The best and most successful leaders have proven an ability to create advantages where, historically, there aren’t any. Customer touchpoints are neither a disadvantage or advantage by their simple nature; it really depends on the approach of the individual organization or facilitator of that specific point of contact. In other words, turning customer touchpoints into an advantage is more than feasible. Customer touchpoints exist in almost every organization. That’s because a touch point is any phase or step in which the organization actively engages with a consumer or customer. This could be anything from an introduction letter, to an additional sales call, or even a happy birthday email. While every organization has a series of customer touchpoints across their respective customer journeys, not every customer touchpoint in every organization is going to look or feel the same.
Customer touchpoints have been in existence since, well, the beginning of business. However, the emphasis on turning customer touchpoints into an organizational advantage is, at least somewhat, new. This is, in part, due to the swift acceleration that society experienced into the modern digital era over the past few years. With the rise of the virtual economy came an entirely new way of operating and running businesses. While many organizations were prepared for the sudden and unexpected shift into the virtual economy, many others were not. One of the aspects that many organizational leaders struggled with in this transition was creating equivalent high-quality customer journeys throughout the digital operations. Another challenge in this same regard was that with the rise of the digital era came a flurry of new types of customer journeys and customer touchpoints all together.
This posed a hurdle which new and existing businesses needed to clear, alike. One popular solution to this challenge is to create an extensive and comprehensive online presence for the brand. While this is a great solution, it can also be daunting - especially for a new company that’s just getting on its feet. However, it’s vital in order to tap into the rich market of the modern day consumer.
No organization's profile of customer journeys will look the same. Neither will their communication strategies be mirror images. That being said, though, there are proven tactics and strategies that are widely popular amongst organizational leaders that are also accepted by the majority of the market as best practices.
Optimizing Customer Touchpoints
Before getting into the details on how organizations successfully optimize their customer touchpoints, it’s important to understand the value in going through such a process. While customer touchpoints are singular, isolated, interactions between an organization and consumers, together, they compose a much larger picture. A series of customer touchpoints creates a single customer journey. Customer journeys can contain any number of touchpoints, and therefore, needs to be considered as a comprehensive engagement. In other words, while addressing individual customer touchpoints, it’s integral to keep the larger picture in mind.
Customer journeys, together, compile the customer experience that any individual has with an organization. In turn, this means that the success or failure of each individual customer touchpoint has a direct impact on the overall customer experience. In the modern economy, which is supersaturated with competition, this is a major point of emphasis for the majority of organizational leaders. Delivering a high-quality customer experience goes far beyond leaving a happy and satisfied customer. While that may be the direct and most immediate result, optimizing the customer experience leads to a whole plethora of positives.
By optimizing the individual customer touchpoints with a sophisticated CCM, an organization will see tangible results that speak for themselves. At the surface level, CCM systems assist communication professionals in creating efficiencies throughout the operations of the organization. This directly puts time back into the daily schedules of the communications staff. This time can then be redistributed to more impactful and significant tasks that lead to other operational improvements. Beyond creating efficiency and increasing productivity levels, an optimized customer journey and high-quality customer experience bring about significant other results as well.
In growing a company or organization there are different tiers of quality when it comes to the type of growth being seen. In other words, there are certain growth-avenues that typically bring in a more loyal, dedicated, and invested consumer, while other growth-avenues are known to bring in fleeting customers that have no sense of provider-loyalty. Often regarded as the top tier in this way is known as organic growth. Organic growth essentially relates to word-of-mouth, and reiterates the value in providing an excellent customer experience from start to finish.
By optimizing the customer touchpoints, and in turn the customer journey, the customer experience is then, too, optimized. Going through this process ensures both the consistency and quality of customer experience that an organization provides. This leads to stronger brand perception in the marketplace, a deeper sense of customer loyalty, and a significant increase in organic-referrals that bring in top-tier growth.
A Few Final Words On Optimizing Customer Touchpoints
The rise of the digital era came swiftly and sooner than expected. With the worldwide pandemic creating the need for significant precautionary mandates, the open-armed-acceptance of the virtual economy happened nearly over night. This brought with it an onslaught of challenges and obstacles that organizational leaders had to face. Utilizing CCM solutions allowed many organizations a seamless transition into the digital era, while maintaining a high-quality and consistent customer experience that ultimately boosted the brand overall.
A sophisticated CCM, like that offered by Topdown Systems, will give you and your staff the tools you need to optimize your communications strategy with features aimed at boosting levels of customer engagement and bolstering the customer experience overall. With shifting communication trends, having a flexible CCM software that offers a recyclable content library and a suite of other communication centered features powered by AI, business logic, and automation, is essential to elevate your entire communication strategy.
For more information on document generation software, communication best practices, or anything else on CCM software, keep browsing Topdown System’s content library.
