What’s creating friction in your life?

There are two things I absolutely loathe doing – filling in forms and paying bills.

Both are usually made far more difficult than they need to be, creating a hugely unnecessary friction in my life.

Many years ago, when I worked at the Office of Fair Trading, we re-did all our forms. It was a mammoth task, and I’ll always be grateful that it wasn’t my project.

Fortunately, the designer we outsourced this work to absolutely loved forms and the level of detail that was required to create a good form. You know the type – a form you can easily read and that has enough space to write all your details. Not like the Australia Post customs declaration form I’ve recently had to fill in – font so tiny I could barely read it.

Unnecessary friction.

Lucky for me, my husband is a master form-filler, so he kindly did them all after my first frustrated effort.

I also despise paying bills. Not because I don’t want to pay for a service or product, but because so many organisations make it so difficult and unnecessarily time consuming for me to give them my money.

An excellent example of a bad experience is the one I go through every year when renewing my subscription to Harvard Business Review. The ONLY reason I haven’t cancelled yet is because it’s such a brilliant mag and, ironically, the online portal is excellent.

HBR send me a letter (!) to inform me my subscription fee is due (but without telling me the due date). To pay them, I need to fill in a form with my credit card details and post it to the UK in the envelope they provide. Last year it took six months for me to get my renewal letter due to disruption of the postal service.

It’s 2022 and yet there is no way to receive my invoice or pay online. For what is largely an online product.

I could also pay this bill by telephone – and giving a person my credit card number. As I hate bill paying, I asked my husband to do this. They wouldn’t let him, despite my name being on the credit card, as he wasn’t listed on my account.

Unnecessary friction.

Think about your organisation.

Are there unnecessary frictions you are providing to your customers? How could you simplify them?

And now think about your life.

Are there things in it that cause you unnecessary friction that you could outsource? To another family member or someone you pay?