Who Owns Customer Experience? Part 3 of 4: Customer Touchpoints

In Part 1 of this Blog series, we concluded that regardless of CX ownership, EVERYONE in the organization is responsible for CX but that there are barriers to achieving organizational-wide responsibility. Among the most important barriers are lack of executive leadership and silos, both organizational and in disparate information systems. In Part 2, we began to look at the organizational silos, and communication gaps, starting in Contact Center Operations.  In Part 3, we will continue looking at silos by focusing on a very critical element of the customer journey: customer touchpoints.

The first thing we need to do is to define what a customer touchpoint is. Very simply, it is anything regarding your firm that “touches” a customer. How many of them does a firm have? The answer may surprise you. Potential touchpoints are:

• Marketing brochures
• Customer letters, mailings, invoices
• Social media presence
• Email/fax/chat/text applications
• IVR/IVA/chatbot/AI applications
• General website; portals; mobile apps
• Signage in an office, including mission statements
• Queue announcements
• Front-line Contact Center staff handling phone/digital interactions
• Walk-in staff

This blog post will address several important questions regarding customer touchpoints, including the following:

1. Does the organization have an overall customer touchpoint strategy?
2. Is that strategy aligned with the CX goals and objectives of the organization?
3. Is there consistent messaging across all customer touchpoints?
   – Why is this so important?
   – What impact does disjointed messaging have on the customer journey?
   – Why is this such a challenge?

4. What must the organization do to drive consistency and to achieve an effective customer touchpoint strategy?
5. Once that strategy is in place, how is it maintained?

Let’s move forward by answering these important questions:

1. Does the firm have an overall customer touchpoint strategy? There are two critical factors that must be examined to begin to answer this question:
   
   – Identifying all the channels the firm uses to “touch” its customers: This is the essential first step, not only for creating the strategy but also for assessing consistency across channels.
   
   – Determining the ownership of each channel: This is the second essential step. There cannot be consistency if different owners are independently creating customer messaging.

Most firms have never done this type of evaluation nor documented ownership. Frankly, it is not possible to have a cohesive customer touchpoint strategy without understanding these factors.

2. If a company DOES have a customer touchpoint strategy, which is unlikely, is that strategy aligned with the CX goals and objectives of the organization? The required alignment will depend upon who is driving the organizational CX goals and objectives, and the participation of customer touchpoint owners in decision-making. Often, we have found that this is not a cohesive process.

3. Is there consistent messaging across all customer touchpoints, and why is this so important? While it should be obvious why consistent messaging is important, you would be surprised how often we find that it is not. The failure to recognize the importance comes from a lack of understanding regarding the impact of inconsistency on CX. So, let’s answer the second part of this question by looking at the impact from a customer perspective. As a customer, have you ever:
   
   • Received a mailing that provides contact information that is incorrect?
   • Secured inconsistent responses from two different agents in the same Contact Center?
   • Heard two different Contact Center agents use different terminology about the same topic?
   • Seen different terminology used in different touchpoints (e.g., “member” versus “subscriber” or “doctor” versus “provider”)?
   • Observed different names for the same departments in different touchpoints (e.g., “Customer Relations” versus “Customer Service” versus “Customer Care”)?
   • Been transferred from department to department because the staff doesn’t have a clue where to send you?

These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. Customer horror stories that result from inconsistent messaging are endless. Let’s be honest: these experiences have a major impact on how a customer feels about the firm. Negative feelings are often readily shared on social media channels, and those posts can have a significant impact on the firm’s image.

To deal with these customer reactions, many firms are now employing technology to monitor social media channels. They are still missing the point. Monitoring is fine, but it is often reactive. They need to deal with the root cause of these customer reactions, which is a lack of enterprise-wide consistency in customer-facing messaging.

4. What must the organization do to drive consistency and to achieve an effective customer touchpoint strategy? So far, we have shown that it is important to have consistent messaging across all the channels a firm uses to touch its customers. We have also found that the two areas that serve as the foundation for all other steps are identifying all touchpoint channels and the owners of each channel. What’s next?

Here are the critical steps to achieve an effective, cohesive Customer Contact Strategy:

Step 1: Agree on Messaging: This will require securing input from all the different touchpoint owners, understanding the messaging they are using today, and agreeing on consistent themes for the messaging the firm will use in communicating with customers.

Step 2: Secure Buy-In from Senior Leadership on the Messaging: Ultimately, senior leadership defines the course of the firm, and their buy-in on the core messaging is therefore critical and essential.

Step 3: Organize a Team to Review Existing Touchpoints: Having identified all the different touchpoints prior to this point, organize a team to review them. The goal of this review is to determine what modifications need to occur to achieve consistency. Everything this team finds needs to be documented, as those findings will be incorporated into an overall plan going forward.

Step 4: Develop a Plan to Modify the Existing Touchpoints: Based on the information collected by the team that reviewed all the touchpoints, a plan must be formulated to address the findings. This plan should include at least the following elements:

1. Prioritize modifications that need to be made. Prioritization may depend upon many elements, including:
   – Severity of the customer impact
   – Timeframe required to make changes (e.g., making changes on an IVR may require significantly more time than making a change on the website)
   – Upcoming events that require immediate attention
2. Assign ownership responsibilities for:
   – Managing the plan
   – Implementing the changes to each individual touchpoint
3. Develop a process for incorporating new requirements that arise subsequent to the touchpoint review described in Step 3.
4. Create a communication plan to promote the new messaging to internal staff and to customers. Internal staff may also require training, as customer-facing staff are an important touchpoint.
5. Close out the modification initiative. This will include a mechanism for ensuring ongoing consistency and integrity across all touchpoints. This topic will be discussed in the next section.

5. Once that strategy is in place, how do you maintain it? At this point, let’s assume that the existing touchpoints have been modified, are consistent, and are now in line with the agreed-upon core messaging. Now what? A process must be put in place to ensure ongoing consistency. A commitment must be made to pursue two critical elements:

1. Ensure that all proposed new touchpoints, or changes to existing touchpoints, be incorporated into an existing business change management process.
   – Business change management staff should be able to recognize the impact of touchpoint changes on internal staff and on external customers.
   – Plans must be formulated in advance of implementation to address these impacts.
2. If a business change management process does not currently exist, consider implementing one.
3. Assign overall responsibility for the customer contact strategy to an individual or a team of individuals. Every new touchpoint or modification to an existing touchpoint must be evaluated by these individuals against the agreed-upon core messaging, always taking into account organizational CX goals and objectives.

In Part 4 of this blog series, we will wrap up by examining the organizational silos that exist outside the Contact Center. In the process, we will see the impact of communication gaps on the customer journey and, starting with executive leadership, discuss a methodology to close these gaps.

Stay tuned!