How are you managing the touchpoints to improve human experiences? Part 2 of a 3-part series

In last week’s blog post, we had 289 positive words to help you design a positive experience.  This will be part two of a three-part series to help you build great experiences.  In this week’s post, we will get into the touchpoints along an experience that impact how individuals feel about the experiences you bring them.  We will first get into the definition of a touchpoint.  Then, we will share the difference between a physical and a digital touchpoint.  Lastly, we share a list of touchpoints that you can bring to a meeting to discuss and focus on as you look to improve human experiences.

Touchpoints and the Human Brain

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, a leading researcher into human emotion, describes the human brain as being trapped in a dark box.  The only information it receives from the outside world comes from the senses:  Sight (light), Sound (Air pressure), Taste, Smell, and Touch.  Each input to one of these senses does not mean anything.  The brain has to interpret and make meaning of each input.  It does this by comparing the input to past inputs to make a prediction about the current one.

We will define “touchpoints” as these inputs to any one of the five senses that a person has with your organization.  Because there are so many inputs to a person’s experience and because each organization is different, the amount of inputs (touchpoints) can be quite large.  As such, there will be no inclusive list of them to this post.  We will provide a list that will help you at a meeting discuss this topic and discuss which inputs/touchpoints are the most important for your organization or department.  As you review your most important touchpoints, reflect on how people approach or avoid your organization at touchpoints along their journey.

Ideas to break down touchpoints

As mentioned, the number of touchpoints a person has with your organization is tremendously large.  As a person goes through your organization either as a customer or an employee, they are not consciously aware of most of these touchpoints.  As we have discussed in a previous post, the human brain is constantly maximizing energy and that we as individuals cannot be aware of every input to our brain.  To give you an example, you can converse with someone about an experience and they can say it was negative.  Probing further into why a person feels that way and they may have not have an answer for the question.  We as individuals are constantly approaching or avoiding ideas, products, services, people and other inputs.

You can break down inputs/touchpoints in a few ways.  The first is to separate touchpoints in both physical form versus digital form.  A second way is to break it down based in journey form.  Descriptions of each are listed below:

• Physical Touchpoints are tangible in an experience. Examples of Physical Touchpoints can include physical signs, brochures, store layout, restrooms, etc.
• Digital Touchpoints consist of the inputs that are in digital form. Examples of Digital Touchpoints include websites, social media, online search, blog posts, emails, etc.

Another way you can break touchpoints down is by doing it along a person’s journey with your organization.  A customer journey can be broken down into these categories:

• Awareness – The touchpoints that bring awareness of your organization
• Consideration – For customers, the touchpoints that help determine if to purchase
• Purchase – The touchpoints in the purchasing process
• Service – The touchpoints in providing service to the customer
• Loyalty – The touchpoints that the customer experiences to stay as a future customer

There can be other ways of categorization.  As an example, you can establish important touchpoints based on inputs to the five senses.  The key is to name the important touchpoints that have the biggest impact on your organization.

Touchpoints

Below you will find a large list of touchpoints in alphabetical order to get your organization focused on which touchpoints are the most important.  Since each business is different, your touchpoints will vary from other organizations.  Exploring that uniqueness can be another way to find solid touchpoints to improve your brand and separate yourself from others.

List of Touchpoints to Review:

The above is a starter list to get you thinking of the various inputs that people have towards your organization.  These inputs form approach or avoid behaviors in the people you serve.  In the last post, we discussed 289 positive words to help you design positive experiences.  The next step is to bring those positive words together with the touchpoints to understand what is needed to bring these great experiences.

Bringing Positive Words to the Touchpoints

To give an example on bringing positive words to the touchpoints, let us look at a small café.  The owner of the café has a few positive words that they want to make sure is a part of their customers experiences.  The top five positive words that the owner wants is the following:

• Welcoming
• Warm
• Fresh
• Reliable
• Loyalty

To accomplish these words and to build them into the experience.  The owner of this café can first build these words into the culture of the café with the employee experience.  By training the employees to build this culture within themselves and within the experiences they bring, it increases the likelihood that the owner will achieve their objectives.

After communicating and training employees on the objectives, the owner of the café now wants to pick out the most important touchpoints that matter to their business.  The following touchpoints are what the owner feels are the most important inputs the customers have about the café.  These touchpoints include:

• First Impression
• Employee Interactions
• Menu
• Product taste
• Consistency of Service
• Loyalty Program
• Café Atmosphere
• Café Restrooms

Let’s take “Welcoming” and run it through these touchpoints.

• How are customers welcomed the instant they walk in and through the whole experience?
• Are employees constantly obtaining the needs with friendly conversations?
• Does the menu look welcoming and unique?
• Is the service consistent along with product taste to give the customer a sense of welcoming certainty?
• Does the loyalty program make the customer feel a part of a welcoming community?
• Is the atmosphere and café design welcoming to customers?

To give a sense of welcoming, having the right employee training and personality will be vital.  Acknowledging customers quickly and learning their names will be another quality that the employees will need to learn.  Employee awareness of product freshness needs to be heightened to consistently bring great taste to the end product and provide a positive experience.  Developing a routine, even when busy, will be important to provide that consistent service that customers will come to expect.  The above will help drive loyalty along with a rewards program to bring repeat business.  Lastly, how the store is designed (walls, music, temperature, flooring, seating, etc.) will determine if customers feel warm and welcome.  To develop these positive emotions in the restroom, creativity will be needed to keep all touchpoints consistent in bringing great service.  In next week’s post, we will get into the measuring of your goals.  In this example, is the café accomplishing its objective on the positive words design at the designated touchpoints?

Wrapping it Up

In the first part of this three-part series, we discussed proactively using words to design great experiences.  In this week’s post, we went over the definition of a touchpoint.  Touchpoints can be digital or physical.  Some ways to organize your businesses touchpoints can be to separate digital/physical, map them along a customer journey, or use the five senses to analyze how people interpret the inputs you bring.  There are several ways that you can analyze them.

We also shared a list of starting customer touchpoints to help you brainstorm and perspective take on the various inputs people have interacting with your organization.  Each organization is different so the touchpoints between two businesses can be quite large.  By deciding which touchpoints are the most important ones where people make decisions on approaching or avoiding your organization, you can put your energy to where it is most needed.

By combining the positive words you picked with the most important touchpoints, you will be more proactive in the customer journey process.  Instead of chasing bad reviews or service recovery, most of your energy will be implementing positive experiences at designated touchpoints.  This will help you improve the human experiences at your organization.  Next week’s post will be the last of this three-part series.  It will help you with ideas on how to measure how your organization is achieving its positive objectives.

About SmileyAnswers

SmileyAnswers is the leading reseller of the HappyOrNot® Reporting System within the United States, Canada, and the U.K.  HappyOrNot® has over 1.5 billion feedbacks to date and is a leader in capturing the real-time insight of customers, patients, and employees.  With the recent addition of the Smiley Link and Smiley Digital, SmileyAnswers is in the unique position to capture a whole journey Live by using the Smiley’s for both digital and physical touchpoints.  Organizations can “listen” to how people feel at all the important touchpoints.  After capturing real-time feedback at these touchpoints, organizations can then “learn” what and where the hidden pain points are to make immediate positive changes.  Finally, successes can be shared with Live Sharing, Social Sharing, digital boards, social media, email, power points, and more.  This process can be repeated daily throughout the year to constantly improve human experiences.