No one spontaneously decides to purchase a product they’ve barely heard of. Instead, customers go on a buying journey: a multi-step consideration process that culminates in a purchase. It might start with an ad or social media post. From there, your potential customer might look you up on Google, visit your social profiles, or consult your FAQ section before finally deciding to buy. These points of contact between your brand and customers are called touchpoints.
Here’s what you need to know about customer touchpoints and how to optimize yours for high customer satisfaction and sustained business growth.
What is a customer touchpoint?
Customer touchpoints are interactions or points of engagement between your customers and your business throughout the customer journey, from initial consideration to purchase, and extending into post-purchase support. Every interaction is an opportunity to improve the customer experience and nurture loyal customers through moments that reduce friction and add value.
Examples of touchpoints where customers interact with your brand include your:
- Website
- Emails
- Mobile app
- Blog posts
- Advertisements
- Social media
- Store on third-party sites, like Amazon
- Reviews
- Subscription renewals
- Packaging
- Delivery
- Customer service
- Physical store (brick-and-mortar or pop-up)
Successful customer touchpoints require a mix of user experience (UX) design, customer experience (CX) design, and marketing strategies to build strong relationships and foster brand loyalty.
Why are customer touchpoints important?
Think of customer touchpoints as a row of dominoes—each part of a larger, carefully constructed chain reaction. Positive customer interactions early in the customer journey—like a potential customer seeing an ad on social media that feels perfectly tailored to them—can build momentum toward a final purchase and cultivate brand affinity.
Just as a single misaligned domino can disrupt the entire chain, a poorly executed touchpoint—like a confusing social media ad or a website with a weak call to action (CTA)—can derail the customer journey entirely.
You’ll need to build a customer touchpoint strategy where every interaction aligns with the next. The goal is to create a frictionless path that guides customers toward conversion and, ideally, long-term loyalty.
Common customer touchpoints
It may take interacting with multiple customer touchpoints before a potential customer decides to purchase. Though they vary by industry, there are typically three touchpoint phases throughout the customer experience: before, during, and after a purchase.
Before a purchase
These customer touchpoints create awareness, generate excitement, and educate new customers about your product or service:
- Social media channels. Targeted social media content—paid and organic—can create excitement and demonstrate your products’ features, driving brand awareness and website visits.
- Landing page. Appealing landing pages can set you up for success. In fact, 94% of first impressions of your homepage are related to its design.
- Search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing your website content for discovery via search engines like Google can expose new customers to your brand.
During a purchase
These customer touchpoints minimize friction and make the purchase process smooth:
- Product detail page (PDP). This page provides information to support the customer’s purchase decision, like key features, descriptions, and benefits.
- Checkout flow. The checkout process should be as simple as possible. A multi-step process that entails mandatory account creation and many additional steps can lead to a poor customer experience and shopping cart abandonment.
- Brick-and-mortar store. A physical location is an opportunity to optimize the customer experience with live interactions that bring your brand to life.
- AI assistants. 81% of consumers believe AI is now essential to customer service. These tools can quickly address common customer concerns during the buying process.
After a purchase
Closing a sale is great, but building a loyal customer base is even better. Solidify relationships with existing customers at these key touchpoints:
- Loyalty programs. Whether it’s points, a tier-based approach,or exclusive rewards,85% of customers say loyalty programs inspire them to keep shopping with certain brands—and happy customers typically have a higher average order value (AOV).
- Package tracking. Customers expect to know when their package will be delivered. Giving real-time updates can increase customer satisfaction and reduce the burden on your customer service team by minimizing inquiries.
- Self-service options. An FAQ page or engaging how-to videos are helpful self-service resources, allowing customers to get the most out of their purchase without waiting for answers.
- Support teams. AI is making waves in nearly every aspect of business, but some customer concerns are more complex than AI can handle. Give customers the option of talking to a real person when their issue demands a personal touch.
How to identify customer touchpoints
Not all touchpoints make sense for every business strategy. A software company might offer a free trial while a physical retail business must consider in-person interactions. The goal is to identify and optimize touchpoints that resonate most with your target audience.
Start by creating a customer journey map, outlining each step customers take when interacting with your brand. Track the whole customer experience, from awareness to loyalty. Think of the customer journey as the bird’s-eye view (the entire domino chain) and customer touchpoints as specific interactions (individual dominos).
Customer journey maps usually include five stages:
- Awareness. A potential customer learns about your product or service.
- Consideration. The potential customer interacts with your brand, does research, and compares products or services.
- Acquisition. The customer makes a purchase.
- Service. Retain the customer by addressing needs and concerns.
- Loyalty. Turn existing customers into brand advocates.
With numerous customer touchpoints, it’s strategic to delegate touchpoints at different stages to different teams within your business. For example, your marketing team will likely be the best fit for handling awareness and consideration while sales reps focus on acquisition and customer service teams work on improving service touchpoints.
How to evolve your customer touchpoints
Here are a few tips for improving customer touchpoints:
- Aim for consistency. Your brand guidelines inform the entire customer experience. If your tone is fun and relatable, keep it consistent in everything from product descriptions to FAQs.
- Prioritize and budget. Leverage customer analytics tools and metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, or subscription renewals to find gaps in customer experience. Choose what you need to prioritize and allocate a budget for improvement.
- Ask for customer feedback. Ask your customers for input through customer surveys and feedback surveys to gain valuable insights about what works, what needs improvement, and where there are opportunities for more customer touchpoints. You could uncover a new touchpoint to test, like a new social media platform.
- Keep track of data with CRM. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce Sync or HubSpot CRM help pull all of your customer data into a single dashboard to track and manage interactions.
- Automate some touchpoints. While people still like having the option of talking to a human service team, AI tools can expedite tasks like email follow-ups, answering commonly asked questions, and providing order updates—allowing you to focus on more complex touchpoints that require the expertise of marketing managers or sales reps.
- Consider a subscription. Studies show that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than keeping loyal customers. You could consider a subscription offering with a frictionless renewal process to add stability to your revenue model.
Customer touchpoints FAQ
What are examples of customer touchpoints?
Customer touchpoints are any interactions with your brand a potential customer may have, like engaging with social media content, an ecommerce checkout experience, or speaking to a sales rep at a retail store.
What are the three phases of customer touchpoints?
A customer’s journey with your brand typically spans three stages: before, during, and post-purchase.
How do you identify customer touchpoints?
A great starting point for identifying customer touchpoints is creating a customer journey map with five stages: awareness, consideration, acquisition, service, and loyalty. You can then identify specific touchpoints within each stage. Examples of customer touchpoints may include posts on your social media channels at the awareness stage, customer interactions with your FAQ pages at the consideration stage, and interactions with your customer support team at the service stage.