Most organizations engage in sophisticated customer journey mapping. Each touchpoint is analyzed and optimized, generally with the goal of creating a joyful and satisfying customer experience along each step. Beyond making touchpoints satisfying and engaging, brands should work to expedite the customer journey. Doing so respects your customer’s time, shortens the overall purchase process, creates a greater sense of service to your customers and allows your organization to focus more intensely on the remaining touch points and tasks.
Simplifying Individual Touchpoints
Sometimes a touchpoint isn’t simply a one-off interaction, but a series of tasks, questions or processes that have to happen within that touchpoint. Normally, companies strive for excellence during these touch points, aiming for high net promoter scores and increasing satisfaction at each touchpoint. While this is valuable, it’s also important to streamline each touchpoint. Are all tasks necessary? More importantly, do they bring value?
Understanding where value lies, and where it doesn’t lie, can help streamline each touchpoint into a shorter number of tasks. The benefit is less customer fatigue (remember, customers might give high ratings to a touchpoint if their interaction and service is good, even if that touchpoint is too lengthy or arduous), and a simplified interaction to provide more focused training to employees.
Removing Steps Entirely
It might seem extreme, but removing customer touchpoints entirely may be worth your organization’s time. In fact, if a touchpoint can be removed, it should. Anything that isn’t absolutely essential and adding value to your customer’s interaction isn’t worthy of their time, and their overall satisfaction with the ease of your service will rise with every touchpoint or interaction that goes by the wayside.
In this light, think about ways interactions can be consolidated or batched. Customer success relies largely on ease of interaction, and while delivering value each time is worthwhile, expediting the interaction altogether is priceless.
Removing Customer Impetus
Beyond removing pieces or entire steps of your company’s customer journey, you should be working to take as much responsibility as possible off the customer. Think about the way you place responsibility on a customer, whether it be paperwork, presenting them with challenging concepts, or even having too high of expectations for their desire to meaningfully interact with your brand. By removing any responsibility they might have, they’ll have a true sense of service they’re receiving from your company, and a higher overall satisfaction.
Identifying Hidden Touchpoints
Finally, there may be “hidden touchpoints” along the customer journey that don’t even involve your brand directly. Particularly, customer journey steps such as their education about a product or service, especially when it comes to major decisions or purchases, could make up a tiresome and difficult step in their customer journey.
Your organization should work to find ways to educate, assist and help customers through this process. Proactively providing information, meeting them at the beginning of their purchase consideration and directing them to resources not only makes your organization stand out from the crowd, but boosts the customer’s confidence in your brand and reinforces the idea that you genuinely want them to make the best purchase decision possible, whether with your product/service or another.
