Explore the different stages of your customer journey and spot key moments that enable better customer experience for your business.
Have you created a model airplane or car while growing? Do you build DIY furniture? Then, you are likely to have followed a set of instructions that covered how to build the product.
Although some instructions are better and easier to follow than others, their main role is to explain the steps to help you achieve your main goal. These instructions are similar to customer touch points or brand touchpoints. They are important interactions that are found throughout the customer journey.
By grouping the customer touchpoints, you get to paint a chronological picture of the customer experience. If you want to optimize your customer journey, you have come to the right place.
This post explains what is a touchpoint, its uses, and the different types of customer touchpoints. Let’s dive right in.
What Do Customer Touchpoints Mean?
In the simplest of words, touchpoints are interactions that a business has with its customers throughout the customer journey. As these moments play a huge role in overall customer experience and brand perception, it is crucial to utilize them.
Chances are that you might have searched for “point of contact meaning”. It is important that you influence your target audience through each moment. However, to get started, you will first need to outline key touchpoints.
Generally, digital touchpoints are recorded on a customer journey map in chronological order. It enables customer service and marketing teams to identify each touchpoint and find ways to improve the customer journey.
Why Are Consumer Touchpoints Important?
Consumer touchpoints are also known as brand touchpoints and they have a huge role to play. Since every encounter you have with your customers plays a huge role in the overall success of your brand, you have to make them count. Here are some reasons why you must never overlook digital touchpoints.
- Act as the Deciding Factor: One of the main reasons why brand touchpoints should not be taken lightly is because they act as the deciding factor for customers when they are about to make a purchase decision. Through the effective use of each touchpoint, you can increase your loyal customer base. As there is no phase which does not involve touchpoints, you must make sure that you improve them.
- Customizable Based on Demographics and Individual Customers: Another great thing about customer touchpoints is that you can customize them for your demographics. Product developers and marketers can customize the touchpoints to ensure that there is no monolithic path that frustrates consumers. Thus, it is possible to be agile.
- Help Measure and Track Progress Made: Customer touchpoints can even be used for measuring and tracking progress. Each touchpoint can be monitored and necessary changes can be made to optimize performance.
Customer Touchpoints Examples
When it comes to customer touchpoints, there are various examples from pre-purchase to post-purchase that you need to focus on. These are discussed in detail below to help you understand how you can improve them.
Pre-Purchase Stage
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Social Media
Even though social media plays a huge role throughout the customer journey, its main role is to acquire new customers. The fact is that social media provides a cost-effective technique to reach a huge share of your customer base. It can be used to promote your offerings, establish relationships with customers, and boost the overall reputation of your business.
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Online Advertisement
When you browse online, you are likely to encounter banner ads at the sidebar or the top of a webpage. They act as touchpoints that direct your prospects to your website. Companies rely on online advertisement for generating traffic to their websites.
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Digital Marketing Content
Any material that a company posts online for promoting its brand aside from ads is considered digital marketing content. These materials include engaging blog posts, infographics, and promotional videos. They help brands attract prospects.
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Company Events
When working on the sales or marketing team, you are likely to attend conferences where you stand at a booth promoting your business. These conferences allow you to introduce your brand to prospective customers who might have never even heard of it.
For instance, Inbound is an event that is held every year. Companies from across the globe attend the event to discuss customer service, marketing, sales, and just about every type of business topic. It provides the ultimate platform for business leaders to meet and find new partners to grow their organizations.
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Peer Referral
The truth is that customers trust their peers more than advertisements. In fact, 83 percent of customers claim that their family and friends are the most trusted source of referral. This is why it is crucial that you improve your word-of-mouth marketing to be considered trustworthy.
Customer Journey Map, source
Purchase Stage
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Direct Conversations with Company Representatives
The most important touchpoint in the purchase stage is the direct conversation that customers have with your company representatives. In-person interactions serve as a direct point of contact between your business and its customers. These conversations occur at your store when customers are making a purchase decision.
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Product Catalogs
Product catalogs are also extremely important regardless of whether they are a hard copy or online. They allow you to showcase your product line. A product image with an enticing description helps provide valuable information to customers so that they can make a purchase. It is a good idea to add a CTA on your catalog page to remove friction and boost conversion.
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Ecommerce
Ecommerce has emerged as the most effective option for businesses to acquire customers and boost sales. The reason behind this is that websites can be accessed from just about everywhere. Therefore, SMEs can provide products and services to customers from just about every corner of the globe.
As there are various touchpoints within ecommerce, you need to understand them and improve tem to increase sales.
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Product Reviews
Product reviews are just as important as any other purchase touchpoint. Today, customers can read product reviews online while shopping for something. In addition to this, many online retailers have started including product reviews on their listing pages to help provide customers an idea about the experience previous customers have had. Thus, customers will come across this touchpoint while navigating through your online store.
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Point Of Sale
The last customer touchpoint in the purchase process is the purchase itself. It is an integral touchpoint as it is where your sales representative would encourage the sale and explain everything that the product has to offer. This is why it is a momentous step that many businesses need to capitalize on.
Post-Purpose Stage
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Thank You Emails or Letters
Thanking your customer for making a purchase is a great way to establish a strong relationship with them. Follow up with your customers when they buy something with a thank you letter or email. However, it is worth mentioning that hand-written notes are appreciated the most by customers as they show that you care about them and are interested in forming a long-term relationship with them.
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Product Feedback Surveys
In addition to sending a thank you email and letter, you need to send product feedback surveys. They help evaluate the type of experience customers have had with your product. If a negative review is left by the customer, you need to reach out to the customer to ensure that their problem is solved. Besides, these reviews provide valuable information for improving your product or service.
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Cross-Selling/Upselling Emails
After customers have made a purchase, it does not mean that their needs would magically disappear. In fact, it is possible for customers to have additional needs after they use your product. This provides a huge opportunity for you to upsell or cross-sell. It allows you to sell premium or additional items on your online store. Send upselling/cross-selling emails to customers to get them to take an interest in other products. You can rely on email automation for this.
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Billing Actions
Not many businesses realize that billing is an overlooked touchpoint. Since it happens after customers have made a purchase and does not have an influence on the buyer decision, you need to avoid providing a negative experience to customers. If you fail to avoid negative experiences, your churn would rise.
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Provide Subscription Reward
Lastly, subscription rewards also act as a customer touchpoint. If you have a subscription-based business, renewals are necessary for keeping your company afloat. Since you require subscriptions for maintaining steady growth, you must remove as much friction as possible to streamline the renewal process. Besides, you must provide an effortless experience to retain existing customers and attract new ones.
Conclusion
Customer touchpoints are the touchpoints where you come into contact with your audience.
You must understand each touchpoint to make sure that you know how to incorporate it for optimizing customer journey.
