Consumers expect to be able to do anything, anywhere and at any time in our digital world. They’ve grown accustomed to this level of speed and efficiency because business-to-consumer (B2C) companies have been delivering a frictionless customer experience for years. PayPal and Venmo are great examples of frictionless transactions and instant gratification through digital platforms: There is no need to coordinate, get approval or wait for someone else to execute the transaction. These companies ensure the most efficient payment option by allowing consumers to be autonomous.
The ease that we’ve come to expect in our consumer transactions is only now starting to become available in the enterprise. Business-to-business (B2B) buyers are the same people who participate in B2C transactions on their own time. They don’t become different people with different preferences when they go to work, so they are looking for the same quality of experience they’ve grown accustomed to in their everyday life. However, the enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) world is still evolving toward a model that doesn’t require contacting sales or negotiating a contract prior to delivering value. That said, there are still a few questions around how to manage customers, revenue streams and products that vendors need to answer.
Before Making the Move
Migrating to frictionless allows companies to get out of their customers’ way and enables complete autonomy. To do that, customers have to be able to be successful with a product on their own in a relatively short time period. It’s possible to cover up some product user experience challenges with a traditional sales, demo and heavy-handed onboarding process, but there’s no way around that with a frictionless model. Until companies have a great UX, frictionless won’t work.
One example is ezCater, a nationwide marketplace for business catering that generates a lot of data from more than a dozen applications and needed to replicate it all into its data warehouse. Using a frictionless model, ezCater was able to get started with its data tool in minutes and replicate data into its Amazon Redshift data warehouse. Once the company was successful with its first data sources, it went deeper and got involved in the Singer open source project, building its own integrations to run on Stitch as well.
Frictionless isn’t right for every situation, and a multi-product company may benefit from only adopting it with certain products. When evaluating the frictionless model, companies should prioritize their product where a fast time to value without help is most realistic and focus on making that product successful with a frictionless model. It is not beneficial to spread these efforts across the entire portfolio. Ideally, a small team can focus on this one product autonomously and to iterate quickly without being constrained by the rest of the organization.
Friction Points of Frictionless
Enterprise companies may be hesitant to implement a frictionless model because their products are generally more complex and costly. While there is high risk, there is also the potential for high reward. Making the shift to a frictionless model enables a faster time to value, better customer experience and increased efficiency.
While this is appealing, there are some product categories where frictionless isn’t an option. For example, a large public company isn’t going to sign up for a free 14-day trial of a new accounting system and swipe a credit card at the end if it goes well.
Committing to Success in Frictionless B2B
Transitioning to frictionless involves giving up control and venturing into uncharted territory, so it’s natural to be cautious about taking the plunge. Frictionless requires different skill sets from the traditional sales model, and success requires employees to learn new things. While some initially may not be sure where they fit in, a larger number of happy customers typically makes everyone at the company more effective at their jobs. Instant gratification is extremely valuable, and it allows customers the flexibility to operate on their own schedule.
The frictionless model allows a more accurate evaluation of product capabilities and experience. It creates a higher velocity of customer acquisition, better customer experience, faster sales cycles and a more productive sales team. To take advantage of these benefits, it’s critical to ensure that the move to frictionless will be an intentional and committed one. If companies can devote themselves to frictionless, both the company and their customers will cash out on the transition—just like PayPal and Venmo.
— Jake Stein
