Identify and Conquer Critical Customer Touchpoints and win your customers for a lifetime

There are a lot of instances during a customer’s journey with your brand where they interact with you. It may be pre-sale, during the transaction, and even post-sale.

Customers may approach you to ask queries and requests for demos. Customers may negotiate while purchasing the product. And customers may continue to keep in touch after the sale for feedback or complaints.

All these varied instances where a customer chooses to indulge with your brand are known as Customer touchpoints. These engagements can be a game-changer to create and/or alter your brand image and improve customer experience.

According to Forbes, 81% of companies consider customer experience to be a differentiator. So, Customer Touchpoints can help you take an edge in the competition.

Let’s dig deeper to know what Customer Touchpoints mean and how to identify and use some Critical Customer Touchpoints for your benefit!

What Customer Touchpoints actually mean?

“Customer Touchpoints” is often considered to be business jargon and confused with another term, “Channels”.

However, these two are significantly different. Channels are deliberately created points of contact which help you understand where customers come from. This is where interaction takes place.

Customer Touchpoints are more specific. They are the actual encounters that build key moments to gain customer trust. These are mostly unplanned and uncontrollable.

Confused? This Customer Touchpoint example might help…

You post an ad on social media. Many target customers view it. They even like it. Some of them comment and ask you more about the product. In this case, the Social Media platform is a channel while the likes and comments are Customer Touchpoints.

But why do we need them?

Why are Touchpoints Important?

To be able to improve interactions with customers, you need to realize what these interactions are and where they take place. Understanding and finding Critical Customer Touchpoints is therefore necessary for varied reasons:

● Customer Attention: According to Marketing Week, around 50% of customers interact with brands at 6 touchpoints on an average. This makes Customer Touchpoints an important source to attract customer attention.

● Personalized Experience: Customers like interacting with humans rather than bots. Touchpoints create a personalized experience for them. According to research by Epsilon, personalized experiences make it more likely for 80% of customers to do business with a brand.

● Improved Customer Experience: A good interaction can result in a favorable customer experience. Forbes says that for about 68% of customers the contact person is a key to a positive customer experience. And, Global Newswire’s survey found that 49% of customers tend to make impulse purchases after a great experience.

● Customer Perception: Also, when you know your touchpoints, they can be used as a means to change customer perception of your brand. In its report, Forbes highlights that 90% of CEOs believe customer perception has a strong impact on their company strategies.

● Customer Trust: When customers have the right perception about you, it becomes easy to win their trust. And when customers trust you, they are loyal to your brand. 75% of customers globally say that they will continue to buy a brand that they trust, according to a survey by Marketing Charts.

So, why are touchpoints important?

Because touchpoints can be used as great tools to attract customers, capture customer insights, instill trust, improve brand loyalty, and rejuvenate customer experience.

And now that you know why are touchpoints important, you must know some Critical Customer Touchpoints…

Some Critical Customer Touchpoints

Knowing what Customer Touchpoints really are and why are touchpoints important, it will now be easier for you to list your customer touchpoints.

Usually, organizations list channels as their touchpoints. Billboards, mail, websites, in-store sales points, call centers, etc. are mostly too broad to be considered as touchpoints. These are rather gateways to instigate interaction and thereby create new touchpoints.

Rather than being organization-centric while listing customer touchpoints, you must put yourself in the shoes of the customer. You should trace the customer throughout their journey with your brand. In other words, you need to focus on customer journey touchpoints.

Customer Journey Touchpoints can be split into three: pre-purchase, during a transaction, and post-sales. When combined chronologically, these touchpoints demonstrate the entire experience a customer would have with your product/service.

Pre-purchase Customer Journey Touchpoints

These touchpoints will be derived from all those channels that are used to engage mass audiences in one go to seek their attention. This includes varied media like print, TV, digital, and social. These touchpoints can be used to promote products, build relationships, and enhance brand image.

Critical Customer Touchpoints During Transaction

While the transaction takes place, there are ample engagements that take place between the customer and the business. Whether you are selling via a physical store or e-commerce platform, whether you have B2C or B2B products, you’ll always have some contact points to connect with your customers.

Post-sales Customer Touchpoints

And even after-sales, customers and businesses stay in touch. Customers like to share after making a purchase. There is always feedback, reviews, complaints, etc. And responding to these can help win customer trust.

According to Forbes, 77% of customers would choose brands that respond to their feedback.

Throughout the entire customer journey, you can encounter millions of touchpoints. However, you need to know how to identify customer touchpoints and map them to the customer journey to seize the opportunity as it arrives!

Some Customer Touchpoint Examples

The table below lists some real-life Customer Touchpoint Examples related to the different stages of the customer journey:

The next question in line is how to identify customer touchpoints?

How to Identify Customer Touchpoints via Customer Touchpoint Mapping

You are now well versed with the real meaning, need and examples of Customer Touchpoints, however, you still are one step behind. You cannot take action on touchpoints unless you can identify them.

So, how to identify customer touchpoints?

One, you should know what can be a possible touchpoint, which by now you understand real fine. And two, you need to map these possible touchpoints to varied customer journey instances using a technique called customer touchpoint mapping.

Customer Journey Maps can be used as great tools for Customer Touchpoint Mapping. According to McKinsey and Co, using customer journey maps reduce the cost of service by 15–20%. Many companies like HubSpot, Microsoft, Gliffy, Custellense, etc offer brilliant Customer Journey Mapping tools.

The following steps can give you a generalized idea as to how Customer Touchpoint Mapping works:

1. Identify the various customer touchpoints and categorize them into the different stages in the customer journey.

2. Arrange these touchpoints in chronological order within each category. Start with pre-purchase, followed by the transaction, and finally post-sales.

3. Now, in each category, list the touchpoints that have a positive interaction and mark them in green. For eg, a positive review, a successful demo, etc.

4. Similarly, any friction in interaction should be marked red. For instance, complaints, issues, etc. are areas that can result in friction and a negative brand image.

5. Every touchpoint where the customer makes a decision can be marked yellow. Like when the customer wishlists a product to decide later, etc.

6. Analyze the entire map and focus on the red and yellow areas. For yellow markers, focus on how to get them converted to green. For red markers, be patient and polite while dealing in such interactions to avoid negative implications.

7. Device multiple maps to cover the various types of experience that different customers can have.

Customer touchpoint mapping makes it easy to cumulatively view the various touchpoints in customer journey while highlighting areas that can be improved. It perfectly helps to answer the question of how to identify customer touchpoints and also generates scopes of improvement.

Key Take-Aways

Customer Touchpoints is not mere business jargon, rather it has significant power if used rightly. To know how to identify customer touchpoints and why are touchpoints important, you need to truly understand what Customer Touchpoints are. And only then can you design them better, and use them to enhance the customer experience. You can also use tools for Customer Touchpoint Mapping to create schedules of strategies to encash upon them.