I don’t need to answer this, do I? After all, you are a buyer yourself. How would you describe your experience of a recent purchase? Would you describe it as a superior product, as a bargain, or as a satisfactory transaction? Maybe, but the probability is that you would describe your experience as enjoyable or a drag, exciting or disappointing, fantastic or so-so.
People perceive experiences as a blend of emotional and rational factors, but it is the emotional memories that stick with us. This is what the former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines Jan Carlzon calls the moment of truth. He writes in his book, The Moments Of Truth: “Anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, is an opportunity to form an impression.”
That is why good service after a long wait over the phone to talk to a Bank of America representative leaves a positive memory, whereas bad service even after short wait leaves a bad impression. Observing that customer memory is back-end-weighted, the general trend is to offer the best customer service as the last part of customer interaction. But what about when a customer is just evaluating a product, or when she is negotiating? Do those experiences count? Absolutely. These experiences make or break the deal. When a perfectly plausible deal evaporates, the most probable reason is a bad customer experience. So the real customer experience is the sum of all the experiences that a customer has with you at every touch point.
Touch point defined:
A touch point represents every time your customer comes into contact with, or "touches," your brand and anything and everything associated with it. Using the product or service itself is the main touch point. Other touch points include an advertisement for the brand, the person who picks up the phone when a customer orders, the delivery man, the invoice letter, even a comment from a friend on your brand or customer service.
A company’s view of the customer experience as the sum of experiences at all touch points is a limited answer to the total customer experience. Figure 2.1 shows a relatively simplistic yet complete view of a customer experience cycle, sometimes referred to as a customer journey. Of course, the details look different for each situation. However, in most cases, an organization's touch points with the customer include: sales contacts, ordering activities, fulfillment activities, and problem resolution. These experience elements are termed above-the-surface experience elements or, from a business perspective, a sales cycle.
Most businesses concentrate on these experiences by improving processes: How quickly do we answer their calls? How long do they have to wait? Do we resolve complaints quickly? Or, they concentrate on customer interaction with staff people. Front-facing employees are, quite simply, the custodians of the above-the-surface customer experience.
Figure 2.1: Complete Customer Experience Cycle
As you see in Figure 2.1, a customer's complete journey includes many other factors that have a substantial impact on her overall experience. These below-the-surface experience elements provide significant insight that can help improve what happens at above-the-surface touch points. They also provide insight into related services that address the customer's unarticulated or unmet needs at the non-touch points. Recognizing the fact that a customer's journey starts well before she contacts a business and continues long after she buys offers two key opportunities to improve these below-the-surface experiences: 1) establishing awareness, which has always been the main reason for brand-building, and 2) providing tools for customer advocacy, which offers the opportunity to empower your loyal customers to become evangelists of your services. Combine these two with your traditional sales cycle—i.e., lead generation, qualification, bidding and proposal, negotiation and close, fulfillment, and customer support—and you will have a customer relationship lifecycle (CRL).
In order to really provide the total customer experience, a business has to touch both above and below the surface, or master the full customer relationship lifecycle. How?
One answer is to increase your touch points.
The more touch points you have with a customer, the better experience you can provide. The better the experience, the higher the possibility of new sales from new and existing customers.
We use customer engagement channels to establish touch points. So what these customer engagement channels are?