When have you seen force or friction impact a company’s ability to grow?

[mbarba]

Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is integral to taking an inbound approach to business and speeding up your company’s flywheel.

Why are those important? Let’s define terms first:

• Inbound is a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust.
• The flywheel is a model adapted by HubSpot to explain the momentum you gain when you align your entire organization around delivering a remarkable customer experience. Rather than thinking of your business as a funnel, with leads coming in at the top and customers coming out at the bottom, think about your business as a circle — as a flywheel.

When thinking about how to spin your company’s flywheel faster with RevOps, there are two important concepts to keep in mind:

1. Force is what allows your business to scale by spinning your flywheel faster and faster. This looks like when your customer has a great customer experience and tells their friends and colleagues about it.
2. Friction is what grinds your business to a halt, if not addressed. This is when your company provides your customers with a bad customer experience, and they also tell their friends and colleagues about it. In turn, this slows down your flywheel.

Here’s what I’d love to hear:

1. Share a time when you had an amazing customer experience and you saw a company grow faster and faster because of their wonderful customer care.
2. Share a time when you had a poor customer experience (please don’t name names or organizations) and how you saw that type of poor care affect their business.

[ALagos2]

Positive Customer Experience Example with BionicGym

When I first purchased my BionicGym, I was excited to try it out but needed some help understanding the device settings and getting started with a workout routine. I reached out to BionicGym’s customer service, and within hours, I received a personalized video response from a representative. They explained how to set up the device and even recommended a beginner’s workout plan tailored to my fitness goals.

What amazed me was the follow-up: a few weeks later, they checked in to see how I was progressing and offered tips for intensifying my workouts. This proactive approach made me feel like a valued customer and motivated me to stick with the program. BionicGym’s commitment to customer care created a loyal user out of me and, judging by the growing community and positive reviews online, clearly contributed to their increasing popularity. It was evident that the company’s focus on customer success drove their rapid expansion in the fitness tech market.

Poor Customer Experience Example

I once had a different experience with a fitness tech brand that left me disappointed. After purchasing a wearable workout device, I found it confusing to use and had trouble syncing it with my phone. I reached out to the company’s customer support, but it took them days to respond, and when they did, the response was generic and unhelpful. When I replied with more specific questions, I received no follow-up.

A few months later, I noticed that the company had stopped releasing updates for the device and that their social media presence had dwindled. It became apparent that they were losing customers due to their lack of responsiveness and poor customer support. This experience highlighted how essential it is for companies, especially in the tech space, to prioritize customer care to build trust and ensure long-term success.

[KimTenove]

1. My mobile banking is amazing and now offers all services a traditional B&M location would. They are quick to reply to urgent requests via their online chat and have self-serve options within the app, even to flag suspicious activity.

2. My telecoms provider continuously overbilled me for months, despite multiple conversations/escalations with their support team. My refund took another 6 months to receive - I will never use this company's services again.

[Francesca_sl]

Positive experience: With my bank, I had my purse stolen, losing my phone and cards. A friend lent me her phone to call the bank. The agent followed all the protocols but also offered me two helpful alternatives and provided a sense of calm and security. This was a significant plus for retaining me as a customer and sharing my positive experience with my close circle.

Negative experience: I went to buy shoes, but there was no staff available to help me find my size. After waiting 20 minutes in line, the cashier told me I had to queue again in another place to choose my size and then return to pay, and her demeanor was quite rude. I lost 30 minutes, didn’t buy the shoes, and will not return to that store.

[Amoré]

1. I have great customer care with my bank. Whether it is using the app chat function or going into a branch and the odd times I have to call in an issue. Never had problems.

2. With the same banking app, I had issue with one of their products that allowed me to pay a monthly fee for lawyer assistance and when I called in to ask a query the consultant logged it as a claim 0 which is not what it was, I was asking Qs and that then changed my premium and the product then becamse useless to me as the person wanted to assume I run a business from home - they clearly did not comprehend the hybrid situation and only IF I work more than 50% of the time from home then I have tax claims I can do for 'rent' purposes of the specified office. 

[MonicaJavvaji]

1. Amazing customer service when I was having an issue with one of my cleaning equipment. They clearly unserstood the problem and quickly replaced with a new product. The representative was very helpful and finished the work in short time.

2. I had a bad customer service when I got a pair of sandals in store they had bad sandals which were damaged after wearing for less than hour. when I went to talk to the manager she was very harsh and gave a really hard time. From then on I stopped shopping there and told my friends not to buy.

[APoole1867]

1. Amazing customer experience when returning a product. Very easy and quick to speak to a support representative, their time to resolve the issue was short, and I got the outcome I wanted. For me it was all about it being accessible, hassle free and customer focussed 

2. Going into a store for a renewal and being given a negative, closed response when asking about the products and pricing available. I haven't used the organisation since, because I didn't feel respected as a customer. 

[USingh94]

Friction – While execs did sign up to dedicate some of their time towards professional learning upgrade skills, the commitment had a time decay. This was largely due to lack of constant communication or providing regular feedback. The customer success teams ensured to conduct a program that was scheduled at a particular time (Thursday’s 12pm and 4pm ET) for 30 minutes to come and ask questions or attend a live session. The session details, flow and follow ups would be sent to their emails.

Force – When executives would attend the sessions, we encouraged them to actively participate in a joint session that contained some to-do actions that would be discussed in the next upcoming session. By introducing actions, this stirred actions of accountability and responsibility as a team. Using this approach, the attendance, combined with the actions in the friction stage, the satisfaction value of the course objectives saw a marked improvement (85% satisfied rate)

[Abayomi95]

1. So this did happen at an institution when they changed there CBA. There was really a great turnover in there business that even customers had to go to there website to give kudos to them on the change that was made. And this resulted in a great turnover in there customer base. 

2. Wow, this was a reversal of the first illustration. It's still the same institution and this was before the change occur as the CBA that was being used was imposed on them by CBN so they had no other choice than to keep using it and it's actually affecting the growth of the institution as customers account are being tampered with by the said system and to correct, it takes a longer time before solution can be provided. This resulted in customers moving there accounts from the institution to another. This continue for almost 3 years before a new management came in place and there was change in the CBA. 

[JDZawaydeh]

1. There was a productivity company that gave so much with their PLG offerings that I basically felt that I was getting a fully functional product for free. They gave most everything that one would need, but the more and more I used it, the more involved I got and the more I needed to do. They had self service options to upgrade, and I seamlessly upgraded when the tiem was right. I now am a loyal customer and strongly reccomend this to any and all colleagues. 

2. There was another company who made it very difficult to convert because they gave a "free trial" of the product but gave such limited functionality that I wasn't able to gauge whether or not this would be a good fit for my company with specific use cases or anything besides basic functionality. Also, the way that their pricing was structured, you needed to commit 6 months payment up front as well, which was a lot to ask for for hardly using the product. It felt like a low value place to introduce that friction, and although there was some justification for the 6 month committment, I ended up not converting because I didn't have enough to justify that decision. 

[NVIJ]

1.Amazing customer experience I encountered when one of my order package got delivered to some wrong address. When i raised this to their customer care, they ensured that no need to worry and refunded back the money. Plus they gave additional 10% discount on next order. 

2. Encountered poor Customer experience when using a Payment app, it asks for signin information again even when the merchant(seller) have all the info. That was one of hindrance, the company was facing while onboarding new customers. However, when raised this concern, the payment app took the feedback and removed such requirements by working with the merchant tech team to autofill the information.

[CPorvaznik]

1. The companies that impress me the most are the ones who will take care of your needs and recognize when they did something poorly and need to improve.

2. companies that I have had bad experiences with typically have so much friction in the buying process it makes me not want to buy and get frustrated very easily by every little peice of friction that keeps me from buying. 

[FHerrera6]

1. I think companies that have a good impact on the society or environment have a force within.

2. When I get cancelled or have to wait too much for riding apps

[MNikitchuk]

1. 24/7 support [Intercom] that instantly deals with the questions of any customer, so they share their excitement even on LinkedIn

2. Anytime a new corporate client wants to join - he needs to schedule a demo with a sales person and another onboardig person needs to set a corporate account, because the tool is self-serve built 

[TFlatt]

1. An occasion when I had an amazing customer experience was ironically off the back of a bad customer experience I was complaining about. The organisation addressed all the points in my complaint, took the time to go through each one with me and offered solutions and acknowledged areas of improvement and acted upon it.

2. An occasion where I had a poor customer experience, I enquired with a jewwllery a company for bespoke piece of jewellery with specific attributes that were not already existing on their ready to ship pieces. I gave a detailed description on their enquiry platform and was disappointed ot receive a link of an already existing piece that didn't contain the specific attribute I was looking for. It gave the impression that my enquiry was not properly read and immediately put me off trying to work with that company for the piece I wanted. 

[SPayara]

One should do all the necesitties to avoid all the bad frictions in the the process inorder avoid interruptions.

[rista]

I've had an amazing customer experience with USAA insurance. They answer the phone promptly and answer all my questions thoroughly.

I had quite the opposite experience with a different insurance company. I was on hold for 50 minutes and hung up. Tried again and was on hold 30 minutes before someone answered. Switched from them to USAA in part because of very short hold times. I don't have time for that!

[Heni1]

1. To me it's probably how slow-fashion or local brands can survive in this cut-throat fashion industry.  They don't have a product catalogs with 1000 pieces but the pieces that they carry in store are usually much better in material quality and finishing. On top of that, the customer care is calm and not to pushy as their goals aren't always returns optimization. Nonetheless, they tend to perform very well in the long-term as the values they created are more sustainable.

2. Bad experience is when you constantly have to play mind-games with sales people to get a good quote. Some encounters can be so awkward, it can turn the people away from the business.

[sarahdaily]

1. Share a time when you had an amazing customer experience and you saw a company grow faster and faster because of their wonderful customer care.
   When I've had amazing customer experiences, the company met me right where I was at in my research and evaluation process with relevant content, at my pace. They weren't pushy, but provided contextual value right when I needed it. This set a good impression for the rest of my experience with the company. 
2. Share a time when you had a poor customer experience (please don’t name names or organizations) and how you saw that type of poor care affect their business.
   In poor customer experiences, companies created too many steps to get information I was looking for, when I was looking for it. I had to book a "demo",  which was in reality a BDR discovery call, which pushed me to another sales call before I could factual solution-based information and accurate pricing. 

[CBlandini]

When I had my car serviced they help take of me and gave me a free rental to show apprciation of my business. 

When I ordered out food and they gave me the wrong order and did not compensate me for it. 

[LCinelus]

for me the thing I hated the most is poor customer service and the ability to sort things out the ways it should be.They had high value when it comes to marketing the customer satisfaction is the most important things  .