What are customer touchpoints, and why do they matter?
Customer touchpoints are the places where your customers and potential customers come into contact with your business. They can be physical locations, like a store or office, or virtual locations, like a website or social media page.
Every customer touchpoint is an opportunity to make a good impression and create a lasting connection with your customers. The best businesses take advantage of every customer touchpoint to deliver a consistent, positive experience that meets customer needs and builds loyalty.
In this post, we’ll look at what customer touchpoints are, how to identify yours, and how to make the most of them.
What is a customer touchpoint?
In business, a customer touchpoint is any way that a customer can interact with your company, whether it’s in person, online, over the phone, or through social media. And while each of these interactions may seem small, they can actually have a big impact on how customers perceive your business.
That’s why it’s so important to identify your customer touchpoints and make sure that each one is delivering a positive experience. After all, it only takes one bad touchpoint to turn a potential customer away for good.
Customer touchpoint examples
What are some common customer touchpoints? Here are a few examples:
Your website
This is often the first place that potential customers will go to learn more about your company. It’s important to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and provides the information that they’re looking for. One way to supercharge your website’s ability to connect with potential customers is through live chat, which allows visitors to get their questions answered in real-time.
Your sales team
Whether they’re meeting with potential customers in person or handling inquiries over the phone, it’s important that your sales team is friendly and professional. They should be able to answer questions about your products or services, and help customers find the right solution for their needs.
Your customer service team
This is the team that customers will turn to when they have a problem or concern. So it’s crucial that your customer service representatives are helpful, patient, and efficient in resolving issues.
Related content: Tips for upselling and cross-selling for CS reps
Social media
With social media, you have the opportunity to connect with customers in a more informal setting. This can be a great way to build relationships and create loyalty among your customer base.
Related content: How to use Twitter for customer support
Customer feedback and surveys
Paying attention to what customers are saying about their experiences with your company is a vital part of improving the customer experience. You can collect feedback through surveys, online reviews, social media, and many other channels.
These are just a few examples of customer touchpoints, and each one presents an opportunity to either improve the customer experience… or make it worse.
To get a complete picture of all the ways that customers can interact with your business, it’s helpful to create a customer journey map. This will show you the different steps that customers take from awareness to purchase, and help you identify all of the touchpoints along the way.
Why customer touchpoints matter
Customer touchpoints play a pivotal role in the customer journey, and can have a major impact on customer loyalty and retention. In fact, research has shown that it costs (roughly) five times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. So it’s important to make sure that all of your customer touchpoints are delivering positive experiences that will keep customers coming back.
In addition, the way that customers interact with your business can say a lot about your brand. If customers have negative experiences at any of their touchpoints, they may start to question whether your company is really the right fit for them. On the other hand, if all of their interactions are positive, they’re more likely to develop a strong loyalty to your brand.
Tips for optimising customer touchpoints
Once you’ve identified your customer touchpoints, you can start working on making sure that each one is delivering a positive experience. This may involve making changes to your website, training your sales team, or improving your customer service process. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that even small changes can make a big difference in the way customers perceive your business.
Summary
- Identify all of your company’s customer touchpoints.
- Analyse each touchpoint to see what is working well and what could be improved.
- Make sure that each touchpoint is delivering a positive experience for customers.
- Regularly review your customer touchpoints and make changes as needed.
By taking the time to optimize your customer touchpoints, you can improve the overall customer experience and build loyalty among your customer base. And that’s sure to pay off in the long run.
Not sure where to begin? We can help!
