Customer touchpoints are the points of contact between a brand and its prospective customers through channels such as chatbots, social media, and email, as well as offline mediums.
By perfecting how they are perceived at every interaction, brands can generate more sales, cement their reputation, and cut back on costs while improving their customers’ experience.
A Primer on Customer Touchpoints
Customer touchpoints can happen before, during, or after a purchase.
For example, online advertisements attract prospects, drawing traffic to the brand site. Digital content on the brand’s website in turn promotes the brand. E-commerce also makes it easy for brands in a specific location to provide products and services to their existing and potential customers.
The entire process, from when a prospect discovers a brand to when they decide to buy, is also called the customer journey.
Some of the key places where a customer touchpoint occurs include:
- Brick and mortar stores, kiosks, and physical service centers
- Social media and social messaging applications
- E-commerce websites and e-commerce aggregators
- E-commerce mobile apps and support apps
- Brand websites and self-service portals
- Online reviews (including review aggregators like Google)
- Contact centers and omnichannel support capabilities
- Search engine optimization and organic reach
- Digital advertising
Benefits Of Optimizing Customer Touchpoints
By aiming to perfect every interaction, brands can:
- Provide Customers with Greater Value – Optimized touchpoints provide customers with value that they may not have expected, which in turn may inspire an interest in the brand. Matching or exceeding customers’ expectations can also make them vocal advocates of the brand.
- Access More Advertising Real Estate – Brands can use optimization tactics like relevant ads on every part of a customer’s digital journey, ensuring high visibility.
- Save Costs – A lot of marketing spend can be saved if an organization invests in touchpoint optimization, as it increases traffic and outcomes from each impression. It also offers businesses more opportunities to collect customer data and generate intelligence for further cost savings.
- Retain Customer Attention and Loyalty – Steady and continuous interactions help keep a customer’s attention. This frequency also creates trust in the brand, and customers will be willing to pay the brand price rather than head to other competitors.
- Generate Sales – Customer touchpoints can be the source of a high volume of leads, which allows a brand to nurture more customers towards a sale since every touchpoint is a conversion opportunity. Also, the more comments or reviews appear on a specific touchpoint or platform, the more they tend to engage customers – further driving sales.
- Cement Brand Reputation – Customer engagement and impressions are not only about garnering conversions here and now. They also help cement reputations so that customers turn to a specific brand when a need arises.
- Reach Diverse Audiences – Different touchpoints may be preferable to different customer demographics, and optimization strategies ensure you can reach every type of audience. Optimizing customer touchpoints is essential to ensure that products do not become “niche” items and can convert different customer groups across channels with equal efficacy.
7 Tips on How to Go About Touchpoint Optimization
Customer journey maps show the order of customer touchpoints, acting as a visual representation of the first until the last interaction.
Top tips to perfect touchpoints across the journey map include:
- Make the brand site more appealing. It should be able to draw people’s attention. Focus on hassle-free navigation between the sections. Good website design reduces the bounce rate and increases conversions.
- Consider placing clear and relevant calls to action (CTAs) that are brief, simple, and will take minimum time to read.
- Provide clear replies to customer questions and fast responses during live chat.
- Upload video demos showcasing the prospect’s product or service.
- Social channels are a great way to grow an audience and reach business goals through ads and active engagement. They also help businesses connect with customers personally, boost brand awareness, increase user engagement, and boost leads and sales.
- Targeted online advertising is an excellent way to reach prospects with matching intent. With online advertisement, brands can target audiences more interested in what they sell.
- Companies can send personalized emails to prospects individually. Personalizing emails based on the buyer’s journey, past purchases, and demographics can help make customers feel like they are doing business with a human, not a company.
Today, touchpoints are the building block of digital customer experiences, and perfecting them is a crucial step in a company’s overall CX improvement strategy.
Using these tips can help companies get the most out of their omnichannel investments and craft seamless, interconnected experiences that extract value from every touchpoint.
Gather more insights on CX design by reading our article: How to Develop a Customer Experience Design Methodology
