How to identify and improve your customer touchpoints
Every business wants to improve the customer experience (CX). But, unless you consider your buyers at every touchpoint, you may be falling short.
The customer experience is a direct result of several interactions across their journey. Everything counts, from initial contact with your website to the ease of buying a product to how helpful your post-purchase support is.
Here’s how to identify and improve your customer journey touchpoints and create a winning customer experience.
What are customer touchpoints?
Customer touchpoints are your brand’s points of customer contact from start to finish. For example, customers may find your business:
- On your website
- Through search engine queries
- In an advertisement
- On social media
- In your brick-and-mortar store
- On rating and review sites
- Through recommendations and word-of-mouth
Identifying your touchpoints is the first step toward creating a customer journey map and ensuring your customers feel satisfied before, during, and after they purchase something from you. And with deep knowledge of your touchpoints, you can make better business decisions for your customers and your customer-facing teams.
Touchpoint definition: A touchpoint is any time a potential customer or customer comes in contact with your brand–before, during, or after they purchase something from you.
Why is it important to identify customer journey touchpoints?
Once you identify them, your customer touchpoints will serve as a guide for improving customer satisfaction across your entire customer journey.
The benefits of knowing your customer touchpoints include:
- Gain a better understanding of the customer experience: Identifying touchpoints allows businesses to get a comprehensive view of the customer journey.
- Uncover customer pain points: Recognizing touchpoints helps you pinpoint specific areas where customers may encounter challenges or dissatisfaction.
- Improve customer interactions: Knowing where customers interact with your brand allows for optimization of those interactions.
- Drive customer satisfaction and loyalty: A seamless experience across various touchpoints increases customer satisfaction, fostering long-term brand loyalty.
- Improve churn rates: Recognizing and improving touchpoints can significantly impact customer retention.
- Drive continuous improvement: Businesses can stay agile and responsive to evolving customer expectations by regularly monitoring and adapting touchpoints.
Understanding your customer journey touchpoints will help you frame every interaction with your business positively.
Types of customer touchpoints
Identify your customer touchpoints by listing all the places and times your customers might come into contact with your brand. We’ve compiled a list of customer touchpoints here, which will vary depending on your business.
| Before purchase | During purchase | After purchase |
| Social media | Store or office | Billing |
| Rating and reviews | Website | Transactional emails |
| Testimonials | Catalog | Marketing emails |
| Word of mouth | Promotions | Service and support teams |
| Community involvement | Staff or sales team | Online help center |
| Advertising | Phone system | Follow-ups |
| Marketing / PR | Point of sale | Thank you cards |
Pre-purchase touchpoints
Pre-purchase touchpoints are the initial avenues a customer could use to find you. These points of contact happen before a customer visits your business in person or online.
Here are the most common pre-purchase touchpoints:
Social media
You don’t need to be on every social media platform, but make sure you have a profile on channels your customers use. Keep your pages active with content that is interesting and useful. Always respond to customer comments—this engagement is why you are on social media—and start forming relationships with potential customers.
Referrals
Referral programs offer incentives for both the referrer (an existing customer) and the new customer. This strategy makes both groups happy and increases the potential for future purchases and more referrals.
Online ads
Ensure that your online advertising links lead to content that’s directly relevant to the ads. If your advertisement features a sale, ensure that the link leads customers to a page that describes or shows the sale items in detail. While you want customers to spend time exploring your website, this is not the time to lead them to a sign-up form or home page. Create a better customer experience with a landing page with relevant content.
Purchase touchpoints
Was your customers’ purchase experience everything they needed and expected? The only way to know is to examine your purchase touchpoints, when customers are either getting ready to make a purchase or enmeshed in the process.
Online or in-store transactions
At the point of sale (POS), a sales representative or web page should provide all the necessary information—including what needs your product will fulfill. This touchpoint is the final one before a customer completes a purchase.
Checkout process and payment experience
Is your payment process streamlined and intuitive? Does it feel secure? Does it include all relevant payment information, like whether you accept PayPal? A great payment experience will leave the customer without any doubts.
Customer interactions with sales representatives
Customers sometimes need that little extra push to hit the purchase button. When interacting with sales representatives, can your agents give your customers all the information they need?
Post-purchase touchpoints
Post-purchase touchpoints are any interactions that happen after a customer purchases your product or service. This period extends indefinitely and includes both repeat purchasers and one-time buyers.
The most common post-purchase touchpoints are: