Customer Touchpoints

What are customer touchpoints?

What makes your business stand out from the rest?  What makes you as a sales person stand out so that both people and your client base trust you anyway?

 From a customers point of view ever business has product and costs. These are givens.  But why do they allow you in the door?  What makes them want to do business with you and keep coming back or referring your service to others?

What are the little things that make customers come back?

Pleasant decor.

• Is their somewhere for the client that has to wait on your time to log into the wi-fi service?  Can they make a cuppa?  Is the music so loud that they really have to go - now! Good lighting, pleasent smells. Clean restrooms.

Appropriate storage capacities.

• A mechanics shop that has a pile of everything everywhere would make people think that their car will be done ... when it is found... later.
• Where as a mechanic shop that has everything in it';s place and a place for everything gives the first impression of a faster more through service because of streamlining and time management aspects.
• A home business that has a well looked after frontage gives the illusion that the people inside care for their things.  Therefore they will care for your business - not spreading everything around for competitors to 'take'.

Extras that cost

• Hidden fees and unclear billing statements are not something that the customers have budgeted for.  After a delay in payment to you will they really be coming back?

Buzzworthy side effects of good touchpoints

First off when people actually get something that they were not expecting they will comment on it.  Maybe not to you, but word of mouth gets around through their friends.  Especially over the internet as many customers both research the products they want to purchase before purchasing.  When they find what they are looking for a 'share or like' may occur.  Then they will tell others about what they have purchased.  Word of mouth like this is quick and does your business well.  The reverse is also true.

Valuing the customers time and energy may be a little thing that you can 'show' your business cares about.  Having small chocolates individually rapped, or biscuits in their own wrapper placed next to the refreshment stand allows freedom of choice for the customer. Having an empty plate or container means that someone has not been keeping tabs on the freebee's. It really is the  little things are something that your customers value above and beyond the basic product that they came in to purchase.

How to find out what your customers are saying about you.

• Simply - ask them.  
• Listen to what the customers have to say.  Verbally as well as on the internet.
• Listen to on--line conversations with a # and your company name straight after the #.  Anything on-line within that servers platform will come up.  Get back to these customers quickly.  Rectify the problem before word of mouth becomes a viral backlash.
• Be easily found on the net.
• Engage with customers, and other people through the forums, microblogging and commenting on their comments or feeds.
• Create focus groups.
• be active within these focus groups.
• Being proactive and bringing up topics for conversation gets your business name [and your one too] seen on the top of peoples comments.
• Remain within your focus as this will give you and your customers the direction your business is in.
• Ground braking technology input when all someone really wants is to collect a cuppa and something to eat could and will put them off returning.

Customer touchpoints are not always obvious.  The touchpoints are sensory pleasures or displeasures.  When painful or just not there another brand fill the void.  Your potential customers will simply go there.