It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers

Diane Serbin Hopkins

Book cover for It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers
Book cover for It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers

It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers

It's Hard to be Easy: The Competitive Advantage of Clearing All Paths for Your Customers

Diane Serbin Hopkins

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Description

Although it's often missed in the busy-ness of business, ease is a desired and important promise organizations in any industry must consider for their customers. This book offers a "back to basics" exploration with ease at the center of what customers deserve. There are many reasons being easy is hard and this book was written to help leaders re-imagine decisions to pursue effortless experiences whenever possible.


When customers find it repeatedly difficult to interact or transact with a business, a process begins that encourages them to walk away. Being "hard" in this case involves points of friction that are deliberately or inadvertently placed before customers. Friction points can exist at any point of a customer's journey and the progression can lead to the loss of business. The Friction-Defection Progression is something to avoid at all costs. This model begins when Customers express interest, then goes downhill from Customer Friction to Customer Frustration to Customer Dissatisfaction to Customer Defection.


Diane includes insights and lessons from a variety of industries and 10 Customer Path Clearing Exercises teams can use to assess and address a commitment to improve customer ease.


This book answers the essential question: "Why in the world would any organization allow it's people, procedures or policies to impede the ability for customers to be customers?

Critical Reviews

Diane has been a pioneer in simplifying the healthcare experience and creating moments that ease the burden of being a patient. Through this thoughtful discussion she outlines an approach that all industries can easily apply and adopt.

M Bridget Duffy, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Vocera Communications.


It's Hard to be Easy is a reminder for all businesses that the customer should never get lost in our aspirations of grandeur.

Diane has created a thought-provoking and thought-stretching book that will help leaders think about customer effort as a

foundation of strategy.

Julie Anixter, Enterprise Design Principal, Throughline


This is the perfect time for organizations to take to heart the lessons found in It's Hard to be Easy. The book brings us back to a core principle of business growth - businesses that make it easy for customers to start and keep doing business will win.

Mary Claire Mandeville, CEO, Vennli

Publishing Information

Publisher: Networlding Publishing
Pub date: 2021-08-18
Length: 142 pages

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