Consider Every Customer Experience Touchpoint

Providing a great customer experience at every touchpoint throughout the buyer’s journey is critical.

Building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint. In TANK New Media’s weekly podcast, Manufacturing Growth, Krista Ankenman and team tackle growth challenges. In this episode, Krista and Talyor dive into the importance of providing a great customer experience at every touchpoint throughout the buyer’s journey.

Customer experience has become a marketing buzzword. Why? Because companies have learned that if a potential customer has a good experience, they’re more likely to make a purchase. But should selling and profit be the primary motivation for offering a great experience to customers? No, it shouldn’t, and there are many reasons why.

To start, let’s deconstruct this concept: what is customer experience?

Customer experience is the perfect pairing and intertwining of customer service and customer satisfaction. It’s when a company thinks about the customers before itself. Customer experience means you’re razer focused on your customers’ needs, desires, and preferences, not those of your company. It means making sure you understand who your customers are, how they process information, and what their shopping patterns and habits are. Providing great customer experiences at every stage of the buyer’s journey matters.

For years, companies have structured their business strategies around a marketing and sales funnel, but a funnel doesn’t capture the momentum or the customer-centrality that a flywheel does. With the flywheel, the momentum from your happy customers drives referrals and repeat sales. Basically, your business keeps spinning and growing — with the customer at the center.

Customer Experience Expectations

80% of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8% of customers agree. Crazy, right? Clearly, there’s a misalignment of company and buyer expectations.

While your company may sell what a customer needs, it’s not about the product or service. Well, not entirely. First and foremost, it’s about connection. People want to connect with a company and brand before they make a purchase. Relationships take work, and this relationship is no different. It needs attention and nurturing.

Think about creating valuable touchpoints like emails, white papers, and blog posts. Keep your voice and branding consistent. Look for ways to make processes simpler and more convenient like shorter online forms, easy-to-digest website pages, and reaching your customers on the platforms they’re already using. Uncover the things that are hindering or tripping up your customers along the way.

Every interaction, each touchpoint, provides either a positive or a negative experience. Think about that as you work to build relationships with potential customers.

Understanding the Customer Journey & Touchpoints

The customer journey is the sum of experiences that consumers have with your company or brand. It’s how you communicate with them, and how they respond. It’s knowing where and when to engage.

For instance:

• Where are your customers? What channels do they use, and how do they interact with them? Focus your time and energy on where your customers are spending time and where they’re looking for information. Reach out to them there and find creative (not creepy) ways to connect.
• Do your customers value the self-serve model that’s become so integrated in current purchasing habits? These days people are doing so much more work upfront before purchasing. They want to feel empowered to make educated decisions, and they want to find solutions for themselves. If this describes your primary customer personas, it’s really important that you don’t hinder that, but instead, capitalize on it.
• Provide multiple ways for your audience to find the information they want. Maybe the gateway is an email, a downloadable white paper, or a social media ad. Think about the different paths that can lead to the same target audience.

Content Marketing Institute says that it takes seven to twelve touchpoints to deliver a qualified lead to sales. That being the case, each touchpoint along the customer journey needs to be strategic and intentional.

Defining Branded Customer Experience Touchpoints

While your product or service may technically accomplish the same as another company, it’s your brand that will set you apart from the competition. What is it that makes your brand unique? What you are providing that differentiates you from others in the marketplace?

Your brand is more than your signature colors, fonts, and logo. It also encompasses your values, your mission, and your why. Some key brand-related standouts could be:

• Credibility — always being above the line
• User First — always putting the user’s experience first
• Personalization — always making it personal

And these are just a few. There are many more. Identify yours and embrace them.

Credibility

The way to build credibility over time is to have top-tier products, industry-leading customer service, and consistent branding. While a defective product may disappoint your customer, how you deal with the situation will make all the difference. From the moment you “find” your customer, stay true to your brand and be prepared to make painstakingly hard choices to keep your credibility intact and your customer number one.

User First

Make sure the customer journey is customer-centric, straightforward, and optimized so that it’s focused on providing the consumer with the information they want in the easiest way possible.

A user-first buying experience can include responsive and mobile-friendly applications, great UX and UI design, and helpful information that’s easy to find.

Personalization

This is about creating a natural experience. One way to do that is to add personalization tokens when it makes sense. That may mean using it sparingly in a subject line or often in the email greeting — it all depends on your audience and how you think they’ll respond to it. Another way to create a personal experience is to incorporate smart content.

Here’s an example of effective smart content. If someone visits your website, downloads an awareness stage white paper, then leaves, the next time they visit your site, rather than re-showing them that same white paper, the content will dynamically update to show a consideration stage checklist instead. Tailoring their website experience to their needs is helpful and offers a natural next step. (Curious about the three stages of the buyer’s journey? Read this article.)

Consistent Branding & Success Measurement

There’s more to say about creating a great customer experience that includes strong branding and how to know whether or not you’re hitting the nail on the head with your customer experiences. For specific branding tips and insights, ways to measure your customer experience success, and more topic-related resources, listen to the podcast, Customer Focused: Consider Every Customer Touchpoint to Improve the Buyer Experience.

If you want to include inbound marketing and modern digital marketing strategies as part of your growth plan, TANK New Media would love to help.