How Fast is Too Fast?

The notion that interactions should be as fast and easy as possible seems to be accepted without question - but lately, I've been questioning it.    People roll their eyes, snort, and make sarcastic remarks along the lines of "Yeah, like our customers want things to be slow and difficult," but from what I'm seeing, I'm led to consider that there truly are instances in which the customer feels like a task should take a little more effort, and they feel uneasy when they something seems too easy and too fast

To back up a bit, I'm referring to acquisition and servicing transactions in the digital channels, where it is possible track the clicks and seconds to arrive at a rather precise estimate of how long it takes to complete a flow, even across multiple visits, down the level of how many seconds it takes to fill in every "blank" in an online form.

This level of granularity enables interaction designers to be extremely precise and focused, and it can result in dramatic improvements:  if a question is oddly phrased, then making it clearer, restructuring it, providing help text, or even moving it to a different place in the flow can have dramatic consequences: a question that a user might ponder for 30 seconds before answering can be improved so it takes less than five.   Do that for each of twenty questions in a flow, and you can turbocharge a ten-minute task to require less than two minutes.

The problem is that when things go this fast, doubt arises.   It's very similar to the way that too low a price for an item causes customers who have doubts about quality.   In the same way, if a task is too easy (especially if it's a "complicated" task like applying for a mortgage or getting an insurance policy), people feel very uneasy, assuming that they did something wrong - they abandon the online channel and pick up the phone (or leave altogether) because the task went so quickly that they fear the product is not what they really need.

I can say with confidence that this happens in the digital channels, but I expect it applies in other channels - and the discomfort and anxiety is even worse.  A customer on the phone or in a store can feel very uneasy about a transaction that goes too quickly because there is a person who represents the interest of the seller, who is pushing them.   At best, there's the sense that the operator or clerk has not been attentive enough and has not asked enough questions to understand their needs, and will put them in a product that will not be satisfactory.  At worst, there's the sense that they are being fast-talked and hustled, either to buy something quickly or just to get them off the phone without serving them adequately.

In all, I don't think I can maitnain the axiom that faster is always better - and as absurd as it may seem, sometimes it's better to require the customer to invest more time.   I am absolutely certain that an objective measurement of the amount of time it takes to complete a task cannot be the sole measurement of quality - it has to be benchmarked against a more subjective measurement of how much time the customer feels that a transaction should take, or their level of comfort after completing it.   Did it take too much, too little, or about the right amount of time?

Benchmarking against customer expectations so will likely lead to the conclusion that some things are done too fast.    And as much as I feel uncomfortable at the prospect of rigging a transaction to take more time than is absolutely necessary, it does seem entirely reasonable to conclude that it can in some instances result in greater customer satisfaction.