In a good post titled “How to manage different customer interaction points to enhance customer engagement” on the Contactual (News - Alert) blog, Meghdutt Brahmachari notes that as an organization selling something, “how you manage your customer engagement will make or break your business.”
A customer touch point is pretty much any interaction your customer has with your organization. Brahmachari gives three solid pointers on how to manage these interactions and ensure they work to the advantage of your company:
Go where your customers are. Yeah it sounds basic, but friends, you’d be surprised how many companies give this short shrift. Yes, we know that predicting how customers will first contact you is difficult, as Brahmachari says: “You cannot control what the customer’s initial touch point will be; they can find you through a variety of sources ranging from online sources to offline trade shows to referrals, to name a few.”
At least if you’re doing your job right they can, and this includes contact via Web chat, e-mail, social media and SMS. What you need to do, then, is use different mediums of communication to increase your visibility across different channels to make it easy for prospects to find you, then once they have made the first contact, it will be easier for you to control their experience based on different calls to actions, as Brahmachari says.
Next -- and this is critically important -- ensure consistent customer experience for each touch point. Don’t be great in one area and lax in another -- “On the Web we’re great, but if you call us, well, you’d better have a book handy.” It’s not like the customer will be more forgiving if you only waste her time on one touch point.
Measure which touch points work better for customers, Brahmachari says, since “different forms of engagement work differently for different customers. Some customers prefer picking up the phone and calling you directly where as some customers prefer emails.”
And finally, yes, do use each touch point. Reduce redundancy -- if a customer calls you one day, show him you remember the call when he chats with you online three days later. Don’t make him repeat everything he said then. You will not move up in his estimation.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Chris DiMarco