Have you ever questioned whether you really understand the big picture of your company's customer experience?
Picture this: a customer rates their post-purchase encounter as excellent, and it seems like your customer experience (CX) strategy is on the right track.
But what if, despite this apparent success, something isn't quite perfect as you observe your retention rates and business growth? Could the data from a single touchpoint have misled you?
Let’s explore the challenges of a single-touch approach in this blog post, and understand its limitations in improving customer experience.
The Problem with Single-Touch Feedback
Single-touch feedback is the feedback that is collected from only one touchpoint in the customer journey, such as a post-purchase survey, a website rating, or a call center interaction.
While this type of feedback can provide some insights into customer satisfaction, it can also be biased and incomplete.
Here are some of the drawbacks of single-touch feedback:
It Ignores the Complexity of the Customer Journey
Customers interact with a business through multiple touchpoints, from pre-transaction to post-transaction, and each touchpoint can have a different impact on their overall satisfaction.
- For example, a customer may have a positive experience with a product, but a negative experience with the delivery, the customer service, or the billing.
If the business only collects feedback from the product touchpoint, it may miss the opportunity to identify and resolve the pain points in the other touchpoints.
It Creates an Echo Chamber Effect
According to PwC, 84% of business executives perceive a high level of trust from customers, yet only 27% of customers affirm the same degree of trust.
Single-touch feedback can create a false sense of confidence and complacency for the business, as it may only reflect the opinions of a specific segment of customers, such as the most satisfied or the most dissatisfied ones.
This can lead to a skewed perception of the customer experience and a lack of awareness of the areas that need improvement.
- For example, a business may receive high ratings from its website visitors, but low ratings from its actual customers, who may have different expectations and needs. If the business only focuses on the website feedback, it may overlook the issues that affect its customer retention and loyalty.
It Limits the Depth of the Feedback
Single-touch feedback can be superficial and generic, as it may not capture the specific details and reasons behind the customer’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
- For example, a customer may rate a product as 5 stars, but not provide any comments or suggestions on how to improve it. Alternatively, a customer may rate a product as 1 star, but not explain what went wrong or what they expected.
This can make it difficult for the business to understand the root causes of the customer’s feedback, and to take appropriate actions to enhance the customer experience.
The Solution: Multi-Touch Feedback
Multi-touch feedback is the feedback that is collected from multiple touchpoints in the customer journey, providing a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of customer experiences and interactions with a product or service.
According to McKinsey, measuring overall customer satisfaction by tracking their journey is 30% more accurate than focusing on individual interactions.
This multifaceted approach enables businesses to identify patterns, uncover pain points, and gain valuable insights into the diverse ways customers engage with their brands throughout the entire lifecycle.
Here are some of the benefits of multi-touch feedback:
1. It Reveals the Strengths and Weaknesses of Each Touchpoint
Multi-touch feedback can help the business identify the touchpoints that are most important and influential for customer satisfaction, and the touchpoints that are most problematic and frustrating for the customer.
2. It Breaks the Echo Chamber Effect
Multi-touch feedback can help the business gain a more diverse and representative sample of customer opinions, as it can reach out to customers who may not provide feedback through a single touchpoint.
3. It Increases the Scope and Depth of the Feedback
Multi-touch feedback can help the business collect more specific and actionable feedback, as it can ask more relevant and targeted questions to the customer at each touchpoint.
💡 Inspiration: Unveiling Hidden Patterns
To vividly illustrate the transformative power of a multi-touch approach, let's delve into a hypothetical scenario that not only emphasizes the importance of various touchpoints but also explores how key metrics can be misleading when viewed in isolation.
💭 Imagine a retail company that primarily relies on post-transaction Net Promoter Score (NPS) as its key metric. The NPS consistently reflects high satisfaction scores for the delivery process, with customers praising the speed and efficiency of receiving their purchases. On the surface, this single touchpoint metric suggests a thriving and successful customer experience.
However, when they adopt a multi-touch approach and incorporate key metrics from different stages of the customer journey, a different narrative emerges. By expanding the feedback collection to include pre-transaction touchpoints, such as website interactions, the company uncovers crucial insights.
Key feedback from various touchpoints reveals that many customers faced difficulties navigating the company's website. Some struggled to find relevant product information, while others experienced frustration during the checkout process.
In this scenario, the initial positive NPS scores for the delivery process only scratch the surface. It becomes evident that the seemingly seamless delivery process was overshadowed by challenges in earlier stages of the customer journey.
By evaluating various touchpoints and interpreting key metrics in a holistic manner, the company gained several tangible benefits.
- Firstly, they identified specific areas of the customer journey that needed improvement, allowing for targeted enhancements to the website and pre-transaction processes.
- Secondly, the strategic shift towards a more customer-centric approach resulted in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, positively impacting the overall brand perception.
- Ultimately, by embracing a multi-touch approach, the company transformed isolated metrics into actionable insights, ensuring a truly exceptional customer experience.
How to Embrace a Multi-Touch Approach
Implementing a multi-touch approach can be challenging, but not impossible. Here are some steps that businesses can take to adopt a multi-touch feedback strategy:
Map the Customer Journey
The first step is to map the customer journey, which is the process that the customer goes through from the moment they become aware of the business, to the moment they become loyal advocates of the business.
The customer journey can be divided into different stages, such as awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. Each stage can have different touchpoints, such as a website, social media, a store, a product, a service, or a loyalty program.
The business should identify and list all the touchpoints that the customer interacts with at each stage, and the goals and outcomes that the customer expects and achieves at each touchpoint.
Gartner's data reveals that, although 30% of organizations have implemented customer journey maps, they struggle with utilizing them effectively. It means that effectively leveraging them puts you ahead of the competition.
Design the Feedback Collection Structure
The second step is to design the feedback collection, which is the method and the timing that the business uses to collect feedback from the customer at each touchpoint.
The business should choose the feedback collection method that is most suitable and convenient for the customer and the touchpoint, such as a survey, a review, a comment, or a rating. They should also prioritize clear, concise, and consistent feedback collection that doesn't disturb customers.
The integration of specialized tools is a key strategy to efficiently gather insights, enhancing the feedback process and ensuring a smooth, user-friendly experience.
Analyze and Act on the Feedback with VoC Precision
The third step in the multi-touch feedback strategy involves harnessing the capabilities of advanced Voice of Customer (VoC) tools to gain deeper insights and drive actionable improvements in the customer experience.
VoC tools empower businesses to go beyond surface-level feedback interpretation. Use these tools to aggregate, segment, and visualize feedback data, unlocking patterns, trends, and nuanced insights. Once insights are derived, VoC tools play a crucial role in the action planning process.
VoC platforms provide a structured framework for turning insights into strategic initiatives, ensuring that they are not only impactful but also aligned with the customer's needs and expectations.
They enable businesses to measure the impact and results of implemented actions accurately. Through continuous monitoring, businesses can assess the effectiveness of their initiatives and make data-driven adjustments as needed.
Offering a dynamic feedback loop, VoC platforms allow businesses to iterate on their strategies and continuously enhance the customer experience.
Pisano's Unified Approach to Multi-Touch Excellence
Pisano stands as the beacon for companies seeking a dynamic multi-touch approach to customer feedback. By consolidating SMS, Email, Mobile, Web, and Brick-and-Mortar channels into a single platform, Pisano effortlessly facilitates real-time engagement across diverse touchpoints.
What sets Pisano apart is its unparalleled flexibility. From NPS to Customer Satisfaction, from Customer Effort Score to Dynamic Analytics Events, Pisano tailors feedback collection to the unique demands of each touchpoint.
This precision allows businesses to extract targeted insights, uncovering specific details and reasons behind customer sentiments.
Pisano transforms customer journeys into a canvas for growth, empowering businesses to identify pain points and uncover growth opportunities at every step of the customer experience.
