Friction

The Space Between Expressed Interest and Completed Enrollment

What’s the one thing a business doesn’t want new customers to experience? Friction. What exactly is friction and can it negatively influence your business? You may recall from 7th grade physics that friction is the force that causes a moving object to slow down. Over the few minutes it takes you to read this article, we’ll discuss potential causes of friction during and after the customer enrollment process and how it can cause your customers and your business to lose speed. 

You might be wondering what in the world friction has to do with your business. How do you craft a customer experience (including the initial experience of enrolling or registering) that covers all the essentials without overwhelming your customer? Your prospective customers are looking for a quick and simple process for getting themselves or their child(ren) into your programs. They want a process that gives them the result they’re looking for, with the least amount of effort. Using our metaphor, a customer becomes a moving object when they express interest in your offering. Anything you put in front of them--from this first point of interest until they have converted to a paying customer—that isn’t as simple and easy as possible to understand or do creates friction.

Eliminating Friction

Below is a flowchart that outlines a few key places during and after enrollment where a prospective customer might experience friction. In all cases, these are areas that can be addressed by either your website or the software you use to run your business. They are things in your control. If you run some other kind of enrollment-based or instructor-led business, we’re sure you’ll find similarities in the chart.

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Bringing It Together

As you can see, at any point in time, your customer might experience friction or frustration. Our goal is to minimize, if not eradicate these during and after the enrollment process. Our new guide details eight areas in which Enrollsy’s digital enrollment platform removes friction to create a delightful enrollment experience for your customers and a better overall software experience for you. If you like what you see, we’d love to talk with you about your unique use-case and how Enrollsy can help!