It’s a little embarrassing to admit that for a long time, I thought people were full of crap when they talked about touch point analysis. See, there’s a trend in business, a very bad one, of terms existing for things that mean nothing, or mean little of substance. Sometimes, they mean the same thing as fifty other terms, because each department had their own two cents put in on naming it from their context. I thought this was just another one of those.
Sometimes, it is. I think that a cool half of the people in the universe who toss around touch point analysis in discussions have no clue what it really means, at least to any level that qualifies them to go on about it so.
What is It:
Well, as far as I can see, it can mean either looking at every interaction a customer has with your company throughout their entire customer experience, or it can mean any interaction a customer has with anything relevant to the customer experience, even if it’s indirect.
I personally prefer this second definition, as the first one paints a terribly incomplete picture of things in the digital millennium. At one time, that wasn’t so much the case.
So How is That Different:
How is this different from regular step by step customer experience analysis, then? For a long time, I thought there was no differentiation, and it left me less than receptive to anyone who wanted to discuss this. But, the more I think about it, the more I do see there being some difference.
A straight up customer experience analysis is a little less “high res”, where a touch point approach looks at it in more “real” logistics. Through this kind of analysis, we see the many different multimedia forms through which the customer may interact.
This prepares us for our publication better, because we know where to content market, what channels to focus on “controlling” or publishing white papers and other information over, because that’s where the user is going to interact.
With this complete image of every possible channel being used, we can formulate comprehensive and inclusive strategies and shape ideal customer experiences.
The Bottom Line:
Here’s the final word on it. Let’s get down to why customer experience counts on a technical level. Customer acquisition costs are a problem. Therefore, to abate the immense cost of acquisition, ideally, you’ll want to shape customer experiences to be very effective without being wasteful or too vague.
So, embracing this very analytic-rich and picture-painting analysis method saves you a lot of money, and overcomes one of the biggest problems in business with a single stroke.
I was wrong for a long time, and sometimes I like being wrong, because then I learn something. That’s what it’s all about. I’m willing to bet that a lot of you thought the same way.
So, I’m totally behind touch point analysis. It’s easy to use, and it really does get a lot more data to help you bring customers in more cheaply and more efficiently. I’ll certainly be using this henceforth, and I think you’d benefit from it too.
