Content Weapons Primer: Touchpoint Management

A definition of touchpoint management

Organizations that believed digital channels would reduce the volume of engagement and the number of touchpoints have been disappointed to find both actually continue to increase. Sounds all complex but it’s very simple. With the customer journey line ironed out. Touchpoint management in this context is isolating and putting controls in place at every possible interaction you or your organization has with your customers (current and potential). One stat that should drive this home is that 71% of customers stop buying after a bad experience! An ounce of prevention as the saying goes, right. Touchpoint management is a means to an end regarding this.

Thanks to its great set of features, touchpoint management is now a very important aspect of sales and marketing management. Since we have digital media everywhere, we rely more than ever before on shares, likes, tweets, comments and word of mouth rather than classical advertising. And as a result, organizations of all types and sizes need to adapt to these points, with touchpoint management being great in this regard.

What it does is it makes it easy for you to assess any marketing and management ideas and then figure out their strong and weak points. You get to see firsthand where your message, products or services are most and least effective. Where your staff is failing and exceeding expectations. At the same time, this can also be used to contact future customers and then see the pros and cons of what approach you will use. Thanks to touchpoint management you can encourage customers to provide insight into what they like and dislike at this point, and then you can use all the info to improve your services and make them a whole lot better in the long run.

However, you need to be careful on how you analyze these touchpoints that you share with your customer base. If you use them too much, this might show weakness and sensitivity. Which is why you need to use these strategically and with extra care. Try to use and manage the touch points adequately as you acquire feedback and make improvements. Customers need to see some sort of improvement in order for this type of system to work very well.

Learn more now in Content Weapons the book #contentweapons by Michael Stattelman

How to lead “Next Practices” initiatives like this in Meta Leadership also by Michael Stattelman

In order for the touchpoint management approach to work well, you need to make sure that you create a system that will boost the power of your message while also enhancing the planned experience. You need to improve your reputation by assessing audience needs and then improving on what those targets want to see you do better. The more information and detail there is, the better the payoff will be. Which is why you need to have a very strong, persistent approach towards this kind of system. Absolutely distinct/clear lines of separation from other operational activities are paramount as they can cloud the final objective.

The touchpoint management routine can be used in sales, retailing, advertising and marketing. But the best part is that you can use a huge range of channels in order to reach your targets in assessing their knowledge and requirements. It’s not an easy system to establish but the payoff can be great as long as you focus on higher and higher levels of quality and performance from each individual touch point. You will need to make some adaptations and customizations, yet as long as you implement it with great diligence it will indeed work exactly as planned.

Keys to touchpoint management are to meticulously analyze the entire set of circumstances around each touchpoint and put in place initiatives to address each of these. For instance, the sentiment and demeanor of someone contacting a complaint line will be considerable different than that of a new customer follow email requesting feedback on the quality of what they received. As a leader of this organization tasked with this specific domain you should ensure that scenario planning is done and a lop is integrated that deploys these initiatives, monitors their effectiveness and adjusts them to the levels intended for enhanced accuracy and performance as it feeds the overall strategy.

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