7 Proven Tips to Reduce Customer Effort and Boost Loyalty

Customer loyalty is the holy grail for any business. Loyal customers buy more, refer friends, and are more forgiving of mistakes. But in today‘s competitive landscape, earning that loyalty is harder than ever.

One of the most overlooked keys to customer loyalty is reducing customer effort – how easy or difficult it is for customers to get what they need from your company. According to research by CEB (now Gartner), "96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience."

In other words, the easier you can make it for customers to do business with you, the more loyal they will be over the long run. Here are 7 proven tips to reduce customer effort and drive loyalty:

1. Make it effortless to contact support

When customers have a question or problem, they want to reach someone who can help as quickly and easily as possible. To make support more effortless:

• Provide multiple ways to get in touch (phone, email, chat, social media, etc.) so customers can use the channel they prefer
• Clearly display contact info on your website, product, packaging, etc. so it‘s easy to find in a moment of need
• Staff support during the hours your customers need it most, ideally 24/7 for urgent issues
• Minimize transfers between agents and wait times with proper staffing, routing and training

For example, Amazon puts its contact info front and center and even provides an estimated wait time for each channel:

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2. Offer robust self-service options

Many customers today prefer to find answers on their own before contacting support. Effective self-service can greatly reduce effort by empowering customers to quickly get what they need. Some key elements of great self-service:

• A comprehensive knowledge base with FAQs, how-to articles, and troubleshooting guides on all core topics
• Contextual help embedded in your website or product that anticipates and addresses common customer questions
• Video tutorials, webinars and other multimedia content demonstrating product features and use cases
• An active community forum where customers can ask questions and get answers from each other or your team

Check out how Canva provides an extensive library of help content right where customers need it in the product:

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3. Streamline your user experience

The design of your website, product and core customer journeys has a huge impact on perceived effort. Look for ways to make your UX as instinctive and frictionless as possible:

• Align navigation, layout and functionality with customer expectations and mental models
• Simplify and optimize high-frequency flows like signing up, checking out, upgrading, etc.
• Proactively help customers succeed with personalized onboarding, tips, and guidance
• Continuously gather user feedback and rapidly iterate to remove rough edges in the experience

Stripe is often praised for its elegant and intuitive developer experience that makes it incredibly easy to start accepting payments:

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4. Empower your support team

Your support team is on the front lines of customer effort every day. Equipping them with the right people, skills and tools is crucial for delivering low-effort service:

• Hire candidates with strong communication, empathy and problem-solving skills
• Provide in-depth training on your product, policies and processes as well as soft skills
• Trust your agents to use good judgment and resolve issues without always needing approval
• Give agents a 360-degree view of the customer with a robust CRM and support platforms
• Measure and reward agents based on the quality of the experience vs. just volume and speed

Zappos is legendary for empowering its support team to "wow" customers, like the 10-hour customer service call that set a world record.

5. Communicate proactively

Many support interactions are caused by unclear or lack of communication. You can cut down on customer effort by proactively sharing relevant information at the right times:

• Set expectations early and often about how your product works, what‘s included, timelines, policies, etc.
• Share product updates, usage tips, and other valuable info to help customers get more value
• Alert customers promptly to any product issues, outages, or shipping delays and provide workarounds
• Check in with customers after key milestones to get ahead of potential challenges or concerns

For instance, Uber does a great job communicating with riders about their trip status, driver location, estimated timing, and any issues that arise:

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6. Make it right when things go wrong

Even with the best intentions, every company makes mistakes or falls short of expectations sometimes. How you handle those situations is a key driver of customer loyalty. To turn a negative experience around:

• Take ownership, apologize sincerely, and act quickly to make things right
• Empower your team to bend policies and make exceptions to accommodate customers
• Provide compensation for major issues commensurate with the scope of the problem
• Circle back with the customer afterward to ensure they are fully satisfied with the resolution

Chewy has earned a stellar reputation for going above and beyond to delight customers, especially when remedying problems. For example, they‘ve sent flowers to customers whose pets have passed away.

7. Measure and improve customer effort

Finally, to make a real impact on customer effort, you need a systematic way to gauge and enhance the experience over time. Some ways to do that:

• Survey customers after interactions to collect Customer Effort Score (CES) feedback
• Analyze unsolicited feedback, complaint trends, and churn reasons to identify effort hotspots
• Journey map your customer experience to highlight and eliminate high-friction touchpoints
• Regularly review your CES and other effort KPIs to track progress and set improvement goals

As an example, Intuit has a dedicated team that conducts thousands of customer interviews and analyzes over 50,000 support interactions to find ways to simplify its products:

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Reducing customer effort is one of the most impactful things you can do to increase loyalty and retention. By following these 7 tips, you can identify and eliminate points of friction to create more effortless experiences. While it requires ongoing focus and work, the rewards of higher CLV, referrals, and customer love are more than worth it.