Customer touchpoints in retail: Impress and engage

The pandemic has affected the way people shop. Also, 75% of the 33,000 customers mentioned that they changed the brands they shop due to Covid. This pandemic has hit customer loyalty because more and more people moved to online shopping and discovered various other brands. 

2022 doesn’t seem to come with many improvements for the retail industry. It seems that the supply chain problems are aggravated, stocks are low, and prices tend to increase. With all of these, how can you make sure that your customers don’t move on to the competition? By improving their experience at every touchpoint. 

Customer touchpoints in retail

Before we dig deeper into the subject, let’s start with the basics. Customer touchpoints are the interactions between the customer and your brand. Anytime a customer interacts with your brand, no matter the channel, that is a touchpoint. From a Facebook ad to the cashier, there is a long way, filled with touchpoints. 

Each one of these touchpoints is extremely important. The experience customers have in every touchpoint impacts their buying decisions. However, without knowing which are the touchpoints of your customers, you can’t improve the experience your customers are having. Let’s see how you can identify these touchpoints. 

How to identify the touchpoints

If you want to map out all of the touchpoints to make sure that you’re not missing out on some of the interactions your customers are having with your brand, you should divide the customers into three categories: 

• Before the purchase
• During purchase
• After purchase

To make it easier, here’s a common example of how you can divide the channels and places people come into contact with your brand:

After you identified the main channels and people involved, it’s easier for you to observe the various interactions customers have with your brand. For instance, social media means every post you made on every channel + the posts retailers make that include your products. 

Afraid you’re missing some touchpoints? 

Try putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. Ask yourself where you might interact with a brand similar to yours. This is the easiest way to figure out if your omitted a touchpoint or two. 

Have a clear view of your touchpoints? Let’s see how you can improve the experience of your shoppers at every touchpoint. 

Impress customers at every touchpoint

Since every brand is different, we will talk about 3 of the most common touchpoints. 

1. On the website

Considering that 81% of customers do their research online, before buying a product, you should spruce up your presentation website. Even if you don’t sell your products directly on the website or if you sell exclusively in-store, this doesn’t mean that you should invest in a website. 

What can you do? 

• Make sure to share important information about your products. Include information about nutritional value, any allergens, the size and type of packaging of your products. 
• Don’t forget to include storytelling in your strategy. Try to include stories about the products and the brand to better connect with your customers. 
• Think about the functionality of your website. Even if people aren’t making a purchase that doesn’t mean that they should leave your website frustrated. Check and optimize the loading speed of your website. 

2. On social media

Social media is one of the most important channels nowadays. If you are not present on 2-3 social media channels you are losing a large number of your shoppers. Why? People spend around 142 minutes on social media daily. Shoppers search for products on social media and they want to connect digitally with brands.

What can you do?

• Make sure that there are daily posts on your social media channels. For Twitter, you can aim for up to 5 tweets per day, while on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram you can post 1-2 posts per day. 
• Be responsive! Shoppers might want to receive information about products directly on social media. Make sure that you hire a community manager who is in charge of engaging with followers. Responding to comments and reviews is also important for shoppers. 

3. In-store

Last but not least, the final touchpoint: the physical store. This is the most important touchpoint. However, you can only do so much as a brand in a big retail store. People still prefer to shop in-store, especially when it comes to groceries. 

What can you do?

• Be innovative! Use a robotic POP display if you want to attract the attention of shoppers and engage with them directly at the point of sale. Tokinomo helps you increase sales by 200% without price discounts.

• Placement is really important in-store. Make sure that your products are placed on middle shelves and that they are as visible as possible. You can also place your products on end caps or dump bins if you want to attract attention. 
• Don’t focus on promotions and discounts. This approach can affect the image of your brand and customers might perceive your brand as “cheap”. 

These are just a few tips and tricks that can help you attract the attention of shoppers and impress them at every customer touchpoint. Even if your shoppers don’t have the possibility to purchase your products on social media or on a website, that doesn’t mean that you should neglect these channels and touchpoints.