Has customer experience become too effortless?

For years, the logic of customer experience has been simple: make things easier. 

Reduce the number of clicks, cut waiting times and make self-service more straightforward. If something stands between a customer and what they want, get rid of it.

For the most part, that's been good advice. Nobody misses sitting on hold to find out where a parcel is, or completing a five-stage form for something that should take seconds.

But there are signs that our relationship with convenience is becoming more complicated. Apps that deliberately introduce friction are attracting attention.

Carrier Pidge, for example, is an app that makes users wait for messages to be delivered rather than sending them instantly, intending to encourage more considered conversations. The app reportedly grew from just a few hundred users to more than 75,000 over the summer.

The popularity of this app – and others that are designed to be the opposite of immediacy and optimization – challenges the assumption that faster always means better. Convenience matters little on its own without an accompanying understanding of context, and proactively working to build trust at the same time.

This shift in attitudes is becoming much more relevant to customer experience and customer service.

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes businesses capable of responding, deciding and acting almost instantaneously. But just because we can easily remove delays and friction we risk overlooking the useful role it can sometimes play. 

For CX leaders, it means a new way of thinking. Instead of simply asking, "Can we remove this friction?", we should also ask: "What does the customer lose if we do?"

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Why speed alone no longer defines a good customer experience

The goal of customer experience has always been to meet customers and their needs wherever they are – whether that means fast and thorough resolution or, at other times, something that's more considered. 

For a long time removing friction was one of the most reliable ways to achieve that. But when AI makes instantaneous interactions commonplace, speed alone tells us much less about the quality of an experience than the context.

Someone checking whether a payment has gone through, and how much they might still owe, probably wants an accurate answer immediately. Making them wait for a person to investigate something that automated self-service could establish in seconds would be frustrating.

But customer preferences become more complicated when we move beyond routine interactions. Twilio's latest research found that while 69 percent of consumers prefer interacting with a real person, 72 percent would choose an AI agent if it guaranteed their issue would be resolved faster.

That isn't as contradictory as it sounds. Customers don't necessarily want a binary choice between human or AI service; they want the right service for the situation. Sometimes that's speed. At other times, confidence, control or understanding matter more.

What is responsible friction?

In CX, we tend to use "friction" to describe anything standing between the customer and completing an action. But that lumps a range of very different customer interactions into the same category.

Imagine a customer speaking to an AI agent about a billing problem. At first, automation works exactly as it should: the agent understands their history, answers routine questions and moves the conversation forward quickly. When it becomes clear that the customer is frustrated, continuing to automate may be the most efficient choice on paper, but not necessarily the best in reality.

Handing off the conversation to a human may sacrifice some of the immediacy of keeping it automated. But if the context moves with them, the business can preserve what matters about a convenient journey while adding something automation cannot always provide: human judgement.

That's what you could call 'responsible friction' – not deliberately making experiences slower or more complicated for no reason. It's about recognizing that sometimes a little friction has a job to do.

Pointless friction vs. valuable friction

Remove it when it's pointless. If friction exists because systems don't talk to each other, remove it. If customers must repeat themselves every time they change channels, fix it. That's pointless friction, and technology should continue eliminating it.

Keep it when it adds value. An identity check before a sensitive account change serves a purpose; asking customers to re-enter information the business already holds does not. The same is true of things like confirming an important or irreversible action before an AI agent carries it out.

Why this matters more as AI agents gain autonomy

It all comes back to context. Sometimes the best experience will mean an instant answer with no unnecessary steps. At other moments, carefully applied friction can reassure – checking someone's identity, explaining what happens next, giving them a meaningful choice or knowing when to bring in a person.

This distinction will become increasingly important as AI agents gain greater autonomy and take on more responsibility across the customer journey itself. When technology can not only answer questions but take actions on customers' behalf, businesses need to think carefully about where speed is actually helpful.

The best customer experiences are those that can confidently distinguish between the friction that should be removed and friction that brings value. 

Quick links

• Building context-aware customer service that works
• AI agent management: The new CX role you can't ignore
• Who audits your AI Agents? How to establish independent QA for contact centers