Touch points bring the customer experience to life.

1. Touch points
•Touch points bring
the customer
experience to life.
• a touchpoint being any interaction point between the
customer and your brand.
• Being creative with how you think about the touchpoints
along the customer journey can yield surprising benefits.

4. Touchpoints four general categories:
1. Products: Using the term
“product” loosely here, this
includes the hardware, software,
and services themselves.
2. Interactions: Two-way interactions
that can be in-person (such as in a
store), on the phone, or virtual
(web sites, blogs, social network
and user forum presences, and so
on).

5. 3. Messages: One-way communications that
include brand, collateral, manuals,
advertising, packaging, and the like.
4. Settings: Anywhere that the product is
seen or used: a retail store, a friend’s house,
TV product placement, events, or shows.

7. • Look at each touchpoint and ask yourself:
• What specific things are we doing at each touchpoint?
• Are the touchpoints addressing customers’ motivations, and
answering their questions or allaying concerns? Are they working for
your target customers, and for novices and experts alike?
• Are the touchpoints addressing your customers’
unmet/underlying/latent needs? Are there needs going unstated
that neither you nor competitors are solving?
• Are all the touchpoints speaking with the same tone, the same
message, even the same words? Is your brand being communicated
effectively and clearly?
• Are there hiccups in the flow from one stage to the next that may
cause potential customers to drop off, or cause dissatisfaction for
current customers (and perhaps costly product returns or help-line
calls)?
• Are the touchpoints differentiating you from competitors and
helping retain the customer?

8. •Every touchpoint plays a role in
reinforcing the brand’s positioning
and overall perception. Important
touchpoints that are majorly
mishandled can send customers
fleeing and result in damaging,
unfavorable word of mouth.

9. Apple’s touchpoints
1) A Clean, Easy to Navigate Website
• The website is clean, crisply designed, easy to navigate, and
easy to find and learn about new offerings, set up
appointments, and locate stores.
2) Packaging
• There is something magical about opening a new Apple
product. The packaging radiates quality and design. It can
also be clever, as with the plastic shopping bags with cords
that can be used as a backpack. The original iPod package
captured the wonderful colorful, animated visual and feel of
the TV ads. Computer packages with carry handles serve as
advertising billboards when customers leave the store. The
way the boxes open and the products are laid out inside also
conveys specialness.

10. 3) Demo Units in Store
• The many demo units in each store make it extremely easy to
try/sample the devices. I’ve always felt that if a product is
truly superior, sampling is the single most effective marketing
tactic. Employees at each store whose job it is to explain the
products, support the sampling strategy.
4) The Number of Employees, Attitudes and Training of
Employees in Stores Apple doesn’t skimp on employees in their
stores. There are plenty there to insure customers don’t have
long waits to get information. The criteria for hiring and the
training methods are unusual because Apple employees are
collectively cooler, hipper, smarter, more patient, collaborative
and more problem/solution oriented than I’ve seen in any other
retail establishment.

11. 5) The Cleanliness of the Stores, No Clutter, and Consistency of
Design
• The consistent cleanliness of the stores, the cheerful lighting,
and uniform building materials and design, all contribute a
familiar and positive vibe. Because the mandate is to make
the stores clutter free, bags and receipt printers are placed
underneath the surface of the display tables and out of sight.
6) Store Locations
• I’ve been in Apple Stores in Hong Kong, Barcelona, Sydney, San
Francisco, Wellington, Florida and Beijing. They’re all in
locations that are easy to find and in areas of each city their
relatively well-educated target would want to be.

12. 7) The Genius Bar
• The Genius Bar has come to my rescue many times, including
at the crack of dawn at the 24-hour 59th Street and 5th Avenue
Store in Manhattan on two time-critical occasions. Having a
human being to speak with and quickly solve paralyzing
problems makes device owners grateful and fans for life.
8) One to One
• Customers that buy new computers are eligible to purchase
“One to One” tutorials for two consecutive, one-year periods
following the purchase. The One to One program enables
customers to schedule 1-hour, ½ hour, or open training
sessions with specialists in each of the Apple software areas
(iPhoto, Pages, Keynote, etc.). The trainers are extraordinarily
patient and know how to help customers learn to become
self-sufficient at using the hardware and software.

13. 9) Acknowledgement of Appointments
• After registering for an appointment at the Apple store,
customers are sent a confirming email. It’s helpful and
decreases the likelihood of “no shows”.
10) Staff Collaboration
• When assisted at the Genius Bar or One to One, if the Apple
employee isn’t sure the answer, they collaborate with other
employees to find a solution. This collaboration
communicates that there’s a task force at hand to solve
customers’ problems.
11) Short Wait Times to Check Out
• Because employees who provide customers with devices and
other items for sale have a register in their hands on their
mobile devices, checkout wait times are minimal, making
purchases more seamless and pleasant.

14. • 12) Personal Set-Up
• Several years ago Apple reorganized their stores to provide an
area called “Personal Set-Up”. The area is devoted to making
sure people who just purchased a device leave the store
knowing how to use it. The practice makes customers even
happier and more excited about their new purchases and
reduces customer service expenses later on.
• 13) In-Store Classes Apple stores offer regularly scheduled
classes that explain the basics of using the devices and the
most useful features of each major software type. Learning
how to do more with their hardware and software increases
users’ appreciation of how wonderfully useful and multi-
faceted the products are.

15. 14) Guest Speakers and In-Store Events
• Guest speakers and in-store events, such as director and actor
appearances in the New York Soho Store during the Tribecca
Film Festival, increase traffic into the store, and increase the
likelihood visitors might make an extra purchase. On an
emotional level, visitors feel Apple is helping them learn new
things, entertaining them, and empowering them to be more
knowledgeable in different ways.
15) Rebate Receipt Acknowledgement
• Apple periodically has rebate offers and unlike with any other
rebate I’ve ever sent in, Apple sends a note saying they
received it and it’s being processed. This provides peace of
mind because you know they’re on top of it.

16. 16) iBooks Author Software
• I wrote my book, Catalyzing Innovation, using Apple’s iBooks
Author Software. I consider myself fairly tech phobic, yet even
I found it relatively easy to use. If it hadn’t been for iBooks
Author, I may never have written the book. The page layouts
looked great, it was easy to insert and size over 500 images,
and seeing it all come together in finished form as I wrote,
was extremely gratifying and kept me going.
17) iBooks Author Phone Support
• iBooks Author has GREAT phone support. The people are
knowledgeable and care about helping you get your project
done. I couldn’t have published the book without them. So
far, from what I’ve been able to determine, it appears neither
Amazon nor Barnes & Noble have any comparable, human
support for eBook publishers.

17. • 18) When You Call The iBooks Author Support Line, Apple
First Gets Your Phone Number & Apple ID
• This avoids the aggravating, time-wasting experience that
frequently occurs when you explain a problem to a call center,
only to be disconnected when placed on hold, and then having
to start all over again with someone else. If disconnected,
Apple will call you back!
• 19) Software Development Kits
• In Apple’s early years, created all the hardware and software
for all their products. Now, their relatively easy to use
Software Development Kits (SDK’s), have resulted in over
1,000,000 apps being developed, subject to Apple’s quality
control approval. This enables app developers to make money
on their apps globally if they sell them, or to at least have a
place to distribute the apps if giving them away free. The
tremendous variety of helpful and entertaining apps also
make Apple’s devices much more useful and a valued part of
people’s lives.

18. 20) Questionnaires on Satisfaction
• After experiencing Apple customer service, I am often sent a
satisfaction survey. To me it’s an indication Apple wants to
continuously improve every aspect of the customer
experience. It also makes it very easy to provide them
hopefully useful feedback.

19. • The lesson of all of this is that for firms to win the loyalty
and devotion of their customers, they need to
experience their brands as their consumers do to
determine all the ways they can make the product or
service experience better, more pleasant, more human,
and more productive. Each brand should develop a
detailed customer touchpoint or journey map with all the
stops along the way before, during, and after
purchase. They should think of ways to differentiate
beyond the obvious to surprise and delight
customers. Maximizing touchpoints doesn’t have to be
more costly. In some cases it can save money in
customer service and advertising due to more favorable
word of mouth. It just might have the highest return on
investment of any marketing aspect!