Do you have a written plan for the various touch points you make with your customers?
If you’re like most small businesses, you probably don’t even know what i’m taking about.
Keeping track of, and optimizing your customer touch points is essential if you want to create a consistent and predictable customer service experience for your customers.
What is a Customer Touch Point?
Customer touch points are any interactions and communications your business has with your customers during the life of your relationship with them. Customer touch points can be, but are not limited to:
- Your marketing materials
- Any employee contact with your customers
- Phone and written communications
- Your website
As you can see, a customer touch point is anytime your customer has an interaction with your business, whether with a human or with your marketing and branding efforts. Do you know all of the possible touch points you have with your customers? Maybe you should stop now and write them down.
Why is keeping track of your customer touch points important?
It’s important because a company that delivers great customer service does so in a consistent and predictable way. That takes planning.
One of the principles of creating a great customer service experience is not doing spectacular things for your customers, it’s doing little things in a spectacular way. I’ll add to that even further……it’s doing little things in a spectacular, but consistent way.
If you do something nice for your customers, like send thank you cards…..do you do it consistently, or just when you remember or feel like it? Do all of your best customers get one, or whoever you happen to remember that day?
Just like with marketing, your customer’s experience with your business shouldn’t be left to the whims and moods of you and your employees…..your customers should feel good knowing that if you do something nice for them once, you’ll remember to do it again for them. The only way for you and your employees to deliver customer experiences in a consistent way is to have a written touchpoint plan or calendar.
Customer Touch Point Calendar
A customer touch point calendar is alot like a marketing calendar, except that you’re tracking and scheduling your customer service activities in advance. One, so you don’t forget to do it, and two, that you do it consistently. It’s simply writing out the various touch point opportunities you have with your customers, and including activities throughout the year to coincide with those touch points. You can download a sample touch point calendar here, it’s a simple Excel file that you can use as a template or customize for your own business.
Some of the activities cross over into the marketing side of things, so be sure to coordinate your marketing calendar and customer touch point calendar.
Are you creating a consistent customer service experience for your customers?
If not, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your customer service activities and come up with a plan for delivering a great experience each and every time you make contact with your customers.
Gary Shouldis
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