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Engaging customers and gathering real-time insights is hard in this hyper-connected world where customers receive multiple surveys via email and SMS daily, seeking insights.
Beyond crafting the perfect set of questions and appealing design, survey timing is a critical factor that influences the success of a survey. In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can determine when to send surveys to ensure maximum impact.
Customer touchpoints are the interactions between a customer and a brand.
Any time a customer interacts with your brand, whether it is through an online ad or your social media account, it becomes a customer touchpoint.
For example, a customer seeing a billboard poster of a brand’s new skincare line is touchpoint No. 1. When the customer visits the brand’s website and ends up in the product listing of this new skincare line, is touchpoint No. 2. Purchasing the product they need is touchpoint No. 3 and receiving a followup email on purchase is Touchpoint No. 4.
There is a wide array of touchpoints, identified and unidentified, that comprise pre-purchase, during-purchase, and post-purchase communication. At each of these stages, the type and medium of communication varies.
“The platform extends our ability to productively manage our busy intercept survey projects, and the confidence to support major new clients.”
Laura Ruvalcaba, President & CEO, Brain Research
The touchpoints for every company are different. For instance, for a B2B software company, the touchpoints could include an online ad, marketing campaign, sales call, onboarding team, and technical support. Whereas for a retail company, it could include social media ads, store visits, in-store purchases, unboxing, and social media reviews.
Here are three ways you can categorize customer touchpoints.
Pre-purchase interaction by a prospective customer may be regarding a particular product’s availability, pricing, delivery payment options, etc, and may be posted on the FAQ section of an Online shopping website such as Amazon, Flipkart, etc.
On the other hand, these pre-purchase inquiries may translate into a particular brand’s product comparisons on moving to the stage of interactions during purchase. This is usually done when the prospective customer has surfed through various brands and customer review websites and has decided to buy the product from a particular brand.
They may be confused between two models of the same product offered by the brand, which may vary on aspects such as useful life, Guarantee, warranty, packaging, etc. They may ask for further assistance from brand salespersons to make the best possible decision.
Lastly, the post-purchase interactions usually comprise feedback and after-sales services. This may include an installation procedure to be carried out or a manufacturing defect in the product that needs to be fixed by the company within the warranty period.
Identifying customer touchpoints requires the brand to think from the customer’s perspective. However, it is important to understand that it is not only enough to identify these touchpoints but you must also map out these interactions.
Customer journey mapping based on the identified touchpoints helps you understand the underlying cause of dropping satisfaction. It helps you unveil where you are lacking in delivering the right experience.
A company may receive a higher satisfaction rate on multiple touchpoints but see a decline in conversion. Mapping out the touchpoints allows you to discover which interactions are causing dissatisfaction.
This reveals whether the touchpoints result in an overall positive experience or just some satisfied interactions that ultimately drive customers away.
You can identify critical touchpoints effectively by asking yourself questions such as;
This could be as simple as getting to know what the brand offers or getting a problem solved. People use different channels of communication based on the type of reason that they have for getting in touch with the brand and where it will be addressed quickly and effectively.
People get to know about the brand from billboards, social media, advertising, word of mouth, and websites, among other channels. The medium that markets a brand and makes people aware of it also prescribes ways to get in touch with the brand to know more about it. These marketing channels usually act as a guide for prospective customer’s journey from becoming aware of the brand’s presence to buying products or rendering services from them.
Customers tend to pay more importance to certain mediums, such as customer reviews, one-on-one interaction, email promotions, etc, as a reliable source of gathering information before trusting and purchasing from a brand.
Identifying these key touchpoints and working on improving them can greatly enhance the reach of brands and encourage increased buying. It is also important to know where the customer purchased from to decide if customers prefer online or offline buying, automated or interactive purchases, and a company website or an online shopping platform.
Post-purchase, customers contact the brand to avail of sales services or get their grievances redressed. Most people look for active interactions via phone calls as they get to talk to a brand representative and get on-the-spot solutions, as opposed to automated interactions through emails or websites where the redressal procedure might take up some time.
Brands should track engagement activities in all these interactions and work on constantly improving communication quality to enhance customer satisfaction. Customers should be kept in the loop about new brand endeavors by generating visually appealing content such as videos and blogs. This creates a feeling of belongingness and keeps the customers looking for new brand-sponsored content.
Increasing engagement is a matter of ensuring good customer experience on all the customer touchpoints. Prompt responses, quick and practical solutions to customer problems, constant sharing, and maximum transparency are respectful approaches that are pillars of good customer interactions.
As famous author Kevin Stirtz puts it :
“Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back.”
Brands should look at touchpoints as areas of influencer customer approach towards the brand. For each customer, these points are a representation of what the brand stands for and how it treats its customers. To ensure that each customer moves away from these touchpoints with the right impression, brands must actively monitor and update their communication channels.
Identifying key touchpoints that drive customer satisfaction can help you enhance customer experience and nurture trust.
Identifying touchpoints helps map out the entire customer journey, allowing you to understand each step customer takes from initial to post-purchase interaction. The insight helps you uncover the key moments that impact their purchase decision and helps you create a seamless experience.
Knowing the driving factors can help you optimize each interaction based on customer preference and behavior.
By identifying the customer touchpoints for your customers, you can determine which channels are most valuable to engage them. This data can enable you to strategize your marketing and sales efforts for the most impact.
A positive experience at each touchpoint leads to overall customer satisfaction, which nurtures customer loyalty. Consistent positive interactions across the journey foster trust and encourage repeat business.
By mapping out each customer interaction, you can identify potential pain points and reasons for customer churn. This enables you to optimize the touchpoints and proactively offer resolution, preventing customer dissatisfaction.
Every brand needs to understand how their customers feel about their interaction with the brands on various touchpoints. One of the effective ways brands can identify customer touchpoints is by allowing customers to offer their feedback on surveys such as CSAT, CES, and NPS. This will help brands understand where they lack and fill up the gaps.
For example, a customer who registered a complaint regarding a product that they purchased from the brand website can be asked how they feel about the telephone conversation that they had with the brand representative.
Was there anything disturbing about the tone or manner of speaking of the customer rep?
Did they find the solution to their complaint, or was there any delay?
Such questions convey the areas where the brand needs improvement. Such feedback can be carried out using online surveys, F2F interviews, telephone interviews, or focus groups. Data collected through such feedback studies can increase customer retention and loyalty and enhance customer experiences.
By keeping a thoughtful eye on each interaction and creating customer touchpoints with customer feedback, brands can make meaningful connections with each customer.
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