Search Expertbase
Hire Albert
Virtually
Hybrid
In-Person
Defining Customer Touchpoints
50 Claps
906 Words
5 min
Improving the customer-centricity of your organization isn't just good business, it's also good marketing.
What could be more important than improving sales and your customer relationships? Today, there is a fast-growing movement among organizations interested in improving their customer-centricity through a better understanding of customer interactions, or touchpoints. Called "Customer Touchpoint Management" (CTM), the goal of this new movement is to improve customer experiences, and as a result, improve customer relationships. By improving customer relationships, organizations improve market share, sales, and both customer and employee loyalty and advocacy.
But what exactly is a touchpoint? A touchpoint is defined as, all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organization. Whether an ad, Web site, sales person, store or office, Touchpoints are important because customers form perceptions of your organization and brand based on their cumulative experiences.
These days, savvy marketers and advertisers understand that customer relationships can no longer be considered exclusively the domains of sales and customer service. If the accuracy of invoices, or the professionalism of installers or cleanliness of your store or office is lacking, then the relationship can suffer no matter how well the marketer, salesperson or overall owner of the relationship performs. CTM-oriented organizations know that they can best enhance relationships with customers by improving touchpoints across the entire enterprise.
In fact, improving your customer relationships can deliver powerful results to your organization. For example, after seeing the impact on her brand perception and purchase decision of consistently great touchpoint experiences with her local Lexus dealer, the marketing executive of a $5 billion dollar division of a Fortune Five conglomerate decided to improve the customer-centricity of her own organization. We helped her to improve touchpoint performance across the organization. The result? Voice-of-customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction scores increased dramatically, and these indications of enhanced customer-centricity are expected to translate into added sales and profitability.
Similarly, Avis implemented a CTM initiative to understand and improve key customer touchpoints. As a result, Avis gained market share in key travel markets and became a leader in customer loyalty and satisfaction as measured by Brand Keys and JD Powers.
Organizations fall into four basic categories when it comes to CTM: observers, followers, leaders and visionaries. Here is what those different categories mean:
CTM Observer: While your firm may be doing well, there are opportunities for dramatic improvement in the customer-centricity of your organization. If your approach to better understanding and improving customer touchpoints has been to observe or monitor customer service trends in your industry, you may be finding it more and more difficult to compete. New clients and strong sales may be masking poor customer satisfaction and retention issues, which could lead to a serious problem down the road. You know that improving customer-centricity will help, but your organization may be having trouble getting its hands around just how to accomplish this -- you?re not sure exactly where to start. Previous efforts to improve customer experiences have generated mixed results. As a consequence, your organization's employees are highly skeptical of new programs and their ability to effect change. A change of culture may be required to improve customer-centricity dramatically.
CTM Follower: Your organization is making progress on improving customer experiences and is generating some positive feedback as a result. However, you are still following the Customer Touchpoint Management leadership of others. You appreciate that you are more customer-centric than some of your competitors, but worry that you have significant hurdles to overcome to catch up to the customer service leaders in your industry. You are proud of the improvements made to date and you want to continue the organization's positive momentum.
CTM Leader: A Customer Touchpoint Management revolution leader, your organization is benefiting from being ahead of the customer experience curve. You excel in comparison with the majority of your competitors. Your sales are increasing, and you have improved the retention of both customers and employees. Customers who advocate your offerings are helping to fill your sales pipeline and employees who advocate your company are helping to attract outstanding staff. You are committed to improving touchpoint performance through a dynamic CTM plan, and have systems in place that enable your organization to surface and apply touchpoint best practices. Not satisfied, however, you continually look for opportunities to improve customer touchpoints in order to improve your customer-centricity and to stay ahead of your competition.
CTM Visionary: Your organization is the inspiration for the touchpoint revolution both within and outside of your industry. You have established benchmarks and best practices for developing and implementing a comprehensive CTM plan. You have developed a system of two-way communication that encourages ongoing and honest feedback from both customers and employees. Based on customer and staff input, you have established touchpoint standards and manage to those standards. Your customers consistently experience excellence in every touchpoint they encounter. Outstanding talent is clamoring to work for you and your competitors covet your employees. You are able to charge a premium for your products or services, and your corporate leaders are invited to speak about the customer-centricity of your organization. Happy to share your CTM story, you know that your success is based on an ingrained culture of relentlessly looking for better ways of understanding, improving and measuring your customer touchpoints in order to strengthen your position as a customer service leader, and to further distance yourself from your competitors.
This Article is authored / contributed by ▸ Albert Einstein who travels from Ulm, Germany. Albert is available for Professional Training Work both Virtually and In-Person. ▸ Enquire Now.
54 more Articles by Albert
POP
Value Talk: Getting The Most Out Of Your Speaker
6 min. Valuable insights on using your speaker to maximise the success of your eventStrength Inspite Of Size
11 min. Growth is necessary, but size is no guarantee of a successful future! Nevertheless, growth is needed. Without growth there is no life. In a certain sense, ...Move Over, Baby Boomers
8 min. Gen X-ers want far more collaboration with companies - both as customers and as employees. CIOs are uniquely positioned to help their enterprises meet ...New Tools For Negotiators
15 min. Five easy-to-use tools help negotiators in complex deals arrive at a negotiating position that is not only acceptable to them but also palatable to other ...Strategy Session: What To Look For When Hiring A Professional Speaker
4 min. How do you know if the speaker fits? How do you avoid embarrassing mismatches?Branding, Recruiting And Learning Through Public Speaking And Conference Attendance
11 min. Reasons Why You Should Speak at and Attend Professional SeminarsThe 'Unprofitability' Of Modern Technology
13 min. Of all the findings on business strategy yielded by the study of the businesses in the PIMS? database, the following is one of the most controversial: ...Organic SEO Or Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Which Should You Choose?
8 min. Organic search engine optimization has some distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising. However, there are undoubtedly certain situations and scenarios ...Management -The Handling Of Complexity
9 min. Complexity has been one of the most frequently used words for some years now. People talk about complex systems, complex interrelationships, complex problems ...The Next Generation Of In-House Software Development
17 min. How leading-edge companies are streamlining applications development.POP
The Parkland Way - Never Thought You Could Learn From A Hospital?
18 min. Looking for inspired leadership, passionate employees, unsurpassed productivity, and grateful customers? Forget the dispirited corridors of corporate ...POP
TRIZ As A Lean Thinking Tool
11 min. Lean Thinking is a highly evolved method of managing an organization to improve the productivity, efficiency and quality of its products or services. The ...Best Practice And Beyond: Knowledge Strategies
12 min. Value created by knowledge is often not captured. Five accounts of knowledge strategies.Games Managers Should Play
9 min. The success of strategic investments depends largely on the subsequent moves of competitors. Uncertainty about competitive conduct can lead executives ...Who Knows Whom, And Who Knows What?
13 min. Employees' personal connections can be as valuable as their individual knowledge base. Social network analysis, or SNA, helps maximize a company's collective smarts.Managing Your Organization By The Evidence
17 min. An organization is much more likely to improve its current performance and underlying health by using a combination of complementary practices rather than ...POP
The Hacker's Code Of Ethics!
4 min. Recently, I came across a code of ethics for hackers (yes, it really does exist) that I'd like to share with you, because I think it really hits home with ...Must Work Be Fun?
5 min. Should work be fun? Must it be fun? Today, the answer to these questions is mostly yes. What else should it be? Yet however plausible this answer might ...POP
Corporate Transformation Without A Crisis
19 min. The art of leading deep corporate change can be learned. The trick is to help each member of the company discover a new reality...Project Success And Failure
20 min. What is success, what is failure, and how can you improve your odds for success?Enterprise Risk Management - Risk's Rewards
21 min. Are you on board with enterprise risk management? You had better be. It's the future of how businesses will be run.Succession Planning: Often Requested, Rarely Delivered
28 min. Surprisingly, many organizations lack a proper succession plan. One reason is that they do not have an effective succession planning process. This author ...POP
We Need Teamwork - But Is It The Only Useful Form Of Work?
6 min. Two of today's buzzwords are Team and Teamwork. Those with a particular desire to conform to the spirit of the age portray them as the polar opposite of ...Tracking The Growth Of India's Middle Class
17 min. Over the next two decades, the country's middle class will grow from about 5 percent of the population to more than 40 percent and create the world's fifth-largest consumer market.POP
Pros & Cons Of Pay For Performance
11 min. Somewhere in Corporate America, a human resources manager is tweaking her company's employee-incentive program. Maybe she's dumping last year's customized ...Growth And Size
4 min. "Size is no guarantee of future success." What is strategically important is strength not size. Speed is more important than physical mass and flexibility ...A New Model For Marketing
4 min. The proliferation of brands and channels is forcing companies to restructure their marketing efforts significantly.Finding Facilitators That Fit!
3 min. The aim of this guide is to prepare you for discussions with a bureau, and to get you thinking about all the factors that affect your Facilitator choice.So This Is What Communication Can Do?
13 min. Everything that we do for our clients is based on the idea that improved communications will improve an organisation's performance and contribute to the ...Better Operational-Risk Management For Banks
15 min. Operational risks are costly, but they can be conquered when high-ranking executives join the battle.Intrapreneurship: Leveraging Organisational Talent
9 min. The global talent war has seen organisational leaders scratching their heads to understand how they can attract and retain the very best talent that is ...How Gulf Companies Can Build Global Businesses
8 min. Companies based in the GCC states are using their petrodollars to expand into global markets. But in the long run, these companies will have to develop distinctive capabilities and skills.Measuring Performance In Services
16 min. Services are more difficult to measure and monitor than manufacturing processes are but executives can rein in variance and boost productivity - if they implement rigorous metrics.Speakers Don't Always Have To Be Famous
6 min. Plenty are the professionals who are on the "front lines" of the industry, knowledgeable of the countless changes, and who are willing and able to speak ...Getting Labor Policy To Work In The Gulf
16 min. For GCC states, liberalizing the labor market and developing the local workforce are the keys to moving beyond a reliance on foreign workers.POP
Sales Person Or Customer Advocate - Who Do You Need To Be?
10 min. To get beyond survival and to grow both profits and margins, the successful companies of the future will be forced to become true customer experts.15 Seconds On The Web: Ten Writing Tips To Improve Sales
7 min. In 15 seconds, a visitor to your site determines whether or not they are interested in your product or service. Web usability experts can provide all sorts ...7 Ways To Stop Selling - And To Start Building Relationships!
7 min. Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.Foresee The Future
8 min. Foresee the future, that's what your customers expect, that's what you need to deliver.A Good Look At Corporate Social Responsibility
31 min. There appears to be plenty of room for much greater effort and involvement by companies and organizations around the world. Here a few thoughts and pointers.The Top Ten Things Customers Want
3 min. Over the last two years of working with hundreds of clients from all walks of life, I have noticed trends of what my clients want and need. This top ten ...What Is The Business Of Business?
15 min. By building social issues into strategy, big companies can recast the debate about their role in society.POP
Eight Business Technology Trends To Watch
19 min. Eight emerging trends are transforming many markets and businesses. Executives should learn to shape the outcome rather than just react to it.Dwindling Readership: Are Tabloids The Answer?
14 min. Newspapers have tried a host of measures to halt the long-term decline in their readership, but they haven't stopped consumers from turning to TV and the ...What Procurement Areas Should Be Outsourced
4 min. Few companies have the skills to effectively manage procurement across all spending categories. Smart enterprises should examine their procure-ment strategies ...The CEO's Role In Leading Transformation
15 min. The CEO helps a transformation succeed by communicating its significance, modeling the desired changes, building a strong top team, and getting personally involved.A Guide For The Ceo-Elect
13 min. The days, weeks, or months between taking the job and assuming power are precious. Put them to good use.50