Customer touchpoints are your brand’s points of customer contact, from start to finish. For example, customers may find your business online or in an ad, see ratings and reviews, visit your website, shop at your retail store, or contact your customer service. Seems like a long list, but these are just a few of your touchpoints. A touch point is any time a potential customer or customer comes in contact with your brand–before, during, or after they purchase something from you. Identifying your touchpoints is the first step toward creating a customer journey map, and making sure your customers are satisfied every step of the way.
Your Website is the Key
Speed: Imagine arriving at a brick-and-mortar store and having to wait at a locked door for someone to let you inside. How long would you wait before deciding it wasn’t worth your time? Online, it’s about three seconds. Slow site loading speeds interrupt the shopping journey and add a huge amount of friction to the customer experience, especially when consumers trying to browse between product offerings. To get an idea of just how important site speed is to your online store, check out these stats:
- A one-second delay in page loading reduces customer satisfaction by 16%.
- 25% of visitors will leave a site that takes more than four seconds to load.
- Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.
You can improve your site speed by reducing the number of plugins, reducing image and video sizes, and ensuring that Liquid code is optimized to avoid lengthy commands.
Importance of Touchpoints
The importance of touchpoints—understanding them all, controlling those that you can, and influencing those you cannot—will be a defining factor in delivering a better customer experience, building stronger relationships and driving loyalty in the years that come. The bottom line is simple to understand, though I recognize a lot of work to execute: Companies must evaluate the ways they touch, influence and serve customers. Without an understanding of customer experience at the touchpoint level today, it’s difficult to prioritize opportunities to improve customer experience tomorrow. Once this understanding is gained, you’ll have the tools you need to begin controlling the touchpoints you can and influencing those you cannot control.
Keep this conversation going by commenting below, liking this piece, sharing this article, calling me directly at (812-336-1727), or e-mail me at (andrew@lambertconsulting.biz).
