form of unresolved confusion. I know what I want to do and I just can’t get it done! Where is the bloody register? Where did I park my car? Why doesn’t this button work? I don’t have all the information I need to complete this paperwork!

However, being obsessive about being frictionless can sanitise your brand experience. You might even liken it to the gentrification of your own brand world. Lacking in nostalgia, humour and unexpected things. Everything is so expected that you look, sound and act like everyone else. You are textureless and your customers have no memory of you, specifically.

UI design globally has become a sea of sameness and best practices. In many ways this is great, it creates a shared understanding. Commonly understood hieroglyphs like the hamburger menu, the share button, Bluetooth and hundreds more make it that much easier to move your customers through their journey.

So now the task for companies is to add the texture.

To make it ownable, and memorable because you won’t be remembered for being frictionless. I’m not endorsing more friction but I am warning against frictionless brands. Aim for a smooth intuitive flow but interrupt, surprise, and delight along the way. This is the role of the brand within the customer journey.

• Tone of voice: personify your brand, be funny, be serious, be anything but boring.

• Visual design: Less the UI that’s good frictionless design but more the content presented within

• All the senses: Sounds, smells

• Nostalgia: Is there history that your brand or your target resonates with?

• Humans: Often human interaction is seen as friction vs interaction. If automation frees us up to do anything it should be to connect better. Face-to-face contact is becoming priceless.

Want to talk more about Brand or Customer Experience? Let’s make some brand friction.

#brandstrategy #brand #CX #CustomerExperience