- Identify your customers’
- Create a customer journey
- Use customer touchpoint
Identify your customers’ touchpoints and map them
A customer touchpoint map is a guide that shows you the points where you can directly interact with your customer.
It lets you easily identify pain points and improve the areas that are troublesome.
It can also help your business identify different customer persona(s) by applying psychographic methods, which then makes it easier to segment your audience and sell more effectively.
While mapping your customer touch points you have to remember that there is no concrete guide. It can change from business to business.
- Ads (Online & offline)
- Digital marketing content
- Website & social media
- Reviews
- Testimonials
- Company events
- Community engagement
- In-store or online
- Website
- Promotional offers
- Product reviews
- Sales representatives
- Product catalogs
- Point of sale
- Billing
- Marketing emails
- Thank you notes
- Service & support teams
- Help center resources
- Feedback surveys
- Loyalty programs
Create a customer journey with touchpoint mapping
The necessity of a product or service depends upon the needs of the customer. A customer goes through the purchase process to satisfy their needs. The process they go through to find and purchase your service or product is called the customer journey. Creating a customer journey map will help you understand the role that each touchpoint plays during a customer interaction.
By creating a customer journey map, you’ll create a blueprint that visually shows you how your customers interact with your business at each step. These steps can also be represented as different stages in the customer lifecycle that a customer goes through during and after a purchase.
A customer journey is not a one-size fits all formula. Each stage is different depending on the nature of your business. A customer journey will help you understand what happens at each touch point and what customer interaction looks like at each stage. Customer journey mapping is all about trying to understand your customers better and understand your business from a customer’s point of view, so you can make each interaction better than the previous one.
Use customer touchpoint mapping to gather feedback
Identifying pain points from your touchpoint map can be easily done through customer feedback surveys. Along the journey, you can have short surveys for customers to rate their experience at each significant point of interaction. This can highlight what’s working for your business and what isn’t. A perfect way to understand customer expectations is to have a complex “voice of the customer” program. If you don’t already have one, now is a good time to start.
- An exit survey on your website, where a customer can provide feedback on their way out
- A customer satisfaction survey embedded to your thank you email
- A small survey right after they receive customer or technical support
These are a few places where you can ask for support related feedback that widen the window for you to understand their experience with your business. However, adding a survey at every touchpoint can be tiresome and annoying for the customer. Therefore, pick the crucial ones with the aim of improving relatively longer and important interactions.
The other point to note is that not every survey needs specific questions. An open-ended question during a survey is just as good to identify pain points. Once you have a general understanding, you can move on to more specific issues and with those issues, more specific questions about what your customers experience during those touchpoints. Collecting feedback to improve your customer experience is an ongoing process. The requirements and expectations will change at every stage, so you’ll likely have to improvise along the way.