Retailers need to bump up the friction
Have we all been sucked into praying at the temple of convenience? Technology has certainly fuelled solutions that take away much of the effort that was once involved in all parts of our daily lives and AI has simply thrown powerful accelerant onto the bonfire of inconvenience.
In a 2018 New York Times essay the legal scholar Tim Wu wrote that we should resist the “tyranny of convenience” because it places all the focus on the destination and involves no journey. He argued it is the journey that is ultimately the important part. Increasing numbers of people across Europe are cottoning onto the joy of ‘slower travel’ sleeper trains as an alternative to the monotony of flying for their vacations because it arguably makes the journey as enjoyable as the actual holiday.
Subscribe to TRBThis nascent move to recognise the inconvenience of convenience has promoted the concept of ‘friction-maxxing’ that embraces the efforts involved in doing things for ourselves rather than always relying on technology. This can mean taking meetings in person rather than via Teams or Zoom, cooking from scratch rather than constantly relying on Deliveroo and UberEats, and going to the shops rather than just buying online and potentially using agentic AI solutions to make the buying decisions on our behalf.
It seems that Gen Alpha (eight-to-14-year-olds) recognise the upsides of injecting a little friction into their lives. As many as 73% prefer to shop in store, according to research from MG2, having grown up with online as the norm they now regard brick-and-mortar stores as the more novel experience and they want a bit of this physical action.
This growing appeal of adding friction (and as a by-product experience) into our lives and going shopping is prompting retailers to reassess their commitment to physical space and the person-to-person service they provide. There is a realisation that they have maybe been too gung-ho on the digital channel and now need to backtrack and throw in some more of the rich service-led in-store experience.
For many businesses the drive to digital has diluted their brand values and thinned out the relationship with the customer. Consider the comments of Dane Mathews, chief digital and technology officer at Taco Bell, who says: “There is no way I can make a consumer experience memorable with a bunch of screens and artificial intelligence. They’ll be better, but I don’t know if they’ll necessarily be memorable.” He has very much identified that it’s ultimately the people on the front line that make the difference.
Just packing in the tech within stores to supposedly take out friction and boost convenience has simply not worked if we take the example of Amazon and its clever Just Walk Out technology as the company recently announced the closure of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores that relied on whizzy kit to deliver the frictionless experience that they thought customers desired.
In the US we have seen Starbucks bump-up its efforts in-store as it has been on a recruitment drive for more baristas, it has been closing many of its take-away-only stores, and it has been on a mission to add-in more seats at many of its stores. It is a similar story at Target that is investing more in store-based employees while at the same time cutting around 500 roles at its distribution centres and regional offices.
The company stated: “This change fuels our ability to put significantly more payroll in our stores – primarily in additional labour and hours where needed most, but also in new guest experience training for every team member at every store.”
This all suggests retailers – and hospitality companies – are adapting to the scenario that growing numbers of people (notably younger consumers) quite like a bit of friction. There might not be many people who are quite ready for max-friction but there is certainly growing evidence that somewhat dispels the belief in tech-land that we all want our future decisions in life to be made by agentic AI.
