Optimising customer touch points in an omnichannel world

Customer touch points are the points of contact between a brand and its prospective customers through channels such as chatbots, social media and e-mail, as well as offline mediums. By improving how they are perceived at every interaction, brands can generate more sales, cement their reputation and cut back on costs while improving their customers’ experience.

Customers go through a difficult journey before making the final decision. Hence, the mission for organisations is to design a journey that consumers will desire to join and go to the end of it.

Connecting all these touch points to create an omnichannel customer experience can improve a customer’s interaction with your organisation and increase sales.

An omnichannel customer experience means a customer can interact with your business across multiple channels as part of one seamless customer journey. Marketing, sales, customer support and even in-store experiences are synced up so a customer can easily go from one customer channel to another to complete their purchase.

Customer touch points can happen before, during or after a purchase. For example, online advertisements attract prospects, drawing traffic to the brand site. Digital content on the brand’s website in turn promotes the brand. E-commerce also makes it easy for brands in a specific location to provide products and services to their existing and potential customers. The entire process, from when a prospect discovers a brand to when they decide to buy, is also called the customer journey.

Some of the key places where a customer touch point occurs include:

• Social media and social messaging applications;
• E-commerce mobile apps and support apps;
• Online reviews (including review aggregators like Google);
• Contact centres and omnichannel support capabilities; and
• Digital advertising.

Benefits of optimising customer touch points

By aiming to perfect every interaction, brands can:

Save costs – A lot of marketing spend can be saved if an organisation invests in touch point optimisation, as it increases traffic and outcomes from each impression. It also offers businesses more opportunities to collect customer data and generate intelligence for further cost savings.

Retain customer attention and loyalty – Steady and continuous interactions help keep a customer’s attention. This frequency also creates trust in the brand, and customers will be willing to pay the brand price rather than head to other competitors.

Generate sales – Customer touch points can be the source of a high volume of leads, which allows a brand to nurture more customers towards a sale since every touchpoint is a conversion opportunity. Also, the more comments or reviews appear on a specific touch point or platform, the more they tend to engage customers – further driving sales.

Customer journey maps show the order of customer touch points, acting as a visual representation of the first until the last interaction.

Here are four tips to perfect touch points across the journey map:

Make the brand site more appealing. It should be able to draw people’s attention. Focus on hassle-free navigation between the sections. Good website design reduces the bounce rate and increases conversions.

Upload video demos showcasing the prospect’s product or service.

Social channels are a great way to grow an audience and reach business goals through ads and active engagement. They also help businesses connect with customers personally, boost brand awareness, increase user engagement and boost leads and sales.

Companies can send personalised e-mails to prospects individually. Personalising e-mails based on the buyer’s journey, past purchases and demographics can help make customers feel like they are doing business with a human, not a company.

Using these tips can help companies get the most out of their omnichannel investments and craft seamless, interconnected experiences that extract value from every touch point.

Today, touch points are the building block of digital customer experiences, and optimising them is a crucial step in a company’s overall customer experience improvement strategy.

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