Friction Mapping™ Masterclass: How to Uncover What’s Really Holding Customers Back
Read time: 5 mins
In our latest 383 Masterclass, we took a deep dive into one of the most powerful tools in our kit: Friction Mapping™. Led by our Experience Director, Karl Randay, with guest speakers Sarah Baker-White and Kathryn Benjamin, the session explored how teams can get beyond assumptions, map real customer journeys, and fix the pain points that stop people in their tracks.
The conversation was full of real-world stories, practical advice, and a clear message: if you want to improve customer experience and drive change, you need to start with what’s getting in the way - friction!
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Watch the replay on demand
You can now watch the full masterclass on demand. Learn how Friction Mapping™ is being used in sectors from finance to recruitment, and hear directly from experts who’ve applied it in practice.
What is Friction Mapping™?
Friction Mapping™ is 383’s approach to helping teams find and fix the parts of a journey that simply aren’t working. It combines customer research, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and a structured process for spotting the moments where people feel stuck, confused, or let down.
Karl described it best:
“It’s not just about creating a nice journey map. It’s about helping people make better decisions, faster. We built Friction Mapping™ because we saw businesses struggling to turn research into action.”
Unlike traditional mapping methods that often focus on the ideal experience, Friction Mapping™ digs into what’s really happening and why. It brings together tools like Jobs to Be Done, Design Thinking, and service blueprinting to ensure teams are looking just as hard at internal processes as they are at customer touchpoints.
From guesswork to genuine insight
Karl shared how the methodology has evolved over more than 15 years, drawing from frameworks like Jobs to Be Done and Design Thinking. One example came from 383’s work with Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS), where the team moved beyond surface issues to uncover deeper, systemic challenges in the finance journey. These weren’t just design fixes; they were fundamental blockers in how the service worked.
By focusing on real customer stories, not assumptions, Friction Mapping™ helped the VWFS team make meaningful changes that improved both the customer experience and internal decision-making. The methodology is fast, collaborative and insightful, helping organisations get to actionable answers without lengthy discovery phases.
Turning stories into structure
One challenge many organisations face is making sense of qualitative interviews and stories at scale. Friction Mapping™ solves this by creating a clear way to tag and score what people are saying. Levels of anxiety, types of friction, and impact on business outcomes are all considered.
This process has now been enhanced with the help of AI. Karl explained how AI tools now act as co-pilots, quickly identifying patterns across interviews without losing the context of each story. This means teams spend less time processing data and more time acting on it. It’s a way to make qualitative insight more quantifiable, helping teams scale their analysis without losing the human touch.
The power of collaboration
Both Sarah and Kathryn spoke about how Friction Mapping™ helps bring teams together. In many businesses, departments like product, marketing, and operations each have their view of the customer experience. When these teams don’t share a single picture, important details can get missed.
Kathryn shared a powerful story from her time in recruitment. While the hiring process worked well for placed candidates, the company had no idea how poor the experience was for rejected applicants. People who never heard back were left frustrated, but no one had been looking at that part of the journey until they mapped it properly.
Sarah reflected on her time at HSBC, where a long and outdated account opening process caused delays and customer drop-off. Friction Mapping™ helped reveal hidden issues behind the scenes, like why certain users were being referred or rejected, and showed the team where to focus. By aligning teams around a shared view of the journey, mapping also helped to gain internal buy-in for change.
Friction Mapping™ in action
“You can have a great journey on paper, but if your customer hits a blocker at step two, that’s where the experience ends.” Karl Randay
That’s why the value of Friction Mapping™ isn’t in the map itself; it’s in the momentum it creates. Once pain points are clear, teams can spot quick wins, plan smarter improvements, and make a case for investment based on data. The process helps build better product backlogs and create real commercial impact.
Why it matters now?
In a world where experience is everything, knowing your customer journey isn’t enough. You need to understand the moments that cause drop-off, delay, or frustration and how to solve them.
Friction Mapping™ helps you:
- See the full end-to-end experience.
- Focus on real issues, not assumptions.
- Unite teams around a shared picture.
- Move from ideas to action quickly.
Whether you’re designing a new digital product, improving a service, or planning a transformation programme, Friction Mapping™ is a proven way to reduce risk and unlock value.
Want to explore Friction Mapping™ for your business?
Find out more about our Friction Mapping™ service or get in touch to see how we can help you unlock customer insights and build better digital experiences.
FAQs
Q: How is Friction Mapping™ different from customer journey mapping?
A: Journey mapping often shows how things should work, usually in focused areas or at a high level. Friction Mapping™ shows where they don’t, in much more detail. It focuses on real customer feedback to uncover blockers in the current experience.
Q: Who is it for?
A: It’s ideal for product, CX, and digital teams who want to drive improvements based on real insight, not guesswork.
Q: How long does it take?
A: Most Friction Mapping™ projects deliver actionable results in weeks, not months.
Q: Is it just for B2C?
A: No. We’ve used it in B2B sectors too, including finance, healthcare, and SaaS. The process itself is completely agnostic, as it’s human-led.
Q: Is AI involved?
A: Yes. We use AI to help process qualitative data faster, spotting patterns across interviews while keeping the human context.
