The face and the friction

A friend sent me a vowel asking:

"But these guys who ask you for money – actually, your checking account or credit card – pestering people with circus ways for reputable NGOs at the exit of the mall, do they work?"

I have a fixed idea or illusion that everything that exists exists because it works. It's not a perfect theory, even if it allows me, like Occam's razor, not to mess around with overly elaborate explanations of simple situations. The theory is not perfect, I say, because in business everything that exists is because it works .

There are two forces that continually oppose each other: the first tells us that time is a very strong test, if something has passed it there is a valid reason to keep it alive. The second tells us that everything changes, and testing what worked over time may no longer apply. When things change slowly, the former prevails. In case of violent transformations, the latter has the upper hand.

There is a pattern that I have found that seems interesting to me about transformation and change.

But let's go back to the initial question. Petulant dudes in bibs have always worked, and they probably do. (Based on what we really say works I'll come back to it later. Every measurement is a choice, and often a biased one.)

Anyway, why are they there?

The short answer is “they are paid on commission”, and evidently capitalism makes their opportunity cost very low – the same concept as riders, to understand. If you agree to work for that amount or a percentage, it means you wouldn't get more elsewhere and you aren't rich enough to value doing anything above that threshold.

The more elaborate answer must consider another matter. Man, irrational by definition, doesn't decide according to how convenient or motivated he is to make a choice, but according to the interface in front of him, human, on shelves or in the form of a screen.

In digital there is extensive talk of friction (which I often translate into slamming): each action is (progressively) less influenced by motivation and (progressively) more encouraged by ease. Playing the stock market today is much easier than it was 30 years ago, and in fact it has a digital interface (understood: it doesn't judge you, it doesn't argue, it gives you the impression of not double-crossing your purchases).

There is a universal secret (there was) to make ecommerce (but not only) projects successful: creating natural and low-friction interfaces – buyer side – and solving the resulting order management snags with technology – vendor side . Trying to shift the slam onto the buyer often doesn't work. Don't sue me Amazon (I repeat) don't sue me Amazon. None of you are Amazon.

However, friction works in two ways. Friction isn't just bad (for business) like the slam we think about when we have to recompile our home address over and over again on every goddamn site – and we think “but hell is there a way to do this, we went up Mars and we have not found the remedy for this” – of course except when we have already ended up on Amazon.

The imposed friction (and apparently-see-beyond positive for the business) materializes when in person we don't know/want to say no. In front of yet another donation request email, we trash the message (digitally or not) without too many problems. When faced with a person in the flesh, we are much more reluctant to do so. We don't want to appear assholes , even if the very fact of making us feel assholes, if we say no, was provoked by an initial framing by the seller himself. What we call personal selling enters the field: from Bofrost to Folletto!

Sometimes this reluctance to not follow our instincts is in favor of our health. People order far more crap online than when they are in front of a pizza chef. (I'm reading this book , not up to date but interesting, from the school of Thaler).

There are also seemingly negative frictions that aren't. During the week I spoke to a delivery service which requires a telephone interview before starting to deliver to a home. Oh my, I thought. But if you think about it, those who get there won't say no. They won't have the courage anymore. They will have the bias of having already invested their time and yours. They won't want to appear assholes, either. And they will have more qualms about suspending the service. It will be necessary to calculate how much the conversion of interviewees increases, and their loyalty, and when the number of those who want to be interviewed before accessing the service decreases. The magic formula is finding the perfect balance between lead volumes and conversion rate through “human” friction.

There are also malicious frictions coming out. The one that requires you to speak to an operator to cancel a subscription, or almost (Sky, WSJ, various publishing). The phone call isn't like having it in front of you, but it's a lot harder than pushing a button to leave.

But how do we calculate if something works? The problem with many data is that we only consider what is easy to calculate. The NGO takes into consideration the costs and revenues of that face-to-face model, but not that of my pissed off friend who probably won't donate to them anymore, not even online. Like I will no longer subscribe to the WSJ. The delivery service probably perceives how "it works" to call new customers on the phone, but does not consider how many get lost on the street who do not want to talk on the phone.