5 Important “During the Purchase” Guest Experience Touch Points to Consider

Understanding customer touch points that take place during the purchase can help your brand understand and improve the customer experience.

The customer experience journey is filled with many customer touch points — any interactions that a customer has with your brand — that define the customer experience. If your brand isn’t mapping what the customer journey is like for the typical customer, you’re missing out on ways to enhance and improve the customer experience with your business.

“It’s impossible to improve the customer experience if you don’t know the moments that they go through to make that experience,” according to Qualtrics, a customer experience technology provider. “These moments – the touchpoints in which the customer interacts with the brand – define the experience that customers have.”

The many customer touch points along the way on the total customer experience with your brand occur primarily in three buckets:

• Before the purchase
• During the purchase
• After the purchase

“Multiple touchpoints create a journey,” says Qualtrics. “If brands are to successfully influence the customer – to buy, renew or recommend to a family, friend or coworker – then the experience in the moments that matter [must] meet their needs.

Once your customers are drawn to your products with the “before the purchase” phase, a new road of touch points begins with the “during the purchase” phase.

Here are five customer experience touch points that take place during the purchase on a customer journey and why they’re important.

1. Company representative interactions

The most direct point of contact you have with customers is your in-person interactions, says inbound marketing specialist HubSpot. Customer conversations with call center reps, salespersons and in-store employees have an “immediate impact” on the customer’s purchase decision, says HubSpot.

2. Product catalogs

Online or hard copy catalogs are an “excellent medium” for showcasing your products, says HubSpot:  “An image of the product, coupled with an enticing description, gives the customer everything they need to know before making a purchase.”

3. E-commerce

The most effective way for many businesses to get new customers and close deals is through e-commerce, says HubSpot.

“That’s because websites can be accessed globally, making it possible for an SMB in one location to provide products and services to a customer on the other side of the world,” says HubSpot. “Understanding the various touch points within e-commerce can dramatically improve the customer experience for SaaS and other online companies.”

4. Product reviews

“Product reviews are no longer a pre-purchase touch point,” says HubSpot. “Now customers have smart devices that can call up product reviews while they’re shopping in your stores.

“Additionally, some online retailers include reviews on the listing page, so you can see what other customers think without navigating away from the page.”

5. Point of sale

The point of sale is a “momentous step” in the customer journey and the last touch point a customer reaches before making a purchase, says HubSpot.

How to get started on your customer journey map

A customer journey map is a visual depiction of each interaction the typical customer has with your business on the entire customer journey. To get started on mapping out your brand’s customer journey, consider downloading HubSpot’s or another marketing or software company’s customer journey template for guidance.