What Is Customer Touchpoint And How To Identify Them?

Have you ever wondered what shapes your experience with a brand – from the first time you hear about it to your last interaction?

Every step of that journey involves what we call Customer Touchpoints: The Key to Seamless Experiences.

Customer touch points are key points where customers interact with a business, whether by browsing a website, reading a marketing email, or just negotiating with customer service.

But how do businesses find and optimize those touchpoints so that everyone delivers a seamless, positive experience?

Let’s dig into identifying real touchpoints and improving each stage of the customer journey!

What are Customer Touchpoints?

Customer touchpoints are all customer interactions with a brand along its journey; it means all moments-from first awareness up and through any needed support a customer may require after the sale.

Touchpoints can be either direct or touch. Every touchpoint significantly influences the shaping of the customer’s experience and perception of the brand, finally resulting in loyalty and satisfaction.

Why are Customer Touchpoints Important?

Identifying and writing down these touchpoints in a customer journey map is an activity that can help organizations pinpoint areas for improvement.

Customer touchpoints are so significant for businesses as they reflect the amount of contacts that customers make with a brand during their journey.

This process of mapping, in this sense, helps the marketing, sales, and customer support teams become aware of where friction may be happening: slow web pages or unresponsive customer care, to name a few, which could comprise a boundary to experience.

Solving such problems will create smooth flows throughout a customer’s journey and eventually result in higher satisfaction.

Touchpoints can be segmented into three stages :

1) Pre-sale- The first contacts through advertisements and other social media interactions

2) During purchase- They comprise the activities during the sale process with the client representatives and at the checkout stage.

3) After Sale- These are the interactions after selling to the customer: customer service, follow-up questionnaires, and loyalty programs.

Knowledge of touch points enables brands to fine-tune their strategies in such a way that every contact is positive in influencing the customer’s experience.

These interactions significantly have an impact on customer experience and even purchasing decisions.

Research has shown that 73% of consumers point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions.

Knowing and determining touchpoints that are likely to discourage customers opens the opportunity for making it better or eliminating them for more customer satisfaction.

3 reasons why customer touchpoints are very important:

1. Enhanced Customer Retention

Any business’ key metric is customer retention, and touchpoints play a very significant role in that function.

If customers have pleasant experiences at all points of a touchpoint – you are buying it, you are getting your product, or you are seeking support – they tend to come back for their next purchase.

This is because loyal customers already know your brand, and trust your products, and not much marketing is required to win them over again.

2. Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty stems from repeated, consistent positive contact across customer contact points.

When customers perceive value and have their needs met through personalized marketing, responsive customer service, or high-quality products, customers are more likely to choose your brand over competitors.

Loyalty from satisfied customers turns into repeat business and brand advocates.

This serves the loyal customers by allowing them to share their experiences with their friends and families, meaning that the loyal customers serve as excellent sources of word-of-mouth marketing, which can get you new customers at no additional cost of advertisement.

3. Elevating Post-Sales Support

Indeed, a post-purchase stage is as vital for the customer journey as the pre-purchase and purchase stages.

Controlling touchpoints with a customer after his or her sales, such as, for instance, customer support communications, follow-up contacts, and feedback solicitations, can highly increase the satisfaction from doing business with a seller.

A well-honed customer journey ensures the answers to the inquiry are received in good time so that issues get resolved in the shortest possible time, and there is an increased likelihood that a customer returns to the same vendor.

This responsiveness not only ensures the retention of customers but also impresses a positive reputation for the brand.

Customers who feel supported after buying will often give good reviews about the brand, recommend others to use the brand, and keep coming back for more purchases.

5 Tips to Identify Customer Touchpoints

Know your touchpoints if you are to sustain your customers and improve customer experience. Here’s a simple approach to help you realize those interactions:

1. Understand Your Customers and Their Needs

Start with an investigation and survey of your customers and see what is the perception of your target market.

This would provide you with a crystallized version of buyer personas where it reflects the multipart needs of your audience.

If you are an interior designer, and your clients mainly find you online, most probably your first touches will be from search ads and content online.

And doing these initial touches much better can create a much longer-lasting impression.

2. Analyze Customer Interactions

Review the current touchpoints and determine how many are most utilized by your customers.

Whether they prefer to connect to your business on social media, your website, or other channels, determine this.

You may also directly ask customers about which engagement avenues they prefer through surveys.

3. Map the Customer Journey

With an outline of your current touch points, you should build a customer journey map detailing the whole process.

For the sake of your buyer persona, where have they come to realize what their problem is? How do they start researching some solutions? How might they come across your business?

This mapping of their interaction will include where their interactions started, how long their interactions are during the purchasing phase, and afterward for post-purchase interaction.

Awareness of the customer experience at each touch point is key to understanding pain points along the journey.

4. Collect Customer Feedback

Customer satisfaction measurements would be based on surveys, such as the Net Promoter Score, which indicates whether your business would be recommended to friends and family.

This should highlight pockets of friction that require a little tweaking. In addition, surveys throughout the journey will indicate certain touchpoints that need to be optimized.

5. Always Review Touchpoints and Journey Maps

A company has to identify and optimize customer touchpoints continually. Monitor the touchpoints regularly and update the journey maps whenever new marketing campaigns or customer paths are added for continuous improvements.

By undertaking these steps, businesses will effectively discover their customer touchpoints and work on improving the customer’s total experience toward a higher satisfaction and loyalty end.

How to Use Customer Touchpoints in Your Business?

There are great possibilities to improve the overall customer experience through the use of touchpoints.

On the other hand, it also has to be understood that not all touchpoints will apply to your business model.

A Software as a Service company for instance might not need an online catalog and if you act as a solo entrepreneur, a customer probably doesn’t have to handle with sales team.

4 Steps to Create Your Customized Customer Touchpoint Map

1. Step into Your Customers Perspective

Now that you are in the shoes of your customers, do understand their journey while deciding to buy something.

Ask yourself the following:

What is the first source of information they consult?
How did they decide to buy that specific thing?
What do they do if there are some problems with the product?

Here’s an example of a customer journey:

A customer has a problem and is out searching for solutions.
They try to search specifically for the product online and browse through Google, Amazon, etc.
They look for reviews of the product as well to make a decision
When they get enough information, they place an order
When they use the product, they then encounter issues and begin searching for self-help with the product.
Ultimately, they contact the customer service.

Match up each action taken by the customer with an analogous touchpoint:

Touchpoint 1: An integrative blog to answer questions that are most frequently searched for by customers.
Touchpoint 2: Targeted Google and Amazon ads.
Touchpoint 3: Impartial product reviews on your site.
Touchpoint 4: Self-service capabilities such as track-your-order status.
Touchpoint 5: Knowledge bases and other self-service instructional guides.
Touchpoint 6: Easy access to customer service contact information.

The steps above should guide you on how to develop a customized touchpoint map to make customer service easier and to ensure satisfaction in interactions.

2. Assess Feasibility Based on Your Company Size and Budget

Now that you have a good estimate of the amount of resources and information your customers will need at every touch point during their journey, it is time to assess which ones make sense practically based on the size and budget of your company.

For instance, if you are offering some fancy high-tech product and you are a solo entrepreneur, buying a full-service desk supported with knowledge bases and ticketing is likely out of the question.

You want to find alternatives that are easy for you and your team to adopt and scalable as your business grows.

You do not want to be restricted when your customer touchpoint strategy becomes effective.

3. Define Touchpoint Tasks

Choosing the touchpoints is only the beginning; you have to define them into actionable tasks. Once you figure out what is possible, now it’s time to get down to the action.

Here’s what this might look like for the example above:

1) First Touchpoint Tasks

Develop a strong content strategy that reflects customer needs.
Identify the first five blog posts to be published within four weeks.
Hire four freelancers for content development.
Use your in-house marketing team to leverage buyer personas and current customer acquisition data.

2) Second Touchpoint Tasks

Accounts created in Google Merchant Center and Amazon Seller.
Create unique product copy with the help of two freelancers.
Gather pictures of products along with other information such as specs, country of origin, and sustainability ratings.
List products on Google and Amazon

3) Third Touchpoint Work

Add product reviews to your website utilizing a WordPress review plugin or something similar to this.
Ask previous customers to review in exchange for offering them 10% off of their next purchase.
Be proactive when responding to incoming reviews so users know your brand is responsive.

You would tick down the list of touchpoints and add tasks until you have a good checklist you can refer to across your team.

A touchpoint map will help you locate which area needs improvement in your product, service, customer experience, or other dimensions of your business strategy.

Make use of our fully customizable template for a customer touchpoint map to design a layout that best matches your business requirements.

4. Use Software Tools to Automate Touchpoint Tasks

It is good to put in marketing, sales, and service software so that touchpoint tasks work out without involving much manual exertion.

For example, if you have a three-person marketing team that doesn’t know much about the process but would like to begin with social media marketing as your first touchpoint, then you could use Locobuzz.

Locobuzz gives you a comprehensive social media tool set with which your team can streamline its efforts toward effective engagement.

Encourage your newly developed team to take up a certification course on social media management if they have no prior experience in managing social media activities.

If the touchpoint is where the customer interacts with a salesman, use the money to invest in a CRM system that will track any communications and automatically schedule follow-up calls with the customers.

For email-based offers or discounts, use email marketing software to automate messages instead of manually typing in every email for every client.

If an easily accessible service desk forms one of your touchpoints, investing in customer service software that can accommodate ticketing and even respond to simple questions through a chatbot could be very resourceful.

These tools will help streamline processes in the way you handle customers at every touchpoint, thereby running smoothly with less intervention from your team.

This way, when your customer base keeps growing, no touchpoint will go unchecked!

Here’s a list of customer journey touchpoints organized by their respective stages-

Here are 20 Examples of Customer Touchpoints

Customer Touchpoints Before a Purchase

1. Social media

Social media offers a flexible customer touch point. They directly play a role in attaining your target audience and new customers.

Its cost-effectiveness places it on top for promoting products, building client relationships, and building brand reputation.

The principle of continuous publishing will finally unlock the potential of any social media that is introduced.

More importantly, many users leverage their social media as an important touch point in each step of the buying process: pre-conversation, conversation, and post-conversation.

It serves fundamentally as a new acquisition strategy, but the same social media can be leveraged to support the relationships that already exist and to facilitate engagement within the community.

An efficient social media strategy should ensure your business is active on the most visited platforms by your customers.

The channels should be used not only to market your products and services but also to involve your audience with a sense of community.

2. Digital ADs

Also, banner ads appear at the top or down the side of web pages and are among the most effective touchpoints for getting potential customers back to your website.

For most brands, including Best Buy below, these are driving traffic.

The more relevant and targeted that landing page can be, therefore, the more your marketing spend and banner ads will pay off.

This methodology allows you to retarget prospects much more effectively than sending them straight to your flagship site.

Digital ads on SERPs and across networks also represent the very first touchpoint for customers.

They may attract users to click on the ad and visit a targeted landing page. If your ad copy is promotional, then the landing page should promise all that the ad copy promises by matching with it.

In reality, these online ads and related landing pages can facilitate a better customer experience and even higher conversion probabilities.

3. Digital Marketing Content

Digital marketing content refers to the variety of materials your company is publishing online to market itself.

This may take the form of a promotional video, infographic, or interesting blog post. In addition to assessing how effective this content is, it also needs to be in line with your brand identity.

However, all these are only possible if your published content is engaging and interesting.

The likelihood of purchasing from brands is most probably because of their efforts in the production of quality digital marketing content to the customers.

4. Recommendation by Family and Friends

Ever consider what customers say about your brand when they talk about it with family, friends, or coworkers?

Customers who have positive experiences with a business play a very influential role in new prospects; good conversations are four times more likely to buy.

So, word-of-mouth marketing is a crucial investment because it upgrades the credibility of a business.

For one thing, people end up consulting others on the internet before purchasing anything be it a product, or a service.

That’s just the assumption that brands may stretch a little further than the truth in commercials, which even customers do not.

Not surprisingly, then, 93% of consumers look most to friends and family as the “most credible source for referral.”

Customer satisfaction has to be established at every touchpoint. For example, you may have an awesome product, but terrible customer service is what does the business in.

Conversely, excellent service through all touchpoints contributes to positive word of mouth and also instills confidence in your brand on the part of customers.

5. Business Events

If you are in marketing or sales, you have likely attended some conferences or exhibitions. You can also market your company in one of these booths.

That is why these are ideal events for making your brand known to the entire market in case the people attending do not know about it.

There are many Conferences in which companies from all over the globe are present together to discuss marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.

Such events will help business leaders connect with new partners and find strategies for growth in an organization.

Events and pop-up shows help generate awareness about your business by potential customers.

Industry-specific conferences and trade shows will make it a proper location for such presentations.

You can also streamline the process by scheduling meetings directly through your CRM system.

Customer Touchpoints During a Purchase

6. Company Representative Interactions

Company representatives are the most immediate interface with your business, and their interactions have a direct impact on buying decisions.

While an online touchpoint is usually the first point of contact for a prospect, if that prospect then decides to visit your brick-and-mortar location, the face of the company they meet is usually the sales representative.

There is a greater chance to close the sale if the sales rep can present a fluid experience similar to what they have been engaged in online.

7. Price Page

Most of the customers get frustrated if you only have a pricing page that states “request a quote” or “schedule a demo”.

Transparency in your pricing may be very crucial in this area. Naturally, you have a specific page for pricing; ensure that you add your prices on this page.

If you’re not showing any prices, ensure that you tell customers on the homepage so they don’t get caught off-guard by the additional steps.

8. Product Catalogs

Whether in digital format or printed, catalogs are a wonderful method to show your product line.

You can add images and detailed descriptions to give a customer everything they need to make a knowledgeable buying decision.

One step further to increase the usability aspect for a customer, you can add a call-to-action, where a customer can directly add the product to their shopping cart.

9. E-commerce

E-commerce has made it extremely simple for me to buy almost everything I want online without much hassle.

E-commerce for most companies serves as an effective source to attract customers and seal sales, thereby exposing companies to a global market.

The various touchpoints in e-commerce drastically alter the customer experience for SaaS businesses and others that are online.

Information on product pages, live chat, and shopping carts or checkout pages are a company’s biggest touchpoints when purchasing something.

Updates made to these sections will ensure the sealing of more sales. In addition, e-commerce websites provide brands with access to a global customer base.

Ensure that your site is correctly incorporating product descriptions, images, and videos to offer the best customer experience.

Also, ensure proper monitoring of your webpage loading speed so that potential customers don’t get frustrated and leave.

10. Product Reviews

Consumers today research businesses and product reviews quickly, often scrolling through their smartphones while shopping in a store.

E-commerce websites today are now required to showcase product listings with ratings and reviews, thereby making reviews such an integral touchpoint not only before the transaction but at every point of the buying journey.

As customers walk into your store, they can look up product reviews with smart devices right in front of their faces.

Most websites of online retailers will put these reviews directly on the product listing page so that users can easily see what others have to say about a product without ever having to leave the page.

This makes it easier for those potential buyers to make a buying decision.

11. Point of Sale

The point of sale is the last interaction between the customer and the product before the purchase is finalized.

This is the most crucial point at which your sales representative needs to communicate why the customer needs your product or service.

This is one of the most crucial interactions the customer will have in the buyer’s journey about following through with their desired action.

To conquer this opportunity, you should prepare your salespeople with all the information that will help them make decisions for such customers.

When selling through online transactions, the checkout page must be designed to facilitate an easy transaction and should provide clear, short information that will in turn create a seamless buying experience.

In this way, optimizing both online and in-shop interactions at this stage is likely to make a difference in customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

Customer Touchpoints After a Purchase

12. Thank-you Notes

Without a doubt, the best way to establish customer rapport is by sending an email or a handwritten thank-you note after making the sale.

Such gestures show the importance you give your customers as well as your interest in continued relationships.

To start a chain of thank-you notes, you are first reminded of the steps on how to write an effective note.

For new or even returning customers, a welcome or thank-you email works out well in showing appreciation for their business and gives them a second confidence to maintain contact.

Including your customer support contact information in the note also encourages customers to reach out with questions or concerns.

13. Product Feedback Surveys

Customer feedback surveys are used to ask for feedback from a customer after the latter has purchased as a way of determining how their experience with your product or service has been.

After receiving a note with negative feedback about your company, that is your cue to respond to the customer so that the latter can tell you more about the issue.

The information obtained can then be passed on to the product developers for improvement in the future.

They show that you care for your customers and play an important role in retaining a customer, who is five times more difficult to acquire, according to customer acquisition studies.

Feedback surveys are great touchpoints that can help you assess whether your product meets the customer’s pain points.

When negative reviews appear, proactively reaching out may lead to improvements not only in your product but in your sales processes as well.

14. Upsell and Cross Sell Emails

Customer needs very often remain too long after the desired item was purchased; for the majority of clients, their needs may appear just when getting started with using the product ordered.

This presents you with an opportunity to sell upselling or cross-selling complementary or premium items from your store.

If a customer purchases a product, it may just dawn on them that they need other tools or accessories to have a full experience.

Use this as a chance to promote appropriate tools by sending upselling or cross-selling targeted emails.

15. Billing Actions

Billing is one of many relatively neglected touchpoints in the customer journey.

More often than not, this happens after the purchase and thus does not impact the buy decision directly, but it is a step nonetheless that can cause some lost customers to churn immediately if managed poorly.

Identifying churning due to billing-related issues is relatively difficult, and this is the primary reason why more frequent surveys help optimize the billing process.

Although billing probably does not have any direct effect on purchasing decisions, it is an important determinant to ensure smooth billing to maintain satisfaction among customers, especially in B2B contexts where billing complications might lead to customer loss.

16. Subscription Renewals

Renewals of the subscription services are very vital for companies operating on a subscription model.

Renewals do have direct implications for revenue and growth.

It’s usually about simplifying the renewal process; it must be frictionless enough to let the customers keep renewing their subscriptions when their contracts are near expiration.

Provided that you can be friction-free in the renewal process, you are likely to ensure that your customers stay in touch with and committed to your service.

Thus a sure bet for steady, reliable growth for your business.

Customer Touchpoints in Customer Service

17. Customer Support Channels

Customer support channels are critical platforms, wherein the actual channel of communication takes place between service agents and their customers.

The channels used include live chat, email, phone support, social media, and peer review sites.

Omnichannel support ensures one-click transitions between various channels to ensure smooth completion of customer requirements.

For example, if a customer initiates his service through a call but suddenly needs to share some screenshots, he can switch to a chat or email directly without having to raise another service ticket.

18. Customer Onboarding

In addition to the proper channels of communication, companies should pay much attention to customer onboarding..

This is what makes a new customer familiar with how to properly use a product.

Proportionately designed and implemented onboarding creates an easy way whereby the customer may familiarize him or herself with how to use the product by receiving guides, tutorials, and direct support after installing or using the product for the first time.

Proper onboarding enables the new user of a product to familiarize him- or herself with it and, hence, promotes a medium-term positive relationship.

19. Customer Loyalty Programs

Companies should design customer loyalty programs to enhance their relationship with customers.

These incentives are done for repeated business over time by giving customers special benefits, discounts, or access to new products before others.

In this instance, companies can enhance retention when they acknowledge and reward loyal customers and convert satisfied customers into brand advocates as they share good experiences with other people.

20. Self-Service Resources

Lastly, providing a self-service tool, such as a help center or knowledge base, allows customers to find answers on their own rather than depending on support teams.

This would decrease the level of dependency on the support teams and subsequently enhance customer satisfaction generally.

Convenience and user-friendliness are enhanced each time customers experience speedy access to troubleshooting steps and information at their wish.

6 Effective Ways to Enhance the Customer Journey

For increased customer satisfaction and, ultimately, business growth, customer touchpoints must be optimized throughout the customer journey. Some effective ways to achieve this are as follows:

1. Utilize Customer Insights to Improve Experience

Mapping customer touchpoints will be reflective of what customers value and what needs to change.

Data from where prospects leave the process, and analysis of questions asked to sales and support teams, surveys could be relevant to highlight improvement in the appropriate areas.

Improving the overall customer experience requires this kind of loop.

2. Identify New Opportunities

Knowing your touch points also leads to other opportunities for engagement or sales.

For instance, surveying the customers may reveal a channel you haven’t tapped into so far.

Additionally, tracking which certain products or services customers often view on your site might expose upsell opportunities previously unnoticed.

3. Focus on the Key Touchpoints

Once you have identified which touchpoints contribute significantly towards the enhancement of sales and customer satisfaction, it is high time you focus on prioritizing them.

Allocate your resources and time based on the value each of these brings to your business and to your customers.

Focusing on high-impact touchpoints makes sure your efforts meet your needs in the best possible way.

4. Implement Omnichannel Communication

Omnichannel communication must be established for a unique customer experience across websites, mobile applications, social media, and SMS.

The implication is that changes in customers from one platform to another should not be abrupt. Their context should not be it when communicating on another channel.

For instance, after receiving the contact over email, a customer then wishes to communicate in live chat without any form of interruption at all.

5. Keep Refining Touchpoints Through Testing

Touchpoints require constant testing to be optimized; A/B testing can be performed to test different messaging, designs, and strategies to see what works for an audience.

As customer preferences change, continuous testing allows one to flex towards the new preferences in the market.

6. Ensure Consistency with Brand Identity and Messaging

Consistency across all touchpoints about visual elements, messaging, and overall identity ensures that trust and loyalty are developed.

The brand alignment must embody your core values and resonate with your target audience.

Irrespective of whether through a website, social media presence, or in-person events, the customer always meets a unified brand image, perfecting positive perceptions.

In a nutshell, with all those integrated elements-businesses can optimize customer touchpoints leading to either ultimate improvement in satisfaction or progress towards long-term loyalty and growth.

Optimize Your Customer Touchpoints with Locobuzz

Transform your customer experience and drive business growth with Locobuzz. Our platform enables you to effectively identify and optimize customer touchpoints, ensuring a seamless journey from awareness to advocacy.

1. Personalize Interactions

Tailor each touchpoint to individual preferences. With Locobuzz, you can deliver personalized messages and offers that increase engagement and loyalty, fostering trust and repeat business.

2. Streamline Omnichannel Communication

Integrate multiple channels for a unified experience. Locobuzz ensures seamless interactions across social media, email, and more, enhancing customer satisfaction.

3. Continuous Improvement Through Testing

Utilize A/B testing to refine touchpoints based on real-time feedback. This ongoing optimization keeps you ahead of changing customer expectations.

4. Align with Brand Values

Ensure consistency across all interactions. Locobuzz helps maintain alignment with your brand’s messaging and values, reinforcing trust and loyalty.

5. Leverage Data-Driven Insights

Locobuzz provides advanced analytics to map the customer journey. By analyzing behavior and feedback, you can pinpoint pain points and make informed improvements.

In summary, optimizing your customer touchpoints with Locobuzz enhances the customer journey and drives business growth.

Let us help you create exceptional experiences that keep customers coming back!

Wrapping Up

Thus, Customer Touchpoints are the Key to Seamless Experiences.

The chance to analyze interactions will further enable businesses to improve and fine-tune the strategies necessary to meet better expectations, strengthen brand loyalty, and keep growth on fire.

Be it a visit to the website, the simplest social media interaction, or a call made to the hotline of customer service, every touchpoint offers the opportunity to make an indelible impression.

The thing is to keep a close eye on these and improve them so that they are always in line with the values of the brand as well as the changing needs of your customers.

Now, have you mapped your customer touchpoints? If not, where will you start?