Optimizing retail touchpoints for elevated customer journeys

Monika Karlović
Content Marketing Associate

Retail and eCommerce businesses have shifted in recent years to accommodate the rise of digitalization. Customers demand digital and user-friendly interactions with little tolerance for pain points. In fact, 86% of customers will leave after two bad experiences with a brand.

As successful as your product might be, it comes down to the quality of interactions you provide. Every interaction contributes to the customer’s impression of your brand and the overall experience they have while shopping with you.

Each touchpoint matters. The key is to identify and optimize them to meet the expectations of a digital world. In turn, you can boost conversions and improve your bottom line.

What is a customer touchpoint?

A customer touchpoint is an interaction between a customer and your brand that influences their perception of you. This can be anything from seeing an advertisement to speaking with customer support or downloading your app.

These touchpoints are mapped out throughout the customer journey and provide insight into how customers interact with your business. Each touchpoint offers retailers a chance to impress and satisfy customers, improving their overall experience.

Examples of retail touchpoints

Touchpoints exist in every stage of the customer journey. From pre-purchase to post-purchase, every interaction will determine if customers feel satisfied enough to purchase from you again.

Map out all the interactions customers have with your brand to determine if those touchpoints add value to the relationship or have developed into pain points.

Here are some typical touchpoints for retail:

Pre-purchase	During purchase	Post-purchase
Social media post	Making and account	Re-engagement campaigns
Advertisements	Website or app browsing	Promotions
Online reviews	Checkout process	Billing
Word-of-mouth	Customer support	Delivery
Blog	Targeted ads	Feedback
		Returns and exchanges

How to identify touchpoints in retail

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and find every point of contact they have with your brand. You can use feedback surveys and reviews to determine the emotions associated with each touchpoint and find pain points you didn’t know existed.

Take Petpetgo for example.

The eCommerce retailer found that Facebook ads and generalized email campaigns resulted in low return on advertising spend (ROAC). These touchpoints were not adding value to their potential and existing customers, which meant their bottom line was suffering.

By identifying the touchpoints that had a low impact on their customer relationship, Petpetgo could optimize them to boost satisfaction, ROAC, and overall experience. They doubled their purchasing frequency and reduced advertising spending by 10%.

How did they do it? With a combination of personalization and omnichannel solutions, the retailer started sending relevant content and promotions to the right customers at the right time.

5 messaging techniques to improve retail touchpoints

Relevant messaging plays a huge role in the success of transforming touchpoints into seamless experiences, much like in Petpetgo’s case.

Here are some messaging essentials to ensure you make the most of every interaction:

1. Focus on omnichannel and timely communication

These days, omnichannel communication is a must. The bottom line is that customers demand that their interactions with you to be as smooth as possible and expect seamlessly connected and convenient communication.

72%

of customers blame bad customer service experiences on having to repeat their problem multiple times

Omnichannel communication allows you to connect with customers on the channels they prefer to use and enables you to unify customer data. Use information such as open times and rates to determine when to send messages and on what channels. Customers are more likely to engage with your content if they receive it at a convenient time for them.

2. Make your communication contextual and behavior-based

Offering a cohesive customer messaging experience comes down to knowing individual customer preferences based on their specific actions and behavior and anticipating their needs at any given time.

Make your communication touchpoints behavior or event-driven, and always have something relevant to say to your customers. A personal touch is also the perfect way to re-engage customers who may be on the fence, seem disengaged, or have shown any periods of inactivity. What’s more, compelling, personalized offers and incentives get attention and stand out above all other types of generic digital noise.

3. Be conversational

Ultimately, customers respond best to human-to-human communication, which is at the heart of conversational and meaningful interactions. But artificial intelligence and digital apps play a major role in enabling brands to achieve a conversational customer journey.

Using seamless CRM, customer service integrations, chatbots and a range of messaging apps allows instant, interactive, and more personable communication between brands and customers – a recipe for customer satisfaction and overall better touchpoints.

4. Make sure your messages fit the style of the channel

When messaging customers via apps like Viber and WhatsApp, you need to fit in with the other messages they will receive on those channels. Most of their contacts are likely family and friends, so if you send a formal business message or a flashy advertisement, it could be seen as invasive and spammy and get ignored.

In today’s climate, you must be prepared to interact with your customers how, where, and whenever they choose. If you keep your communication strategy conversational and natural, sending relevant and personalized messages at the right moment, you’re sure to see better results.

Leverage the likes of mobile app messages, chat apps, and RCS to embed clickable buttons that ensure customers can reply easily and quickly. If you want your customers to participate in touchpoints, you need to make it as easy and painless as possible for them to comply.

5. Always add value

Great customer messaging touchpoints always add value. When you have a customer’s contact details, don’t take advantage of that to send a stream of ads or reminders to visit your website.

Your messages should offer something that makes your customer’s life easier and happier.

Where possible, always give your customers options – people love the freedom to choose. Provide helpful and exciting content customized to suit their interests and preferences.

Tactics to improve touchpoints

Learning where and how to apply these essentials can make or break your touchpoints. But they allow you to optimize your interactions and improve the overall experience.

Of course, there are some touchpoints that you can’t directly optimize, such as word of mouth or customer reviews. But with time and determination, customer satisfaction scores will go up, leading to better experiences and more positive reviews.

Let’s break down ways to optimize important retail touchpoints throughout the customer journey to improve experiences:

Pre-purchase touchpoints

87% of online shoppers use social media while shopping for products.

They browse social pages to learn more about products before making a purchase. Make sure everything they need to know is readily available, up to date, and accessible on your social pages.

Use metrics to determine which posts perform the best and lead to conversions.
Create a strategy around your customer’s behavior and leave them with a great impression after viewing your social page.

Infobip tip for social media

Remove the need to switch between apps. If a customer is browsing your Instagram and sees a product they like- allow them to message your brand directly to ask questions before purchasing the product. The rise of social commerce is not slowing down. Gartner predicts that 60% of millennials will prefer to make purchases on their favorite social platforms over traditional eCommerce sites. Give them a simpler and faster way to purchase products, adding value to the entire interaction.

Similar to social media, metrics are key.

Use metrics to determine which ads got the most interactions and which campaigns led to greater conversions. This will help you determine which ads are relevant to your audience and which missed the mark

Infobip tip for advertisements

Many customers still turn to blogs to learn more about products.

Let’s say you have a cosmetics brand. Customers would benefit from a blog with content related to beauty, skincare, and overall health. Add links for products related to the topics you cover in your posts.

Infobip tip for blogs

Customers want smoother and faster signup processes.

Pain points most often occur during the purchasing process. Some customers can find it troublesome or annoying to have to make an account or login before making a purchase. Do some digging and find out what part of the login or account creation process could be smoother for your customers, or what incentives you could offer to entice them to create a profile.

Infobip tip for account signup

During purchase touchpoints

Improve overall web and app experiences.

There are a variety of touchpoints on your website and app.From the download process to product browsing, a customer’s experience on your app or web page influences their decision to purchase from your brand. Ensure you offer a user-friendly experience to help guide them to completing a purchase.

Infobip tip for web and apps

Remove long waiting queues for more satisfied customers.

A major pet peeve for customers is when they have a complaint and try to communicate with customer support only to meet long waiting queues. Customer support is a critical touchpoint for eCommerce retailers, as it is usually the first and sometimes only time customers interact with employees. It’s essential to ensure this interaction is smooth and that customers leave with a positive impression of your brand.

Infobip tip for customer support

Add a chatbot to your customer support team and a cloud contact center solution for optimized performance from service agents. Your brand can interact with customers on their favorite channels by adding a chatbot. With natural language processing (NLP) technology, chatbots can provide a real conversational experience, speed up resolution time and ensure customers are left satisfied.

85% of retailers say that poor checkout processes are the reason for lost sales.

Don’t let this critical touchpoint turn customers off from your brand. Optimize the process by reducing the number of clicks and pages needed to complete the purchase.

Infobip tip for checkout

Post-purchase touchpoints

Customers expect to recieving billing reciepts instantenously.

Ensuring your customers receive their receipts and billing documents is important for eCommerce businesses. This touchpoint will reflect on your company’s reliability and give customers peace of mind that their online purchase was secure.

Infobip tip for billing

Offer seamless delivery to customers.

There is nothing worse than a poor delivery process. Even if a third party is delivering the product, make sure you are proactive and notify the customer throughout the process. Any changes or delays need to be communicated before your customer reaches out to you.

Infobip tip for delivery

Get to know your customers’ expectations.

Collecting feedback is critical to understanding which touchpoints are working and which aren’t. Send feedback surveys and ask customers to rate their experience with you.

Infobip tip for feedback collection

Improve return processes to boost repurchase rates.

It’s always a disappointment when a customer returns a product, but if you make it a painless touchpoint for them, they will likely order something from you again.

Infobip tip for returns and exchanges

Entice customers to return with the right interactions.

Remember how we said relevance is key for advertisements? Well, that’s actually true for every interaction you have with your customers. If you have been segmenting and learning about your customer’s needs, you will know exactly which promotions and content will interest them the most and on what channels they are the most responsive.

Infobip tip for re-engagement

Create customer-centric retail touchpoints

Touchpoints occur throughout the entire customer journey. Once you learn what customers want from your brand, you can optimize or even create great experiences through every touchpoint. By following these tips and practicing proactive outreach, you can create memorable experiences for your customers, with their needs center focused. You will build painless touchpoints and strong relationships that keep them coming back for more.