How can you identify touchpoints for CX and CRM strategy alignment?

Touchpoints are interactions that a customer would have with the platform via different mediums. This can range from a simple query to a a complex return / cancellation flow. Each touchpoint represents an opportunity for a company to engage with its customers, gather valuable information and shape the overall customer experience.

Touchpoints refer to any interaction or point of contact between a customer and a business throughout the customer journey. These interactions can occur through various channels such as in person interaction, phone calls, emails, social media, website visits, advertising and more. Each touchpoints is an opportunity for a business to engage, communicate and build relationship with its customers. Understanding and managing touchpoints is crucial for businesses to create a cohesive and positive customer experience.

Touchpoints are customers' various interactions with a business throughout their journey. These could include interactions via email, social media, customer service calls, in-store visits, and more. Identifying and optimizing these touchpoints is a key part of improving the overall customer experience.

In simpler terms, every interaction a customer has with a brand, whether it's on a website, through social media, or even a call center, is a touchpoint. Reading an article or scrolling through LinkedIn can be considered touchpoints. These interactions are opportunities for the brand to deliver value, convey its message, and shape customer perceptions, generating valuable data for improving CX and CRM strategies

Mapping the Customer Journey: Start by charting the complete path that customers take, beginning from the initial stage of becoming aware of your brand to their interactions after making a purchase. Channels for Customer Interaction: Enumerate all the avenues through which customers interact with your company, such as websites, social media platforms, mobile applications, emails, telephone calls, visits to physical stores, and so on. Integration of Data: Ensure that customer data is seamlessly integrated across all touchpoints. Having a unified perspective of customer interactions is vital for both customer experience (CX) and customer relationship management (CRM) strategies.

It helps in defining the strategy and the vision for CX as a whole. Lesser the customer touchpoints, more seamless the overall user experience would be and the focus would be to eliminate friction and make processes that are hassle free for the user to be interacting on the platform. Identifying and optimizing touchpoints allows businesses to deliver a consistent and positive experience across all channels.

Touchpoints are important because they represent the various interactions between a customer and a brand throughout their journey. They significantly influence customer perceptions, satisfaction, and loyalty, shaping the overall customer experience. By optimizing touchpoints, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, build brand loyalty, and improve overall performance.

Son importantes por que determinan como el cliente ve a la organización, ademas que a partir de los puntos de contacto el cliente empieza el camino para la fidelizacion y recomendacion.

One of the ways through which an alignment can be generated is via generating stages a customer traverses through when they are interacting on a platform. For example, craft out the e2e process map once a customer reaches the platform, initiates an interaction and ends it as per the need raised. Determine which touchpoints have the most significant impact on customer perception and behavior. Focus on those that matter most. Once you have the e2e view defined, create a visual representation of the customer journey, highlighting the touchpoints and their relationship to each other.

By designing and managing the entire customer lifecycle effectively, companies can improve customer satisfaction, increase customer loyalty, and ultimately drive business growth. Effective CX requires a deep understanding of your customers, a clear vision of your CX goals, and a commitment to continuously improve and evolve your CX initiatives.

To map touchpoints: Identify Customer Journey Stages: Define key stages of the customer journey, such as awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase. List Potential Touchpoints: Identify all potential interactions customers may have with the brand at each stage, considering online and offline channels. Understand Customer Actions: Determine customer actions and behaviors at each touchpoint, considering how they engage with the brand. Gather Customer Feedback: Collect feedback to understand customer perceptions and experiences at different touchpoints.

In addition you woudl want to consider emotional journey mapping. Beyond the functional aspects of touchpoints, consider mapping the emotional journey of customers. Understand how customers feel at each touchpoint — are they frustrated, delighted, confused? This emotional layer can offer deeper insights into how to improve the overall experience. Also its essential to remember that this doesn't remain static but always evolving. Ensure that improvements at each touchpoint align with broader business objectives. For instance, improving a touchpoint should contribute to goals like increased customer lifetime value, higher sales, or improved brand reputation. Whenever possible, quantify the impact of each touchpoint.

En primera instancias deber tener un proceso maduro en tu organización, una vez que los hayas identificado, debes considerar crear el journey de tu organización con el cliente, para identificar en que partes del journey se dan estos puntos de contacto con el cliente y documentarlos como tal.

If there is a detailed map that has been defined in terms of the user interaction, the next key step would be to understand how effectively and seamlessly can this data be integrated with the CRM structure in place. Customer data from various touchpoints needs to be collected, centralized and accessible in the CRM systems which are being used. Once this data passes through, create detailed customer personas to understand individual preferences, behaviours and needs. This data can also be used to automate flows in the CRM that can free up consultant task times and eventually shape up how CX operates. Alignments should be done in line with the data gathered and insights generated.

Once you have the omni channel customer journey mapped, together with the touchpoints, you need to understand which are the moments that matter, also known as the moments of truth (MoTs) While every interaction has the potential to impact overall CX, some carry more weight than others. These are the moments of truth and are the ones worthy of measurement and action. The right metrics for the right moments are important, and so is acting on the feedback obtained from each MoT, and thanking customers for their feedback. Taking learnings from one MoT and applying it across the customer journey and channels is key to making sure that you don’t create negative impacts to CX in one area by adjusting another.

Aligning Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) across touchpoints is crucial for delivering a cohesive and seamless interaction with customers. Here are steps to achieve this alignment: Define Customer Journey: Map out the entire customer journey, identifying key touchpoints from awareness to post-purchase. Understand customer needs, expectations, and pain points at each stage. Integrate CRM and CX Systems: Ensure that your CRM system is integrated with CX tools and platforms to facilitate seamless data sharing. Centralize customer data to provide a unified view of customer interactions and history.

In my experience in the boutique fitness industry, aligning CX with CRM involves deeply understanding the customer journey and personalizing every interaction. By utilizing CRM data, businesses can tailor experiences at each touchpoint, from online engagement to in-studio interactions. Integration of CRM with digital platforms ensures consistent communication, while staff training is crucial for delivering personalized service. Regular feedback and data analysis refine the CX, enhancing customer loyalty and strengthening the brand in a competitive market.

Estes times devem atuar de forma muito próxima, de tanto de CX quanto CRM, planejarem suas ações a luz da jornada do cliente, há grandes chances de sucesso. Porém se cada um agir conforme suas próprias convicções, há muita chance de causar inconvenientes para o cliente em sua experiência.

One of the major levers to improve CS efficiency is to continuously work on Self-Serve that instills a lot of confidence in building up a robust and self reliant interactive model. If you improve the share of self-serve in your overall CS interactions, costs reduce, as self-service costs are dramatically lower than agent-driven support costs. The adoption, coverage and its effectiveness will be a gradual process and is strategically measured, can have a larger impact on overall self support numbers.

To align CX and CRM strategies, following the steps below is essential: Foster teamwork and collaboration dynamics between both areas. Integrate systems to have a complete and updated view of the customer. Use intelligent automation to streamline and personalize customer interactions. Establish common success metrics such as retention, and NPS. Consistently gather customer and employee feedback to ensure strategies and initiatives solve pains and help operations streamline. Provide constant training to ensure the best interaction between teams and encourage the use of data in all areas. CX and CRM strategies can be aligned effectively by following these steps, resulting in better customer experiences and overall business success.

Para alinhar a estratégia de Customer Experience (CX) e Customer Relationship Management (CRM), é crucial mapear a jornada do cliente, identificando todos os pontos de contato. Utilize o CRM para integrar dados desses pontos, analisando as interações para identificar experiências positivas e negativas. É importante coletar feedback dos clientes e usar essas informações para personalizar interações futuras. Equipes devem ser treinadas para usar insights do CRM e melhorar o CX. Monitoramento contínuo e ajustes são essenciais, assim como garantir que a tecnologia de CRM suporte os objetivos de CX. Por fim, desenvolva uma cultura organizacional centrada no cliente, enfatizando a importância da experiência do cliente em todas as operações.

Touch points constitutes the smallest level of Customer Interaction with its service provider, yet managing the experience has evaluated from touch points management to what we call “ Sub-Journeys” management. This is essential as interconnected touch points has a spill over effect and the design of one touch point cannot happen in sole or in isolation of other touch points

En creo que es demasiado geralizado el punto de vista, mí opinión es que cada caso es mejor tratarlo de forma más personalizada y puntual en cada aspecto.

Achieving CX and CRM strategy alignment is not an overnight task so prepare for the long game. You'll need to set a clear vision, map it out visually for other stakeholders to understand, and provide a clear breakdown of the current strategy against the gaps that need to be filled and processes that need to be changed. It will take lots of strategy sessions and discussions to help others see the long-term value and buy into the process. Make sure to involve the right players and do your research so everyone feels confident that the strategy is based on sound data and can produce measurable results.