THE ART OF EFFORTLESS How great companies deliver world- class effortless experience

Insights from , Zuora, Wix, Thistle and Noa Table of contents

Introduction

Thistle

Patreon

Noa

Zuora

Wix What’s ‘effortless experience’ all about? And why should we care?

What does a Saas company, a website-building platform, a food delivery business, a news publishing app, and a membership platform all have in common?

Give up? They all know what effortless experience looks like and understand the value of getting ‘effortless’ right.

There are a number of factors determining this – one being that customer loyalty and repeat business are achieved not by delighting your customers, but by delivering an effortless experience. Indeed, some of the most successful companies in CX are those with which we hardly notice our interactions. That’s because they do exactly what we need them to do – without the hassle.

Research carried out by Gartner found that the secret to companies mitigating disloyalty is to reduce customer effort. The study, which involved quantitative research exploring the interactions between hundreds of customer service organisations and 97,000 customers, found that the majority of customers (96 percent) who had high- effort experiences reported being disloyal, compared to only 9 percent of customers with low-effort experience.

So what kinds of customer interactions are ones deemed to require high levels of effort? Gartner highlights four: The need to contact a company more than once; being treated like a number or what’s referred to as “generic” service; having to repeat information; and the customer’s perception that it takes an extra effort to resolve an issue.

Additionally, customers now want to interact with brands through more modern, self- service channels and by having convenient access to information and content that empowers them to solve an issue themselves. As technology further advances, what we consider low levels of effort now might feel like friction in ten years’ time. That’s why it’s important that companies continuously explore ways that they can reduce effort for their customers.

At Voxpro - powered by TELUS International, we strive to provide effortless experience throughout all customer interactions. But rather than blow our own trumpet, we decided to check in with five brands to discover how they minimise effort and attempt to remove friction from the customer journey. Not only that, in the following pages, these great companies – Thistle, Patreon, Noa, Zuora and Wix – share with us examples of other brands that inspire them to reduce effort.

We hope this e-book provides you with some nuggets of advice that will help your company in its quest to provide an effortless experience for your customers.

Enjoy!

For more insights from Voxpro - powered by TELUS International on delivering beautiful customer experience visitwww.voxprogroup.com/insights

3 When we think of the food delivery business, we generally consider it a service that involves minimal effort for the customer. This certainly rings true for Thistle, a -based food delivery company whose mission is to make eating nutritious, plant-based foods incredibly convenient and accessible.

Co-founded in 2014 by husband and wife, Ashwin Cheriyan and Shiri Avnery, Thistle began with a focus on cold-pressed juice sold from rented pop-up space within restaurants and stores. While the company achieved reasonable success in its first year, relaunching as a subscription business in May 2015 proved to be a crucial pivot.

Thistle’s service allows customers to choose between three plant-based meals a week up to three meals a day, six days a week plus snacks and juices. In a short time, the company has managed to strike a chord in the food delivery market and since its shift to a subscription model, Thistle has grown by almost 1,030 percent over the past three years.

Given the nature of Thistle’s business, creating an effortless experience for customers is key to its success. Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan says his company has strived to provide an ‘effortless’ service by investing in high-quality customer support from the very start.

“In looking at great direct-to-consumer companies, we found that almost all of them invested heavily in great support – the likes of Zappos, Apple and Warby Parker,” Cheriyan explains. “We wanted to create a company in the healthy foods space that puts the customer first by providing unparalleled support.” Anticipate problems According to Cheriyan, the mandate for Thistle’s CX team is to anticipate problems a customer might encounter before they arise and to take proactive steps to avoid them occurring in the first place. This, he says, has been achieved through swift operational changes, product and engineering improvements, and by providing constant feedback to the culinary development team.

“If done well, a customer may not even realise the effort put in by our customer support team because we anticipated and avoided a likely problem before it ever had a chance to manifest itself,” he says. “That is what makes it effortless.”

4 Seek feedback – even from My Master of Effortless satisfied customers Cheriyan cites Zappos as the first company to really show Cheriyan’s advice for companies – that a business can differentiate itself primarily on the whether they’re in the food delivery strength of a world-class customer experience. “They business or general tech – seeking to obsessed over the customer and, via this obsession, remove as much friction as possible built a world-class business,” he says. “Others that come from the customer journey is to capture to mind include Dollar Shave Club, Amazon, and Trader as much information available from the Joe’s.” people who know best: your customers.

“Ask them constantly for their feedback on what could have been improved during each stage of their journey,” he advises. “Even if a customer has a good experience, you’ll find that there was always room for improvement and some of our best feature ideas and improvements came from customers who had a good experience but were given the chance to make suggestions that would have made the experience even better.” Embrace what seems unrealistic Cheriyan believes that no customer suggestion is too crazy or unrealistic. “You’ll find that even if the proposed solution is unrealistic to implement, the problem that has surfaced may be addressed several other ways,” he says. “Never be satisfied that improvements cannot be made when it comes to improving the customer journey.”

Additionally, some of the most minute details can be the ones that resonate most. “You’ll find that often, the most impactful things are quite small,” says Cheriyan. “In our early days, one customer wrote us a rave review about our service because one of our delivery drivers brought her paper from the curb to her doorstep as he was dropping off her Thistle delivery. This small act of kindness made a massive impact on our customer – to her, we immediately went from being ‘just a service’ to a collection of empathetic and kind people who would go above and beyond to take care of her.”

Key Takeaways

Thistle leaves us with some interesting points to ponder around the delivery of effortless experience.

• Anticipate problems before they happen

• Even when a customer is satisfied, seek their advice on how you can make your product or service even better

• No customer suggestion should be deemed too crazy or unrealistic

• Small acts of kindness can have the greatest impact

For more visit www.thistle.co

5 Maritza Dominguez knows well the tug of war that exists between having the proper security measures in place and creating an effortless experience for customers. The risk operations manager at Patreon – the popular membership platform that helps artists and creators get paid for their work – has operated on both sides of the fence.

She began her CX journey more than a decade ago working as a bilingual customer service agent for an online dating site before transitioning into the area of fraud prevention. Today, heading up risk operations at Patreon, a platform that has over 3 million patrons supporting more than 100,000 creators, one of the major challenges she faces is the ongoing battle against collusion. That is, fraudsters creating fake creator and patron accounts and using stolen credit cards to pay themselves. According to Dominguez, this type of fraud is getting more and more sophisticated.

“In the beginning, when I first started, the collusion was super obvious,” she explains. “You could tell that they put zero effort into it. These days, you’ll get fraudsters who will scrape a or page and, unless you’re looking for specific mistakes that they made, it’s really hard to differentiate between a fraudster page and a real creator page.”

Given the numerous barriers that are needed to protect users and the company against sophisticated fraud such as fake user accounts, how does Patreon ensure that it doesn’t compromise on customer experience? Offer guidance to build trust “When it comes to, for instance, content moderation, taking down a page is a very serious affair for us,” says Dominguez. “We try to do as much as possible to help the creators come to a place where they are within clear guidelines. We carry out as much guidance and interaction with the user as possible until we reach a middle ground. We almost never take someone down outright without trying to work with them to bring their content back within our guidelines, so that’s one way we work to build trust.” Putting barriers in place can show you care “From a fraud standpoint, we try to make it as obvious as possible to creators that sometimes we put up some barriers that add a little more friction to the process,”

6 Dominguez explains. “But it’s not because My Master of Effortless we don’t trust them, it’s because we want to make sure that the number that Dominguez views online merchant Etsy as the poster they see in their balance is what they’re child of effortless experience. “Etsy does a really great job actually going to get.” of letting you know what’s going on in the journey both as a user and as a creator,” she says. “I’ve taken a look For Dominguez, a certain amount of at their fraud policies and their chargeback information. friction is to be expected and customers They do a really good job of making things transparent today are used to it. “I do all my shopping and putting responsibility in the hands of the creator to online so there is a certain amount of the levels that they want.” friction that I’m accustomed to,” she says. “I know they are going to ask me my name, for my card number and maybe a zip code. For these, I’m not going to bat an eyelash.” Don’t cause suspicion In Dominguez’s view, part of developing an effortless experience is about coming to a place where the information a company is asking for isn’t something that is going to cause suspicion. “A lot of times when you ask for too much information, customers ask, ‘why do you need to know that?’ It may result in them dropping out of the transaction. But also, finding the right balance between that and transparency, because I feel that creators and patrons are smart enough and should be aware of some of the things going on behind the scenes.”

Key Takeaways

Being effortless and protecting your customers from security threats is a big ask of any company. However, Patreon demonstrates that with the right approach, a suitable balance can be achieved.

• Any existing friction in the customer journey must be the kind of friction that customers are accustomed to

• Be transparent with customers when it comes to security

• Find the right balance between making things effortless for the customer and pursuing them for personal information can have the greatest impact

For more visit www.patreon.com

7 The idea for Noa was conceived through a recognition by its founders that time- constrained professionals wanted to receive news in a more ‘effortless’ way. That is, a news service that is personalised for consumers by recognising their preferences and delivering it through audio.

Founded by Gareth Hickey and Shane Ennis in 2015, Noa (an acronym for News Over Audio) works with major publishers like Bloomberg, , The Financial Times and The Independent in the UK to enable users to listen to written articles on a wide range of topics while on the go.

As Noa describes it: “We wanted to make engaging with the world’s best journalism more convenient by narrating it and by putting it on a single platform so you can listen while you’re on the way to work, around the home or out for some exercise.”

Given the premise of the service being provided, the guys at Noa know a thing or two about the art of effortless. According to Hickey, in the digital age, for an experience to be effortless it needs to allow you to complete a task – or whatever it is that you set out to do – with minimal conscious thought.

“It needs to guide you every step of the way,” he explains. “If you must stop and think, it’s no longer effortless. It is worth noting that a truly effortless experience does not exist in any fields, but the goal should always be to reduce the time it takes to do something. I would always compromise user interface (UI) in favour of user experience (UX). There is often a trade-off.” Have a carefully thought out user journey Noa strives to achieve ‘effortless’ by considering everything in terms of the ‘job’ that the consumer is trying to do.

“In Noa’s case, our subscribers come to us because they want to understand a topic in the news,” Hickey explains. “An effortless experience is one that makes this job of learning about a topic very easy. It starts with a carefully thought out user journey and plain messaging. Product performance and reliability is a close second. One thing that doesn’t necessarily factor in an effortless experience is a beautiful interface. It’s

8 certainly nice to offer a slick UI, but it My Master of Effortless shouldn’t be confused with UX.” Hickey points to and as companies that deliver Think of the consumer as a world-class effortless experience given how secure someone who has a ‘job to and easy they make on-boarding for users. “Neither are effortless, but they’re super low friction,” he says. be done’ “Duolingo is another great product that we admire for Hickey says understanding why the creating a low effort learning experience. It brings you on consumer uses your product or service a very conscious onboarding journey by asking you a small is a great starting point to removing amount of short and easy questions. Your responses to as much friction as possible from the these are central to your learning experience. This is the customer journey. “Once you think of the case of having the user make a small time investment up consumer as someone who has a ‘job to front, in order to reduce friction thereafter.” be done’ you can begin to remove steps from the user journey, or introduce new steps that save them time in the long run,” he advises. Communicate clearly and consistently Clear and consistent messaging is also crucial. “If you either omit messaging – perhaps in favour of an improved UI – or try to be clever with how you word something, then you’re adding friction,” says Hickey. “Presume absolutely nothing and ensure that close to zero thought is needed. Finally, be very selective about the options you present to your users. If there are too many, or if they’re not sufficiently differentiated, then you’ll upset the user journey.”

Key Takeaways

Noa’s approach to ‘effortless’ centres on carefully examining all steps of the customer’s journey in order to reduce or remove friction.

• Enable a user to complete a task with minimal conscious thought

• Be very selective about the options you present to your users

• Have a carefully thought out user journey and provide plain messaging

• Consider having the user make a small time investment up front in order to reduce friction thereafter For more visit www.newsoveraudio.com

9 Zuora was born out of the idea that much of the world of business was moving towards a subscription-based model. That meant consumer habits were changing as they became more interested in not just buying one product, but subscribing to them as a service. For that to work, a company needs to adopt a system that recognises how subscriptions are different than one-time charges.

That’s where Zuora comes in – it creates a cloud-based software platform on a subscription basis that enables any company in any industry to successfully launch, manage, and transform into a subscription business. Zuora has some big names on its books, some of which have gone on to have successful IPOs such as Zendesk, DocuSign, Box and SurveyMonkey.

Zuora’s clients are not only software companies. It also counts the likes of Briggs & Stratton, Toyota, Ricoh and Bloomberg as customers.

“From smart floors to porta potties, we’re seeing even the most unlikely industries adopt subscriptions,” says Marlene Summers, Vice President of Customer Support Services and Community at Zuora. “From an industry perspective, the manufacturing sector is booming due to the rise of the Internet of Things in the subscription economy. And it’s a global phenomenon.”

This increased uptake in recent years by companies moving towards a subscription- based model reflects a growing desire by customers to access products and services in a more effortless way. You just have to look at some of the masters of the subscription economy like Netflix and Spotify to understand how some subscriptions can blend seamlessly into our everyday lives. Learn from your customers For Summers, taking learnings from customer insights and putting them into action is the most efficient way for any company to be successful at effortless experience. “With lots of applications and platforms, B2B enterprise software included, there’s a feeling that processes are often more difficult than they need to be, and that makes people not enjoy using them,” she says.

“Effortless experience, for me, is achieved by thought leaders capturing the experience of their existing customers and taking those learnings to improve standards. It’s about

10 looking for customer experience feedback My Master of Effortless and identifying elements in the customer journey that are unnecessarily hard, and As a lover and advocate of subscription-based brands, trying to make improvements so that the Summers picks out security firm Clear as a company that experience becomes as close to effortless provides an excellent standard of CX while expecting as possible.” minimum effort from its customers. Through its membership, Clear’s service enables you to skip queues Effortless should help at a number of airports and other venues. “Whether it’s accelerate business or for improving your standard of travel, or simply helping you feel more important, it’s a fantastic service!” says simplify life Summers. Summers highlights e-signature technology company DocuSign as an example of a brand that delivers world- class effortless experience. The company describes its mission of “accelerating business and simplifying life for companies and people around the world”.

“DocuSign really stands out for me,” says Summers. “Electronic signatures seem like a simple need, but DocuSign are the leaders in making it really easy. I know it’s DocuSign I’m using, but I think most people don’t need to know that it’s DocuSign. Its service is absolutely effortless!”

When customers or users have limited knowledge about which company they are interacting with and when, it’s usually a good sign that the brand knows precisely how to do ‘effortless’ well.

Key Takeaways

The key message from Summers is that it’s your customers that possess the answers to how a company can deliver world-class effortless experience.

• Customers don’t enjoy interactions if they are not easy

• Identify elements in the customer journey that are unnecessarily hard

• Capture customer feedback and act on the findings

• Strive to make customer interaction as seamless as possible For more visit www.zuora.com

11 With over 150 million users across 190 countries, Wix is a freemium platform that allows any user to develop an online presence – that can be anything from sophisticated e-commerce stores to personal blogs.

Founded in 2006 by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan, Wix came about inadvertently when the trio were attempting to construct a website that would form the basis of another start-up idea. However, having quickly discovered that creating their own website was difficult, frustrating and very costly, they had their light bulb moment – to build a platform that empowered anyone to create their own website with no coding or design skills needed.

Alon Mor is Head of Customer Solutions at Wix, and he says the factors determining the delivery of effortless experience have changed significantly in recent years.

“Back in the day, it was all about customer engagement – be there twenty-four-seven and be ready to talk to a user whenever the user wants,” he explains. “That’s still true, but another new layer has been added.”

That new layer is the provision of tools that help customers solve problems themselves with ease. “People today, they want to try to solve things on their own before engaging with anyone, and I think this is key here,” says Mor. “It’s about having a fantastic knowledge base, having as many solutions as possible that you can offer your users before spending time with them – because we appreciate our users’ time.” Effortless interactions start with fantastic content This approach is evident when you log on to Wix.com and discover a vast range of educational content that makes it much easier for users to navigate challenges that arise when building their site.

“Before they spend time asking for a call back or chat or sending us an email, we want to make sure that they have all the information that they need in the easiest way for them to digest,” says Mor. “Some of that information can be very technical and complicated so we go above and beyond to make sure that we have the best tutorials and videos that can explain to our users whatever it is that they want to learn. If they still want to talk to someone, we’ll always be there. Effortless interactions start with fantastic content.”

12 If the content is not enough, My Master of Effortless let’s talk! The company that most impresses Mor when it comes Having a strong knowledge base is not to being ‘effortless’ is Amazon. “Considering the amount sufficient on its own in order to minimise of traffic that this huge company needs to deal with on a effort for the customer. The option daily basis, and the complexity of that traffic, Amazon has must exist for a customer to quickly and built a fantastic mechanism that starts with trying to solve effortlessly obtain customer support your own problems yourself,” he says. “Here’s everything if they are unable to solve an issue that you need to know. But if that doesn’t work out for themselves. you, we’ll pick up the phone and we’ll talk to you instantly. I think this company is doing a great job.” “We are offering them the option to read about it themselves and to see if they want to solve it themselves but they don’t have to,” says Mor. “At the end of each article, they have the option to say if it was helpful or not and if someone is saying it was not, they are being offered the option of contacting us right away. When we say effortless interaction, this is what it means.

“So here’s the content, here’s the information that you might want or you might need, but if this is not it, let’s talk right away!”

For Mor, having a massive workforce was the solution to effortless experience a decade ago but these days, it’s about creating the right funnels and the right automatic solutions within those funnels before a customer ends up speaking to a human being. “This is the name of the game – creating smart funnels and at the end of the funnel, you have the option to interact with a human.”

Key Takeaways

It is clear that Alon sees the provision of tools to allow customers to solve their own problems as the first port of call in achieving ‘effortless’. However, he doesn’t dismiss the need for human interaction either.

• Provide customers with the tools that help them solve problems with ease

• Appreciate your users’ time

• If your knowledge base doesn’t suffice, provide human touch right away

• Learn from customer interactions and act on them For more visit www.wix.com

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