The importance of optimizing touchpoints in a customer journey needs no special introduction. As conjunctions of contact between the customer and brand, touchpoints play a major role in the quality of the overall customer experience. 

But, some touchpoints are more influential and pivotal than others. They are used more often by customers and demand special attention. Identifying critical touchpoints that customers use and rely on the most can help measure, analyze, and evaluate the quality of customer experience.

Here’s how to identify them!

Map the Customer Journey

Start off with the bare bones by mapping out the customer journey for your brand. Customer journey is a visual representation of the path taken by your customers to fulfill their objective of shopping with you. You can begin by outlining the main stages, communication channels, and most importantly, the primary touchpoints used by your customers. Expand from there, and make it as comprehensive as possible.

Detail every interaction point, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. This visualization, done from the customer’s point of view, helps identify key touchpoints where customers engage most deeply or make critical decisions. It also gives you an overview of all the touchpoints encapsulated in the journey that you can refer to whenever you need. 

Analyze Customer Behavior

One of the most effective ways to pinpoint touchpoints that have a significant impact on your business is through your customers’ behaviors. The touchpoints that customers often choose for considering your brand, furthering to the next step, and making decisions require more attention. Analyzing customer behavior can also help you uncover hidden or overlooked touchpoints that play a major role in CX.

Data on customer behavior will prove to be highly useful in identifying major touchpoints in a customer journey and how they affect the overall experience. Utilize data analytics to analyze customer behavior and engagement patterns effectively and identify touchpoints with the highest engagement, drop-offs, or conversions. These are essentially make or break points in the journey. As critical moments in the journey, they may require constant improvement.

Customer Feedback and Sentiment Analysis

There’s no better agent to give you accurate info on touchpoints than your customers. So, feedback collection should be a quintessential part of your quest to identify critical touchpoints. It gives you a good snapshot of how customers actually regard and feel about different points of contact in the buying journey. You can gather feedback through surveys, reviews, testimonials, and social media posts. 

Metrics like EVI® that you can use to measure any touchpoint at any stage in the journey become super useful here. If some touchpoints consistently evoke more positive or negative reactions than others, they are probably important for customers. Additionally, conduct sentiment analysis to understand how customers feel about various touchpoints. Through these, you can also identify what touchpoints perform well and the ones that need improvement. 

Collaborate with Other Teams

As we always say, customer experience affects every rung and every team in your organization. They are tied to the buying journey in some way or the other. So, if you prefer a more holistic approach to identifying touchpoints, get in touch with other teams.

Collaborating with cross-functional teams, including customer support, sales, and marketing, can help you gain diverse perspectives on touchpoints. Each department interacts with customers at different stages, offering valuable insights into touchpoints that are pivotal for customer satisfaction, conversion, and retention. They will also be able to update you on the strengths and weaknesses noticed at these touchpoints, which can be used during the improvement process. Moreover, customer-facing teams like Success are also able to gather verbal reviews and first-hand experiences that you can use to improve the journey.

Below is our free Customer Journey Map template that you can easily download to get started with mapping your customers’ journeys!