What is a Customer Touchpoint?
What is a Customer Touchpoint?
Why Customer Touchpoints Aren't Enough for Good CX
Understanding Customer Touchpoints
I recently had to return an internet router to AT&T.1
The overall process looked like this:
Go to the website to figure out how to return the router
See that it’s an older webpage
Call the AT&T number and confirm what the process is
Learn I have to go to a UPS store
Disconnect the physical router
Look up nearest UPS location
Go to that UPS
Have the UPS employee record the receipt of the router
Take the receipt and leave the store
Fascinating stuff, right?
I’m sure you’ve done something like this recently.
When I was going through the process, did I consider what steps in the process were actually chosen by the company?
Absolutely not
Each of the points where you interacted with the company is called a “customer touchpoint”2.
Generally, companies will list out the places that THEY interact with a customer, try to optimize those, and call it a day.
To see why that’s not very good, lets check out which of these items could be considered a touchpoint:
Go to the website to figure out how to return the router
AT&T manages their web presence
See that it’s an older webpage
Call the AT&T number and confirm what the process is
AT&T controls their call center practices
Learn I have to go to a UPS store
Disconnect the physical router
Look up nearest UPS location
Go to that UPS
Have the UPS employee record the receipt of the router
AT&T has partnered with UPS, so they chose this experience
Take the receipt and leave the store
Because the bold steps involved AT&T or partner companies, they count as customer touchpoints.
Customer / Company Disconnect
When you’re a customer, you don’t break down your experience with a company into its component parts.
I’ve never considered which part of an experience the company that I’m working with controls vs what is random chance.
Unfortunately, companies generally assume that a customer will only attribute their feelings about an experience to the company-directly-controlled parts of a process.
Look back at the process above.
There are 9 steps and only 33% of them are AT&T touchpoints!
If I had a hard time disconnecting the router3, I would be angry at AT&T.4
Even though AT&T almost certainly doesn't consider the process of disconnecting their router a ‘customer touchpoint’ in their return experience, frustration would spill over into a customer’s general opinion of AT&T.
What Should Companies Do?
You need to understand what your customer goes through.
If you don’t already have a customer journey map for your particular customer, make one.
Include information about who the personas are, what their motivations are, and what they get out of each step of the process.
The first draft for this is generally focused on what the company provides. That is ok to get started.
To get a fuller picture of the customer experience, watch new customers.
It can be hard to put yourself in a customer’s shoes when you have so much more experience and understanding around the decisions made for a brand.
Regularly have employees go through the experience a customer would have to do and record their findings.
If that’s not giving you good results, or you want to dive further into CX research, watch naïve (new) users go through the experience and note where they struggle.
During this research, pay attention to what factors are out of your control, and what you can do to mitigate them.
For example, your company finds out that Gen Z users who want to make a return often struggle to find a printer so that they can print a return slip.5
Instead of throwing up your hands and saying “It’s on the customer’s side. We can’t buy them a printer”, you could instead offer an option to ship them a pre-printed label so that they don’t need to worry about finding their personal printer.
If your 55 year old department director is the only one going through the process, you won’t ever find out what a struggle it would be to find a printer for someone who doesn’t have one.
Conclusion
“Customer touchpoints” or just “touchpoints” are crucial interactions between a brand and its customers throughout the customer journey.
Each touchpoint represents an opportunity for businesses to engage with their audience and influence their perception—either for better or worse.
Even when you compile all these powerful moments, you still only see a small portion of what a customer actually goes through.
The more you understand your customers, their struggles, and where you can make their lives easier, the better they will feel about the company as a whole.
Don’t pay attention only to where you are in full control of an experience.
In conclusion, customer touchpoints are critical moments of interaction between a brand and its customers throughout the customer journey, but they’re not the only thing to consider.
By showing customers that they’re seen throughout the whole process, businesses can foster customer loyalty, drive engagement, and differentiate themselves in competitive markets.
If you have to do this, please keep the receipt. Every employee that I talked to throughout this process said that AT&T would absolutely try to fight you on your return unless you had clear proof of return
You’d think there could be a more descriptive term, like “company-mediated interaction” that would explain the idea more clearly, but alas—here we are
Another note: accessibility for various disabilities is also a major contributor here. If a user had arthritis, the current method for disconnecting fiber optic cable would be extremely difficult.
Read more into the fundamental (and other kinds of) attribution error for more information on this
Way more common than many people realize