Advertising disclosure: This blog participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.

Most of us take order confirmations for granted.

A confirmation is sent when an order is placed. Another one is sent when the order ships that provides the tracking number and estimated arrival date.

Before the advent of order confirmations, it wasn’t uncommon for customers to worry about whether their order was received or when it would arrive. Many would call or email. Some more than once.

It was a lousy experience.

Order confirmations reduce customer effort and make online ordering easier. They provide assurance and, in most cases, prevent customers from calling.

Most companies automate this process, but not all. Macie (not her real name), has to do it manually. Sometimes, she forgets.

"I am human," explained Macie. Each day, she has to remember to check for new orders and shipments and then send an update to each individual customer.

Macie would like her company to be easy to do business with, but the current process makes that hard to do. It’s tedious and time-consuming. Occasionally forgetting just makes things worse.

In many companies like Macie's, the key to reducing customer effort is reducing employee effort.

What is customer effort?

Let's start with a brief description of customer effort and why it's important.

Matt Dixon, co-author of The Effortless Experience, described customer effort as making customers jump through hoops to do business with your company.

He gave several examples in this exclusive interview:

Making a customer call multiple times to get their problem fixed.
Confusing or broken self-service options.
Forcing customers to switch communication channels to get help.
Transferring customers from one department to the next.
Making customers repeat information, such as account numbers.

High customer effort creates disloyalty. Customers grow tired of struggling to get things done and start looking for other options.

Some companies measure customer effort via a special type of survey called Customer Effort Score. It works by asking customers how easy it was to do business with the company.

How employee effort creates customer effort

The likelihood of something going wrong increases the harder employees have to work to serve their customers. High employee effort causes three common service failures.

Time: High employee effort makes customers wait longer.
Errors: More effort makes mistakes more likely.
Attitude: Employees struggle to remain friendly when they’re dealing with nonsense.

Think back to Macie's manual order updates.

They take a lot of time. Macie has to send them one-by-one while also juggling other tasks throughout the day, so she doesn't send updates as soon as they're ready.

Impatient customers are more likely to call or email before Macie has a chance to send an update.

Macie sometimes forgets to send an update, which is a simple human error. Other errors are easy to make when doing a manual task, such as sending the wrong tracking number or an incorrect arrival date.

This can cause customers to call or email when their update is wrong.

Extra effort can be discouraging, which makes it difficult to retain a positive attitude. One company discovered its Customer Effort Score declined by eight percent in the afternoons as employees grew tired.

Take a moment to identify high-effort tasks your employees must perform. There's a good chance that those tasks take longer than they should, have higher error rates, and make employees grumpy.

Three ways to reduce employee effort

Focus on making your employees' jobs just a little easier. Automation is a good place to start.

The more you can automate routine tasks, like order confirmations, the more you can free up employees to focus on customers who need extra help. For instance, most e-commerce software today can automatically send out order and shipping confirmations.

A centralized knowledge base is another good solution.

Employees spend a lot of time searching for answers, whether it's product knowledge, procedures, or the details on the latest marketing promotion. They'll save a lot of time, and give the right answer more often, if they have a single repository with all the latest information.

Empowerment is another solution.

Customer-focused organizations define empowerment as giving employees the ability to provide outstanding customer service. This means providing them with the resources, procedures, and authority they need.

You can learn how to empower your employees with this step-by-step guide. Or explore the empowerment secrets of customer-focused companies in The Service Culture Handbook.