Later on, I saw another post with a similar sentiment.
And a few weeks earlier, I came across another one — this time from comedian KevOnStage reacting to a viral post about the frustration someone experiences every time they try to search for anything in the Gmail app.
Taken together, these posts — and the comments beneath them — point to something important:
Many big brands still have a lot of friction in the products and customer experiences they deliver.
Consumers feel that friction. They’re frustrated by it. And increasingly, they’re wondering whether brand leadership is even aware of — or cares about — the less-than-great experiences customers have with their products.
Independent of what the CEOs of LinkedIn, Microsoft, or Google do, one thing is clear:
If you’re a brand leader, you should care deeply about any friction your customers experience throughout their journey with you.
Because friction is the enemy of growth.
A few weeks ago, when I interviewed Allyson Witherspoon, the CMO of Nissan, she put it plainly: today’s consumers have very little tolerance for friction.
And social media makes that reality visible every day.
Consumers may not use the term “friction,” but they’re constantly sharing the moments when brands make their lives harder than they need to be.
If growth is your goal, waiting for customers to complain about friction online isn’t the strategy.
A better approach is to actively look for it.
Examine the friction that might exist in:
your products
your communications
and the overall customer experiences you deliver.
Then work to remove it wherever possible.
Even better is designing friction out from the beginning.
That requires understanding where customers commonly experience friction — and recognizing that those friction points can vary significantly depending on identity, context, and lived experience.
What frustrates one customer might not affect another at all.
And that’s one of the defining challenges for modern marketers: creating experiences that work well for the many different identities represented among the people you serve.
At Nissan, that means striving to design experiences that are as frictionless as possible for a broad range of consumers.
Their approach works for them.
Yours may involve a mix of intentional design, deeper customer feedback, user testing, audits, and simply spending more time getting closer to the people you serve.
But the larger point remains:
Ignoring friction that already exists — or failing to look for it in the first place — will eventually slow your growth.
If you want to hear more about how brands can design experiences for different types of consumers, you can listen to my full conversation with Allyson Witherspoon here:
Customer Experience As Growth Strategy: Nissan CMO on Designing for Different Consumer Needs | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify.
Talk soon,
Sonia