When Frictionless Breaks the Experience with Adam Candela, ex-Dunkin, Staples
Two taps. That's all it took to reorder your regular Dunkin order through CarPlay while driving. Sounds like the perfect frictionless feature, right? Except it was quietly training customers to spend less on every visit because they never discovered loaded hash browns existed. Sometimes making things too easy becomes the problem.
This encore episode brings back one of our most quoted conversations with Adam Candela, who spent five years leading digital at Dunkin and fundamentally changed how we think about balancing frictionless with profitability. Join hosts Chuck Moxley and Nick Paladino as they revisit why this episode matters.
Nick literally quotes it in meetings once a week, particularly the CarPlay example that shows how extreme optimization in one direction can backfire. Adam breaks down why frictionless isn't just about speed and simplicity, but about creating experiences that are quick, thorough, profitable, and get customers to return and recruit others to your brand. We explore when personalization crosses from convenient to creepy, why "it's digital, just turn it on" stakeholders fundamentally misunderstand product complexity, and the power of creating psychological safety so your QA team feels comfortable sharing game-changing ideas.
Key Actionable Takeaways:
- Balance ease with discovery opportunities - Making reordering too frictionless can train customers into routines that prevent them from discovering new products, hurting both upsell and brand loyalty building
- Create psychological safety for frontline insights - QA teams and people closest to the product often have the best ideas; build team dynamics where they feel comfortable sharing without fear of being dismissed
- Challenge "it's digital, just turn it on" stakeholders - Digital initiatives require architecture planning, story pointing, QA test cases, understanding customer needs, and solving actual problems, not just quick implementation of requested features
Want more tips and strategies about creating frictionless digital experiences?
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Adam Candela's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/adamcandela
Nick Paladino's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/npaladino
Chuck Moxley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckmoxley/