This article was based on the interview with CRMC Keynote Speaker David Avrin on customer loyalty and being easy to do business with by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
For the better part of a decade, the north star for marketing and customer experience leaders has been “customer delight.” We’ve invested millions in journey mapping, personalization engines, and surprise-and-delight campaigns, all in the noble pursuit of creating memorable, loyalty-inducing moments. We have convinced ourselves, and our C-suites, that the path to retention is paved with exceptional, above-and-beyond interactions. But what if this pursuit, while well-intentioned, is focused on the wrong target? What if the most powerful driver of customer loyalty isn’t a moment of delight at all, but the complete and utter absence of friction?
This is the compelling, and perhaps slightly unsettling, premise championed by customer experience expert David Avrin. Drawing from extensive research into modern consumer behavior, he argues that in a world where our most precious commodity is time, the brands that win are not necessarily the most memorable, but the most effortless. This isn’t to say that quality, service, or positive experiences are irrelevant. Of course not. But it suggests a fundamental re-prioritization. The new competitive advantage lies in being “ridiculously easy to do business with”—so seamless, so intuitive, that the interaction itself becomes forgettable. For enterprise leaders, this perspective demands a shift from asking “How can we delight our customers?” to “Where are we making their lives unnecessarily difficult, and how can we stop?”
The Misguided Quest for a “Relationship”
One of the most sacred tenets in modern marketing is the idea of building a relationship with the customer. We create personas, build communities, and craft content designed to foster a deep, personal connection. But as Avrin points out, this is often a classic case of an inside-out perspective. We, the business, want a relationship because it’s a powerful retention tool. The customer, however, usually just wants to get something done.
“I work with with enterprise leaders all the time. And I’ll ask them, what’s your competitive advantage? And they’ll and they’ll point to their eyes, and they’ll say, it’s this it’s the relationship. And I’ll say, well, you you’re looking for a relationship, but it’s it’s probably hard to hear, but most of your customers and clients aren’t looking for a relationship. They appreciate the relationship. They’re looking for whatever they’re looking for, and they want to get in and out.”
This is a crucial distinction. Avrin isn’t suggesting we should be cold or impersonal. He’s arguing that the relationship is a byproduct of consistently good, low-effort experiences, not the primary objective. A customer flying from New York to Los Angeles wants to book their ticket, check their bag, and arrive on time with minimal hassle. If the airline executes this flawlessly every time, a sense of trust and loyalty—a relationship of sorts—will naturally form. But if the booking process is a labyrinth of pop-ups and dark patterns, no amount of friendly flight attendants will make up for the initial friction. For marketing leaders, this means re-evaluating where resources are allocated. Are we over-investing in relationship-building “fluff” while core transactional processes remain clunky and frustrating? The goal isn’t to be the customer’s best friend; it’s to be their most reliable and effortless option.
Distinguishing Good Friction from Bad
Of course, not all friction can, or should, be eliminated. In any large enterprise, certain processes exist for very good reasons: security, compliance, fraud prevention, and regulatory adherence. The challenge for leaders is to learn how to differentiate between this “necessary friction” and the “unnecessary friction” that serves only to frustrate customers for the sake of internal convenience or a short-sighted policy.
“The unnecessary friction is when you say, okay, you need a receipt [for a return], but we’re only going to give you store credit. One part was was protecting the enterprise and compliance, and the other part was just a decision on your end that makes you a pain in the ass to your to your customers…when they make it very very difficult to cancel a subscription. That’s unnecessary friction. Right? Those kinds of things that that make people very frustrated.”
This distinction is the battleground where customer loyalty is won or lost. Necessary friction, like two-factor authentication, protects both the customer and the business. Customers may not love it, but they understand its purpose. Unnecessary friction, however, feels arbitrary and self-serving. It’s the “free trial” that requires a credit card and then makes cancellation a multi-step ordeal involving a phone call during specific business hours. Avrin notes these tactics are often intentional, designed by “bean counters” who see the short-term financial gain from customers who forget to cancel, rather than the long-term brand damage and attrition. Marketing leaders must become the organization’s chief advocates for eliminating this kind of friction, asking the hard questions in cross-departmental meetings: Does this policy truly protect us, or does it simply serve our own internal process at the customer’s expense?
The Fallacy of the Static Economic Model
Why does so much “bad friction” persist in otherwise intelligent, customer-focused organizations? Avrin suggests it’s often due to an over-reliance on a “static economic model,” a way of thinking that fails to account for the nuanced, emotional, and often irrational behavior of human customers.
“A static economic model assumes cause and effect. If we cut this, we save that much money. And it probably plays out most commonly in self-checkout at a grocery store… A dynamic economic model assumes that that customer sentiment and and preferences and prejudices play into our decisions…what happened is people voted. They voted with their feet and their time and their dollars, and the grocery store is empty in the morning because there’s nobody to help.”
This is a powerful framework for any marketing leader trying to make the case for a better customer experience. The finance or operations team might present a static model: “By eliminating 80% of our checkout staff and pushing customers to self-checkout, we will save X million dollars in payroll.” It’s a clean, simple equation. But it ignores the dynamic reality: a significant portion of customers hate self-checkout, especially with a full cart. They will actively choose a competitor who makes their life easier, even if it’s a few blocks further away. The predicted savings are wiped out by lost revenue.
As marketing leaders, we live in the world of the dynamic model. We understand that customer sentiment and preference are powerful economic forces. Our role is to bring that perspective to the strategic table, armed with both qualitative and quantitative data. When a policy change is proposed, we must be the ones to ask not just “How much money will this save?” but “How will our customers react, and what will their behavior cost us in the long run?”
The first step in solving these complex, cross-functional problems is ensuring the right people are in the room when decisions are made. All too often, policies that directly impact the customer experience are designed in an operational or financial silo, and marketing is simply tasked with communicating the new, often frustrating, reality to the public.
“One of the biggest challenges is often times when operational decisions are being made, it’s it’s the bean counters…And you know who’s not in the room? Marketing. Customer experience. They’re the ones who are who are left to deal with the customer to implement the policy that might be errant in some way because I think it’s a little short-sighted.”
This is a direct call to action. For marketing leaders to effectively champion the low-effort experience, they must actively seek a seat at the tables where operational policies, return procedures, subscription models, and support structures are designed. It’s not about a turf war; it’s about providing the critical voice of the customer before a decision is finalized, preventing the creation of unnecessary friction from the outset. By embedding a customer-centric, low-effort mindset into the operational DNA of the company, marketing can shift from a reactive to a proactive role in building lasting loyalty.
The path to sustained customer loyalty in the modern enterprise may require a subtle but profound shift in philosophy. It’s time to move beyond the singular focus on creating moments of delight and embrace the powerful, lasting advantage of being effortlessly easy. This means scrutinizing every touchpoint, every policy, and every process through the lens of customer effort. It’s about valuing your customer’s time as much as, if not more than, their money and recognizing that in a world of infinite choice, the path of least resistance is the one most traveled.
The challenge for us as leaders is to look past our own departmental metrics and internal processes to see the journey as our customers do. The ultimate goal isn’t just to be a competent or qualified provider of goods and services; it’s to be the preferable one. And more often than not, “preferable” simply means easier. Perhaps the highest compliment a customer can pay your brand isn’t a five-star review, but the simple, repeated, almost unconscious act of choosing you again and again, precisely because the experience is so seamless it’s forgettable.
