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.

[jstyla]

• Example of Internal Friction

This project I was an advisor for had high staff turnover and no onboarding documentation. So many times when staff left, the hiring process was longwinded and then senior staff had to train the new people 1:1 therefore detracting away from the senior staffers main key role; to focus on the business operations.

Because of no documentation or proper structure, the company was spending its senior staff resources on training new staff. This lead to a vicious frictional halt to the flywheel in constantly missed deadlines, and underperformance and excessive overtime in simply trying to catch up with operations.

[joepod700]

Costco comes to mind with force. The idea that everything you purchase is eligible for return (even half-eaten food) gives a customer confidence to buy easily with no concern.  Furthermore, their return process is so easy and doesn't even require a reason or receipt and they credit you instantly for your purchase with no questions asked. 

Friction is where you have to shop somewhere and see a sale or promotion, but when you reach the register or checkout, it doesn't recognize the promotional price or discount.  This requires extra work, brings about aggravation to the customer and at times can lead to a lost sale as the customer isn't willing to deal with waiting for a solution from the merchant.

[Zelly]

1. When I enrolled in a money mindset program, that solopreneur gives me an amazing customer journey. She is very hands-on, straight to the point, and simple when it comes to their system. 

2. I enrolled in a high ticket business coaching program and I expect a LOT for it given that the price was premium but the aftercare or the customer experience is bad. I literally felt that I was robbed because I didn't receive the expected customer journey from the course. 

[ASmith32]

1. In a retail environment, I personally experienced "Force" when the vendor credited my account immediately upon the scanning in of the Return Merchandise Label; and shipped out the replacement product, rather than delaying the shipping out of my replacement product by 10-14 business days. Within less than a year, that company has opened several distribution centers in varying states in order to further add value to the customer experience. 

Similarly, I was the recipient of tremendous "Friction" and poor "Engagement" when I returned a product in person due to the fact that provider of the product had no online presence or documented Return Policy. In the face to face experience, I had to elevate the matter to the store manager in order to get a refund. My intent was to merely "exchange" the item, however; the level of poor customer engagement and customer service, led me to question the quality of the product. 

It was obcvious that there were no documented "processes" and/or "workflows" in place, in order to provide a playbook for how their service representatives interfaced with their customers. Loss revenue nullifies any potential to "scale" in any business, regardless of whether the environment is a service driven business model; or a product driven business model. 

[BByler]

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.

Rainbow sandals comes to mind as a brand.  They have a Lifetime warranty, no questions asked and their customer service and turnaround is amazing.  I remember the first pair I had, I literally wore holes in the bottom and finally busted the thong portion.  I contacted them, they sent me a pre-paid UPS label to return my defective pair.  I mailed them back and 5 days later I received my brand new replacements AND they even repaired my old ones so they were usable again.   Other than making a great product, I know that this world-class experience led to the rapid growth of their brand from a surf shop in California to global sales.

1. 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.

There was a certain phone service provider that was notorious for providing terrible customer service in addition to poor network coverage.  So, in the last 5 years we have seen the # of their people on their network drop significantly as people switch to the other top providers who have better coverage and much better customer service.  I predict they will be bought out or defunct in a few years. CS makes or breaks your company.

[SuzC]

I've had an amazing experience with hubspot so far.  Being able to access the academy and play around with the hubs means that even if I don't  become a customer i am very likely to recommend Hubspot to clients.

There are many companies that offer free trials but then request credit card details at the registration stage and put the onus on the buyer to cancel the subscription at the end of the trial.  These companies may be using this friction as a force but it puts me off buying.

[IVolan]

First, I would say Grammarly provides an amazing experience. You can get a value in a second without any unnecessary movements. Now long sign-up processes, no credit card. 

I love it a lot, everyone loves it and they grow really fast. 


Bad example. An international gym network requires a lot of steps to have a free test visit. Long sign up form, with Name, family name, and date of birth, telephone number, mail and verification of your account, purchasing of a free visit on the website, and then communication with admin on the reception.  I've tried two different gyms before I decided to give them a chance. But the overall experience is great. Still, I know a few people who don't want to go there just because of all data they collect.