It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers

Although it's often missed in the busy-ness of business, ease is a desired and important promise organizations in any industry must consider for their customers. This book offers a "back to basics" exploration with ease at the center of what customers deserve. There are many reasons being easy is hard and this book was written to help leaders re-imagine decisions to pursue effortless experiences whenever possible.

When customers find it repeatedly difficult to interact or transact with a business, a process begins that encourages them to walk away. Being "hard" in this case involves points of friction that are deliberately or inadvertently placed before customers. Friction points can exist at any point of a customer's journey and the progression can lead to the loss of business. The Friction-Defection Progression is something to avoid at all costs. This model begins when Customers express interest, then goes downhill from Customer Friction to Customer Frustration to Customer Dissatisfaction to Customer Defection.

Diane includes insights and lessons from a variety of industries and 10 Customer Path Clearing Exercises teams can use to assess and address a commitment to improve customer ease.

This book answers the essential question: "Why in the world would any organization allow it's people, procedures or policies to impede the ability for customers to be customers?

Diane S. Hopkins is a Certified Experience Economy Expert and nationally known author, speaker, marketer, innovator and experience strategist who was one of the first Chief Experience and Chief Innovation Officers in the US healthcare industry. She is CEO of ExPeers and works with companies to assess their current customer experience or innovation culture and to align the brand to the actual customer experience. She is author of Unleashing the Chief Moment Officers and Co-Author of Advice from a Patient.