Complication is destruction

This happens to us all. With your AT&T, Comcast or auto finance bill. You sit down to pay a bill. You try to login to your online management account but for some reason cannot. You're now stuck. You want to pay your bill but you're forced to communicate with customer support, go through a complicated & time consuming verification process. Then at the end of all of this hopefully you can accomplish what you were looking to do. Which is ultimately pay your bill. Look abstractly upon this, you're trying to pay a business money (its a bill dummy) but you're being challenged to do so. Why!? In these scenarios you the customer are paying to experience friction. I was inspired to read that Wired released an article around this type thinking. It focuses on simplicity of product. But I believe simplicity goes beyond that, it's truly the business & how you operate it. It would be a miracle to see a business today that operates in the inverse of this. ••••

If I'm paying a bill or buying stamps I shouldn't experience friction as a customer while trying to give the business they're original intent. Do something simple, treat payments as if every transaction is the original product. Provide me helpful features to get your money, give me notifications both by email or text message if I'm late. Allow me to pay by sending a text or email with a verification message. Allow for easier password resets by reducing security upfront. Then verify valuable information at the point of transaction (IE: Use this bank account through a phrase or PIN number). If you have an e-commerce store, let me complete my transaction first, then ask me only after if I'd like to create an account. Don't ask me upfront because it's distracting me from quickly giving you money. Payment flows are one micro example of creating simplicity in your product. Less time spent feels like less complication for the customer. ••••

The biggest neglect I see is when businesses forget what it's like to be the customer. These types of User Experiences drastically change the friction a customer feels. But through simple and nearly obvious idea's I truly believe it could double down on the amount of transactions a business could see. Use tools like card.io. The user flow could be: take a photograph, complete the transaction & then fill out registration information (optional). This would make mobile onboarding painless. Most of all solve the problem that as a customer you don't do the work you're paying others to do. If we don't follow these types of ideas we could all end up like cable TV, where we pay $30 a month to watch commercials. Or FedEx where we pay $15 for shipping but have to drive 10 miles to go pickup our package when it couldn't be left at our door. Refuse to pay complicated services and they'll eventually die off!