Metrics like churn and teams like customer success exist because we customers often have negative experiences with our products, despite our best efforts.
A senior executive requested input on the top 10 customer pain points, and responses revealed both overlap and significant differences. Rather than replying immediately, I investigated customer complaints and found that eight teams were independently identifying issues using different tools and processes, with no communication among them. This fragmentation underscores the need for a systematic approach to address customer pain points and improve their experiences.
Given the growing demands of product launches, teams often are in a situation where they have to sacrifice the need to improve a customer experience in the interest of building the next new feature. While new features can attract more customers, the quality of the existing experience keeps them engaged. Neglecting this aspect can lead to churn. Balancing innovation with continuous improvement is essential for creating a product that not only meets but exceeds user expectations.
A friction log—an ongoing record of customer obstacles and pain points—can be a valuable tool for product teams. It is a detailed record of obstacles, pain points, and inefficiencies that customers encounter while interacting with your product. Systematically addressing these issues enhances overall customer satisfaction and improves retention.
Balancing innovation with continuous improvement is essential for creating a product that not only meets but exceeds user expectations.
Friction logs should be holistic but need not be exhaustive
To create a comprehensive friction log, it is essential to gather data from multiple sources to capture a full spectrum of user pain points and challenges. Here are some key sources:
Customer Service Calls: Reveal recurring issues that may not appear in other data.
CSAT Surveys: Provide direct feedback on customer dissatisfaction.
User Research: Offers qualitative insights through surveys and usability tests.
Analytics Data: Identifies friction points through metrics like drop-off rates and click patterns.
Product Reviews and Social Media: Capture unfiltered user sentiment.
App Reviews: Highlight common frustrations specific to the mobile experience.
NPS Feedback: Provides insights into what customers love and what frustrates them.
Internal Team Feedback: Offers different perspectives on user pain points.
Competitor Analysis: Identifies industry-wide issues and areas for improvement.
While friction logs need to be holistic, it does not have to be exhaustive. Neither does it have to be holistic right from the beginning. The best approach is to start collecting feedback from a couple of sources, and keep adding others.
Turning a Friction Log into a Product Backlog
The goal of a friction log is not to improve our internal processes but to transform it into a product backlog and actively work it.
Start with customer impact: It is essential to understand not just the friction but who is experiencing it. Despite our best efforts, since our resources are limited and we can only fix a portion of the issues, it is important to prioritize friction points that are most painful for the most important customer segment.
Categorize for clarity: Group issues by common themes. Categorizing helps in understanding patterns and setting clear priorities. It also helps teams solve for large groups of issues through thoughtful product improvements.
Use data to guide decisions: Leverage quantitative data (e.g., frequency of issues, number of support tickets) and qualitative insights (e.g., user feedback) to determine the severity and urgency of each issue.
Align with product goals: Ensure that the friction points you prioritize align with your overall product vision and strategic goals. Not every problem needs to be solved immediately. Focus on those that help you achieve your objectives.
Involve cross-functional teams: Bring together engineering, design, and customer support teams early in the process. Their insights can help assess technical feasibility, design implications, and support impacts, ensuring a holistic approach to prioritization.
Create a clear action plan: Translate friction log into actionable user stories or tasks. Make sure each task is clear, concise, and has a defined outcome, so teams know exactly what needs to be done.
Measure Progress: Define metrics to track improvements like reduction in customer support tickets, CSAT, churn rate, etc., and continuously address issues causing negative experiences to improve these metrics.
Communicate Progress: Teams closest to customers share customer issues to product teams but are often left without any updates that they can either communicate to their customers or know that the issues are resolved.
Measure Progress
To measure the effectiveness of resolving friction points, focus on these key metrics:
Reduction in customer support tickets
Improved CSAT or other similar metrics
Increased engagement and retention
Enhanced customer effort/efficiency
Reduced churn
Maintaining a Friction Log ultimately leads to a better product. By systematically addressing customer friction, we can enhance user satisfaction and reduce churn.
Getting a jumpstart to reducing friction
While managing your friction log as an actively managed backlog is a great way to improve customer experience, there is benefit in thinking of giving it a kick start through a few techniques.
Hackathons: Host hackathons where cross-functional teams focus on solving specific friction points.
Dedicated capacity allocation: Allocate a set percentage of sprint capacity (e.g., 10-20%) to address friction points regularly. This ensures ongoing improvement without disrupting new feature development.
User feedback days: Set aside a day each month for the product team to interact directly with customers, review feedback, and implement quick fixes. This hands-on approach can reveal insights that traditional feedback methods might miss.
Friction triage teams: Create small, agile teams dedicated to triaging and resolving friction points. These teams can quickly handle minor issues, freeing up the main product teams for larger projects.
Gamification: Turn friction resolution into a game by awarding points for each issue resolved. Offer prizes or recognition to motivate team members to contribute more.
Published friction log dashboard: Create a public dashboard that shows the progress of friction log resolutions. This builds accountability within the team and trust with customers by demonstrating active engagement with their feedback.
These approaches can help ensure that friction logs are not just a list of problems but a catalyst for continuous improvement and innovation in your product.
Other Resources to learn from
Stripe’s approach to Friction Logs
Sachin Rekhi’s video on Feedback Rivers