Think about something you worked hard to make.
A meal. A garden. A difficult workout. A photograph you finally got right.
Did the effort make it less valuable? Or was the effort part of what made it worthwhile?
Now think about the last time a company made you work. A password reset that failed twice. A form asking for information you had already given. A service call where you explained the same problem to three different people.
That effort did not produce satisfaction. It produced stress.
Same input. Opposite result.
Customer experience has spent a decade trying to eliminate effort. Fewer clicks, shorter forms, faster checkout, no waiting, no thinking. Most of that is sound. Every unclear choice, unnecessary step and fragile process charges the customer a stress tax, and most companies are still quietly collecting it.
But “remove friction” is an incomplete design principle, because some effort is not an obstacle standing in front of the experience. It is the experience.
A new study in Psychology & Marketing gives the mechanism a name. The researchers call it experience therapy: the use of provider-designed service experiences to help people regulate everyday negative emotion.
In one experiment, participants imagined either paying to walk through a state park or buying a water bottle online. The experience produced a significantly greater expected reduction in negative affect than the purchase.
Then the researchers looked at what made some experiences more restorative. Two things stood out: personal effort and social involvement.
Effortful experiences worked best for the most emotionally stressed participants, and the mechanism was self-efficacy. Completing something demanding made people feel more capable of managing their own state.
The experience did not restore people because the provider removed every demand from them. It restored them because they participated.
Eataly could simply sell you fresh pasta. Instead, it runs classes where you mix, knead, shape and cook it yourself. More work, not less. But the work changes what is being sold. You leave with a skill, a story and something you made.
At LEGO House, visitors do not walk past finished models. They build, test, race and troubleshoot. The LEGO Masters Academy adds guided challenges that push their skills further.
The effort is not sitting between the customer and the experience. The effort is the play.
Patagonia’s Worn Wear is another example. Replacement is easier than repair, every time. But the customer who repairs a jacket keeps an object carrying a decade of her own history and acts in line with something she already believes about herself.
Convenience would have taken both of those away.
This is where the argument gets dangerous, because every company believes its friction is meaningful participation.
The bank thinks its verification steps make you feel protected. The software company thinks its onboarding makes you feel invested.
They are usually wrong.
The test is not difficulty or duration. The test is who chose it, and who keeps something. Meaningful effort is opted into knowingly. Nobody signs up for a pasta class expecting to be handed pasta.
Imposed effort arrives without consent. It is almost always labor the company decided not to absorb: re-entering an address, re-explaining a problem, proving you are who you already said you were on the previous screen.
The first kind builds a capability that belongs to the customer.
The second moves cost off the company’s balance sheet and onto the customer’s afternoon.
So ask it plainly: Did they choose this, and do they get to keep something?
You might happily spend two hours learning to make pasta and resent two minutes re-entering your address. Duration is not the difference. Meaning is.
This is also where the Joy Dividend appears.
The customer invests effort. The experience returns competence, identity, connection or a story worth telling. All of it becomes associated with the company that made it possible.
So look at where your customers are working.
Some of them are working because your systems are badly built. That effort should disappear.
Some of them are working because participation gives them agency, pride or belonging. That effort may be the most valuable thing you offer.
The question is not how much effort you are asking for.
It is who it is serving.
About Hamutal (Tula) Schieber
Hamutal Schieber is a market researcher, strategist, keynote speaker and the founder of Schieber Research. For more than 25 years, she has helped organizations understand changing consumer behavior and translate research, cultural trends and competitive intelligence into strategy.
She is the author of The Joy Dividend: How Brands Win by Reducing Stress and Sparking Delight, a research-based framework for understanding how emotional ease, play, surprise and connection create commercial value.
Talks and workshops
Hamutal’s Joy Dividend keynotes and workshops help leadership, brand, customer-experience and innovation teams identify the stress they inadvertently create, distinguish destructive friction from meaningful participation, and design experiences that build preference, loyalty and growth.
Explore talks and speaking formats or contact hamutal@researchci.com.
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Originally published in The Joy Dividend on LinkedIn.