customer journey und touchpoints

What are Customer Journey Touchpoints and How to Identify Them

Identifying and effectively mapping customer journey touchpoints are crucial steps in enhancing the customer experience and fostering brand loyalty. By understanding every interaction a customer has with your brand, you can create a seamless and personalized journey that not only meets but exceeds their expectations.

In this guide we will look at what are customer journey touchpoints, how to identify and improve them.

What are Customer Journey Touchpoints?

Customer journey touchpoints are the various points of interaction between a customer and your brand throughout their journey. These interactions can occur through multiple channels such as social media, website visits, emails, customer service calls, or in-store experiences. At each touchpoint, customers form impressions, gather information, and evaluate their experiences, ultimately impacting their perception of your brand and influencing their decision-making process.

Each touchpoint is an opportunity to delight, inform, and build trust with your customers. By ensuring consistency, relevance, and excellence across these interactions, you can create a cohesive and memorable customer journey that fosters loyalty and drives positive outcomes for your brand.

Types and roles of customer journey touchpoints

There are various types of touchpoints that customers encounter throughout their journey with a brand.

• Digital touchpoints : These include interactions through your website, mobile apps, or social media platforms. For instance, the ease of navigation on your website can leave a lasting impression on a customer’s perception of your brand.
• Physical touchpoints : These are the tangible interactions customers have with your brand, such as product packaging or in-store experiences.
• Human interactions : Personal interactions, whether they are in-person or over the phone, significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.

How to Identify Customer Journey Touchpoints

Identifying customer touchpoints is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle to see the full picture of how customers interact with your brand. Here’s how to identify these touchpoints:

1. Map out the customer journey

Start by visualizing the journey your customers take when they interact with your brand.

• Visualize the customer journey from awareness to post-purchase.
• Break it down into stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase.
• Understand each phase’s significance in the customer experience.
• Identify key touchpoints where customers interact with your brand.
• Use insights to enhance the customer experience and drive positive outcomes.

To learn more about how to create a customer journey map refer to our comprehensive guide; Customer Journey Map: Definition with Examples . And get a head start on visualizing customer journeys with these customer journey map templates .

• Ready to use
• Fully customizable template
• Get Started in seconds

2. List potential touchpoints

Think about all the places and ways customers might come into contact with your brand during each stage of the journey. This could include your website, social media profiles, physical stores (if applicable), emails, advertisements, customer service interactions, and more.

3. Review existing data

Take a look at the data you already have. Analyze website analytics, social media engagement metrics, email open rates, and any other relevant data points to see where customers are currently interacting with your brand.

4. Seek customer feedback

Reach out to your customers directly to gather insights. Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to understand their experiences and learn about touchpoints that may not be immediately obvious. Ask questions about how they discovered your brand, what influenced their purchase decisions, and how they felt about the overall experience.

5. Walk through the customer journey

Put yourself in your customers' shoes and experience the journey firsthand. Go through the process of finding information about your products or services, making a purchase, and interacting with customer support if needed. Take note of every touchpoint you encounter along the way.

6. Collaborate across departments

Work together with colleagues from different departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product development. Each team may have unique insights into customer touchpoints based on their interactions with customers in their respective areas.

7. Document your findings

Create a comprehensive list or map of all the customer touchpoints you’ve identified. Organize them by stage of the customer journey and channel of interaction. This document will serve as a valuable reference point for understanding the customer experience and identifying areas for improvement.

8. Regularly review and update

Customer touchpoints may evolve over time as technology changes, customer preferences shift, or new channels emerge. Make it a priority to regularly review and update your understanding of touchpoints to make sure that your strategies remain relevant and effective.

Why is it Important to Understand Customer Journey Touchpoints?

Understanding touchpoints is crucial because they provide invaluable insights into the customer experience. Here are a few benefits of identifying customer touchpoints.

• Improved customer experience : Understanding touchpoints ensures businesses can tailor experiences to meet customer needs and preferences, leading to greater satisfaction and loyalty.
• Spotting pain points : Identifying touchpoints helps businesses find areas where customers might encounter difficulties or friction, allowing for improvements to enhance satisfaction. To learn more about customer pain points refer to the guide on “Customer pain points”
• Efficient resource allocation : Knowing where customers interact with the brand enables businesses to focus resources on high-impact touchpoints, maximizing return on investment.
• Competitive advantage : Delivering exceptional experiences through optimized touchpoints sets businesses apart from competitors and strengthens their position in the market.
• Improved customer retention : Creating smoother, more enjoyable experiences increases the likelihood of customers returning, fostering long-term relationships and driving business growth.

Examples of Customer Touchpoints

Let’s dive into examples of customer touchpoints at various stages of the customer journey to better understand them.

Customer touchpoints on the path to purchase

Before a customer makes a purchase, they embark on a journey of discovery and consideration. This journey involves encountering various touchpoints that shape their perceptions and influence their decisions. Understanding these touchpoints is crucial for businesses to effectively engage with potential customers and guide them towards making a purchase.

• Social media ads : Targeted ads on platforms like Facebook or Instagram introduce customers to your brand.
• Search engine results : When customers search for products or solutions online, they encounter search engine results pages (SERPs) that feature organic and paid listings.
• Blog posts : Informative blog content addresses customer pain points and provides solutions, driving awareness.
• Influencer endorsements : Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand exposes your products to their followers.
• Online forums : Participating in relevant online communities allows you to engage with potential customers and answer their questions.
• Webinars or workshops : Hosting educational events establishes your expertise and introduces your brand to new audiences.
• Email marketing campaigns : Email newsletters, promotional offers, and product updates keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage engagement from potential customers.

Customer touchpoints during purchase

The moment a customer decides to make a purchase is a critical juncture in their journey. At this stage, businesses have the opportunity to create a seamless and enjoyable buying experience that encourages customers to complete their transaction.

• Product pages : Detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and customer reviews on product pages provide customers with essential information and reassurance.
• Checkout process : A seamless checkout experience, including multiple payment options, guest checkout, and security assurances, ensures a frictionless purchase.
• Customer support : Providing responsive and helpful customer support during the purchase process reassures customers and resolves any questions or concerns they may have.
• Cross-selling and upselling : Recommending related or complementary products during the checkout process encourages customers to add additional items to their purchase.

Customer touchpoints after purchase

The post-purchase phase is an essential part of the customer journey, where businesses have the opportunity to build lasting relationships and encourage repeat purchases. By providing excellent post-purchase support and engaging customers with valuable content and offers, businesses can enhance satisfaction and loyalty.

• Order confirmation : Immediately after a purchase, customers receive order confirmation emails or messages that confirm the transaction and provide essential information, such as order details and tracking numbers.
• Shipping notifications : Providing regular updates on the status of customers' orders, including shipping notifications and tracking information, keeps customers informed and engaged.
• Product usage guides : Offering instructional guides, tutorials, or how-to videos that help customers get the most out of their purchases enhances satisfaction and encourages product adoption.
• Follow-up surveys : Sending post-purchase surveys or feedback requests solicits valuable insights from customers about their purchase experience.
• Reorder reminders : Sending personalized reorder reminders or product recommendations based on customers' purchase history and preferences encourages repeat purchases.

Touchpoints in customer service

Customer service plays a crucial role in the overall customer experience, influencing satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. By providing responsive, helpful, and personalized support across various touchpoints, businesses can address customer inquiries, resolve issues, and exceed expectations.

• Phone support : Offering toll-free customer service hotlines allows customers to speak with a representative directly for assistance with inquiries, issues, or product support.
• Live chat : Providing live chat support on your website allows customers to engage with a representative in real-time for quick assistance or answers to questions.
• Email support : Responding promptly and professionally to customer inquiries, complaints, or feedback via email demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.
• Social media engagement : Monitoring and responding to customer inquiries, comments, or messages on social media platforms demonstrates your responsiveness and accessibility.
• Self-service resources : Offering self-service resources such as knowledge bases, FAQs, or help centers empowers customers to find answers to common questions or issues independently.

Tips for Mapping and Improving Customer Journey Touchpoints

Follow these best practices and tips to create a customer journey that delights and engages your audience at every touchpoint.

Start with the end in mind

Begin by defining your objective for mapping customer touch points. Whether it’s improving customer satisfaction, increasing conversions, or enhancing brand loyalty, clarifying your goals will guide your mapping process.

Identify customer personas

Understand your target audience by creating detailed customer personas . Consider demographics, preferences, behaviors, and pain points to ensure your touchpoint map accurately reflects the needs of different customer segments.

Take a holistic approach

Look at the entire customer journey from end to end rather than focusing on individual touchpoints in isolation. This holistic perspective allows you to understand how touchpoints interact with each other and how they collectively impact the overall customer experience.

Be data-driven

Utilize data and analytics to inform your decision-making process. Analyze customer behavior, website metrics, social media engagement, and customer feedback to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.

Prioritize key touchpoints

While it’s essential to consider all touchpoints, focus on optimizing the key touchpoints that have the most significant impact on the customer experience and business outcomes. This could include touchpoints that influence purchase decisions, drive customer satisfaction, or impact retention rates.

Personalize the experience

Tailor the customer experience to individual preferences and behaviors whenever possible. Use data-driven personalization techniques to deliver relevant content, offers, and recommendations at each touchpoint, making customers feel valued and understood.

In conclusion, understanding customer journey touchpoints is indispensable for building strong relationships with your audience and delivering exceptional experiences. By identifying, optimizing, and strategizing around these touchpoints, you can foster customer loyalty, drive conversions, and differentiate your brand in a competitive marketplace.

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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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14 customer journey touchpoints to optimize

Do you know how your customers found out about your brand or product? Or what made your users convert—or abandon their carts? 

It’s important to understand the key touchpoints where customers interact with your business to help you determine how to improve them. If you don’t know exactly which elements drive your users—or which block them—you won’t be able to design a smooth customer journey.

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This chapter outlines the most important external and internal customer journey touchpoints and shows you how to optimize them to elevate the user experience and drive business growth.

Optimize your customer journey touchpoints with user insights

Use Hotjar to see how users interact with key touchpoints—and improve their product experience.

14 key touchpoints in the customer journey

According to Iga Gawronska, Product Designer at Hotjar :

 Touchpoints are the key moments your customer interacts with your brand, be it through social media channels, your product, or your customer support.

It’s important for companies to do customer journey map research to understand which touchpoints are ineffective or even causing friction, so they can quickly remove blockers and streamline the user experience. 

Below, we dive into external and internal customer touchpoints you can optimize to raise brand awareness, better understand your customers, and increase conversions.  

3 external customer journey touch points to optimize 

Before they get to your product or website, customers pass through several external journey touchpoints you need to effectively understand and perfect to guide users to your site or product:

1. Social media

Social media is a vital touch point that lets you communicate directly with your users to help them find information about your business or solve their problems, and grow your audience through engagement with posts and ads . 

Social channels also help businesses boost awareness, increase user engagement, and connect with customers. 

So how can you optimize your social media touchpoints? 

Encourage engagement with contests and giveaways, live Q&As, and ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos that get users excited about your brand

Create interactive, high-quality content users will want to share—and keep track of shares and clickthroughs

Use social listening tools to interact with users and track questions, comments, and complaints that help you better understand how customers are experiencing or what they expect from your brand

Humanize your brand by conveying your company's core values and involvement with social causes

Pro tip : highlight your expertise on social media to drive engagement. For SaaS product teams, that might include explainer videos and educational posts; for ecommerce businesses, it might mean showcasing different product pages or visuals, with tips for consumers on how they can use the products you’re selling in their everyday life. 

2. Online ads 

Display ads, social media ads, and video ads are all important customer touchpoints that introduce potential customers to your business. 

Ads help companies generate leads and successfully reach their target audience.  

Here’s how to optimize your online ads:  

Deeply understand your target audience and plan campaigns around their demographics, location, interests, and needs

Make sure you have a clear call to action (CTA) that guides users to complete the desired action—like subscribing to your product or signing up for newsletters

Use a landing page that displays relevant, compelling content and mirrors the advertisements in your campaign 

Use your ads to inform users about product upgrades, features, or improvements

Pro tip : Look for keywords—the words and phrases users type into search engines—that aren’t performing well to optimize specific product or landing pages and increase conversions. Use Google Ads to help you determine what keywords to use and which aren’t performing.  

Virtual or in-person events are an important touchpoint to build brand awareness, display industry thought leadership and influence, and generate sales . 

Some key tips for designing impactful event touchpoints: 

Target the right audience to provide attendees with real value and ensure you’re attracting interested potential customers

Tailor and segment your event using CRM or registration data to curate the content to your audience’s interests for more meaningful engagement

Create an immersive experience that lets you connect deeply with your audience

11 internal customer journey touchpoints to optimize 

Once your potential customers reach your website and product pages, key internal touchpoints can make or break their experience. 

Let’s explore the internal touchpoints you can optimize to land more conversions and delight —and retain—your customers:

1. CTA buttons 

Call-to-action buttons—like ‘Try it free’, ‘Learn more’, and ‘Add to cart’—guide your visitors to complete conversion action goals. Clear, compelling CTA buttons entice users to click, so they can take actions, like finding more information, booking a demo, starting a free trial, or initiating or completing a purchase.

Here’s how to optimize your CTA buttons:

Keep your CTA ‘above the fold’ , at the point before users have to start scrolling down your web page to learn more about your product offering

Use bright colors and white space to make sure your button stands out

Make sure any copy that accompanies your CTA clearly conveys how this action will solve the unique challenges of your potential customers

2. Homepage 

Your homepage is a crucial customer touchpoint: it's your users' first impression of your website, playing a huge role in whether they decide to keep navigating, and it guides them to intuitively find their way around your site.

Use your homepage to help visitors understand your product's value and show them what to do next. 

This touchpoint determines whether users will continue exploring your site and your product solutions —so make sure your web design is customer-centric, with clear, intuitive navigation menus, working links, and compelling images and content. 

Use these tips to make your homepage touchpoints more effective:

Set clear goals: define exactly what you want your website to do and what its customer journey KPIs should be. Stick closely to your core objectives to communicate your mission effectively to users. 

Create an attractive header: using an attractive, consistent header throughout your website experience—with a recognizable logo—elevates your brand's awareness and creates user trust

Build an intuitive navigation bar: make sure users are able to easily navigate your website from the second they land on your homepage with smart web design choices to improve UX

Add compelling CTAs: include calls-to-action that appeal to each type of user, and A/B test them to see which are most effective

Pro tip : use Hotjar's Observe products to see where users click, scroll, and move on your home page—so you know what to adjust to increase engagement. Hotjar's Heatmaps and Session Recordings tools help you A/B test CTAs and other homepage elements to get a granular view on which options compel users to click and engage.

#Hotjar Heatmaps tools

Source: Hotjar 

3. Landing pages 

Landing pages lead users to a specific product or offer—like an ecommerce promotion, a free trial, ebook, white paper, or webinar—that entices them to take action.

Landing pages focus users on one specific conversion action, helping online businesses guide targeted leads through signups that are more likely to convert. Use your landing page to home in on one unique value proposition and encourage users to complete that desired action on your site.  

Our top four tips for optimizing landing pages for customers are: 

Simplify design: don’t use complex design elements or cram your landing page with too much media or content—you don’t want to distract users from your landing page’s main objective. Keep design and copy simple and focused to make sure users get to your call to action. 

Clearly state your offer: don’t make users dig around for what you’re offering them. Make your value known to visitors: clearly explain the pains they’ll solve by taking an action, and why they should choose your solution to meet their needs. 

Prioritize value-based information above the fold: make sure your users are given the most valuable information before this point to encourage them to keep reading

Watch user recordings: Hotjar Recordings let you watch full user sessions, so you can see every click, scroll, u-turn, and rage click in real-time as visitors navigate your landing page. This arms you with valuable insights on blockers to remove and possible optimizations.

4. Signup forms

Signup forms let users opt in to communications like email newsletters or receiving educational resources. Using signup form touchpoints effectively can help you grow your mailing list, learn more about your users, and increase leads and conversions. 

So, how can you make your signup touchpoints more effective? 

Make it clear to users what the value of signing up is, and how it will help them solve their problems

Make signup forms short and clean—the more form fields you include, the more friction users experience

Personalize sign-up with tools like Mailchimp

Make the signup process easy with autofill forms

5. Blog posts

Blog posts are a vital touchpoint to earn your customers’ trust by offering them content that establishes credibility and thought leadership and helps them better understand your product's or website's jobs to be done .

High-quality blog posts build trust by showing users you understand their pains, helping them evaluate their options and make a decision. SEO-optimized blog posts can also help potential customers find your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Here’s how to make sure your blog posts are effective customer touchpoints:

Optimize for SEO: Optimize website readability , headlines, content, images, and anchor text to make your blog posts and other content findable to users 

Optimize for targeted keywords: stuffing your blog posts with less relevant keywords can harm SEO. Use a few long-tail keywords to narrow your focus and directly answer user questions. Remember, you’re writing for people , not search engines—and this approach will actually benefit SEO.

Add image alt text: search engines like images with alt text—they add to the user experience by summarizing what’s in the image, in the event that it doesn’t load

Optimize URLs: make sure your URLs and topic-specific ‘slugs’ are relevant to your content and inform users about what they’re about to open

Optimize meta descriptions: give search engines and customers a brief overview of what your blog post is about to inspire users to click through

5. Video/visual media

Great media elements compel viewers to convert by engaging your audience, providing useful information, and showcasing the benefits of your brand and product solution. Visual media can elicit an emotional response from users that helps them connect your brand with their needs. 

Make sure to optimize your visual media to maximize its effect on the overall customer journey. Here’s how:

Create user-centric videos: your videos should provide added value and insights, or educate users on the ins and outs of your product and features. Create content that’s relevant to your users to capture their attention and keep them engaged. 

Have a clear goal: determine the responses you’re hoping to get from viewers beforehand to design visual media with maximum impact 

Add key SEO information: do keyword research and add targeted keywords to video and image meta descriptions. Try transcribing your video content so users have the option to read it—and search engines can understand what it’s about. 

Consider lead capture methods: ask users for their email to access special or useful content and help you get qualified leads deeply interested in learning about solutions

6. Product pages 

Product pages help ecommerce companies showcase different product offerings and encourage users to make a purchase or learn more. 

Use an effective page navigation layout and high-quality images and product descriptions to give your customers everything they need to make their decision at this touchpoint. 

Here’s how to optimize product pages for your customers: 

Organize your products: group your products in a way that makes sense to your users, with clearly labeled categories, intuitive filters, and search bars

Make user-centric design decisions: adjust the style of your page, including its language, layout type, and item placement, to help users easily access all the information they need and improve their product experience (PX). Test out different product page designs with Hotjar's Heatmaps to see which attract more engagement—and ask users why with Surveys .

Add CTAs: include clear, compelling CTAs throughout the page to inspire users to carry out the intended action

Image quality: use professional, high-quality images of your products or services that clearly display their main features to compel users to keep browsing

Include all relevant information: add reviews, product comparisons, product specs, shipping information, and final price so your users have all the information they need to successfully convert

7. Point of exit   

The point of exit is when a user stops engaging with your website or product, whether it’s by unsubscribing, abandoning their cart, or exiting a page after clicking around.  Tracking churn touchpoints helps companies uncover key information on what’s stopping users from converting into paying customers.

It’s important to ask yourself— and your users —questions at this stage:

If a user abandons their cart: what about your checkout experience caused friction? 

If a user exits a page: what could you do to make your pages more targeted and engaging? 

If a user unsubscribes: how can you improve your product experience? 

How to optimize point of exit touchpoints: 

Identify where users drop off: use Google Analytics to track which pages are failing to convert by identifying the percentage of exits per page

Optimize pages with high exit rates: make sure web page design, navigation, and responsiveness are optimized for minimal exit. Include animations, images, and visual media—and optimize your content with the tips above.

Use multiple-choice churn surveys: place Hotjar Surveys on ‘unsubscribe’ pages to ask users why they’re churning. Let them choose a reason from a multiple-choice list so it’s quick and easy for users to complete—but also create an open-ended question where they can add their free-form feedback. 

Exit-intent surveys: use Hotjar exit-intent surveys to ask your users why they’re leaving your site without taking a conversion action. Then, use these actionable insights to make impactful changes.

8. Starting a free trial

Free trials are a key customer journey touchpoint that lets users experience your product on their own terms and decide if it’s what they’re looking for. 

This ‘show, don’t tell’ approach means you can focus on improving your solution so a trial user understands its value, rather than aggressively selling your product. 

Try the following to improve your free trial customer touchpoints: 

Build a trustworthy, informative landing page: create a landing page that’s dedicated to free trial signups and clearly explains the trial benefits and conditions. Include testimonials, trust seals, and guarantees to persuade users to give your trial a go.

Make signup and download easy: use a simple signup form with minimal steps, and make it easy for users to download and get started on your product trial, so they’ll be more likely to follow through. 

Provide clear timeframes: tell users how long they can expect their free trial to last, so they’re aware of when to cancel or continue with paid plans to build their trust

Showcase your product's value: make the trial worth users’ time and communicate how it’ll help them achieve their goals

9. Onboarding

Your onboarding experience directly impacts product adoption and helps build lasting relationships with users, which can turn them into brand advocates. 

Optimize onboarding touchpoints to make sure users are getting the most value possible, as they learn how to use your product and features, to minimize churn and maximize user satisfaction.

Make sure your onboarding process clearly and intuitively shows users how to get set up and introduces them to key features and use cases to help them integrate your product into their everyday life.

Here’s how to optimize your customer onboarding: 

Educational content and problem-solving: create high-quality educational content that simply and quickly answers user questions. Investing in an interactive knowledge base is one great way to address user issues that might arise during onboarding. Also, ensure that you have fast, effective customer support available.

Introduce users to key features: use hotspots, banners, and tooltips to draw users’ attention to features that might help them and let them quickly locate the answers to any questions they might have

Optimize welcome emails: A/B test your welcome email to find out what users respond to most

Collect user feedback: use Hotjar's Feedback tools to ask users what you could improve during the onboarding process and what they need help with. Use the Feedback widget for streamlined in-browser feedback forms to make gathering user opinions simple.

10. Using a new feature

New features keep users engaged with your product and add value to their experience to help them in their journey of becoming loyal customers. 

Find compelling ways of introducing new features to your customers so they understand how to make full use of your product and reach higher levels of product adoption. 

Here’s how:

Keep users in the loop on new features: tell users about upcoming features on your blog, social media, and newsletters to attract customers and get them to try them out. 

Set up guides and prompts: make sure users know about your features and updates within the product itself. Help them set up new features, and explain how to use them effectively. Use tooltips and hotspots to remind users of new features as they’re interacting with your product.

Include relevant features: focus on the user and include the right features that add value. Don’t feature-bomb your users and dissuade them from adopting your product. 

11. Customer reviews 

Customer reviews highly influence user decisions and can make or break a visitor’s desire to adopt your product. 

Positive reviews help build trust with your users and strengthen brand credibility . They encourage users to interact with your brand—and act as a knowledge base for potential customers. 

Here’s how to optimize your customer reviews:

Increase customer confidence: customers who are happy with their product decisions are more likely to leave good reviews and inspire confidence in other users 

Leverage bad reviews: use your reviews as a feedback mechanism to drive change and make user-backed decisions. Where possible, follow up with customers who leave negative feedback to learn more.

Improve your customer experience (CX) through feedback: use a customer experience survey to get user feedback , helping you make changes to improve CX and get better reviews

Optimize your customer journey touchpoints for brilliant results

Optimizing these key touchpoints will improve your customer journey from start to finish, helping you delight your users and meet organizational goals. 

FAQs about customer journey touchpoints

What are customer journey touchpoints.

Touchpoints are the moments your customer interacts with your brand along their journey before, during, and after purchase. 

Important customer touchpoints for websites and products include: 

Social media channels

Landing page

Product pages

New product features

Customer support

Point of exit

The quality of customer journey touchpoints affects the customer’s overall experience and often determines whether they convert, stay loyal to your solution, or churn, so it’s important to be aware of them.

What’s the difference between a customer journey map and customer journey touchpoints?

A customer journey map lays out all the touchpoints a customer may interact with throughout the buyer’s journey. Customer journey touchpoints are the individual interactions a user has with your company, like landing on your website, downloading an ebook, viewing your product pages, signing up for a free trial, making a purchase, or watching a video. 

How do you optimize the customer journey?

To optimize the digital customer journey, first map out all the touchpoints a customer could arrive at. Then, optimize these by evaluating whether they’re meeting user needs, using product experience insights tools like Hotjar, and making targeted changes to improve each touchpoint. If you optimize specific touchpoints throughout the journey, the entire experience will be optimized for user satisfaction. 

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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

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Touchpoints and channels in customer journey mapping

Touchpoints and channels are crucial elements of any customer journey, but they tend to get mixed up when it comes to actual mapping. Read on to find out a practical way to distinguish between touchpoints and channels.

First, let’s dive into these two definitions, then find the difference between them and settle this issue once and for all.

• 1 What is a customer journey touchpoint?
• 2 Channels in customer journey maps
• 3 The difference between touchpoints and channels
• 4.1 Strategies and examples from various businesses
• 5.1 Touchpoint optimizations strategies:
• 6 Visualizing touchpoints and channels in UXPressia

What is a customer journey touchpoint?

Let’s first take a look at touchpoints. A touchpoint is a moment in time when an interaction happens between a customer and your product, service, or business in general. 

The examples include situations that happen on the website, through marketing, personal interactions, or a phone call. If customers find out something about your product, sign up for a newsletter, buy something, or give feedback, they do this by "touching" your business. And that's why they're called touchpoints. 🙂

Our main goal when mapping a customer journey is to find and map out all the possible touchpoints. The touchpoint with the less favorable experience defines the overall level of customer satisfaction at the end of the entire journey. 

Mapping all the possible touchpoints sounds great, but doing that can be challenging. So, is there any well-tried number to take as a starting point for a customer journey map?

We’d go with 5–7. And it’s the minimum because you will definitely find more physical and digital touchpoints once you start analyzing your business.

Here are a few customer journey touchpoint examples:

• Getting a product demo;
• Getting help and support;
• Checking out;
• Booking a table;
• Giving feedback about one's experience;
• Collecting information about a product or service;
• Doing a warranty return;
• Signing up for an online service.

Channels in customer journey maps

Unlike touchpoints, channels are a medium of communication between a business and its customers. It is the environment where touchpoints occur. 

For example, it’s a corporate website or the phone the customer uses when calling customer support . Some channels are interactive, they can give your customer a response, e.g., live chat , phone calls, social network. 

Others are not, e.g., billboards and flyers. Channels can be offline (brick-and-mortar store, an ad at an airport) and digital or online (a website or a mobile app).

A few examples of channels:

• Skype call;
• Online advertisement;
• Call center;
• Face-to-face communication;
• Mobile app;
• Social networks;
• Talking to friends.

The difference between touchpoints and channels

In essence, you can think of the difference between channels and touchpoints in the following way. A touchpoint happens when a customer has a certain need. For example, they want to learn more about a service, make a payment, or arrive at a hotel to stay for a few nights. And they're looking for ways to satisfy this need. So, a channel is a means a business provides to meet this customer need.

And while one and the same touchpoint might happen across different channels, some channels support only a specific set of touchpoints.

For instance, a customer can pay for the order (touchpoint) through the website, via bank payment, or by handing cash to the delivery man. At the same time, customers can use their smartphone to access the website to pay for the chosen item, order delivery, and give a phone call to the support team.

Note: not every channel can provide good support for a certain touchpoint. For example, you're trying to send emails, whereas your customers may prefer calls, but according to GlobalCallForwarding , 57% of customers ranked call support as their first and most comfortable preference for communication. 

If you don't have enough resources to support all of your channels, it's better to focus on the ones you can support to keep customer experience consistent across all the stages. So remember that when (re)designing your customer journeys.

To learn more about customer journey mapping or polish your mapping skills, be sure to check out the UXPressia Academy course .

How to improve your customer journey touchpoints?

Improving and optimizing buyer journey touchpoints is crucial for enhancing the overall customer experience and fostering customer loyalty.

Strategies and examples from various businesses

• Understand customer needs and expectations

Conduct surveys and interviews or analyze customer feedback to understand customers’ pain points and expectations. Let’s take an Airbnb as an example. This platform regularly collects feedback from hosts and guests to enhance its platform and user experience.

• Personalization

Amazon uses data analytics to personalize recommendations based on customer browsing and purchasing history. This personalization enhances the shopping experience and increases the likelihood of repeat business.

• Seamless multichannel experience;

Starbucks allows customers to order and pay through its mobile app, providing a seamless transition from online to in-store experience. This approach not only saves time for customers but also encourages app usage and loyalty.

• Consistent branding

Coca-Cola maintains consistent branding across all touchpoints, from its social media presence to packaging design. This consistency helps reinforce the brand image and creates a unified customer experience.

• User-friendly website and mobile app design

Apple’s website and mobile app design focus on simplicity and intuitiveness. The clean interface and straightforward navigation contribute to a positive user experience.

• Proactive customer support

Zappos definitely stands out among similar online stores as it is known for its exceptional customer service . They go beyond customer expectations by offering free shipping and returns, as well as providing 24/7 customer support, ensuring a positive touchpoint experience for customers in need of assistance.

• Social media engagement

Wendy's, a fast-food chain, uses humor and engages with customers on social media platforms. This approach humanizes the brand and creates a positive emotional connection with customers.

• Streamlined checkout process

Shopify simplifies the checkout process for online retailers, reducing friction in the purchasing journey. The platform allows easy customization and integration of payment gateways, optimizing the end-to-end transaction experience.

• Loyalty programs

Sephora's Beauty Insider program offers personalized rewards, early access to products, and exclusive events. This encourages repeat purchases and loyalty by providing added value to customers.

• Post-purchase follow-up

Etsy sends follow-up emails asking customers to review their purchases. This not only helps gather valuable feedback but also reinforces the customer's connection with the brand.

• Gamification

Nike's Run Club app incorporates gamification elements, such as challenges and rewards, to motivate users to stay active. This makes the fitness journey more engaging and enjoyable.

• Augmented reality experiences;

IKEA's AR app lets customers visualize furniture in their homes before making a purchase. This technology enhances the online shopping experience and reduces the likelihood of returns.

By incorporating these strategies and learning from successful examples, businesses can enhance their customer journey touchpoints, providing a more satisfying and memorable experience.

How to optimize the number of buyer journey touchpoints?

Optimizing the number of customer journey touchpoints involves streamlining interactions to create a more efficient and effective experience. Need some bright ideas on how to do that? Leverage other companies' experience.

Touchpoint optimizations strategies:

• Use CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot to consolidate customer data across various touchpoints. Using them ensures a unified view of customer interactions, helping businesses avoid redundant customer journey touchpoints and provide a more coherent experience.
• Consider using an SSO solution like the one provided by Google. You may have used Google’s SSO by yourself, for instance, to create an account on some website. As a result, there’s a smaller number of customer touchpoints required for authentication, streamlining the user experience.
• Dropbox has an interactive Help Center that dynamically adapts based on user queries. This makes customers less dependent on support and eliminates the need to contact support by providing instant answers to common questions.
• Netflix uses predictive analytics to recommend content based on user preferences, reducing the need for users to search extensively for what they want to watch.
• Workflow automation tools like Zapier and Make can connect various apps and automate repetitive tasks, minimizing multiple touchpoints in processes like data entry or lead nurturing.

• Shopify integrates with various payment gateways, shipping providers, and inventory management systems, consolidating e-commerce touchpoints and providing a seamless end-to-end experience for both businesses and customers.
• HubSpot's progressive profiling allows businesses to collect additional customer information gradually over time. Instead of bombarding customers with lengthy forms, this approach minimizes initial touchpoints and enhances the user experience.
• Google Analytics offers cross-channel attribution models, helping businesses understand the impact of each marketing channel on the customer journey. Having these insights allows for a more strategic allocation of resources, reducing unnecessary touchpoints.
• Many websites use chatbots for instant customer support. For example, the chatbot on the website of a travel agency can assist users with booking queries, reducing the need for customers to call or email.
• AT&T provides a self-service portal where customers can manage their accounts, pay bills, and troubleshoot common issues. This makes clients less reliant on customer service touchpoints for routine tasks.

• Airlines like Delta use X (former Twitter) and Facebook for customer support. Integrating social media as a customer service channel reduces the need for customers to switch to a different platform to resolve issues.

By leveraging these strategies, businesses can minimize unnecessary touchpoints, making customer journeys more efficient and enjoyable. 

It's also crucial to regularly assess and refine touchpoints based on customer feedback and emerging technologies.

Visualizing touchpoints and channels in UXPressia

Now, when it comes to actually placing channels and touchpoints on a customer journey map, you can do it in a few ways by using our CJM tool .

First off, there’s a Processes and Channels section with over 160 channels for different domains to choose from.

You can also have separate sections for touchpoints and channels, where you can easily add them to your map. 

As for touchpoints, once you set up them in your Team Library , you can reuse them in different projects:

Add as many touchpoints per stage as seems necessary. The result may look like this:

Pro tip: On the touchpoint page, you can add not only touchpoint-related information but also channels associated with this specific touchpoint.

In the channels section, you can add background icons and describe them in plain text if you want.

By the way, you can also visualize touchpoints and channels associated with your persona right in the Persona Online tool . Here is what it can look like:

And that’s all there is to it. Hopefully, these two key concepts of customer journey mapping are a little clearer to you now, and you will easily tell them apart when creating your journey maps.

Ready to visualize your customer touchpoints and channels?

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Rate this post

This was insightful. I finally get the difference between customer journey touchpoints and channels, but still have a question about applying that to personas. Should I add all channels they generally use even if my company is not present there?

We’re happy that you found the article useful, Alice! The channel section of your persona should have all their mediums of communication and research, including the ones that are yet to be covered by your company. You can then look into closing the gaps to:

a) be present where your customers expect to find you, b) reach out to them through the channels that they prefer.

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How to Optimize Customer Journey Touchpoints (with Examples)

Your customers’ journeys from awareness to advocacy may be measured by how much they buy and how much they spend, but they’re defined by the many interactions they have with your brand along the way. These interactions, which we refer to as “ touchpoints ,” represent the various ways in which customers engage with your company as they learn about a product or service and make a decision to buy it, stick with it, and talk about it. 

Savvy business people like yourself know that a smooth sailing customer journey entices customers to buy a product, purchase it again, and recommend it to their friends and colleagues. On the flipside, friction can discourage action, depress sales, and lead to churn. To optimize your customer journey for a better customer experience , focus on what you can control — the touchpoints. Here’s how to get started.

Understanding the five stages of the customer journey

Before you can fine tune the details, you should first outline your customer journey map in broad strokes. Although the particulars of a customer journey can and will look different for every customer, product, or service, there are generally five phases of the overall customer journey.

This encompasses the ways in which customers become aware of your brand — including via advertising, organic social media, word of mouth, and more.

Consideration

This phase is when prospects research your product or service, ask questions, seek information, and consider alternatives.

Purchase / Conversion

The purchase or conversion phase entails all of the interactions customers have once they convert. That could be going through the process of opening a new bank account, downloading an app, or completing a transaction. 

Post-Purchase / Conversion

The post-purchase phase encompasses interactions and experiences customers have with a brand after the initial purchase or conversion, including seeking out customer support, providing customer feedback, renewing a subscription or plan, and more.

Loyalty and advocacy

This phase is reached when customers renew a membership or plan, review a company’s products or services, or recommend the brand to others through direct or indirect feedback.

Customer touchpoints and the journey map

If the five phases of the customer journey are the geographical boundaries on your map, then the touchpoints are the points of interest. Note that these touchpoints can entail things you do and don’t want your customers to experience, and some touchpoints may or may not be directly under your control. The point of conducting a modern customer journey analysis is to identify where and how you can reduce friction. 

To start, outline the universe of experiences your customers might have with your brand. You can break these down into online and offline interactions. Here are some examples to consider.

Online touchpoints

• Websites or landing pages
• SMS and messaging apps
• Social media
• First- and third-party reviews
• Digital customer support channels (livechat, chatbots, etc.)
• IoT devices
• Digital ads

Offline touchpoints

• Phone or IVR interactions
• Contact center phone calls
• Storefront or in-person interactions
• Events or conferences
• Direct mail
• Offline advertising

Building the customer journey map

There are many different customer journeys you can map, but the trick is outlining the most relevant ones. For example, you may have some customers entering your funnel through social media ads, while others come directly to your website after seeing an offline commercial. Others may read a review on a third-party site, while some may find you through a search engine. 

Optimizing touchpoints starts by organizing these interactions along a specific journey and aligning them to the appropriate journey phase. From there, you can build a framework to understand friction, drop off, and churn. Many customer experience teams will organize these touchpoints by categories, such as pre-conversion, conversion, and post-conversion or post-purchase, but you can tailor your customer journey map to your specific industry or niche.

Common challenges across customer touchpoints

There are a few common — yet difficult to spot — hurdles in customer journeys that can cause undue friction. Here are some to look out for as you conduct your analysis.

Inconsistent messaging

Minor inconsistencies are forgivable, but overt deviations can lead to customer frustration and even harm your brand reputation. It could be as simple as your company’s chatbot or call center providing a different answer to a question than what’s listed on your website or as complex as deprecated materials being circulated by an out-of-sync sales team.

Siloed touchpoints

Similarly, experiences that are siloed and disconnected from others can confuse or misdirect customers. If the experience at a kiosk or event booth for your brand differs from that of your company’s website, demo call, or product page, your customers can feel misdirected or deceived. Likewise, if they have a great experience with a salesperson but the support experience is less than desirable, it can lead to churn and negative reviews.

Unnecessarily complex buying journeys

In some industries, when a customer is ready to buy, they’re ready to buy. Unnecessary extra login screens or form fills, or, in more complex environments, extra meetings or line items in a contract, can cause significant friction and a breakdown of a conversion altogether. 

Five strategies to optimize customer touchpoints

Here are key strategies and tools you can use to enhance and maximize the effectiveness of each touchpoint.

Build cohesive, omnichannel experiences

Disjointed and siloed touchpoints can cause a lot of friction. Ensuring consistency between online and offline experiences , by optimizing experiences across channels and ensuring a connected tech stack, can go a long way.

Deliver personalized customer experiences

Personalize messaging, interactions, content, products, and services for the individual customer where possible to increase customer loyalty and share of wallet .

Implement real-time feedback monitoring

Instead of viewing each journey as a snapshot in time, monitoring customer feedback in real time enables you to dynamically improve the customer experience as it’s unfolding in the moment.

Get proactive with customer behavior analysis

Analyzing customer behaviors and customer signals can help you stay ahead of problems. If customer feedback and reviews suggest there’s an issue, ongoing analysis can help you solve it before it gets out of hand.

Leverage a customer experience management platform

Finally, consider investing in a customer experience management platform for a better overall experience across your customer journey. 

Build better experiences with Medallia

Streamlining every interaction with your brand is possible, with the right tools to optimize your customer journey touchpoints.  

Medallia offers a suite of advanced solutions for managing digital, in-person, and phone-based customer interactions, enabling teams to provide better experiences, reduce the burden on the contact center, and strengthen customer retention and satisfaction rates.  

To learn how your organization can benefit from Medallia’s customer experience management platform, speak with a Medallia expert today.

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Identifying and Optimizing Customer Journey Touchpoints

How do you identify and optimize customer journey touchpoints?

This is the main question that the article tackles.

Before we get down to it, we also cover different stages of the customer journey and examples of touchpoints at different stages. To inspire your product team .

Ready to dive in?

• A customer journey is all the customer interactions and experiences with an organization, from initial discovery to ongoing use and beyond.
• Customer journey touchpoints are key moments where customers engage with the company or its products.
• For example, before the customer buys the product, they interact with the landing page . During the purchase, they interact with the demos , and afterward, they engage with onboarding flows .
• The customer’s journey includes several stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Activation , Adoption, Renewal, Expansion , Loyalty, and Advocacy .
• To identify customer touchpoints, first research their needs and pain points . Use surveys, interviews, and feedback from customer-facing teams to create user personas .
• Next, use analytics to find patterns in user behavior . Supplement the insights with qualitative data from surveys.
• Combine the information about customer touchpoints , goals, feelings, and challengers in a customer journey map .
• To inform touchpoint optimization, gather feedback at key interaction points, and track user behavior along the customer journey with analytics tools.
• Implement personalized in-app guidance to help users quickly discover and implement relevant features.
• Prioritize optimization of touchpoints that significantly influence customer purchasing decisions, like comparison pages.
• Enhance customer service interactions across multiple channels by providing staff training and implementing CRM and automation tools.
• Use A/B tests to experiment with multiple versions of user flows to determine the most effective approach.
• Continuously update and refine customer journey maps to reflect evolving customer needs and product developments.
• Want to learn how to optimize customer journey touchpoints with Userpilot? Book the demo!

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What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is the complete series of experiences and interactions that a customer has with a business from the initial point of awareness to post-purchase and beyond.

Understanding the customer journey is crucial for SaaS companies because it helps identify the touchpoints that influence customer decisions.

By mapping out these stages and touchpoints, you can optimize each interaction. To increase customer satisfaction , drive conversions, and build long-term customer loyalty .

What are customer journey touchpoints?

Customer journey touchpoints are elements of the customer journey in which the customer interacts with the brand or product. Each customer journey consists of multiple touchpoints.

Examples of typical touchpoints in the SaaS context include the landing page , the onboarding flow , or a cancellation survey . We cover a few more touchpoint examples below.

What are the stages of customer journey?

The customer journey stages vary from product to product. Most of them overlap with 9 basic stages, though:

• Awareness : the potential customer learns about the product, for example, from a social media post.
• Consideration : the customer evaluates the product as a potential solution to their problem, for example, by trialing it or comparing it to competitors.
• Decision : the customer signs up for the product or purchases a paid version .
• Activation : the user experiences the product value and starts using it to complete tasks.
• Adoption : the product becomes a go-to solution to their problems, and they use it habitually.
• Renewal : the customer renews their subscription .
• Expansion : the customer buys additional products and add-ons or upgrades to a higher plan.
• Loyalty : the customer appreciates the value of the product and the positive change it brings and isn’t likely to switch to competing solutions.
• Advocacy : the customer promotes the product in their social and professional circles, for example, through WOM or referral programs.

How to identify important customer touchpoints?

With the theory out of the way, let’s see how you can identify the key touchpoints in the customer journey.

1. Define your target audience

The first step is all about understanding your target customers: their needs, wants , and pain points.

Collect the necessary customer data through:

• Interviews and focus groups (during the product discovery process ).
• Competitor analysis (What problems do their product solve? What they don’t?).
• Conversations with the customer-facing teams (like the customer success team , support team, or sales team).

Collate all the information by creating user personas, focusing on their:

• Role in the company.
• Jobs to be done .
• Company details (size, target market, goals).
• Pains and challenges.
• Team collaboration (key stakeholders).
• Product benefits for their use cases

2. Find patterns in their journeys

Next, segment your users based on their use cases and analyze their interaction with the brand for patterns.

As a SaaS product manager or marketer, you’re lucky because most user interactions happen at digital touchpoints. So they’re easy to track and analyze:

• Social media management and monitoring tools can help you track how potential customers interact with your social content.
• Web analytics platforms – their engagement with your homepage, landing pages , and paid ads.
• Product analytics tools – monitor their in-app behavior .

For example, you could use path analysis to map out all the user actions on your website or inside your product.

You can back up the analytics with surveys for qualitative insights . For example, in your welcome survey, you could ask users how they learned about your product.

3. Create a customer journey map

Once you have all the data, build customer journey maps . I’m using a plural form because you will need a separate map for each user persona . Because they have different objectives and use the product differently.

Your map should consist of:

• Stages (Awareness, Consideration, etc).
• Touchpoints (e.g. sign-up page ).
• Key actions at each touchpoint (complete the registration form).
• Feelings the customer experiences (excitement, confusion, sense of achievement, etc).
• Barriers (e.g. the microcopy isn’t clear).

Customer journey touchpoint examples

I’ve already mentioned a few touchpoint examples but let’s look at a few more. And organize them based on when the interaction happens.

Customer journey touchpoints before the purchase decision

The touchpoints in this phase attract and engage prospects. They provide them with information about your offerings and demonstrate their value .

• Search engine-optimized website (homepage, landing pages, etc.).
• Social media content (posts, ads, direct messages, etc.).
• Online ads (e.g. PPC campaigns or retargeting ads).
• Email newsletter.
• Product reviews (e.g. on platforms like G2 or Capterra).
• Content marketing (blogs, whitepapers, e-books, etc.).
• Industry events (e.g. conferences, like Product Drive, or social events, like Product Pints).

Customer journey touchpoints during the purchase decision

During the purchase decision phase, the goal is to convert interested prospects into paying customers .

These touchpoints provide detailed information, answer questions, and offer assurances to help prospects feel confident in choosing your product over competitors.

• User reviews and testimonials.
• Competitor comparisons (e.g. BOFU blog posts or comparison pages).
• Sales team.
• Interactive product demos .
• Case Studies Free trials .
• Pricing pages .

Customer journey touchpoints after the purchase decision

After the purchase, your focus shifts to ensuring customer satisfaction and promoting customer retention. These touchpoints focus on enabling users to maximize product value, providing support, fostering engagement, and encouraging repeat business and advocacy.

• Onboarding flows .
• Customer support channels (live chat, phone, email, etc.).
• Follow-up emails.
• User community forums.
• Knowledge base and self-help resources ( video tutorials , how-to guides, product documentation).
• Feedback surveys.
• Product updates and announcements .
• Loyalty programs Customer success initiatives.
• Renewal reminders.

How to optimize your customer touchpoint strategy?

So, you’ve identified the major touchpoints at different stages of the customer journeys. It’s time to optimize them. To satisfy customer expectations and needs and to create a positive customer experience .

Collect customer feedback at every touchpoint

Collecting customer feedback at individual touchpoints helps you spot signs of dissatisfaction. And figure out how to improve the user experience .

For example, you run:

• An onboarding survey to learn how well your flows support new users.
• A CES survey to assess how easy it is to use a newly-launched feature.
• A churn survey to identify reasons why users choose to cancel their subscriptions.
• End-of-trial survey to find out why the user isn’t converting.

Each of these should be triggered contextually, just when the interaction takes place. In this way, the experience is still fresh in the user’s mind. Which makes the feedback more reliable.

Use in-app flows to improve customer satisfaction

When a new user signs up for the product, you want them to experience its value as quickly as possible. They’re not going to waste their time on a tool that’s difficult to navigate or doesn’t offer clear benefits.

That’s where in-app flows come in.

Their job is to help users discover the relevant features and teach them how to use them. So that they can achieve their goals efficiently.

I use the word ‘relevant’ on purpose. You don’t want to distract users with information and features they will never need. Instead, personalize the onboarding based on their use cases.

Here’s how Miro does it:

First, they use a welcome survey to collect information about your role and goals. They use it to customize the welcome screen .

From the welcome screen, you choose what you’d like to create, like a customer journey map. This opens a template and triggers an onboarding flow.

The flow doesn’t just show you how to complete common tasks and manipulate the visual elements. It prompts you to perform the action, increasing the chance that they remember.

Focus your marketing efforts on high-level touchpoints

High-level touchpoints have the biggest impact on the customer’s decision to purchase the product. Like your PPC ads, landing pages, or email marketing campaigns. These are the ones you should prioritize in your optimization efforts.

Here are a few examples of how to do it:

Do not overlook customer service touchpoints

Customer service teams play a crucial role in the customer journey as they directly impact the customer’s experience and perception of a brand. Their responsiveness and ability to solve problems have an impact on customer satisfaction and can help you win their trust .

How do you optimize the CS touchpoints?

• Regularly train the customer success team to improve their product knowledge and communication abilities. Give them the flexibility to solve customer problems in creative ways.
• Offer multichannel support (email, live chat, phone).
• Provide self-service support via resource centers and chatbots.
• Implement a CRM to manage customer interactions.

Constantly monitor customer interactions with touchpoints

We’ve already used product analytics to identify the major touchpoints. They’re also invaluable when it comes to optimizing them.

By tracking user behavior at different touchpoints, you can identify friction points that slow customers down or cause churn.

For instance, a funnel analysis can help you identify where users drop off while navigating your website or during the onboarding process. A path analysis can show you what exactly they did before this happened and highlight potential usability issues.

Armed with such insights, you can then optimize the particular touchpoints. For example, if users drop off during the sign-up , you can improve the conversion rates by simplifying the form or enabling SSO.

A/B test different flows to see which one results in a better customer experience

A/B testing involves running 2 different versions of the flow simultaneously to determine which of them performs better.

Imagine you want to optimize the activation rate by improving your onboarding flows. To do so, you create 2 (or more) different flows and enable them for 2 user samples (representing the same group). As users interact with the product, you track the conversions.

This experimentation method isn’t limited to in-app experiences. Companies use it to optimize touchpoints along the entire journey . The ads, landing pages, email sequences. You name it.

Customer journey mapping shouldn’t be set in stone

Customer journey mapping isn’t a one-off exercise.

As customer needs evolve and you develop your product, customer interactions change, too.

For you, this means constantly remapping the customer journey and reoptimizing the touchpoints.

For example, Userpilot has recently launched custom analytics dashboards to enable customers to monitor relevant product metrics from one place.

To accommodate the innovation , we needed to modify multiple touchpoints: our landing and pricing pages, blog posts, support resources, and onboarding flows, to name just a few.

Optimized customer journey touchpoints help customers achieve their goals efficiently without delays, confusion, or frustration. They create a positive customer experience and enhance customer satisfaction.

They’re also essential for business success. They ensure that users progress smoothly along the customer journey: sign up for the product, adopt it, convert to paid accounts, upgrade to higher plans, and promote your product.

If you’d like to learn how Userpilot can help you optimize your customers’ journeys, book the demo!

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13 mins read

Mastering Customer Touchpoints to Elevate the Journey and Improve CX

Amropali Shetty

Introduction

What are customer touchpoints, why are customer touchpoints important, how to identify customer touchpoints effectively, examples of customer touchpoints, how yellow.ai enhance customer touchpoint identification and engagement, success stories, the final thoughts, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Executive summary

Customer touchpoints play a crucial role in every business-customer interaction. This blog takes you through the essence of customer touchpoints, illustrating their role in sculpting the customer journey and enhancing customer experience (CX). From the initial spark of interest to the post-purchase glow, every touchpoint is an opportunity to impress and retain customers. We’ll navigate through the various touchpoints, providing insights on optimizing each for a seamless, satisfying customer journey . This comprehensive guide offers practical examples and strategies, positioning it as a vital tool for businesses aiming to elevate their customer engagement game.

The concept of customer touchpoints is a critical element in shaping the customer journey and enhancing the overall customer experience (CX). Each touchpoint represents a moment of truth where businesses have the opportunity to influence customer perception positively and build lasting relationships. It is a strategic mix of interaction, communication, and experience management that can set a brand apart in today’s competitive market.

Consider the weight of these interactions: A Salesforce report reveals that 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. This statistic is a clarion call for businesses to map out and meticulously enhance every customer touchpoint. From the initial digital advertisement that catches a customer’s eye to the post-purchase follow-up email that makes them feel valued – every step in this journey matters. 

This blog aims to explore these various touchpoints in-depth, offering insights and strategies to refine them for a more impactful customer journey.

Customer touchpoints are those moments when someone bumps into your brand, forming the steps of their journey from curiosity to loyalty. Picture each touchpoint as a handshake or a conversation, ranging from seeing an ad and visiting your website to getting support help. It’s all about the interactions, whether big, like a purchase, or small, like social media engagement.

Related read: 10 Reasons why customer experience is important?

Now, why fuss over these touchpoints? Each one is your stage to shine. For instance, a person spots your eco-friendly ad on Instagram, clicks, and lands on your site. These moments are your chances to impress. When they buy something, and later, when you send them a friendly email, or they reach out with a question, you’re weaving your brand into their daily life. Done right, these touchpoints turn a browser into a buyer and then a fan.

The magic of these touchpoints lies in their cumulative impact. It is vital to understand that these touchpoints are not isolated interactions. Instead, they are parts of a more extensive and cohesive journey. Each touchpoint builds on the previous, and combined, they weave experiences that can turn a casual browser into a loyal customer. The artistry for businesses lies in recognizing and optimizing these touchpoints to create a smooth, satisfying customer journey that resonates with both the consumer’s mind and heart.

Related must-reads:

• Customer service software: How to select the best one
• Good customer service: Ways to deliver [+10 Examples]
• Customer service automation – A full guide
• Customer service strategy: A step-by-step guide

The significance of customer touchpoints in the business landscape cannot be understated. They are the gears that drive the mechanism of customer engagement and satisfaction. Each touchpoint holds the potential to elevate a customer’s experience and build a deeper connection between them and your brand. This relationship-building is crucial in a market where customers have several options. Well-managed touchpoints can become the distinguishing factor that sets your brand apart, turning casual interactions into lasting customer loyalty.

Related read: Customer Experience vs. Customer Service

1. Creating a positive brand image: Each touchpoint is an opportunity to reinforce a positive image of your brand in the customer’s mind. Whether it’s through a user-friendly website interface, a helpful customer service call, or a prompt response on social media, these interactions collectively build a perception of your brand as caring, efficient, and customer-centric.

2. Facilitating repeat business and loyalty: Personalized and positive touchpoints significantly influence customer decisions to return for repeat purchases. Customers who feel valued and understood are more likely to become loyal brand advocates. They will share their positive experiences with others and contribute to organic business growth.

3. Streamlining customer service: Efficient management of touchpoints can lead to higher resolution rates from the first contact, simplifying the workload for customer service teams. Besides improving the work environment for your employees, it also ensures that customers receive quick and effective solutions.

4. Gathering insightful feedback: Every interaction is a chance to gather valuable feedback. Analyzing these touchpoints provides insights into customer preferences and pain points, enabling you to fine-tune your offerings and communication strategies.

5. Enhancing customer retention: Customer experience often trumps price and product in today’s world. So, mastering touchpoints is vital to retaining customers . Keeping existing customers is generally more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. That makes touchpoint optimization a financially sound strategy.

6. Building a loyal customer base: Satisfied customers are likely to choose your brand for future needs. That forms a loyal customer base that is less susceptible to competitive market shifts.

7. Optimizing post-sales support: A well-managed customer journey allows for more effective post-sales support. It involves addressing inquiries and resolving issues swiftly, which further cements customer trust in your brand.

Identifying customer touchpoints is like mapping a well-traveled road; it involves understanding every stop-and-start that a customer experiences with your brand. Here’s how businesses can effectively identify these vital interactions:

1. Decoding customer insights

Start by getting under the skin of your target audience. Who are they? What do they need? Conduct market research and analyze customer feedback to understand their preferences. For instance, if your clientele primarily discovers your services through online searches, then your digital presence (websites, online ads, SEO efforts) becomes a crucial touchpoint. Tailor these digital interactions to create a strong first impression.

2. Evaluating interaction patterns

Review how customers currently interact with your business. Is it through your social media platforms, website, or in-store visits? Customer surveys can reveal where your audience prefers to engage. That will enable you to focus your efforts on enhancing these touchpoints. For example, if a majority interact via social media, it’s time to ramp up your social media engagement strategies.

3. Charting the customer journey

Mapping out the customer journey helps you visualize how customers go from recognizing a need to making a purchase and beyond. Outline the journey for each buyer persona . It can start from discovery to post-purchase interactions. Understanding this journey in detail allows you to identify where you can improve experiences and smooth out any friction points.

4. Gathering direct feedback

Use tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to gauge customer satisfaction and the likelihood of referrals. These surveys can pinpoint areas of discontent and help you identify which touchpoints need refinement. For example, if customers indicate dissatisfaction with post-purchase support, this area becomes a priority for improvement.

5. Continual reassessment

The process of identifying and refining customer touchpoints is ongoing. Regularly revisit your customer journey map and touchpoint analysis, especially when introducing new products, services, or marketing campaigns. Keep abreast of changing customer preferences and market trends to ensure your touchpoints remain relevant and effective.

Customer touchpoints include every interaction a customer has with a brand. Each of these touchpoints shapes a customer’s perception and experience. These crucial moments define the journey a customer takes with a business, from first awareness to post-purchase engagement. Let’s explore these touchpoints in detail, dividing them into three key stages: before purchase, during purchase, and after purchase.

Phase 1: Before purchase

The customer journey begins even before a customer decides to make a purchase. This before-purchase phase is all about creating the right first impression. It builds the foundation of a potential long-term relationship. It involves the initial interactions that a customer has with your brand, often determining whether they will proceed to the next step in the buying process.

1. Social media

While most people think that platforms like Meta, Instagram, and X are just for socializing, the truth is that they’re vital for first impressions. A customer’s journey often begins here, where they discover your brand, engage with your content, and form initial opinions. 

Effective use of these platforms involves more than just promotional posts. You must focus on authentic engagement, responding to comments, and sharing content that resonates with your audience’s interests and values. This stage is crucial for building brand awareness and setting the tone for customer expectations.

2. Digital advertisements

These are the billboards of the digital age. Whether it’s a banner ad on a website, a sponsored post in a social feed, or a targeted ad on a search engine, digital advertisements are often the first point of direct interaction between your brand and potential customers. 

These ads need to be eye-catching, relevant, and, most importantly, lead to a landing page that delivers on the ad’s promise. It’s about creating a seamless transition from interest to engagement.

3. Customer reviews

Reviews on platforms like Amazon or TripAdvisor play a crucial role in shaping potential customers’ expectations. They provide insights into other customers’ experiences, offering a glimpse into what new customers might expect. Businesses must monitor and manage these reviews, addressing concerns and highlighting positive feedback. This stage is crucial for building trust and credibility.

4. Family or friend referral

Personal recommendations carry significant weight. A referral acts as a trust signal, often carrying more influence than any advertisement or review. Encouraging referrals through loyalty programs or incentives can turn satisfied customers into brand ambassadors. These ambassadors will extend your reach through their networks.

5. Website resources

A well-designed website acts as a digital storefront. It’s where potential customers explore, learn about your offerings, and make decisions. Resources like informative blog posts, detailed product descriptions, and FAQs help guide customers, providing them with the knowledge they need to move forward confidently in their purchase journey.

Phase 2. During Purchase

It is a phase where interest transforms into action. It’s a critical stage where the customer’s experience can directly influence the outcome of a sale. This phase includes all interactions that occur during the actual purchasing process, such as conversations with sales or support teams, navigating the ecommerce site, and the point-of-sale experience.

6. Conversations with sales or support teams

Direct interactions with your team can make a significant impact. These conversations are opportunities to provide personalized advice, address concerns, and build a connection. Training your team to understand customer needs and offer solutions can turn a simple inquiry into a successful sale.

7. Product brochures

Product brochures are like the storytelling books of your brand’s offerings. Whether flipping through pages or scrolling online, these brochures paint a picture of what you are selling in vivid detail. They are a combination of eye-catching design and essential info. They guide customers through features, benefits, and why your product is the solution they have been searching for. A well-crafted brochure engages and persuades, turning curiosity into concrete interest.

8. Product reviews

Product reviews are the word-of-mouth. They offer a platform for customers to share their experiences about your services. Reviews give a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the real impact of your products or services. Whether praise or constructive criticism, each review adds to your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness. Engaging with these reviews showcases your commitment to customer satisfaction and continuous improvement.

9. Website or ecommerce site

Your online presence must be user-friendly, informative, and reflective of your brand’s values. It includes easy navigation, clear product information, and a straightforward checkout process. Ensuring a smooth online experience is key to converting interest into sales.

10. Point of sale

The actual transaction moment, whether in-store or online, should be efficient and secure. This final step in the purchase process is crucial in leaving a positive impression and encouraging repeat business.

Phase 3. After purchase

After the purchase is made, the journey is far from over. The ‘After Purchase’ phase is where you solidify the customer’s decision, enhance loyalty, and lay the groundwork for future interactions. This stage includes touchpoints like customer onboarding, follow-up communications, satisfaction surveys, and ongoing support.

11. Customer onboarding

After a purchase, the first step in solidifying a customer’s loyalty is effective onboarding. This process involves guiding new customers through the features and benefits of your product or service, ensuring they understand and can fully utilize their purchase. A well-designed onboarding experience can significantly reduce churn by addressing any potential confusion or issues upfront.

12. Thank-you or welcome emails

The power of a personalized thank-you or welcome email can’t be overstated. This simple gesture of appreciation can make customers feel valued and recognized. Such emails can also provide additional information about the product or service, offer customer support contacts, or promote related products or services. The key is to strike a balance between gratitude and informative content, enhancing the customer’s post-purchase experience.

13. CSAT surveys

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are crucial for gauging how well your product or service has met the customers’ expectations. Sending out these surveys shortly after purchase provides timely insights into the customer’s experience. This feedback can be instrumental in making improvements to your offerings or customer service approach. Addressing any negative feedback promptly can also help in resolving issues before they escalate, ensuring a better customer experience.

Related read: How to Improve Customer Satisfaction in 2024?

14. Customer support channels

Providing accessible and efficient customer support channels is vital after a purchase. These channels could include live chat, email support, phone support, or social media interactions. The goal is to offer easy and quick ways for customers to seek help or get their questions answered. An effective customer support system not only resolves issues but also strengthens customer trust and loyalty.

15. Company knowledge base or community forum

A comprehensive knowledge base or an active community forum can be invaluable resources for customers post-purchase. These platforms can offer self-help options like FAQs, how-to guides, and user forums, allowing customers to find answers at their convenience. A well-maintained knowledge base or community forum not only enhances customer autonomy but also reduces the load on your customer service team, creating a win-win situation for both the business and its customers.

As the market evolves, understanding and utilizing customer touchpoints has become more crucial than ever. Yellow.ai chatbots are intelligent partners in this journey, offering businesses the finesse needed to identify and make the most of every customer interaction.

The Yellow.ai edge: Transforming customer touchpoint management

1. AI-powered insights: Yellow.ai’s chatbots delve deep into customer interactions, extracting valuable insights that help businesses understand and optimize touchpoints.

2. Omnichannel presence: Seamlessly integrating across various platforms, our AI chatbots ensure a unified experience, whether customers engage on social media, websites, or messaging apps.

3. Personalized interactions: Tailoring conversations based on customer behavior and history, Yellow.ai chatbots make each interaction feel personal and relevant.

4. Real-time engagement: With the capability to respond instantly, Yellow.ai chatbots keep customer engagement continuous and interactive. That significantly enhances the customer journey.

5. Data-driven decision-making: By analyzing customer interactions, our AI chatbots help make informed decisions to refine marketing strategies and customer service approaches.

6. Scalability and efficiency: Our AI chatbots automate routine inquiries and free up human resources for more complex tasks. It ensures a high level of efficiency.

Embrace the future of customer interaction with Yellow.ai. Book a demo to discover how our AI chatbots can revolutionize your customer touchpoint strategy.

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Within a mere six weeks of going live, Pelago not only onboarded over 5,000 users but also achieved a striking 50% deflection rate!

The landscape of customer interaction is both complex and dynamic. In this age, where every touchpoint can turn a potential lead into a loyal customer, understanding and optimizing these interactions is essential. The key lies in integrating technology like Yellow.ai’s AI chatbots with a deep understanding of customer needs. This mix of technology and empathy is what transforms routine interactions into memorable customer journeys.

Customer touchpoints are vital because they represent every interaction a customer has with your brand. These moments shape their perception, influence their satisfaction, and ultimately determine their loyalty. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to build trust, address needs, and enhance the overall customer experience, leading to stronger customer relationships and long-term business success.

What is touchpoint analysis, and how do I conduct one?

Touchpoint analysis involves examining all the points of interaction between a customer and a brand. To conduct one, start by mapping out the entire customer journey, identifying all potential touchpoints (from discovery to post-purchase), and assessing their effectiveness and impact. Use customer feedback, analytics, and direct observations to evaluate how these touchpoints are currently managed and identify areas for improvement.

How do customer touchpoints affect customer loyalty?

Customer touchpoints directly affect loyalty by shaping the customer’s overall experience with your brand. Positive and meaningful interactions at each touchpoint can foster satisfaction, trust, and emotional connection, leading to repeat business and advocacy. Conversely, negative experiences can quickly erode loyalty, pushing customers toward competitors.

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Customer journey mapping: The path to loyalty

A version of this tutorial originally appeared in the free Primer app .

In an ideal world, the journey people take to become loyal customers would be a straight shot down a highway: See your product. Buy your product. Use your product. Repeat.

In reality, this journey is often more like a sightseeing tour with stops, exploration, and discussion along the way—all moments when you need to convince people to pick your brand and stick with it instead of switching to a competitor.

Staying on top of all of these moments might seem overwhelming, but mapping your customer’s journey can help. It can give you and your team a greater understanding of how your customers are currently interacting and engaging with your brand, and also help illustrate how your products and services fit into their lives, schedules, goals, and aspirations.

Let’s take a look at five steps your team can take to start journey mapping.

1. Find the sweet spot where your customers’ goals and your own align

Before you start journey mapping, nail down your business goals. Any marketing and communication you deliver during the customer journey should be focused on helping your brand reach those goals.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that your customers’ goals might be different from yours. For example, let’s say your goal is to sell more sunglasses with new, improved lenses that have a better profit margin. Meanwhile, your customers’ top concern might be getting sunglasses that match their personal style. Lens protection could be their second or even third priority.

Consider how your marketing and communication strategies can help your customers reach their goals while also getting you closer to yours.

2. Identify all of the communication touchpoints in your customer’s journey

When do you traditionally communicate or engage with customers? Make a list of these moments and group them based on when they happen during the journey: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.

Now find communication touchpoints you may have missed. Track what actions and interactions between your brand and your customers happen just before and after each of the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages.

For example, you might decide that a major moment in your purchase stage is when your customers are guided through your website to buy an item in their shopping cart. But you might notice other communication touchpoints right before that purchase moment, like your website confirming to customers that an item has been added to their shopping cart, then suggesting related products.

Looking for all these touchpoints can quickly bog your team down in a lot of details and micro-interactions. To avoid that, prioritize the moments that get you closer to achieving your business goals.

3. Recognize pain points and moments of delight

How might your customers feel at the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages as they attempt to achieve their goals? For example, could your customers be happy that your website makes browsing easy, but frustrated at how confusing it is to purchase a product?

Find the moments where your customers might have negative experiences. Who on your team is involved in those touchpoints? Your web designers? Your marketing team? Your copywriters? Are there other team members who could collaborate and improve the situation?

Say a customer likes how your online ad describes your product. But when they go to your store, salespeople present the product differently. That’s an opportunity for your copywriters and salespeople to better align their language and sales pitches.

4. Experience the customer journey yourself

Imagining how your customers might feel during their journey is valuable, but actually experiencing it for yourself can uncover much-needed insights.

If your business is run online, open a browser and experience what it’s like to be your customer. Similarly, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, go into a location that sells your product. Afterwards, ask yourself about the main communication touchpoints you encountered. Did they work well? Did they help you complete your journey? What was missing?

And don’t forget about the competition. Become one of their customers and experience the journey they’ve created. Then ask yourself all of the same questions.

5. Visualize your customer journey map

Go beyond just writing down your customer journey and communication touchpoints, and actually create a visual map of them. This doesn’t need to be a polished, heavily-designed visualization. Simply write each of your touchpoints down on individual sticky notes or papers, then pin them in order to a wall.

By doing this exercise, you’re helping your team take a bird’s eye view of the entire customer journey. You can organize your thoughts and collaboratively brainstorm new ideas for changing or adding to your communication at these touchpoints.

Make sure to create hypotheses around why new communication touchpoints will improve the customer journey, then implement and test them. If your hypotheses are wrong, go back to your journey map, reassess, tweak, and improve.

Yes, the journey mapping process can be fairly intensive, but it can have a big impact on your business. That’s why it shouldn’t be just a one-time event. Customer tastes can shift, new technology can become available, and your brand itself might evolve. So it’s important to do journey mapping at least once a year and evaluate what communication touchpoints are still working and what needs to be revisited.

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Stuart Hogg is a marketing consultant who has worked with a number of Fortune 500 brands. He created “Journey Mapping: Connect the Customer Dots” for the Primer app.

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Understanding Customer Journey Stages And Touchpoints

There’s no doubt that customer journeys are more complex than ever. But by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes, you can make great strides in both customer experience and business success.

The term ‘customer journey touchpoints’ refers to the various interactions a customer has with your business during their purchasing process. This process includes stages that remain constant, whether a customer is buying a physical or digital product, signing up for a service, or making a booking.

In this article, we’ll unpack customer journey stages touchpoints, helping you to better understand how to effectively connect with and guide your customers every step of the way.

Here’s what we’ll be delving into. If you want to jump to a specific section, simply click on the corresponding link, and you’ll be taken right there.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey, the customer journey stages, how customer journey stages work in practice, customer journey stages vs customer touchpoints, why is it important to know your customer journey touchpoints, how to identify your customer journey touchpoints, how to define your customer journey, faqs about customer journey stages and touchpoints.

First things first. What do we really mean when we talk about the customer journey? The customer journey describes the customer’s path to making a purchase and beyond. Customer’s very rarely decide to buy on a whim. Instead, they work through a series of steps to become aware of, consider and evaluate their options before making a decision. 

Understanding your customer journey is essential for any business. Why? By knowing their goals and expectations every step of the way, you can do a much better job empathising with your customers and perfectly positioning your product or service. 

There are many different variations of the customer journey. However you’ll most commonly find it split into five main stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention and Advocacy. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Stage 1: Awareness

This is where someone first encounters your brand, usually when they are looking for a solution to some kind of problem. 

For example, if someone wants to plan a trip to Paris, their first step will likely be to search online for hotels or apartments in the city. By clicking on things like booking portals, travel blogs and individual hotel websites, they become aware of different accommodation options.

What’s important to know is that at this stage the customer is not ready to make a decision. Rather, they are becoming familiar with what is available. Your goal here is simply to communicate what you have to offer.  

To be discovered during this early phase, online visibility is key. Things like online reviews , blog posts, social media posts and optimising your website for SEO can all help you show up in search results.

Stage 2: Consideration

This stage is where the customer begins to more seriously evaluate their options as opposed to casually browsing. They will be more specific about the features they are looking for in a product or service and will also begin to compare companies or products.

Your goal here is to convince your target customers that your product or service can resolve their problem (ideally in a way that your competitors can’t) . It’s a really important stage, because it’s one where you’re most likely to have your prospect’s full attention.

With that in mind, it’s a good point to really focus on providing the best possible customer experience . Think about content and interactions that will not only answer your prospects’ questions but also make sure they feel valued. 

Not sure where to start? Getting feedback from your existing customers is a great way to get real-life insights and see where you can improve.

Stage 3: Decision

The stage we’ve all been waiting for! The customer has now done the bulk of their research and is ready to take the plunge. But don’t get too excited just yet! It’s still possible to lose your customer at this stage. 

As a business, your role here is to make the purchasing process as easy and convenient as possible . This applies not only from a user experience perspective but also in terms of what you can offer your customer. Things like free demos, trial periods and introductory discounts can be enough to clinch the decision.

Another huge factor here is online reviews. Why? Nearly nine out of ten consumers read reviews before making a purchase (1). To make sure you are getting a steady stream of fresh opinions, a review management tool is the way to go. It will not only help to automate the process but will also provide you with valuable analysis that you can use to grow your business.

Stage 4: Retention

Remember, the customer journey does not finish as soon as they’ve made their purchase. Research shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can produce more than a 25% increase in profit (2). That’s why it’s essential to keep the contact going at this stage of the customer journey. But how?

Surveys are an essential part of the retention stage for any business. They are a fantastic way to get honest opinions from your customers and the insights you need to make sure they stick around. 

Metrics like the Customer Effort Score (CES) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) are a great indicator of customer loyalty and are really easy to implement. If you want to read more about these and other key metrics, you can have a read of our handy article: How to measure customer satisfaction KPI: NPS, CSAT, CES, & CLI .

Just bear in mind that to see real change, you not only have to collect customer feedback but also act on it! Individual follow-ups to any issues that arise can go a long way in turning things around. 

At this stage, keep the focus on strengthening the relationship with your customer and ensuring they have the best possible experience. Do that, and chances are they’ll keep coming back for more. 

Stage 5: Advocacy

This is the stage where happy customers turn into brand advocates! They let others know about their experience by leaving online reviews and generate more business through word of mouth marketing. 

The core concept at the advocacy stage is creating a community around your brand and making your customers feel appreciated . Of course, not every customer will reach this stage, but those that do are invaluable to your brand.

The advocacy stage should always include proactive ways of managing customer feedback . This means not just collecting customer feedback but also responding to it in a personal and timely way. In other words, show your customers that their opinions really matter!

Incentives are also key here. Personalised rewards, offers and referral programs are all great ways to encourage customers to spread the word. 

It’s all well and good explaining the customer journey stages, but perhaps now you’re wondering how they really work in practice. Let’s have a look at one together!

Take the example we used earlier of someone who wants to plan a trip to Paris. Here is an example of how they may work their way through the customer journey stages.

• Awareness – They begin by doing a basic online search for ‘ hotels in Paris ’. They click on a few different links and become aware of some accommodation options. While searching, they also read a few articles on some of the best things to see in Paris and the best neighbourhoods to stay in.
• Consideration – Following on from their initial search, they decide that they want to stay in a hotel in the Montmartre neighbourhood. Ideally they would like to stay somewhere with a hotel bar that offers breakfast as part of the rate. With this in mind, they begin to narrow down their options, comparing amenities, prices and reviews.
• Decision – The guest finds two hotels that fit their needs. The prices are almost exactly the same, so they take a closer look at the reviews for each. Option A has good reviews, but the latest is from several months ago and so they’re not sure how relevant it is. Option B, on the other hand, consistently gets good reviews, with one left as recently as last week. Because of this, the guest makes the decision to book option B.
• Retention – The guest has a great stay at the hotel. They can check in easily online, make requests to the front desk straight from their device, and the service and amenities exceed their expectations. They are offered a 5% discount on their next stay and feel happy about booking again for their next stay in Paris.
• Advocacy – When they get home they receive an invitation from the hotel to leave an online review, which they do gladly. Back at work the following week, their colleagues ask them about their trip and they tell them all about the hotel and how excellent it was. One particular colleague was thinking about planning a trip themselves, and asks them for a link to the hotel website where they later make a booking.

When looking at the customer journey, you may also come across the phrase customer touchpoints. While the phrases sound similar, there is a key difference between the two that it’s important to understand. 

Customer touchpoints are the individual interactions that someone has with your company during each customer journey stage. For example, in our hotel example, touchpoints might include:

• Following the hotel on social media
• Asking a question via live chat
• Checking prices or looking for information on the website
• Reading hotel reviews
• Checking in at the front desk

Note that touchpoints can be both on and offline, so it’s important to think about both throughout the customer journey.

Understanding your customer journey touchpoints is crucial to shaping a top-notch customer experience. Picture touchpoints as the moments your customers interact with your business. These interactions mold their overall impression of your brand. So, knowing these touchpoints well enables you to spot and fix problem areas, and tailor your strategy.

Consider this: you run a bakery. When a customer visits your website, places an order, enters your shop, or shares their experience on social media – those are touchpoints. Your goal is to ensure all these interactions contribute to a standout customer experience.

By tracking these touchpoints, you can allocate resources effectively, knowing when to engage with customers and when to step back. Plus, understanding customer interactions throughout their journey helps you address weak spots, turning potential churn into conversions.

Mapping out your customer journey touchpoints is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, revealing a complete picture of your customers’ experience with your brand. Here’s how to identify these critical points:

• Start with the customer’s perspective : imagine yourself as a customer interested in your product or service. How would you find out about your business? What steps would you take to make a purchase? Walk through the entire process from discovery to post-purchase support.
• List every possible interaction : note down every possible interaction a customer may have with your brand. This includes visiting your website, following you on social media, receiving promotional emails, talking to your customer service team, and so on.
• Group touchpoints by stage : organize these interactions by customer journey stages – awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase. This will help you understand the sequential order of touchpoints and their impact on the customer’s journey.
• Involve your team : your sales, marketing, and customer service teams interact with customers every day and can provide valuable insights. Use their experiences to help identify other potential touchpoints you might have missed. Tools like Miro are great for working collaboratively and getting everyone’s ideas in one place.
• Ask your customers : lastly, never underestimate the power of direct feedback. Surveying your customers about their experiences can reveal insights that internal brainstorming might miss.

By identifying and understanding your customer journey touchpoints, you’ll be well-equipped to optimise each interaction and create a better customer experience. Remember, the goal isn’t to manage every single touchpoint, but rather to manage them in a way that they collectively deliver a satisfying and cohesive customer journey.

So, now you know the basics of customer journey stages and touchpoints. But what should you do with this information? 

Customer journey mapping is an incredible tool for plotting your customer’s entire experience from A to B. It not only includes every stage but every individual touchpoint. Along with every interaction, a customer journey map also outlines any pain points your customers may encounter and details the emotions they feel along the way. 

The Benefits Of Customer Journey Mapping

Visualising your customer journey has many benefits for your business. It allows you to:

• Get a better understanding your customers goals and expectations
• Identify and eliminate pain points to make customer journeys smooth as possible
• Get rid of ineffective consumer journey touchpoints that may hurt your conversions
• Work out what customers actually receive vs. what customers want
• Assign ownership of touchpoint to increase the accountability of your employees and departments

Customer journey mapping helps make your customer experience management the best it can be. Look at it like this. The more you understand your customers, the more you can increase customer satisfaction . And the more happy customers you have, the more will reach the advocacy stage and introduce even more people to your brand. Cool, right? 

If you’d like to learn more about customer journey mapping (including step-by-step instructions for getting started), head over to our article: How a Customer Journey Map Helps you Offer Unique Experiences .

Just like customers are all unique, so is the customer journey for any given company, from a small or medium sized business to an international enterprise brand. Though the five stages we’ve shared with you are the most common way to segment the journey, feel free to do so in a way that works for you! The main thing is that you have a solid understanding of your specific customer and the journey they go on with your brand. 

By doing so, you’ll be better equipped to offer unrivalled customer satisfaction , boost your revenue and turn everyday customers into raving fans. Of course, mapping out your customer journey is easier when you have the right tool for the job.

Any good Voice of the Customer program should include a way to visualise the customer journey. At Customer Alliance, our customer journey feature gives you a holistic view of satisfaction every step of the way, plus smart analytics that enable you to compare data across individual touchpoints. 

Want to find out more? Join us for a free introductory call and see what we can achieve together. 

What does “customer journey” mean?

The customer journey is the path that a customer takes from the moment they first learn about your product or service until the point of purchase and beyond. This journey is usually split into five main stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. Understanding this journey is essential because it helps businesses align their offerings with the customer’s goals and expectations at every stage.

What’s the difference between customer journey stages and customer touchpoints?

While customer journey stages represent the overall path a customer takes, customer touchpoints are the specific interactions a customer has with your brand at each stage. These interactions, both online and offline, can include visiting your website, following you on social media, receiving emails, engaging with customer service, etc. Touchpoints are crucial to understand as they shape a customer’s impression of your brand and influence their experience.

How can I identify my customer journey touchpoints?

Identifying your customer journey touchpoints involves considering the customer’s perspective and listing every possible interaction they may have with your brand. Group these touchpoints by stage and collaborate with your team to ensure you’ve covered all potential interactions. Don’t forget to ask your customers for feedback as well; their direct experiences can provide valuable insights you might have overlooked.

Why is customer journey mapping beneficial?

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for visualizing your customers’ experience from discovery to advocacy. This process helps businesses understand customers’ goals and expectations better, identify and eliminate pain points, streamline touchpoints, and increase accountability within the team. It aids in optimizing customer experience management and ultimately leads to increased customer satisfaction and advocacy.

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Home  >  Customer Value Optimization  >  How to Optimize the Customer Journey With Touchpoint Mapping

How to Optimize the Customer Journey With Touchpoint Mapping

• Article last updated: June 18, 2024
• Article first published: January 16, 2023

Table of Contents

When you run a business, you need to ensure that every customer interaction with your brand is a positive one. Each point of contact represents an opportunity for the customer to develop a favorable overall impression of your business. 

A great customer journey results in a longer business relationship, more revenue, and a more significant potential for referrals. There are many methods for optimizing your customer journey, but touchpoint mapping is one of the most effective. 

What are touchpoints, and how does mapping them help to improve your customer journey ? Read on to find out more. 

What are customer touchpoints?

A customer touchpoint is any interaction between the customer and your business. It might happen before a purchase, during a purchase, or even after a purchase.

Customer touchpoints can be direct or indirect. A direct touchpoint is when you have some control over the customer experience, such as an advertising campaign or your e-commerce checkout process. An indirect touchpoint is when you have no influence, such as when a customer leaves a review of your business on Yelp. 

You will never have complete control. Touchpoints are a two-way street, and you cannot account for every possible variable in your customer’s experience. However, your job as a business owner is to make each touchpoint as satisfactory for the customer as possible. 

In the next section, you’ll learn what touchpoint mapping is and how to do it. 

What is touchpoint mapping, and why do I need to do it?

Touchpoint mapping is the process of tracing each interaction between your brand and your customers. It involves pinpointing all the points at which customers come into contact with the business.

Each customer journey is different, which means you’ll need to consider different touchpoints based on the various ways people interact with your brand. Touchpoint mapping allows you to visualize these journeys and identify opportunities for improvement in each customer interaction.

Now that you know what touchpoints are, you can start drawing up a strategy for mapping them. I follow a few simple steps, which I’ll outline for you in this section. 

Identify the customer touchpoints

I usually start touchpoint mapping by identifying every interaction customers have with the brand. To make things easier, you can divide the experiences into three phases: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. 

Here are some examples of the types of interactions you would typically see in each phase: 

Pre-Purchase

Customers research your product at the pre-purchase stage. So they may check out the product website and look at the price list there. Reviews–whether on Google, social media or Yelp–are a good source of information for them, too.  

This is the phase where customers actively seek contact details for your business and start inquiring about your products. It is also possible that they’re checking out your competitors, so being readily available is key here. If your landing pages are always down or your phone number on Google My Business is not up to date, you are likely to miss out on a lot of business.

At the point of purchase, your job is no longer to convince them that your product is better. Instead, your main goals are to assure your would-be customers that they won’t regret their purchase and to make the buying experience as quick and as painless as possible. 

Touch points during this phase include things like product pages, checkout pages, point of sale systems, staff engagement, the appearance of the showroom, and product demos. All of these should be designed to create a purchase experience that convinces the customer that they will receive or have already received premium service from your brand.

Post-Purchase

After a customer makes a purchase, many businesses consider it the end of their relationship. But touching base with your customer even after the purchase is crucial if you want to create a long-term relationship with your customer. If you do well at this stage, you not only help combat buyer’s remorse. You also increase the likelihood of your customer buying from you again.

Sending a message to your customer three to five days after the purchase is a great way to start. You can thank them for their purchase, and give them a link to your customer care hotline or resource center. You can subsequently invite them to sign up for your loyalty programs, or give them product recommendations for their next purchase.

Make sure you balance promotional content that encourages them to make another purchase with you, and post-purchase content that is of value to your customer. You don’t want your customer to think you’re only all about making sales. But you don’t want to squander the opportunity to sell either. It’s best to go for a 50/50 or 60/40 consumer-to-company ratio then so you can both benefit from the process.   

Many of these touchpoints may overlap. However, dividing the touchpoints into categories will help you visualize them and identify how they are all connected.

Map the touchpoints

As you identify your touchpoints, place yourself in your customers’ shoes. Imagine that you are a prospective buyer in your store, following a sequence of tasks that will end in your purchase being delivered to your door. Here are the four critical phases of this process, and the touchpoints they might involve: 

Step 1: Drive Awareness of Your Brand

Your goal at this stage is to familiarize the customer with your brand. This includes making them aware that you exist and increasing brand awareness. At this stage, touchpoints include online and offline advertising, content marketing , social media marketing, search engine optimization, blogging, and word-of-mouth promotion.

Step 2: Make the Customer Consider Your Brand

Your next goal is to get the customer to either visit your physical location or browse your website. At this stage, you want them to check out your products and compare them to your competitors’ offerings. This step includes touchpoints such as reviews on Google My Business or Yelp, your company website, email promotions , product demos, and webinars.

Step 3: Close the Sale

The customer is in your store or on your website. How are you going to convince them to click the “Buy Now” or swipe their credit card? Factors like the length of the queue in store or the speed of your e-commerce checkout page can make all the difference. 

Step 4: Generate Repeat Business

Congratulations, the customer has made a purchase! Now it’s time to convince them to buy again . This is the phase where you turn a one-time customer into a loyal fan. Generating repeat business includes touchpoints such as loyalty programs , customer care, product manuals, online community management, follow-up and thank-you emails, and post-purchase surveys. 

Use these stages to form a template for your touchpoint map. You might end up with more than one variation to account for the different types of customers. If you have both a physical store and an e-commerce site, the customer journeys will look different. 

Optimize the touchpoints

Once you’ve mapped out your touchpoints, you can identify to improve them. The customer experience is the sum of all the customer’s experiences with your brand, and one poor touchpoint experience could ruin the entire journey. Even if your advertising materials are top-notch and your product flawless, a poor post-purchase experience with your customer service team could cost you that five-star review – and, more importantly, the customer’s repeat business. 

Therefore, you should try to optimize every single touchpoint and even the spaces between them. Can you shorten the waiting time from order to delivery? Does your checkout page need a makeover to make it more user-friendly? Can you use a reminder email service so that you never miss a follow-up email? 

When I undertake touchpoint optimization, I focus on the following attributes:

• Appropriateness. The customer experience should fit their interests and make sense within the broader context of the sales channel. 
• Relevance. The experience should be useful and match the customer’s expectations. 
• Simplicity. The experience should be easy and painless at every stage. 
• Appeal. The experience should center the customer’s needs and wants and strive to deliver on them. 

If you ensure each touchpoint meets these four vital criteria, you’ll be well on your way to an optimized customer journey . 

Keep your touchpoint map updated

The customer journey is not static, and therefore neither is your touchpoint map. Every customer interaction is different, and you should be continually learning from your customer feedback. 

As your business grows and you reach new markets, you’ll need to add new touchpoints to your map and remove the ones that are no longer applicable. At every stage, ask yourself if each touchpoint meets the four criteria I listed above.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a lot of changes in the ways brands connect with their customers. Many physical stores remain closed, and others are reopening in a limited capacity. More consumers are shopping online than ever before. If you have not already altered your touchpoint map to reflect this new reality, now is the time to do so. 

Your touchpoint map should be descriptive, not prescriptive. Keeping it updated will ensure that it accurately reflects and allows you to keep improving upon your customer journey. 

Start mapping your customer touchpoints now

As you start thinking about your customer journey, you may find it has more touchpoints than expected. Every one of these represents an opportunity to optimize your customer journey and give your customers the best possible experience. The earlier you start touchpoint mapping, the better prepared you’ll be to exceed expectations.  

To start touchpoint mapping, identify the different ways your brand interacts with customers. I recommend sorting them into pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase phases. Next, map these touchpoints in approximately chronological order.

After you’ve mapped the touchpoints, you can start optimizing the customer journey . Take a critical look at each touchpoint to identify which ones could be improved and how. Focus on appropriateness, relevance, simplicity, and appeal to deliver a stellar customer experience every time.

The world is changing quickly, and your relationships with your customers will need to evolve if you want to stay ahead of the curve. Take advantage of touchpoint mapping to improve your processes continually. By doing this, you’ll be well-positioned to offer a fantastic customer experience, no matter what the future may bring. 

Frequently asked questions about customer journey touchpoints

What are customer journey touchpoints.

Customer journey touchpoints are specific interactions or points of contact that a customer has with a business or brand throughout their entire journey, from the initial awareness stage to post-purchase. These touchpoints can occur through various channels, such as websites, social media, emails, customer service interactions, or physical store visits.

Why are customer journey touchpoints important?

Customer journey touchpoints are important because they shape the overall customer experience and influence customer perceptions of a brand. Each touchpoint provides an opportunity for businesses to engage, communicate, and build relationships with customers. Understanding and optimizing touchpoints allows businesses to create seamless, personalized experiences that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

What are examples of customer journey touchpoints?

Customer journey touchpoints can vary depending on the industry, business model, and customer preferences. Here are a few examples of common touchpoints: Website visit, Social media engagement, Email communication, In-store interactions, Customer service interactions, Product usage or trial, Post-purchase follow-up.

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A customer journey map visualizes the steps a user takes on a website, from entry to purchase or information acquisition. It identifies key touchpoints, user emotions, and pain points, providing insights into optimizing the user experience. Using tools like eye tracking and facial expression analysis enhances this understanding, offering deeper behavioral insights.

Table of Contents

Customer journey mapping with eye tracking and facial expression analysis on a website.

A Customer Journey is a person’s journey from A (entry) to B (purchase or correct information acquisition) on any given website. Understanding your customers’ experiences on your website is crucial for optimizing their journey and ensuring they find what they need with ease. Mapping out a customer journey helps you visualize and enhance these experiences. In this article, we’ll explore what a customer journey is, the importance of customer journey mapping, how you can gain deeper insights with biosensors, and how you can create an effective journey map to improve user experiences on your website.

What is a Customer Journey?

In a broad sense, a customer journey can be as long or as short as makes sense for your business case. In this instance, we are looking at it from a UX perspective as that is the most concise stimuli we have when later applying biosensors to our mapping.

As mentioned before, a customer journey refers to the complete sequence of interactions and experiences a customer has with your brand, from the moment they enter your website (and where you enter it from) to their eventual purchase of whatever that website is selling. This journey includes every step a customer takes, from initial contact through to purchasing, using, and advocating for your products or services. Understanding the customer journey helps businesses anticipate customer needs, remove barriers, and create a smoother path to conversion. 

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps and interactions a customer goes through during their journey from entry to exit on your website. It outlines key stages such as awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase, highlighting touchpoints, customer thoughts, emotions, and pain points. This map allows you to see the journey from the customer’s perspective, providing insights into how to improve their experience.

This example of a Customer Journey Map is a general representation of a person’s journey through a website, divided into the different phases the process goes through. The notes at the bottom are meant as checklists for features that are important to have in the different phases.

Increase Customer Journey insights with Eye Tracking and Facial Expression Analysis

Customer journeys are traditionally measured using session tracking software such as Google Analytics , Microsoft Clarity , Hotjar and many others. They work by recording user sessions, where mouse-clicks, scrolling and site navigation are merged to give an overview of customer behavior, drop-off points and session length.  

While those metrics are very important for journey mapping, they do not tell you much about the customers themselves. By integrating biosensors, specifically eye tracking (either screen-based or webcam ) and facial expression analysis (FEA), you can gain insights on metrics such as, attention, frustration, joy and concentration among others. This helps you build a much better understanding of your users, and therefore a much more effective and robust customer journey map. 

How to Create a Customer Journey Map Using Eye Tracking & FEA?

For those with a good understanding of customer journey mapping and interested in leveraging cutting-edge techniques like eye tracking and facial expression analysis, the following steps outline how to integrate these tools into your journey mapping process. These advanced methods provide deep insights into user behavior and emotions, enabling you to create a more accurate and empathetic customer journey map.

1. Define the Objectives and Hypotheses

• Objective Setting : Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with eye tracking and facial expression analysis in your customer journey map. This could include understanding how users interact with specific elements on your website, identifying emotional responses at key touchpoints, or uncovering unconscious behaviors that impact decision-making.
• Formulate Hypotheses : Develop hypotheses about potential pain points, engagement triggers, or emotional responses that you believe are critical to the customer journey. This will guide the focus of your eye tracking and facial expression analysis.

2. Identify Key Touchpoints for Analysis

• Pinpoint Critical Touchpoints : Determine the specific touchpoints in the customer journey where visual attention and emotional reactions are most crucial. These could include landing pages, product pages, checkout processes, or customer support interactions.
• Prioritize Based on Impact : Prioritize touchpoints where small changes can lead to significant improvements in user experience or conversion rates.

3. Recruit Participants and Define Personas

• Select Target Personas : Recruit participants that represent your key customer personas. Ensure that these participants align with the segments you’re focusing on for the journey mapping.
• Ensure Diversity : Include a diverse group of participants to capture a wide range of behaviors and emotional responses, providing a comprehensive view of your customer journey.

4. Design the Study: Eye Tracking and Facial Expression Analysis

• Set Up Eye Tracking : Implement eye-tracking technology on your website or within a controlled environment to monitor where and how long users look at different elements. This could involve hardware-based eye trackers or software that uses webcams.
• Incorporate Facial Expression Analysis : Use facial expression analysis tools to capture real-time emotional reactions as users navigate through the journey. These tools can detect micro-expressions and emotional states such as frustration, confusion, satisfaction, or joy.
• Synchronize Data Collection : Ensure that eye tracking and facial expression data are collected simultaneously and synchronized with the user’s journey through the touchpoints. This will allow for a cohesive analysis of visual attention and emotional response.

5. Conduct the Usability Sessions

• Run Controlled Sessions : Have participants navigate through the key touch points while their eye movements and facial expressions are recorded. Provide tasks that align with typical user goals to mimic a real-world journey.
• Capture Behavioral Data : Alongside visual and emotional data, collect behavioral data such as click paths, time spent on tasks, and navigation patterns. This holistic approach will enrich your analysis.

6. Analyze Eye Tracking and Facial Expression Data

• Heatmaps and Gaze Plots : Use eye-tracking data to generate heatmaps and gaze plots that visualize where users look, the sequence of their visual attention, and areas that are ignored. Identify patterns that reveal how users interact with different elements at each touchpoint.

• Emotion Mapping : Analyze facial expression data to map emotional responses at each stage of the journey. Correlate these emotions with specific actions or inactions to understand the underlying causes.
• Combine Data Streams : Integrate eye tracking, facial expression, and behavioral data to create a detailed picture of the customer experience. Look for correlations, such as how prolonged focus on a specific area correlates with frustration or satisfaction.

7. Map Out the Journey with Insights

• Visualize the Journey : Create a customer journey map that incorporates insights from the eye tracking and facial expression analysis. Highlight the stages, key touchpoints, emotional responses, and areas of visual attention.
• Annotate with Findings : Annotate the journey map with key findings such as points of high frustration, elements that are frequently overlooked, or areas that elicit positive emotions.

8. Identify Optimization Opportunities

• Pinpoint Design Improvements : Use the insights to suggest specific design changes, such as repositioning elements that are frequently overlooked or simplifying areas that cause frustration.
• Emotion-Driven Enhancements : Propose enhancements that address emotional pain points or amplify positive experiences. For example, if users show confusion during the checkout process, simplify it to reduce cognitive load and frustration.

9. Test and Iterate

• Implement Changes : Make the suggested changes to the touchpoints and conduct follow-up studies to measure the impact.
• Continuous Improvement : Iterate on the process by periodically repeating eye tracking and facial expression analysis to ensure that the journey continues to meet user expectations and business goals.

What Are Touchpoints in Customer Journey Mapping?

Touchpoints in customer journey mapping refer to the specific moments where customers interact with your brand. These interactions could occur on your website, through social media, via email, or in-person. Mapping touchpoints helps you understand where customers engage with your brand, what their experiences are like at each interaction, and how these moments contribute to their overall journey. By identifying and optimizing touchpoints, you can create a seamless and positive customer experience.

Which Components Are Part of the Customer Journey?

The components of a customer journey typically include the following:

• Customer Stages: These include the phases of awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy.
• Touchpoints: Key interactions that customers have with your brand.
• Channels: The mediums through which touchpoints occur, such as websites, social media, or emails.
• Customer Actions: The specific actions customers take at each stage, such as clicking a link, reading a blog post, or making a purchase.
• Emotions and Motivations: Understanding how customers feel and what drives them at each stage.
• Pain Points: Identifying obstacles or frustrations that customers encounter during their journey.
• Opportunities: Areas where improvements can be made to enhance the customer experience.

What is Customer Journey Analytics?

Customer journey analytics involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data related to the customer journey. This data-driven approach allows businesses to track customer behavior, measure the effectiveness of different touchpoints, and understand how customers move through various stages of their journey. By leveraging customer journey analytics, businesses can make informed decisions to optimize the user experience, improve conversion rates, and increase customer satisfaction.

Analyzing Eye Tracking and Facial Expression Data

To effectively analyze eye tracking and facial expression data in your Customer Journey research, the checklist below covers the most important point you need to follow:

• Visual Data Analysis : Use heatmaps and gaze paths to visualize where users are focusing their attention on a webpage. Heatmaps provide a color-coded view of the most viewed areas, while gaze plots track the order in which users look at different elements. This helps identify which parts of the page are most engaging or distracting.

• Area of Interest (AOI) Analysis : Define specific areas of interest on the webpage, such as buttons, images, or forms, and measure how much time users spend looking at these areas. AOI analysis reveals which elements attract the most attention and whether they effectively guide users through their journey.

• Emotional Mapping : Map the emotions detected through facial expression analysis, such as joy, frustration, or surprise, at different points in the customer journey. This helps identify how users feel when interacting with various elements and content on the site.
• Correlate Attention and Emotion : Combine eye tracking and facial expression data to see how visual attention correlates with emotional responses. For instance, if users spend a lot of time on a product page but show signs of frustration, it may indicate confusing content or navigation issues that need to be addressed.
• Sequence Analysis : Examine the sequence of visual attention and corresponding emotional reactions to understand user navigation paths and potential friction points. This can help determine whether users are experiencing a smooth journey or encountering obstacles that cause negative emotions.
• Pattern Identification : Identify patterns such as high engagement with specific elements but low conversion rates or signs of frustration on particular pages. Recognizing these patterns helps pinpoint areas for improvement and enhance the overall user experience.
• Segmentation Analysis : Analyze data by different user segments (e.g., new vs. returning visitors, demographic groups) to understand how various customer types interact with the website. This enables tailored optimizations to better meet the needs of diverse audiences.

Mapping and analyzing the customer journey on a website is essential for enhancing the user experience. By examining each step of a customer’s interaction with your brand—from entry to purchase or information acquisition—you can identify key touchpoints, understand customer emotions, and pinpoint barriers to conversion. Traditional analytics tools provide valuable data on user behavior, but integrating advanced techniques like eye tracking and facial expression analysis offers much deeper insights.

Comprehensively analyzing customer journeys is about understanding not just what users do on your website, but why they do it and how they feel. Leveraging these insights allows businesses to enhance the customer experience, driving better engagement, conversion rates, and loyalty. 

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Understanding customer journey touchpoints.

9 min read When you’re looking to improve sales and build your brand, it’s important to think like your customer: to understand and be mindful of them at every step of their journey with you. Here’s how to get a better understanding with customer journey mapping.

What is a customer touchpoint?

Customer touchpoints are the various moments at which a customer will directly, or indirectly, come into contact with your brand. These touchpoints make up the  customer journey , and are key to influencing the  customer experience .

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey describes all the customer touchpoints a potential customer has before, during, and after their purchase.

They include those aspects of the journey directly influenced by your organisation as well as those influenced or controlled by third parties. This is an important distinction as, while you may not be responsible for a particular part of the journey, it still affects the experience your customer has.

Why is understanding customer touchpoints important?

It’s impossible to improve the customer experience if you don’t know the moments that they go through to make that experience. These moments – the touchpoints in which the customer interacts with the brand – define the experience that customers have.

Multiple touchpoints create a journey. If brands are to successfully influence the customer – to buy, renew or recommend to a family, friend or coworker – then the experience in the moments that matter needs to meet their needs.

By knowing and understanding how customers feel during these touchpoints, brands can focus on improving certain, and often small, aspects to the experience, rather than having to rethink the journey as a whole.

This helps brands to create a tailored approach, instead of having to adopt a one-size-fits-all mindset.

See how Qualtrics can help you optimise the customer journey

Identifying your customer touchpoints

Before  – how did they find out about you? Your customer may find out about you through adverts, billboards, social media, online reviews, or good old-fashioned word of mouth.

During  – which channels and what did they do? This is your point of sale (POS). It could be your website, branch, store, or delivery. Customers may interact with sales assistants and call centres.

After  – what happens after the sale? These include invoicing, queries, returns, product support, product or service lifetime, newsletters, and  customer feedback surveys

Once you understand and map every touchpoint in your customer journey and collect feedback from each, you will be able to spot ‘pain points’ along the way or areas that need improving.

Examples of customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints, as mentioned above, are the moments in which a customer will come into contact, or engage, with a brand. This might be before, during, or after completing a purchase or using a service.

These examples include direct contact – where the brand is involved in this interaction, and indirect – where it involves third parties.

Examples include :

• Advertising (inc. digital, out of home, print)
• Social media
• Welcome/thank you emails
• Physical stores
• Customer service (cashier, contact center, sales rep)
• Product reviews
• Subscription renewals
• Influencer recommendations
• Peer reviews
• Point of sale
• Customer onboarding
• Physical and digital events

How customer touchpoints work

Let’s take an example here – a customer looking to take out a mortgage. The customer touchpoints in our example below.

• Your customer has seen an advert for an attractive interest rate and their brother recommended your mortgage.Your online mortgage calculator said the repayments were affordable, so the customer has a helpful face-to-face meeting in a branch, and goes home to fill out the online application form.
• They instantly receive an email with a decision in principle, telling them it has been accepted, inviting them to complete the full application.
• The customer takes a few days to fill out the application and receives an ‘application received’ message.
• Some of the information was missing, so a contact center agent calls them to explain what information they need to provide.
• Finally, the mortgage is agreed and the customer receives a letter with a binding mortgage offer.
• Once the customer has then gone through the house buying process, had their surveys carried out and confirmed their exchange date, they receive final confirmation of the mortgage including direct debit details, terms and conditions, etc. The process is now complete.

So that’s a total of 11 touchpoints – and for many home buyers there will be much more back and forth too – up to the point of purchase.

Following completion, there may be more, like annual or monthly statements or interactions with the customer if they want to increase or decrease how much they pay each month.

Turning your touchpoints into a journey

Customer touchpoints, together, form a journey. This is the process, or order, in which a customer might directly or indirectly interact with your brand. Customers take multiple different journeys with a brand, influenced in different ways.

There is not a single linear journey that every customer will take.

After all, this is why integrated marketing campaigns exist, to meet the needs of different  target audiences . However, understanding these different journeys is important in order to be able to improve the experience of each journey, and of each target audience.

This is called customer journey mapping. It provides an overview of every way in which a customer might interact with your brand. It covers how they:

• Research the product/service/brand
• Use the product
• Seek customer service support
• Express their displeasure
• Recommend the product

Then, when something isn’t working or could be improved then it’s possible to look at the process visually and come up with solutions to make it better for customers.

What to fix and where?

On the face of it, you might have a  satisfied customer . They may give high  NPS  or  CSAT  scores as they now have their mortgage and a lovely new home.

But how many other customers started the application form, gave up filling it in because it was too complicated and went to another provider? Or received a mortgage in principle only for the full application to be rejected?

This is where journey mapping is essential. By gathering feedback at each touchpoint, you can start to understand how each one contributes to the overall experience. Was there a stage that was particularly difficult? Where did the service they received fail to match up to their expectations?

Being able to pinpoint specific pain points along the customer journey means that you can step in and make improvements at the moments that matter.

Using customer experience data and mapping it back to specific touchpoints is how you start to understand the key moments that influence customer behavior.

By analysing this feedback side by side with your core CX metrics , you’re able to identify the improvements that will have the biggest impact on your customers and their overall experience as well as the impact on organisation metrics like win rates, sales, and customer lifetime value .

An action-orientated approach to customer touchpoints

Understanding how your customers interact with your brand throughout the customer journey is vital, but it will only prove effective if you take action on the insights that you uncover. For example, if it becomes clear that the onboarding process is damaging the customer experience, then action needs to be taken to rectify that.

Related resources

Customer Journey

Customer Journey Mapping Workshop 3 min read

Customer journey mapping tools 14 min read, customer journey mapping 14 min read, the complete guide to customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer’s journey 16 min read, customer journey analytics 13 min read, request demo.

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