Providing a rich customer experience (CX) is every brand’s aspiration, and they make numerous efforts in that direction. This is possible only when you have the customers’ best interests in mind at customer touchpoints.
This guide will teach you about customer touchpoints, three reasons that make them essential, and a set of examples.
Building a great product or providing excellent service is one of many things making or breaking your customer satisfaction or CX initiatives. It is a collective of aspects such as website, billing, delivery, support, etc.
Also, don’t forget to download the free ebook: The Hacker’s Guide to Customer Experience, available toward the end of this guide!
What are customer Touchpoints?
Customer touch points are the stages or points where your brand interacts with customers from start to end.
Let us consider this example. Somebody saw an Ad for new sports shoes online. They visited the brand’s website for details, checked reviews on some customer reviews websites, contacted your support or service rep for the address to a local store, and bought it.
The purchase was made at your physical store, but the customer journey started online with an ad and went through various mediums.
LEARN ABOUT: Customer Journey Mapping Tools
This is why all your customer touchpoints are important and designed to serve the customers right. Based on which phase of the customer journey your customers are in, customer touchpoints are divided into 3 buckets:
- Before purchase
- During purchase
- After purchase
Learn how to build your own Customer Journey Map and where to locate the customer touchpoints.
Why is Consumer Touchpoints Important?
We’ve already mentioned how they provide interactions and encounters between consumers and your brand measurement. But what impact does that have on your company from a practical perspective?
Consider these three reasons:
- Customer touch points are the deciding factor for consumers, from discovering your brand to becoming loyal customers.
There is no phase in your relationship with consumers that do not involve touchpoints, so how you plan and create these moments can make or break your customer acquisition and retention results. - Customer touchpoints can be customized for your demographic and individual consumers. That’s helpful for marketers and product developers because you don’t have to create just one monolithic path and miss out on consumers who may not interact with every single touchpoint just like you expect them to do. There’s room to be agile, and that’s great news.
- Customer touchpoints can help you measure and track your progress. In the next section, we explain several assets that you can create to facilitate touchpoints for your brand.
You’ll recognize how you might measure engagement with each medium: video views, search rankings, time spent on-page, or clicks. And when you measure data from consumer touchpoints, you can curate content and refine your strategy for greater success.
Customer Touchpoint Examples
Now that we know what touchpoints are, let us look at some key ones based on the customer journey.
Before purchase
- Online ads
Also known as digital banner ads, these are the ads that you see on various websites either on the side, bottom or at the top. This effective touchpoint helps drive traffic and leads to your website.
Source: Monumetric
- Social media
You can reach thousands of people or potential customers with social media channels such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. You can target these people via posts, hashtags, paid ads, etc., which is handy for customer acquisition. Not only this, but you can use it to forge relationships, keep an eye out for customer reviews, boost brand reputational risk, etc.
Source: Twitter
- Referrals
Word-of-mouth marketing or referrals is more effective than any promotional or marketing campaign that you might run. A staggering 83% of customers said they trust their peers, family, and friends for referrals.
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Almost every brand with an online presence relies on search engines to connect with consumers, and search engine optimization (SEO) helps you take control of those connections.
Making your website and online assets easy to find for curious Google searchers opens your brand up to more engagement and, ultimately, more conversions.
SEO utilizes strategically selected keywords and queries with high search volumes. It leverages several other technical strategies that allow search engines to “crawl” sites and serve them as relevant search results.
- Blog content
A blog can increase your organic search traffic by over 400 percent by posting quality content on your website. But solid SEO results aren’t the only reason blog content facilitates some influential customer touch points.
When your blog posts are well-written, visually appealing, and built on accurate information and data, prospective customers will see you as an authority in your industry.
Consumers will find you because of a search-optimized blog, but they will seek out new touchpoints because you are helping them find what they’re looking for (your insights and your products or services!).
- Your company website
At some point, consumers will come to your company website. To make this an enjoyable and valuable consumer touchpoint, spend time developing the UX/UI and check all of your content to ensure that it is error-free, fully functional, and up-to-date.
This may be multi-faceted if your site has many pages, such as a blog, e-commerce, an interactive portal, and embedded media. A website represents the company, and too many organizations need to pay attention to minor errors that turn an otherwise compelling touchpoint into a distracting experience.
- Boosted social media content
Boosted social media content has marketing dollars behind it. Using the tools provided by each platform, you can segment and target particular groups of people based on information shared on their public profiles, such as region, gender, age range, and even interests and activities.
This allows you to put content in front of consumers who are most likely to find it relevant and compelling. It does require a portion of your marketing budget, but the spending can be worth it, thanks to the precision and results you can achieve when you turn boosted social engagement into a consumer touchpoint.
- Video
There’s a reason successful YouTube content creators have incomes of more than six figures. Video is the internet’s most frequently consumed content medium, and YouTube is the second most visited site after Google.
There’s more if that’s not a big enough incentive to start producing branded videos. In 2018, music videos were the two most shared pieces of content on social media.
When you create video content, you tell a story that appeals to multiple senses. Plus, video helps you connect with consumers looking for entertainment and self-improvement — the ideal position to offer solutions.
- Partnerships
Not all customer touch points are on your website or with the content you share. Utilizing partnerships can help you extend your reach to more people in your target market by reaching consumers who trust and follow your partners.
Partnered content can take many forms. It might be an asset or event you create for a partner to share on their platforms or an asset you sponsor and your partners create themselves.
These partners can be experts, authorities, influencers in your industry, or other businesses you’ve agreed to promote in a mutually beneficial campaign.
- Press releases
Never underestimate the power of a well-crafted press release. When shared with trusted news media members, press releases provide consumers and experts in your industry and community with timely updates about your company and its offerings.
If you’re launching a new product or developing a groundbreaking new feature or study, share this in a press release (and other platforms).
You’ll draw a different crowd of curious consumers than you do on social media or via a blog — consumers who are specifically hoping to learn something new and relevant. This could be your opportunity to show them exactly what they’re looking for.
- Print and out-of-home campaigns
Consumers sometimes set their devices down and explore the world; when they do that, they want to connect. Print and out-of-home campaigns might seem old-fashioned, such as billboards, public transportation advertisements, or paper flyers.
However, they are still effective and can meet people at many different phases in their customer journey.
Don’t expect to duplicate the information they can access on a blog post. Each touchpoint serves a unique purpose, after all. Think of these conventional advertising consumer touchpoints as nudges or reminders that your brand exists, it’s relevant, and it can make their lives better.
We’ve reviewed a few ways you can facilitate connections with consumers. Admittedly, our customer touchpoint examples are mostly digital because most of today’s customer journeys take place online.
Pay attention to the ways you encounter other companies and the assets that make these moments engaging to you. Ask yourself if they compel you to move forward with these brands in the customer journey. You know you’ve just found a successful touchpoint when the answer is yes.
During purchase
- Brochures
Product catalogs or brochures are a great way to showcase your products or services via online soft copies or hard copies. Images and descriptions of products help customers get all the information needed to purchase.
- Customer reviews
Many websites let customers post product reviews; they can rate the product and post specific information or comments about aspects. It’s important to remember your potential customers are referring to these reviews and evaluating their purchase decisions.
Source: Amazon
- Point of sale
A final touchpoint before your customers will make a purchase is a crucial touchpoint in the ‘during purchase’ phase. The sales reps will provide information about the product and what concerns, needs, and requirements it will take care of.
After purchase
- Feedback surveys
Sent after product purchases, these customer feedback surveys help evaluate the customer experience. If the customer experience was unique, what made it so? If not, what could be done better? These are just some points on which you can get information and improve your customer operations.
- Emailing lists
Many of your customers would want to receive your emails about new products, offers, etc., and will sign up for them. This is an excellent opportunity to upsell or cross-sell your products. Also, your customers will always have additional needs, and if they are happy with your offerings, they will return to you repeatedly.
Source: SuperOffice
- Billing
This is the least important touchpoint for many brands, but we respectfully disagree. Just because they’ve purchased something does not mean your customers won’t have any bad customer experiences. Billing errors, response delays, etc., can be off-putting and may even cost you customers.
- Community management
Community management turns a good social media post into a great one. When people comment and share your content, a community manager is there to respond and keep the conversation moving positively.
Take these moments to infuse your company with a brand personality and solve problems for current customers. Dealing with complaints on social media isn’t ideal, but it’s widespread, making social media one of your toolbox’s vital customer service touchpoints.
Halfway there? Congratulations! Luckily, you’ve learned more about Customer Touchpoints and their interconnection with customer experience. If you’d like to take the extra mile and learn more about how customer experience can help you gain customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and increase customer interactions, download our free eBook: The Hacker’s Guide to Customer Experience – CX= Emotion x Value.
Using Customer Touchpoints to Collect Customer Feedback
Knowing your touchpoints in the before, during, and after purchase stages is vital, and that’s not the end of it. To increase customer satisfaction, you must deliver a great customer experience across all the touchpoints and meet customer expectations throughout the customer journey.
One way of knowing where you stand is by conducting customer feedback surveys at critical touchpoints. QuestionPro CX can help you with these surveys and provide insights into delivering exceptional customer experiences.
The CX management software will help transform customer experiences to increase customer lifetime value (CLV).
LEARN ABOUT: Customer Lifecycle
What does touchpoint mapping mean?
Touchpoint mapping refers to the summarizing of every interaction that your customers have with your organization or brand. It helps look closely at each phase of the customer journey and the points where customers interacted with your brand.
Touchpoint mapping is essential since it allows brands to understand customer experience at every step and how it can be improved. All customers and potential customers are unique, and so are their customer journeys.
The touchpoint maps hence differ from brand to brand. You can start creating maps by imagining all possible avenues your customers will use to interact with your brand.
LEARN ABOUT: Customer Experience vs. Customer Service
How and where to begin touchpoint mapping?
To start touchpoint mapping, you must be mindful of these four essential aspects. Without these points, it may not work as an effective marketing method.
1. Identify each touchpoint
Your customers will interact with your brands at various stages. You need to recognize these and bucket them as:
Before purchase
- Website
- Advertisements
- Word of mouth
During purchase
- Product demos
- Point of sale
- Checkout lines
After purchase
- Thank you messages
- Billing
- Customer surveys
2. Map them
Once you know the stages at which your customers will engage with your brand, rate the experiences chronologically. Classify them as customer awareness, consideration, sale, and purchase.
3. Improve touchpoints
Identifying touchpoints is only half the battle. What comes next is important, improving your touchpoints to improve customer interaction. If it’s customer service, then ensuring all queries are resolved in a timely fashion. If it’s billing, then ensure there are no discrepancies, etc.
4. Review regularly
With after-purchase touchpoints, you will always interact with your customers through advertisements, marketing emails, and customer surveys. These need to be continually visited and refined for improved customer interaction and experience.
Learn More: Complaint Resolution
Optimizing Consumer Touchpoints in the Customer Journey
We can only have a complete conversation about consumer touchpoints if we discuss how they fit into the customer journey.
As consumers move through the phases that lead them to choose your brand and become loyal customers, they do so because each touchpoint compels them to do so.
The customer journey has five stages: customer awareness, consideration, decision, action, and customer loyalty (retention and customer advocacy). You can learn more about mapping the customer journey here.
To enhance your understanding of customer touchpoints, let’s consider where different opportunities fit best on the customer journey map. Keep in mind the customer journey is rarely linear, and many assets will connect with people at multiple points along their path.
Customer awareness
Organic social media and community management, press releases, and partnerships.
Consideration
Organic social media and community management, press releases, and partnerships.
Decision
Videos (reviews, tutorials, branded content), surveys, blog content.
Action
Website UX/UI and on-site content.
Customer loyalty
Organic social media and community management, surveys, video, and partnerships. You’ll notice that retaining customers involves just as much strategy and active engagement as acquiring them.
When you leverage consumer touchpoint opportunities at various stages in the customer journey, make sure you optimize them for that particular stage.
LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey
For example, surveys about key factors in the decision-making experience will address different concerns than customer satisfaction surveys that measure your Net Promoter Score (NPS). Consider the questions and expectations consumers will have at each junction and optimize their experience accordingly.
The right resources make all the difference in mapping, implementing, and measuring your company’s most successful customer touchpoints.
QuestionPro CX offers intuitive customer surveys and professional research services to help you get the most out of your connections with your consumers. Get started today!
