FIGURE 2.8 This simple framework organizes touchpoints by channel.
As with any framework, you will need to customize your touchpoint for your organization. If you are creating your framework in advance or in the absence of a well-defined customer journey, you will need to create an educated hypothesis of your channels and stages. See Chapter 1, “Understanding Channels,” for guidance on identifying your channels. As for your touchpoints, try one or more of the following:
• Bring together stakeholders that own various touchpoints in different channels. Collaborate with them to draft the journey stages that span all channels. (See the workshop agenda and approach following this chapter).
• Leverage any existing research you have on your customers, as well as the knowledge of your colleagues.
• Review business processes that customers must go through. Unfortunately, these processes may currently dictate where a stage begins or ends.
• Take your own journey. See how your experience breaks down into steps.
• Interview one to two customers to get a feel for their journey and its stages.
• Play with how many stages to divide the journey into. There is no magic number.
• Name your stages from the customer’s perspective, not business or marketing language. Instead of “creating awareness” and “consideration,” go with “researching and learning” and “exploring my options.”
Identifying Your Touchpoints
After you select one (or both) of the above frameworks to try, it’s time to get to work identifying all your touchpoints. This should occur in iterations. You can start by directly exploring each channel yourself. You can bring channel partners together to collaboratively build out a current-state touchpoint inventory (see the workshop example following this chapter). You will also discover more about your touchpoints (and even undiscovered touchpoints) when you conduct your customer research (see Chapter 5).
A QUICK-AND-DIRTY TOUCHPOINT INVENTORY
When Rail Europe wanted to better align its customer experience cohesively across channels, one of the starting points was identifying all the different touchpoints that existed where there was a specific need at a given time and place. We had everyone represented in the same room: marketing, digital, operations, call center, and more. Each stakeholder had a partial snapshot, but not a full view, one that reviewed interdependencies that they hadn’t considered.
When we completed a draft of the touchpoint inventory shown in Figure 2.9, each stakeholder was surprised just how many moments there were and how each moment was an opportunity to deliver on the value proposition of the service. We knew what stages existed in the journey, but across the organization, we realized no one had an exhaustive picture of just where people were interacting with the brand. The touchpoint inventory wasn’t a major endeavor, but it was an important one in getting everyone started with a clear picture of where the opportunity spaces were going to be as we later mapped out what people were experiencing on the rail travel journey.
COURTESY OF ADAPTIVE PATH
FIGURE 2.9 Rail Europe touchpoint inventory.
Let’s use our CVS Pharmacy at Target example again to look at how we might unpack a customer journey and its touchpoints by channel. This case study is interesting given the partnership between the companies (Target outsourced its pharmacy department to CVS following years of a well-regarded in-house approach).
To unpack each channel, you need to choose a method that works best for each channel’s medium while also identifying the stage or stages that each touchpoint supports. We’ll focus on identifying touchpoints for now. In the next section, we’ll give you some guidance on how to catalog your touchpoints as you find them.
Target Website and CVS Website
Publically accessible websites and mobile applications are often the easiest channels to begin your discovery. You can simply click or tap your way through each screen and state, capturing your touchpoints along the way. Digital touchpoints are often, but not always, equivalent to product features, and can even be articulated as user stories common in an agile development environment.
For example, starting at Target.com, you quickly realize that you must navigate from the Target website to CVS.com (see Figure 2.10). You do so via a bridge touchpoint. (An improvement would be an additional wayfinding touchpoint that communicates that you are still “at Target,” not a generic CVS.) Some of the CVS Pharmacy website touchpoints include: signing in, finding a pharmacy, transferring a prescription, printing prescriptions, and managing automatic prescriptions.
FIGURE 2.10 A bridge touchpoint (“go to CVS Pharmacy”) connects the customer to a site that provides a full set of online services.
In addition to exploring these online channels organically, you may want to try flowing through them by simulating a common user scenario or task. For example, you could search on Google for “get a flu shot at Target” and see what touchpoints begin to appear in your path.
CVS Mobile App
Like many brands, Target has created mobile applications designed to support customers shopping the entire store or carrying out tasks specific to its different departments. For the pharmacy, you must download the CVS pharmacy app. To avoid any confusion, we call this channel “CVS mobile app” while also including “Target mobile app” to inventory the bridge touchpoint. (As with Target.com, the main Target mobile app just simply points you to CVS.)
It’s easy to click through and see that many of the same touchpoints that are available on the website exist on mobile as well. As you click through, you will find that some touchpoints offer the same types of interactions as the website but others work differently based on the affordances of that channel. Refilling a prescription, for example, can be done by using your mobile’s camera to take a picture of the label or by typing in the Rx number, similar to the website (see Figure 2.11).
FIGURE 2.11 Refilling a prescription via mobile.
When doing your inventory, this is something specifically to look out for: How do touchpoints intended to meet the same customer need differ by channel? Doing so not only helps you understand if there are opportunities to meet needs