Evan Carmichael compares the Starbucks app, which loads fast and lets you pay with a barcode scan, to PC Plus, which is slow and requires manual loyalty number entry. He says eliminating friction in customer experience drives sales and referrals, and recommends shadowing customers or hiring testers to find pain points.
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Make it easy to do business with you. When it's hard to do business, you know what's happening? Nobody's going to do business with you. You want to reduce the barriers as much as possible and make it easy for customers to work with you. It sounds simple, but so many companies make huge mistakes in this field and it, it blows my mind. And I wanted to share a quick example with you. Somebody's doing it well and somebody's not doing it well. I'm gonna go to an app on my phone. So, uh, the one that I love is Starbucks. So I'm gonna load this up here. See if you guys can see my apps here. This is my homepage. These are the apps that I use on a regular basis. So I've got Dropbox, Navigation, Camera, Feedly, Starbucks, Play Store, Facebook, Calendar, Cineplex, Instapaper, Messaging, Evernote, Zeit, Music Drop and Play, Settings, and Memrise. These are my favorite apps. So from a retail shopping experience, one of the ones that I use constantly is Starbucks. So I have a Starbucks on the ground floor of my building, I'm always drinking Starbucks. I'll click on Starbucks and the thing loads, and in a few seconds I can go find my card. Let's see. And this is my gold card, I've got $37. It automatically recharges for me, so it's super easy. I can pay and it'll scan my barcode and I can get out of the store quickly. Okay, so that's a great example. One of the main reasons why I like my cell phone— I used to not be a cell phone guy, and it'd be hard to go back to not having a cell phone anymore because of the stupid Starbucks app. That's how much I like this app, because carrying around the card— I lost the card one day, and then it was really hard to pay for my drinks. And so the app saved me that day, and I needed to have the app all the time with me. That's like, this is a first world problem, right? But anyway, I love using it. It's really, it's practical for me in my daily life. So this is a great example. Here's a bad example. This is one that infuriates me on a regular basis. It's the PC Plus points program. This is something that I think is only in Canada. But anyway, for those of you building apps or trying to improve your customer experience, here's an example of what not to do. And hopefully you guys from PC Plus are watching this so you can fix up your program. You will notice PC Plus is not on my home screen because I don't like using them. So if I go to my apps— let me load up my apps— here they are. I went yesterday. So first of all, look how long this thing takes to load. It's ridiculous. I'm sitting there trying to check out, need to pull up my points card program, and it takes forever to sign in and then sign in again. Meanwhile, I'm causing a huge lineup. Okay, to actually get my card, I can click on this. So I have 4,000 points. There's my card. And the thing is, you can't scan that barcode. So the person has to type this huge long number into their computer, and they always make mistakes. They've got to type it in 4 or 5 times before they actually get it. And most of the products in the store don't even allow you to collect points. So I'm sitting there, not sure if any of these products that I've just bought actually will give me points, and I'm thinking, do I want to waste time trying to load up my app, trying for that person to be able to punch in the number for me, all to get zero points and cause a huge lineup behind me of frustrated people? This happened to me last night, so I'm frustrated. PC, fix your points program card, it's ridiculous! This should scan on any scanner. My barcode, just like Starbucks, should be able to scan in and track the points, and you should get points for everything. Why do I have to only get points on certain products? Anyway, the program is ridiculous, and so I don't use the card. It's buried on my apps, it's not on my home screen, and I hate using it. If customers hate working with your stuff, guess what? They're not going to use it anymore. So make it easy to do business. I'd love to say, "Hey, I love my PC Plus program." program card. I'm using it all the time, like my Starbucks one. It's on my home screen. I tell people about it. I drive more people to their stores. And instead I'm slamming them because their product sucks, and it wouldn't take a lot of work to make it great. So look at your own company, look at your own products and services, and is it easy to do business with you or not? Try shadowing a customer for a day Go through their experience, hire somebody to look at your website or make a phone call into your company and see what their experience is like. If you can improve their experience, you'll have a dramatic improvement in new business, in referral business, in repeat business for your company and can literally make all the difference in the world for you. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I'd love to hear what you have to think. If there's a program, an app that's doing a really good job for you, leave it below. Or one that sucks, that you gotta tell the guys, "Hey, you need to improve your app," leave it below too. I wanna know about those guys. And if you have a different question for your business, put it in the comment section. I love seeing them come in. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
