In this digital era, there are multiple ways for a customer to interact with your organization. Despite the digital transformation, only 6% of businesses have adopted an omnichannel approach.
Even without a full omnichannel strategy, there are many touchpoints where customers interact, and these can affect everything from brand awareness to customer retention.
Knowing how well your touchpoints perform can also significantly affect customer satisfaction.
Regular audits - a customer experience touchpoint analysis - let you see what touchpoints are working well and which need improving.
Just what is a customer experience touchpoint analysis? How do you do an effective one, and how can it help your metrics?
In this article:
- Why Carry Out a Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis?
- Identify and Categorize Your Existing Touchpoints
- How to Do a Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis?
- Establish a baseline
- Analyze which touchpoints drive values
- Map the customer journey
- Segment your touchpoints
- List all your touchpoints
- Analyze
- Make an improvement plan
- Measure changes
- And repeat
What is a Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis?
Source: Superoffice
A customer experience touchpoint analysis is an audit of every interaction point customers have with your business.
It involves evaluating their effectiveness and understanding their impact on the customer journey and customer satisfaction. It should identify the strengths and weaknesses of those touchpoints to improve the overall customer journey.
What are the touchpoints you should be looking at? That depends on what touchpoints you use, but the simple answer is all of them. Every method customers use to connect or interact with you should be fully evaluated. These can include:
- Emails.
- Phone calls.
- Website visits.
- Live chat.
- Social media platforms.
Why Carry Out a Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis?
Source: Touchpoint
Understanding customer journeys and behavior is essential for your business. It can ensure their journey is as painless as possible and, when it is good, lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
By understanding what customers experience, you can make improvements or add new features.
Just as you may already be using web analytics tools to track performance in other areas of your business, there are also tools that can help with your touchpoint analysis.
Note that this analysis is not a one-off exercise; you should do it regularly, especially if an initial run identified points and you are looking to improve performance.
Identify and Categorize Your Existing Touchpoints
Source: Markets and Markets
Not all touchpoints are created equal, and categorizing your touchpoints and understanding their roles is the first step in any analysis. Direct contact with the customer has two initial levels.
- Feelings. When a customer first engages with you through social media posts or your website, it can trigger feelings such as curiosity. They want to learn more about you and decide whether to take the relationship further.
- Experience. As the customer interacts with you, their customer journey begins, and an initial positive experience can shape their attitude towards your brand.
You also need to consider what each touchpoint adds to the customer journey.
- Influencing touchpoints. These are touchpoints where the customer is searching for and gathering information. For example, they may look at all the information you have about your business SMS service, in blogs, on your website, or even call and ask questions.
- Pre-purchase touchpoints. Customers are now considering a purchase and may be preparing to make that decision. They may investigate whether any additional costs apply, such as shipping.
- Purchase touchpoints. The customer has made a purchase decision. This may be via your website or directly by phone.
- Post-purchase touchpoints. Once customers receive their product or service, they may contact you via customer service for issues or tech support for assistance or advice.
How to Do a Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis?
Source: Kineticmc
Customer experience and customer behavior both evolve over time. This is why you should be doing touchpoint analyses regularly.
Even when an analysis shows that everything is going well, a year later, things might be very different. With changing needs and expectations come the need for businesses to respond.
One essential part of a touchpoint analysis is that you have to view your business - and the various touchpoints you have - through the eyes of your customers.
They are the experts on their own journeys and, through feedback, can help you better understand them.
1. Establish a baseline
As with any type of analysis, you need some idea of what you are aiming for. Map out your touchpoints and review any existing customer insights.
You can also gather more pre-analysis data through surveys and interviews. Previous customer feedback can highlight areas of concern and touchpoints that work well.
When establishing a baseline, you need to consider not only customer needs and expectations but also the extent to which each interaction contributes to your brand’s value.
2. Analyze which touchpoints drive values
Which touchpoints matter most to your customers (and to you)? You need to look at this from two perspectives.
Firstly, those with high volumes of customer interactions. The second perspective is on touchpoints that drive emotions and values, such as your website and customer service channels.
If those touchpoints are underperforming, it can negatively affect how customers perceive your brand.
By identifying value drivers, you can quickly identify where to improve the customer experience.
You also need to identify any differences between customer segments. One demographic group may prefer interacting with AI customer service, while another prefers human support.
Consider what your customers value and which experiences strengthen your relationship with them.
3. Map the customer journey
Source: Zapier
To begin your analysis properly, you need to map the customer journey.
How does Mr. Smith go from being a potential customer to a retained one? How did they become aware of your brand and what you offer, and at what point - and how - did they enter your marketing funnel and graduate to your sales funnel?
As part of the customer journey mapping process, you should also identify why customers become loyal and why they move on to become brand ambassadors or advocates.
A comprehensive customer journey map can help you identify which touchpoints matter most to your customers and which receive the highest customer volume.
4. Segment your touchpoints
Of course, people interact with your business for different reasons. By segmenting your touchpoints, you can better understand their effectiveness and adjust as needed.
It can also help you understand how different channels work for those segments. Your most-used touchpoints will likely be for the following areas of your business.
- Marketing.
- Sales.
- Customer service.
- Tech support.
- Accounts.
5. List all your touchpoints
You now have a list of the different segments your touchpoints fall into. Now, you need to expand that list to identify all the individual touchpoints for each segment.
For example, a customer contacting your accounts department may have only phone or email, while contacting your customer service teams may offer additional options, such as a contact form or live chat on your website.
The touchpoints will span both online and offline channels, so your list will be expansive yet inclusive.
Offline channels can include marketing flyers, product catalogs, trade fairs, traditional advertising, conferences, and events (including virtual events).
6. Analyze
By this stage, you should have a comprehensive list of every touchpoint your customers experience. You can begin the customer experience touchpoint analysis by reviewing all your data.
As mentioned, you could use a specialist tool or analyze it in different ways. For example, you could analyze your website’s performance using one of the Google Analytics alternatives.
You may also group the touchpoints by purpose (e.g., influencing, post-purchase).
In your analysis, you are examining how each touchpoint has affected the customer journey and the emotions it has provoked. Did that customer touchpoint frustrate them or make things smoother? Did the experience meet their expectations or disappoint them?
Customers’ reactions to your touchpoints will inform your improvement plan.
7. Make an improvement plan
Source: MDPI
Now that you have completed the analysis, you can see which of your touchpoints are performing well and which are not meeting customer expectations.
At this point, you should be able to see not only which touchpoints are underperforming but also why they are not meeting expectations.
For example, your analysis shows that your tech support is not at the level you’d expect. You can drill down into the data, and customer feedback in particular, to see why this is the case.
Customers may expect more contact options than are currently available, and expanding them can be an integral part of your plan.
Doing so will likely require collaboration across your organization and support from cross-functional teams, such as marketing and sales. Without this support and collaboration, any improvement plans will most likely fail.
Any plan you make should prioritize the most important touchpoints, as you may not be able to improve everything at once.
However, by making swift changes across key areas, you demonstrate your capacity for change and your commitment to your customers and their feedback.
To do so, ask yourself some of the following questions:
- Which touchpoints that need improved experience the highest volumes of customers?
- What are the needs of your most profitable segments?
- Are there any improvements you can make that will have a significant impact in the short term? (and in the long term).
- Which stakeholders should be involved in any improvement process?
8. Measure changes
It’s not enough to make any needed changes and hope for the best. You need to assess whether those changes have had the desired positive effects.
There are many metrics for measuring customer experience and satisfaction.
You should have a snapshot of those metrics before your changes, and you can take another at various times after your changes have been implemented.
You can see changes as they happen by monitoring metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Some metrics and KPIs you should be looking at include:
- Retention rates (customer loyalty).
- Customer lifetime value (CLV).
- Sales and profitability rates.
- Bounce rates.
- Customer advocacy.
9. And repeat
Given that some effects may be long-term, you should be prepared to repeat the customer experience touchpoint analysis.
However, this is an opportunity to apply some of the segmentation tactics you may have used earlier. For example, your overall analysis showed that customer service touchpoints were the biggest concern.
You may have implemented changes to rectify any issues and seen some improvement. At some point, you could conduct another analysis of all the points and channels involved in your customer service.
The Takeaway
Source: Pixabay
Your customers are your lifeblood. They buy your products or services, and if you do things right, they will remain loyal to your brand and may even become brand ambassadors.
One major area to focus on is the touchpoints where customers engage with you and your brand.
A customer experience touchpoint analysis can show how these touchpoints are performing and whether any are hurting the customer journey and their experience.
By identifying underperforming areas and making necessary changes, you can improve key metrics such as CLV and customer retention.
FAQ: Customer Experience Touchpoint Analysis
1. What is a customer experience touchpoint analysis?
A customer experience touchpoint analysis is a structured review of every interaction a customer has with your brand—before, during, and after a purchase. It helps identify which touchpoints improve satisfaction and which ones create friction or negatively impact the customer journey.
2. Why is touchpoint analysis important for businesses?
Touchpoint analysis helps businesses understand how customers actually experience their brand. By identifying weak or underperforming interactions, companies can improve customer satisfaction, increase retention, boost lifetime value, and create more consistent experiences across channels.
3. How often should you perform a customer touchpoint analysis?
Touchpoint analyses should be performed regularly, typically every 6–12 months, or after major changes such as a website redesign, new product launch, or customer support overhaul. Customer expectations evolve, so ongoing analysis helps you stay aligned with their needs.
4. What data is needed to conduct a touchpoint analysis?
Common data sources include customer surveys, support tickets, website analytics, conversion data, customer interviews, reviews, and CRM insights. Combining quantitative data (metrics) with qualitative feedback (customer sentiment) provides the most accurate picture.
5. What are common mistakes to avoid in touchpoint analysis?
Common mistakes include focusing solely on digital touchpoints, ignoring emotional responses, analyzing touchpoints in isolation rather than as part of a journey, and failing to act on findings. The goal isn’t just insight—it’s continuous improvement.
Author Bio
Mick Essex has been the Head of Growth + Partnerships at POWR for just over 2 years. POWR makes no-code apps and plugins for e-commerce shop owners globally. They have provided marketing and conversion tools on Shopify for 10 years and 5 years on Ecwid.
Mick's career spans two decades, primarily in growth marketing in healthcare, with stints in broadcast television, advertising, and copy editing.
Mick attended the College of Journalism at the University of Louisiana - Monroe. His wife, Elizabeth; son, Gavin; and pup, Jolene, call Lafayette, Louisiana, home.