Touchstones and Touchpoints
Operating culture is the crucible of brand interactions. Here, the abstract aspirations of culture and strategy hinge on the effectiveness of people and processes to produce brand-exemplifying experiences across the organization’s many touchpoints. As much as operating culture is oriented to productive activities, it also maintains responsibility for many of the experiences that define the success of the reputational brand.
The recent proliferation of customer experience roles is a promising development for the reputational brand and its stewards. Ostensibly, customer-experience practitioners operate according to defined, or at least well-understood, satisfaction criteria, the successful performance against which accrues to the reputational brand.
Still, the reputational brand must also consider a broader group of stakeholders, each of which is worthy of similar experiential attentiveness. For example, the employee experience is crucial to maintaining a cohesive and coalescent culture. The same experiential dynamic is true for suppliers, investors, communities, and so on according to the specific needs and interests of each party.
As a result, customer experience represents only one (though likely the most important) of many stakeholder-specific experiences that eventually roll up to the more comprehensive set of reputational brand experiences.
At the same time, the term “brand experience” generalizes something that should be highly distinctive. We talk about living up to our brand promise, yet too often we haven’t defined what that means at critical touchpoints across the organization.
It’s one thing to say that we have performed according to vague parameters of brand expectations, but it’s another thing to say we have met our brand promise. The former means we at least achieved minimum standards; the latter means we successfully represented our organizational commitments. The difference between the two is a matter of knowing the touchstones of critical touchpoints and enabling people and operations to execute ideal touchpoint experiences.
While it’s true that every organizational interaction is a single touchpoint, and uncountable numbers of touchpoints occur every day internally and externally, not every touchpoint deserves equal scrutiny. The vast majority of these touchpoints are fleeting — a quick phone call; an email status check; a drop-in visit, etc.
In addition, most touchpoint experiences cannot be programmed as a routine or automated process, especially when human autonomy enters the picture. How then can we ever hope to create and consistently deliver any ideal touchpoint experience? The answer is more about ambition than perfection.
The first necessary requirement to produce ideal touchpoint experiences is an organizational will to pursue them with alacrity. The best champion of the effort is the one with the most at stake, and that’s typically the COO or someone with similar, expansive operational oversight. After that, the process follows a formula:
Prioritize which touchpoints deserve attention and rank them according to urgency, value opportunity, effort required, and stakeholder echelon. This phase of the evaluation should give precedence to those touchpoints that can incorporate automation, technology, and other non-human systemizations.
For the selected touchpoints, define the criteria for best-in-class (i.e., touchstone) experiences. The more quantifiable the better. And it should include both stakeholder and organizational perspectives. Brand stewards and “experience” roles (especially customer and employee) should be deeply engaged in this phase.
Identify process owners and affected functions, i.e., any part of the organization that plays a part in the current touchpoint experience.
Map the organizational path of the current touchpoint — which roles, functions, processes, hand-offs are involved, what role do they play, and what’s their impact on the overall experience. This is usually best performed as a retrograde analysis beginning at the touchpoint itself.
Identify what actions, processes, procedures, technologies, and expertise are needed in the design and implementation of the future ideal touchpoint experience. Place emphasis on what can be prescribed as an SOP, required as a defined performance standard, or otherwise redesigned as an automated process.
Determine how to measure the results of the new touchpoint experience. Again, quantifiable metrics are superior to subjective metrics.
Redesign the touchpoint experience against the best-in-class (touchstone) ideal within the practical limitations of technology, operational constraints, resources, and human imperfection.
Set a realistic, yet aggressive deadline against other organizational priorities. Better yet, elevate improved touchpoint experiences to an organizational priority.
Again, achieving an ideal touchpoint experience for every conceivable organizational interaction is infeasible. And not all interactions merit reputational consternation. But for those touchpoints that truly weigh on brand reputation, it’s worth the organizational effort to strengthen the magnetism of those moments.