The Importance of Customer Touchpoints

Good morning everyone. I hope that you are enjoying your weekend.

I want to thank Gary Wirth for putting together the Blog policies. This morning, I want to address one of the topics we wanted to discuss . . . the importance of customer touchpoints.

We previously defined a "touchpoint" as anything that touches your customers. We also indicated that there are "external" touchpoints (the web, email, messages in queue, etc.) and "internal" touchpoints (materials used by the internal staff during the interaction with the customer). Now let's explore why these are important by using a precise example.

Let's say that a customer calls your company. She is launching this interaction during her lunch hour, and has a defined period of time to complete it. NEVER thinking it would be a problem, she calls the 800 number, and is greeted by a very long menu. And so it begins.

1. She is not told how many choices there are in the menu, or that she could potentially enter her choice at any time during the menu.
2. She is driving, and cannot easily press buttons, and there is no option to "speak" her desired option.
3. She listens to the entire menu, and still doesn't have a clue, based on how the options are offered, what to choose.
4. There is no option to speak to a "live agent".
5. She tries pressing "0" to reach an operator, but that starts the menu all over again.
6. On the second go around, she now presses anything that might get her to someone she can talk to.
7. When she reaches that person, the agent says he can't help the caller, and must transfer the call.
8. The agent performs a "cold" transfer, and dumps the call into the next "queue".
9. The caller, while waiting in queue for 10 minutes, hears a system message saying "your call is important to us" every 20 seconds. The caller is thinking the entire time, "if my call is that important to you, why haven't you answered it yet".
10. Now, the caller, after 10 minutes FINALLY hears that the interaction she wants to perform can be done via the website.
11. In desperation, she abandons the disastrous phone route, and brings up the website.
12. The website comes up, and she desperately searches for somewhere on the site to perform the desired action.
13. After searching for 5 minutes, she finally finds the right link to click.
14. When she clicks on the link, the page comes up with a message indicating that it is "under construction".

Exasperated, she shuts down her computer, screams to herself, and heads back to work.

I wish I could say that this was an unusual customer experience, but it is not. What do you think the caller's impression of this company is? The willingness of this person to try to contact this company again is going to be dependent upon a number of factors, including choice.

1. If the customer can deal with another firm to fulfill her requirements, she is going to look for options, and the firm has lost what could have been a potential sale, and a new customer.
2. If the customer must deal with this firm, she will do so unhappily. Her perception of this firm has been formulated by her experience in this attempted interaction . . . and it is NOT positive.

There are whole websites dedicated to failures in effectively dealing with customers. Companies need to understand how important the customer interaction is in formulating your customer's view of your firm. We have looked at only one representative interaction, and I think you can see the point.

I have written a white paper that delves more into this topic. You can find the white paper on our website (http://www.align.com/). Look for it in the lower right hand side of the home page. It is called "Put yourself in your customer's shoes", and it can be found in the "WHITE PAPERS" section.

Looking Ahead to the Next Post

My colleague, Gary Wirth, will be writing the next couple of blog posts, dealing with trends that we see in the Contact Center in 2009. Enjoy, and I'll be back!

Have a wonderful EASTER. Diane