Every brand aspires to provide a rich customer experience. It’s imperative to ensure that every interaction a customer has with your business is positive. You must take numerous efforts in this direction since each point of contact is an opportunity to convert customers into buyers.

But achieving customer satisfaction is more than just producing great products or providing satisfactory services. It’s a blend of various factors such as website, billing, delivery, support, and more. You need to optimize your content strategy to achieve a positive customer journey. One of the most effective methods to do this is touchpoint mapping.

What Is a Customer Touchpoint?

Before we discuss touchpoint mapping, we must first define and identify what a customer touchpoint is. By definition, a customer touchpoint is any point of contact between your business and a customer. It covers any interaction that happens before, during, or after a person purchases your brand.

A customer touchpoint can happen through a direct or indirect channel. Direct interaction is when you have some influence or control over the experience of the customer. An example would be an ad campaign, marketing message, or your e-commerce checkout.

When you don’t have control over their experience, that’s when the touchpoint falls into an indirect interaction. One example of this is when a customer writes a review about your product and posts it on their website. Although you can influence a customer’s interaction with your business, you won’t really have complete control over it.

Why Is Customer Touchpoint Important?

Some businesses overlook the power and benefits of customer touchpoints. But these points of contact are crucial because they allow a company to engage with consumers. It also allows them to strengthen brand awareness, market their products and services, and address customer complaints and concerns.

Consumers enter into these points of contact with the assumption that they will know more about the brand and what they have to offer, ask questions, and receive support. That is why a touchpoint should be designed to serve the customer well.

A touchpoint is a two-way street, and every customer is different. You can’t account for every possible variable since no customer buyer’s journey is exactly the same. But as a business owner, you have the responsibility to make each touchpoint as satisfactory for a buyer as possible. To do this, you need to develop a plan through touchpoint mapping.

What Is Touchpoint Mapping and Why Do I Need It?

As its name suggests, touchpoint mapping is the process of tracing or outlining each interaction that customers might have with your brand. The process involves examining each step of a customer’s journey and pinpointing the places where a customer can experience or come in contact with your brand.

Touch mapping is essential in every business since it allows your brand to have a clear picture of your customer’s whole buyer journey. Through this, you can see where you’re lacking and provide a solution to improve every customer’s experience with your brand.

Since a customer’s journey differs from person to person, your brand should prepare multiple map variations. You will need to consider different touchpoints based on all the possible ways people interact with your business. The map could become quite detailed as you look into all the interactions at each point of contact.

How to Begin Touchpoint Mapping?

Now that you understand touchpoint mapping, you can start developing and mapping a plan to manage your customer interactions. Here are a few steps to help you with the process.

1. Identify Each Touchpoint

The first thing you need to do is to identify each point of contact that customers have with your business. It will be easier to examine and divide the customer experience through categories — before purchase, during purchase, and after purchase. Below are some examples of customer touchpoints categorized in different stages of the buying process.

Touchpoints Before a Purchase

• Online advertisement (banner ads, text links)
• Digital marketing content (blog post, infographics, promotional videos)
• Social media content (posts, hashtags, paid ads)
• Company events (launch party, conference)
• Word of mouth marketing (referrals from family, friends, or peers)

Touchpoints During a Purchase

• E-commerce (shopping cart, checkout page)
• Physical store or office (showroom design)
• Product catalogs (product image, product description)
• Staff and employee engagement (product demonstrations, Q&As)
• Point of sale (checkout kiosks, checkout lines)

Touchpoints After a Purchase

• Billing or invoice actions
• Subscription renewals
• Packaging
• Thank you letters or emails
• Product feedback surveys and questionnaires

Keep in mind that some of the touchpoints may overlap, but this method will help you visualize and pinpoint each possible interaction.

2. Map the Touchpoints

After identifying each of the touchpoints, you need to list them in chronological order. Place yourself in your customer’s shoes and consider all the purchasing process steps that will lead to the product being delivered to your doorstep. You should follow these four critical phases to guide your outline.

• Step 1: Drive Brand Awareness. The goal here is to make the customer aware of your brand. They should know the products that you’re selling or the services that you offer.
• Step 2: Make Them Consider Your Brand. Once the customer is familiar with your brand, the next goal is to get them to visit your physical store or website. During this step, you want them to compare your products with the competitors and consider your brand.
• Step 3: Initiate Sales.Now that the customer is in your store, how will you convince them to close the sale? Consider factors such as your checkout process or the checkout queue’s length, as this could make a difference.
• Step 4: Generate Repeat Business. After the customer has made a purchase, the next goal is to convince them to buy again. This step is where you turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer.

Use these steps to create a template for your touching map. Remember that each customer journey is different, so try to form more than one variation.

3. Improve the Touchpoints.

Once you have an outline of each possible interaction, the next step is to optimize the touchpoints. You need to carefully examine each interaction and improve them to provide a rich customer experience. Even if you have top-notch products, poor customer service could discourage a customer from making another purchase.

When improving touchpoints, try to focus on these attributes:

• Relevant — Ensure that the experience still matches what your customer would expect and need throughout that buying phase.
• Simple — It should be easy enough for a customer to grasp and interact with.
• Appropriate — The customer experience should fit the target audience’s interests and match its channel’s context.
• Appeal — It should focus on the customer’s needs and wants and aim to deliver the things they desire.

If you successfully achieve these qualifications, you’ll be well on your way to an exceptional customer experience.

4. Regularly Review Each Touchpoint

Some touchpoints, especially those for ads and marketing, don’t end once you develop and implement your new plan. These channels continuously evolve and change. And as your business expands and reaches new markets, new touchpoints should be added to your map and those no longer applicable should be removed. You need to set a schedule to review, update, and revise your touchpoints to make them effective.

Takeaway

Through touchpoint mapping and a continuously optimizing system, brands can provide a constantly evolving and improving customer experience. Any business who optimize their content strategy and leverage consumer touchpoint opportunities at every stage of a customer journey will be well on their way to success. Not only will this drive customer satisfaction, but it will also promote brand loyalty and increase sales.

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