Understanding the various touchpoints (e.g., in person, digital) you have with your customers is key to delivering a memorable customer experience.
Once you’ve mapped out your touchpoints, it’s often helpful to group them into channels. That’s the focus of this blog post.
The most common channels
There are five channels that we see often at PeopleMetrics: websites, mobile app, contact center, in location, and field services (in the home):
- Websites: refers to customers visiting websites to gather information about a company. Can include both mobile and regular versions of the website.
- Native Mobile App: refers to customers who download a company’s iOS or Andriod app, and feedback is gathered about their experience with it.
- Contact Center: an important touchpoint where customers call for more information or assistance. Online chat is another part of modern contact centers.
- In Location: refers to an actual in-person customer experience, such as a retail store, restaurant, or hotel.
- Field Services: customers interact with a company in their home.
Mapping your touchpoints
When you look at all the touchpoints on your map, each of them will likely fall into one of these five channels.
No matter how your customer interacts with you, the ultimate goal is to have a consistent “omnichannel” experience.
When your in-location experience is different from your web experience, or when your web experience is different from the experience a customer has with your native mobile app, this inconsistent CX will create problems.
Customers might feel like the company cares about them after a positive field service experience, but if the contact center fails to provide the same level of experience, the customer will be disappointed.
Keep in mind that if you’re working with a premium brand, all channels will need to deliver an outstanding customer experience. If you’re working with a mid-tier, value-oriented brand, the goal may be to achieve a certain standard throughout each channel, such as professionalism or efficiency.
Gathering omnichannel feedback
If you want a consistent omnichannel experience, make sure you are listening to your customers in each channel! You can gather feedback from these five channels in various ways.
For example, you might ask about their most recent experience with a field services representative through an email survey. How satisfied were you with our technician’s most recent visit to your home? Why? Were there any problems? If so, please describe them.
Or you can gather feedback via methods that are channel specific.
For website feedback, pop-up surveys can ask the customer for feedback while they are on the website or after they leave.
When a customer uses a mobile app, a survey can be embedded into the app asking them to provide feedback.
An interactive voice response (IVR) survey or a computer-generated survey can be used after a customer interacts with a contact center—the system directs the customer to the survey when the call is complete.
We are also seeing more and more text surveys, or Short Message Surveys (SMS), these days as a substitute for email surveys.
The goal is to obtain feedback from the customer in whichever way they prefer to provide you with that feedback.
It will largely depend on the customer. If your primary customers are millennials, they might prefer a text message survey. If you’re working with baby boomers, they probably prefer completing a survey via email at a time that’s convenient for them.
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About the Author
Sean McDade, PhD is the author of Listen or Die: 40 Lessons That Turn Customer Feedback Into Gold. He founded PeopleMetrics in 2001 and is the architect of the company’s customer experience management (CEM) software platform. As CEO, he guides the company’s vision and strategy. Sean has over 20 years of experience helping companies measure and improve the customer experience. Earlier in his career, he spent five years at the Gallup Organization, where he was the practice leader of their consulting division. His company offers CEM software with advanced machine learning solutions and hands-on analytical support to help companies make sense of their CX data. Sean holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration with a specialization in marketing science from Temple University in Philadelphia. He has published eight articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and has taught over 25 marketing classes. Sean was named a 40 under 40 award recipient of the Philadelphia region. He is an active Angel Investor, including investments in Tender Greens, CloudMine and Sidecar.
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