3 touchpoints in the customer experience

Pasquale Schifino

Every one of us has purchased a product, used a service, contacted support with questions or dissatisfaction, or complained about, exchanged or even returned an item.

There are many points of contact along the customer journey, i.e. the journey that a (potential) customer goes through before, during and after purchasing a product or service.

At each of these points, the customer forms an opinion based on their experience with a product or company.

This opinion can be positive, negative or neutral.

However, it can also change along the journey and the respective phase in which it finds itself.

Each customer journey also begins and progresses differently.

It is therefore important for companies to always present themselves positively at every stage of the journey and to support the customer in the best possible way.

But how do you actually find out whether a customer is satisfied or dissatisfied?

By asking them about the relevant touchpoints.

But which touchpoints are actually relevant? And when should you make contact with your (potential) customer for the first time? As early as the attention phase or only in the loyalty phase?

Dennis addresses these questions in his video and presents what he considers to be three relevant touchpoints.

🎯 The most important summarized:

Touchpoints are the moments along the customer journey when the customer comes into contact with your company, your employees, your products or services.

Targeted surveys give you the ideal opportunity to determine whether the individual stages of the customer journey – from the search for information to the purchase and all subsequent interactions – have been positive.

According to Dennis, significant touchpoints are: pre-purchase, post-purchase and after the customer has canceled.

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Table of contents

1. Touchpoint 1 – Determine needs before the purchase

2. Touchpoint 2 – After the purchase

3. Touchpoint 3 – After the customer’s termination

4. Summary

5. More about Customer Experience

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Touchpoint 1 – Determine needs before the purchase

Every customer and every prospective customer goes through a series of touchpoints with the company during the initiation phase.

This usually begins completely outside our sphere of influence, when it takes place via word of mouth, or within our sphere of influence, when we start with out-of-home campaigns, TV campaigns or similar.

It is often not yet possible to obtain direct feedback or measure the experience at these points.

You only have the opportunity to interact with the user or prospective customer when they come to your website.

At this point, you don’t yet have any user or email data, which is why Dennis recommends anchoring the first touchpoint on the website.

A good option is to include a survey on the website that opens via a pop-up or modal.

The survey itself is about determining the customer’s needs.

The following sample questions can be used to get to know the prospective customer and their intentions better: What brought you to our website? What are you interested in? What exactly are you looking for? Do you like the content you see?

This is also a good starting point for measuring the effectiveness of marketing measures, checking the quality of your own website and adjusting it if necessary.

Touchpoint 1 - Identifying needs before the purchase — Sample question about the need of the website visitor

Touchpoint 2 – After the purchase

According to Dennis’ recommendation, the second cash flow relevant touchpoint should be queried directly after the purchase.

You should now have the contact details and other information about the customer so that you can interact with them more intensively.

By this time, the customer has already gone through several steps within your company; from the quotation to the payment process to possible support requests.

So you have the opportunity to analyze the steps they went through along the customer journey and ask the new customer what went well and if there were any weaknesses or complications.

This could reveal that there were some hurdles, for example, in the support request or in the payment process.

These are subtleties that you would not otherwise find out about and which you can now work on more thanks to the tip.

What also comes in handy here: Ask your customers about their goals and what they want to use your product for.

On the one hand, this gives you the opportunity to build stronger customer loyalty, and on the other hand, it gives you the opportunity to adapt your marketing measures and develop use cases.

Touchpoint 2 - After the purchase — Sample question about the project

Touchpoint 3 – After the customer’s termination

The third relevant touchpoint, from Dennis’ experience, should be analyzed directly after the termination.

This is basically not a pleasant situation, as it is always very upsetting to lose a customer.

But there are reasons for his cancellation. And asking about them offers you enormous added value, because it gives you the opportunity to improve or adapt your offer.

With an NPS query, this can be implemented excellently.

Survey Template Net Promoter Score NPS — Test our NPS survey template here

As a further tip, Dennis recommends going one step further and asking your customers whether they have achieved their goals.

This way, you learn a bit more about their needs and have the opportunity to identify potential disruptive factors for customer satisfaction.

For example, in the case of an online store, there is usually no cancellation.

In this case, it’s interesting to ask the customer after a reasonable period of time why they don’t buy from you again.

What is the reason for no follow-up purchase?
Is it the price, the delivery conditions or something else entirely?

Again, this will provide you with important starting points that you can use to improve your products or services.

Touchpoint 3 - After the customer's termination — Example question on target achievement after termination

Summary

With this video, you’ve learned how to gather valuable feedback at three different points in the customer journey to keep prospects and customers engaged and build a positive bond between them and your business.

Targeted surveys offer you the best opportunity to find out whether the individual steps within the customer journey, starting with the search for information and continuing through the purchase and all subsequent positions, are proceeding positively.

This gives you the chance to derive suitable measures, improve your processes and focus on what the customer wants. In this way, you will be able to retain customers in the long term, build up a sustainable business and participate successfully in the market.

Since every company and its structures are different, it may well be that other touchpoints prove useful for you.

Use the touchpoints selected by Dennis as inspiration and simply adapt them to the relevant contact points of your business field.

More about Customer Experience

Learn more about customer surveys and customer experience

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