How ‘positive friction’ can create better experiences

When it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, fric­tion is as frowned upon as con­fus­ing web design and poor­ly trained staff. It annoys con­sumers and can cost sales. At least that’s been the pre­vail­ing view of busi­ness­es in recent years. But what if they’re wrong? What if some fric­tion is (whis­per it) a good thing?

“Busi­ness­es have the cur­rent mind­set that the pin­na­cle of great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is a fric­tion­less trans­ac­tion,” says Amir Noo­ri­ala, chief com­mer­cial offi­cer at Call­sign, which pro­vides iden­ti­ty autho­ri­sa­tion and authen­ti­ca­tion solu­tions. “Instead, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is increas­ing­ly about cre­at­ing a per­son­alised jour­ney that delights the cus­tomer.” 

Up to now, busi­ness­es have focused on using tech­nol­o­gy pure­ly to min­imise fric­tion and cre­ate seam­less cus­tomer jour­neys. “How­ev­er, it’s time to change that men­tal­i­ty because it’s not always about elim­i­nat­ing the fric­tion out of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion alto­geth­er, it’s about putting it in the right place and at the right lev­el for each indi­vid­ual,” says Noo­ri­ala.

It could be argued that banks and mer­chants have only been try­ing to give cus­tomers what they want: smooth, has­sle-free expe­ri­ences that don’t require them to re-enter a pass­word or retrieve an SMS code from their phone. But it’s increas­ing­ly hard for busi­ness­es to strike the right bal­ance between elim­i­nat­ing fraud and man­ag­ing fric­tion, says Gus Tom­lin­son, gen­er­al man­ag­er at GBG, an iden­ti­ty man­age­ment and fraud pre­ven­tion com­pa­ny. 

“Why? Because the com­pe­ti­tion is huge and con­sumer atten­tion is short lived. Busi­ness­es know they need to deliv­er a seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to attract and retain cus­tomers, but as the world speeds up busi­ness­es should be care­ful not to go too far,” she cau­tions.

In ecom­merce, cut­ting five sec­onds from the aver­age trans­ac­tion can reduce cart aban­don­ment and ensure the trans­ac­tion is com­plet­ed, says Noo­ri­ala. But if account infor­ma­tion is com­pro­mised, the con­sumer will have to work with their bank to address the prob­lem, wait for a new card to be issued and man­age a whole new authen­ti­ca­tion process, which is the very oppo­site of a fric­tion-free expe­ri­ence.

Taking a personal approach to friction

Busi­ness­es that are pri­ori­tis­ing fric­tion­less expe­ri­ences above all else also risk alien­at­ing some cus­tomers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to onboard­ing process­es or large finan­cial trans­ac­tions. 

“A quick process or trans­ac­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly one that’s trust­ed by the cus­tomer,” says Tom­lin­son. Research car­ried out by GBG in Decem­ber found less than a sixth (15 per cent) of cus­tomers think it’s impor­tant for account open­ing process­es to be quick and less than a quar­ter (23 per cent) think sim­plic­i­ty is impor­tant. More than half (52 per cent) believe secu­ri­ty should be the main pri­or­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Tom­lin­son points out there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. The research also found younger cus­tomers, aged between 18 and 34, were less inter­est­ed in the sign-up process being secure and more con­cerned about speed and ease of use.

Like­wise, some con­sumers will pre­fer bio­met­ric login process­es and oth­ers the more tra­di­tion­al pass­word method. Pref­er­ences can also vary across com­pa­nies, with cus­tomers wel­com­ing less fric­tion from well-known or reg­u­lar­ly used com­pa­nies and more from new or unknown ones. 

Some organ­i­sa­tions adopt the con­cept of a “soft login” from con­sumers’ known devices, says James Squires, lead con­sul­tant of tech strat­e­gy at agency Wun­der­man Thomp­son Tech­nol­o­gy. This might mean, for exam­ple, that ini­tial­ly reg­is­ter­ing or enter­ing login cre­den­tials would enable fea­tures such as per­son­alised con­tent or the abil­i­ty to add items to wish lists or a shop­ping bas­ket with­out re-enter­ing details. Login cre­den­tials would only be need­ed again at the point of mak­ing a pur­chase.

Oca­do is a good exam­ple of a com­pa­ny that has got this right: users can choose prod­ucts and arrange deliv­er­ies, and only have to sub­mit their cre­den­tials when plac­ing an order. Ama­zon goes a step fur­ther by offer­ing their cus­tomers the option to switch on one-click pur­chas­ing, although this is only for deliv­ery to an address that already has a pay­ment method paired with it, Squires points out. 

Harnessing positive friction

Even when fric­tion does trig­ger some neg­a­tive emo­tions in the con­sumer, these are often coun­ter­bal­anced by the sense that the com­pa­ny is tak­ing suf­fi­cient care with their per­son­al infor­ma­tion. 

“Try­ing to elim­i­nate, rather than har­ness, neg­a­tive emo­tions like fric­tion can be a mis­take,” says Joana de Quin­tanil­ha, prin­ci­pal ana­lyst at For­rester. 

For exam­ple, when Fideli­ty Invest­ments exam­ined the jour­ney cus­tomers take to grant oth­ers per­mis­sion to trade on their accounts, they found that mak­ing this process com­plete­ly fric­tion­less was not some­thing their cus­tomers appre­ci­at­ed.

“They did­n’t mind the extra hur­dles and time it took if it meant Fideli­ty was per­form­ing back­ground checks and tak­ing oth­er secu­ri­ty pre­cau­tions to keep their accounts safe,” Quin­tanil­ha explains. “A lit­tle bit of fric­tion in that par­tic­u­lar con­text actu­al­ly cre­at­ed con­fi­dence in Fideli­ty and the safe­ty of their data and accounts.”

The way cus­tomers respond to fric­tion often relates to the val­ue of the infor­ma­tion that could be com­pro­mised. “Cus­tomers will nat­u­ral­ly expect and tol­er­ate more fric­tion for high-val­ue tar­gets like large mon­e­tary trans­fers and med­ical records than they would for their dig­i­tal mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tion,” says Jenn Markey, direc­tor for iden­ti­ty solu­tions at Entrust, which enables trust­ed iden­ti­ties, pay­ments and data pro­tec­tion.

Fric­tion and secu­ri­ty aren’t mutu­al­ly exclu­sive, of course. Bio­met­rics and secure tokens matched to a ver­i­fied ID on file can reduce fric­tion with­out com­pro­mis­ing secu­ri­ty. Smart­phone scans of dri­ving licences and pass­ports for remote iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, as well as proof of “live­ness” via short video record­ings, also scratch the con­sumer itch for both secure and rel­a­tive­ly fuss-free account-open­ing process­es.

“New tech­nolo­gies that enable busi­ness­es to reduce fric­tion pro­vide bet­ter secu­ri­ty than before,” says Nick Caley, vice pres­i­dent, UK, Ire­land, Mid­dle East and Africa, at Forg­e­Rock, an iden­ti­ty and access man­age­ment soft­ware com­pa­ny. “This is because tra­di­tion­al user­names and pass­words are huge secu­ri­ty risks.”

The World Eco­nom­ic Forum found four out of five data breach­es are caused by weak or stolen pass­words, usu­al­ly because peo­ple recy­cle the same cre­den­tials across accounts in an effort to remem­ber them.

Digital security education

The Invest­ing and Sav­ing Alliance (TISA) is spear­head­ing devel­op­ment of a dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty scheme for UK finan­cial ser­vices that will allow con­sumers to set up a reusable dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty. It aims to reduce fric­tion for a range of dif­fer­ent trans­ac­tions, such as open­ing an account, that should increase con­ver­sion rates while deliv­er­ing a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

The project team has under­tak­en research that found con­sumers want both secu­ri­ty and ease of access. “The crit­i­cal issue is to explain how their per­son­al data is going to be used and that dif­fer­ent checks can hap­pen in the back­ground, such as anti-imper­son­ation checks,” says Har­ry Weber-Brown, dig­i­tal inno­va­tion direc­tor at TISA.

As such, the dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty scheme is devel­op­ing a con­sumer pledge to help users under­stand the safe­ty prin­ci­ples and pro­tec­tions in place and what recourse is avail­able should there be a breach of their data. This will be cou­pled with a trust mark that can only be dis­played by organ­i­sa­tions that are accred­it­ed to the scheme, which Weber-Brown says will fos­ter trust with­in a low-fric­tion cus­tomer jour­ney.

Tech­nol­o­gy is also get­ting bet­ter at work­ing out whether it’s real­ly you try­ing to log in or insti­gate a trans­ac­tion, based on a series of clues that deter­mine an over­all risk score. If nec­es­sary, addi­tion­al lay­ers of secu­ri­ty can be trig­gered to ver­i­fy your iden­ti­ty, but most users will enjoy a fric­tion­less expe­ri­ence. 

“It will take a bit of edu­ca­tion,” says Steven Rees-Pull­man, senior vice pres­i­dent, inter­na­tion­al, at Auth0, an iden­ti­ty man­age­ment plat­form for app builders and devel­op­ers. “But what’s excit­ing is adap­tive inno­va­tions rep­re­sent a turn­ing point where tech­nol­o­gy will do more of the work for us with the same, and very often bet­ter, secu­ri­ty.”