Increase Sales Up To 50% When You Reduce Customer Friction

Are you driving potential customers away because they can’t contact you easily enough? Customer friction is a major cause of lost sales, with 50% of consumers saying they would switch to a different vendor because of friction in the buying experience. It’s essential to identify what’s standing in the way of customers making a purchase so you can make their journey as smooth as possible.

We’ve all had poor experiences trying to purchase something online. You have a question about a product and have to fill out a long Contact Us form and wait for an email. If the company takes several days to get back to you, will you wait or go to a competitor?

Then there are self-service portals. In theory, they sound good. After all, 67% of customers prefer to make a purchase without even talking to a salesperson. But the problem is that these portals are often difficult to navigate and don’t provide the necessary information.

And when prospects do need to speak to someone before making a decision, businesses make it hard for them to reach out: Chatbots that offer no option to speak to a human agent, needing to login to a customer account to talk to someone, contact details buried in another part of the website.

With so many other options out there, why bother to jump through hoops to reach a company? A recent study showed that 77% of consumers who had a negative experience trying to contact a company decided not to purchase.

Make sure you aren’t putting your potential customers through experiences like this.

4 Ways to Reduce Customer Friction

Here’s how to give your prospective customers a great experience when they visit your website or social pages or search for you online. The smoother their customer journey, the more likely they are to make a purchase.

Make Information Easy to Find

When prospects are considering a product, they don’t want to search all over a website to get basic information like pricing and features. The basic information about your product must be clearly available.

As soon as someone visits your website, they should understand what your product does and how it can benefit them. To provide further pre-purchase information, set up FAQ in a prominent place. It’s often quicker for prospects to get answers to these FAQ from an automated chat.

Consider setting up a website chat widget to answer FAQ automatically. When people message a business, they expect fast replies and automation gives them that.

One survey showed that 74% of customers prefer chatbots for finding quick answers to simple questions. Even if they have a question that can’t be answered, an auto-reply can help manage their expectations of when they can hear from a human agent.

Optimize Your Chatbots and Train Your AI

There’s nothing more frustrating than a chatbot that doesn’t understand what you’re asking. When used correctly, chatbots save time and provide customers the information they need faster. But a chatbot that keeps going in circles will drive prospects away, and they’ll likely never come back.

Developments in conversational AI allow for greater flexibility with questions or answers, but AI requires training. For example, Respond AI encourages users to add knowledge sources so that AI is equipped with full knowledge of your company and product.

You can also train it to recognize cues that the customer requires human intervention, such as asking to speak to a real person. It should then assign the conversation to a human agent and let the customer know when an agent will be available to assist them.

Enable a Range of Ways to Contact You

If prospects need to contact a human to answer questions or a conversation with a salesperson is required before making a purchase, it should be immediately obvious how to contact you.

A web chat widget as mentioned above is a great way to provide options for them to contact you on their preferred channel. Chat options on your social pages also allow people to get in touch easily when they’re not on your website.

To make it easy for people to contact you when they search for you online, add Google Business Messages to your Google Business Profile.

Many customers prefer to contact businesses over instant messaging, with 82% making a purchase after communicating with a brand via Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

An omnichannel inbox allows customers to contact you across channels while all messages go to a central inbox so you won’t miss anything. Choose a conversation management platform that’s a Google Business Messages partner to enable prospects to contact you through that as well.

Shorten or Eliminate Contact Forms

Having to fill out a long contact form puts leads off. Ask for only the most essential details, or better yet, eliminate contact forms altogether. You can learn more about how to do this in our newsletter on contact form alternatives.

Rather than using a contact form, if prospects contact you through an instant messaging channel, you’ll receive their contact details, for example, their WhatsApp phone number, as soon as they send you a message.

Give Your Customers a Smooth Journey at Every Step

What are you doing to remove customer friction? Let us know in the comments if you’re implementing any of these ideas.

For best results with most of these suggestions, you’ll need a conversation management platform like respond.io. That way, prospects can contact you on any channel, and you’ll never miss a message. Our own customers have seen a 20% increase in conversions after implementing an omnichannel inbox and automating replies to inquiries.

Automation and AI make it easy to reply instantly and answer most common inquiries so some prospects may become customers without even needing to converse with a human.

If you’d like to learn more about marketing and sales over instant messaging, don’t forget to subscribe. In our next newsletter, we’ll share insights on how quality conversations help educational service providers enroll students faster.