Touchpoints are highly emphasized points where the company has interactions with the customer, products and services offered in the company and reactions after purchase. Narrow focus on these interactions can bring about an inaccurate picture about the satisfaction of customers (Rawson, Duncan, & Jones, 2013) . This makes the company forget the essential part, which is the complete journey from purchase to daily use of the product over time. Companies receive many calls after customers purchase products and must ensure that they deal with each call appropriately. However, when questioned later, most customers who make these calls reveal their intention was to reach out for more help on issues such as interrupted service after moving, renewal of contract services and fix technical problems.
Organizations that focus on the entire customer journey gain a lot of rewards such as increased revenue, reduced customer churn and greater employee satisfaction (Rawson, Duncan, & Jones, 2013) . Customers usually expect appropriate, relevant, meaningful and endearing interaction types that bring their experiences to life (The IDF Team, 2019) . Most companies fail in this journey, since they asses customer satisfaction based on one single interaction rather than cumulative interactions. Notably, most customers do not manage to get their problems solved with one call or one field visit.
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More touchpoints increase the complexity of issues with customers. In the case of pay TV, functional groups are expected to tailor the services supposed to be delivered to viewers. They determine the way the customers interact with the company (Rawson, Duncan, & Jones, 2013). These groups work hard to deliver the best services, but can at times fail to deliver on customers preferences. Better integration of customer journeys into operating models can bring about better insight on customer interactions. This will assist them on determining the journeys that might be capable of bringing more success, assess the success of each journey, develop cross-functional processes to improve the processes and build new cultural initiatives to sustain the initiatives.
Identifying key journeys is a paramount step in building better customer interaction through touchpoints. This step requires top-down judgment-driven evaluations and bottom-up, data driven analysis (Rawson, Duncan, & Jones, 2013) . Executive working sessions look into more challenges that come up during customer interactions with the company. It helps in identifying gaps in performance (Stringfellow, 2018) . These sessions have been very effective for companies that have implemented them in analyzing the dissatisfaction rates and targeting the high percentages of churning. Companies that aim to fix minor problems in certain journeys can use the top-down solving method while the ones looking for a complete overhaul can use the bottom-up technique, which is more detailed.
Understanding current performance is the next step after identifying the company’s key customer journeys. It involves mapping out significant steps for each journey and the way a customer is likely to behave throughout from start to finish. The company is able to identify various policies that may be counteractive to development (Stringfellow, 2018) . An example of such a policy is when a company chooses to charge customers for phone based support with the aim to force them towards self-service options. This option may not be satisfying in solving the customer’s issue and can cause discontent.
The last effort is usually redesigning the customer experience after determining which journeys require more prioritization. From a leadership perspective, the idea would be to avoid rushing into a certain remedy thinking that it may be the best solution (Rawson, Duncan, & Jones, 2013) . One would rather involve employees in the decision making process since the issues that cause the discrepancies with customers are usually found internally. Bringing cross functional groups together can allow them to interact and create better and efficient solutions. Getting employees to be more cohesive and involved can help in maximizing their speed and efficiency in interactions with customers ensuring they are satisfied with the experience throughout their journey with the company.
References
Rawson, A., Duncan, E., & Jones, C. (2013). The Truth about Customer Experience. Harvard Business Review , 1-12.
Stringfellow, A. (2018). How to Identify (and Leverage) Customer Journey Touchpoints. NGDATA.
Team, T. I. (2019). Customer Touchpoints - The Point of Interaction Between Brands , Businesses, Products and Customers. Retrieved from The Interaction Design Foundation: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/customer-touchpoints-the-point-of-interaction-between-brands-businesses-products-and-customers
