Customer touchpoints in general are not often understood or appreciated from the customer’s perspective. Therein lies the problem. And they are more than just business jargon! They are meaningful only if and when the company understands them as a whole inventory and as individual opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Understanding your customers’ current situations, and what drives them toward loyalty or defection, is the first step in delivering a superior customer experience. Understanding the actual touchpoints your customers have with your organization is a basic part of that understanding.
Most organizations, when defining their customer touchpoints, list things like:
Billboards
Direct Mail
Web Sites
In-Store Cashiers
Welcome Letter/Customer Communications
Customer Service Call Centers
The challenge with viewing touchpoints this way is this approach often assumes the customer:
a) has been in a linear and direct relationship with the organization and
b) reads and engages with these touchpoints in meaningful ways.
In short, an examination of touchpoints is often entirely company-focused. (Sometimes, it is so company-focused the touchpoints are categorized by org chart: marketing; operations; billing, etc.)
Instead, I challenge any organization to take an inventory of customer touchpoints from the customer perspective.
