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.

Commit to your Business Plan learning

Yes the effective Business Plan you draw up might be made up of a little bit of this, some of that and a pinch more for taste. This business plan might even sustain you until it's run its duration.  However what happens when you go back it it an try making that next step.  Do all the pieces integrate allowing the progress towards achieving all your objective actually be grow and be achieved.

You really do need a business plan.  One that has short term, medium term and long term goals.  The simple thing about making this plan is that really you need to have a focus objective. 

The work out what your objectives are to gain your primary goal.  Complement these with strategies of how you are gong to achieve the overall goal. Simple so far is it?  

Not really however knowing what you want to focus on makes a great number one point.

If you want to bake a cake why then are you making a bread or cooking dinner?  Deciding what type of cake,  for who to eat and the suitability of that cake be makes you involved with the decisions. In this case strategies] 

However being committed to baking the cake means everything has been laid out, you know the answers to these questions, you have a time line.  The first step has been taken.  Being committed is when on ingredient has mixed with another. When you have now committed to baking a cake. 

Making a business plan, acting on it and then reviewing and then being able to  redraw/ alter up another is making that learning factor a commitment to progress.

Presenting a morphed before and after vision leads to ongoing sales

The power of animation is so strong that simulations confer "pseudomemories".  Basically by the sales person supplying a pseudomemory  as a trigger tool the sales person is setting the seen for a is an imposed memory or trigger to gain hold. How the client needs to settle their mind.

You know your product is the best.  Simply dropping the prodct and running is not doing the client or yourself any favours.  The client is in need. Fearful of being sues, being left behind, knowing that you will have other people to see.

The real motivation to stay with you and your company is the reward of doing something and being recognised. Ask them which photos they would like placed in the Safety and Security blog that is a free publication emailed to interested parties.  Advertising is very expensive.  The situation of giving the clients business recognition for ongoing sales, or even spending time having a cuppa or meeting at a shared club activity is important.  Either way the client and sales person is in a win / win situation.

That paperwork again!

• Paper work is important, be it through pen on paper or multi media means. Channelling the correct paper work through the parties involved keeps communication up front and moving on. Keep your finger on the pulse here through tracking the information as it goes through the organisation you are representing.
• Reports are a two way means of keeping everyone informed.
• Updating the journal and diary entries you keep. 
• Filling out the surveys.
• Reading newspapers, the net, and stream lined emails will assist in keeping you ahead or just on top of what is happening. The possibilities are endless so act on them yourself or through contacting your head salesman or other appropriate person.

• Today the use of multi media is prevalent.  Should things ever go to court what bis actually written in hard copy stands up in court. Anything else is an opportunity for fraud as it can be electronically tampered with or whipped out in a instant. Yes the disks may be unscrambled... at whose cost?.

Where do I sign.

When people are swayed to change their habits, ideas or principles, something has occurred to trigger this action flow.  Often people sow seeds that make another person uncomfortable, causing inner turmoil or conflict. When this sowing is done with positive regard for the other persons situation the result is called "Cognitive Dissonance".

People that have good sales technique often use cognitive dissonance as a central component to many forms of persuasion.  The challenge of changing beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours of the client starts when the sales person knows their product, but listens to what the client is actually asking for.  The sales person then tailors what they have to offer into what the client wishes to hear.

Dissonance basically means holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. By the sales person fully listening to the client, then tailor making their presentation to meet the needs analysis 'he' has done as the client has explained their situation, the sales person has just done three very important steps.

Where are the tomato plants

1. The sales person has got the client to explain why they actually want the product that the sales person is selling.
2. The client passively wants it but is also trying to self explain away the fears from not having it.
3. Now the clients inability to rationalize and explain the conflict between wanting and not having it causes a need for the void to be filled. 

In effect the client has just tilled the soil, fertilized it, grabbed a hand full of seeds and is in the process of sowing those seeds.  The sales person just has to assist the client with the choice of seeds or transplanting actual plants for a quicker harvest time.

At this point the client has had to

1. Change their behaviours from a 'no' situation to a 'I must have' situation. Using the seed situation the client has gone from believing the soil would benefit from being left alone for another year, into planting cheery tomatoes.
2. Needs to justify their behaviour by changing the conflicting cognition. Cherry tomatoes are more productive than asparagus as the crop will be more immediate.
3. Then the client will justify their behaviour by adding new cognitions. Next year I will companion plant with...

In effect, what has happened is that the client has just talked themselves into signing on the bottom line.