Touchpoints are how the brand engages with its customers and play a vital role in fostering a strong relationship between the two parties. Every buying journey has a complex web of touchpoints that can range from 20 to over 500! Also, research shows that it requires around eight touchpoints on average to close a sale.
Optimizing touchpoints helps brands deliver a seamless and refined customer experience that aligns with your customer’s expectations and preferences. When the quality of touchpoints and their interconnectedness improve, customers are more likely to enjoy the service.
Here are some ways to optimize touchpoints along your customer journey!
1. Understanding the customer journey and recognizing the key touchpoints
The primary step of optimizing touchpoints comes from knowing your customers, their buying journey, and the channels they use to engage with you. Mapping the customer journey and evaluating different routes taken by your clients to make a purchase, and identifying the main touchpoints along the way are steps to follow here.
Some common touchpoints related to any buying journey include website, social media, email, newsletters, phone calls, and text messages. Touchpoints can differ from brand to brand, which is why a customized approach is important. The demographics of your customers, the product type, and the ecommerce and in-store presence of your business can help you determine the key touchpoints better.
2. Analyze customer expectations at each touchpoint
Next, identify what your clients expect from each touchpoint in each phase of the buying journey. Start by evaluating the present state of the touchpoints and the quality of experience offered by them. Identify how customers feel and the pain points that prevent customers from enjoying a seamless service.
In this regard, customer feedback can offer valuable insights and help brands figure out what’s lacking in their offering. You can gather feedback in the form of surveys and reviews and research what people say about your brand or product type in general. EVI®, NPS, CES, and C-SAT are some CX KPIs you can use to measure the effectiveness of touchpoints at different stages.
3. Enhance the touchpoints
Once you have identified the problematic areas and customers’ views on the touchpoints, it’s time to make the necessary changes. An attractive UX design, easy navigation, prompt support, and high-quality content are some ways to make your touchpoints more appealing to clients. Even when it comes to embedded surveys, make them unobtrusive to the shopping experience. Personalized experiences with relevant content, product suggestions, and tailored customer support also play a role.
More importantly, optimize your touchpoints to offer customers a consistent experience throughout the buying journey. They should be able to initiate the journey from one touchpoint and switch to others seamlessly. Every aspect, from inquiring about a product to returning it due to an issue, should be hassle-free.
4. Measuring and improving the experience
Optimizing touchpoints is not a one-off task. As your client’s needs and expectations evolve, new touchpoints come into being, and existing ones need to be improved. So, integrating touchpoints seamlessly in the buying journey and enhancing their experience is a continuous process. It helps your brand remain agile and competitive in the market.
Use metrics like EVI®, NPS, and CES to determine if customers find the journey easy and feel happy about it. User-testing your optimized touchpoints and gathering feedback based on it also can help. Measuring and iterating often ensure all your major touchpoints are functioning efficiently and deliver the optimum value to users.
Feedbackly is a tool that helps you gather and analyze customer feedback effectively. It can help you optimize touchpoints easily and increase your sales and conversion rates. Want to learn more? Get in touch with us!
