Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Anirudh Dhebar
Professor of Marketing
Marketing Division
Malloy 219, Babson College
Babson Park, MA 02457
E-mail: dhebar@babson.edu
Telephone: +1 781 239 5597
Fax: +1 781 239 5020

April 13, 2012

Copyright Anirudh Dhebar 2012.

This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced
without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of the working paper are available from the author.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2035839

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Abstract
Every business enterprise touches and is touched by customers in different ways at
different touchpoints points of human, product, service, communication, spatial, and/or
electronic interaction collectively constituting the interface between an enterprise and its
customers. Like any good architect conceiving of and giving shape to a building or a space,
the enterprise must conceive, design, implement, and manage these touchpoints with the
central goal of a compelling customer experience at all touchpoint over the course of the
entire relationship cycle.
This paper addresses this central challenge in three stages. First, it makes the case for
a holistic approach to the totality of touchpoints across all parts of the enterprise and all
stages of the customer relationship cycle. Next, it offers a methodology for drawing up
customer touchpoint blueprints. Finally, it suggests five critical requirements for compelling
touchpoint architecture.

Keywords: Customer relationship management, customer experience cycle, customer

touchpoints, customer service, customer-centric organization.

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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2035839

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Some time ago, I was asked by an executive from a leading information-storage-andmanagement company to facilitate a workshop on the design of customer touchpoints. Given
high-technology enterprises reputation notoriety? for focusing more on technology and
product architecture than on the architecture of the customer-company interface, I welcomed
the opportunity. This paper is a result of my research and learning leading up to, during, and
following the workshop.
The paper posits three stages in developing compelling customer touchpoint
architecture:
1. Adopting a holistic approach to the full spectrum of customer touchpoints modes
spanning across all stages of the customer experience cycle.
2. Developing blueprints of desired touchpoint configurations.
3. Making sure the customer touchpoint experience is compelling.

CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS THE NEED FOR A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Working on this manuscript, I Googled the phrase customer touchpoints and, on
April 7, 2012, came up with nearly half a million references to the term. Search page after
search page, almost all the references could be traced to web sites and postings from
marketing and brand consultants. Clearly, customer touchpoints was a rich consulting vein.
But what are customer touchpoints? They are points of human, product, service,
communication, spatial, and electronic interaction collectively constituting the interface
between an enterprise and its customers over the course of the customers experience cycle.
Three elements of the definition merit special emphasis:
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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

While the human interface is an obvious touchpoint, so, too, are product, service, and
space. Of these, space, with its profound connotation of experience and given the
emphasis here on architecture, is worthy of special attention. While in hindsight it is
obvious, I first became interested in the link between place, space, and experience
now almost two decades ago when reading the book The Experience of Place (Hiss,
1990).

Given the relentless push for an interconnected online world, the proliferation of
mobile devices, new media, and digital and social marketing, electronic exchanges
between an enterprise and its customers are increasingly important touchpoints.

The phrase customers experience cycle is meant to draw attention to an immediate

link between touchpoints and the customers experiences at the touchpoints. It is this
experience that must be compelling.
The above discussion suggests a good starting point for customer touchpoint design:

any systematic consideration of the touchpoint architecture must be comprehensive indeed,

holistic in nature.
I prefer the descriptor holistic to the word comprehensive for one simple reason: as
customers, our overall experience interacting with any enterprise is never fully captured by
the simple summation of our separate experiences at different touchpoints whatever be their
mode or their timing. When it comes to customer touchpoint experience, across all different
touchpoint modes as well as across all different touchpoint occurrences, the whole is
profoundly more and different than the sum of the parts.
Take the case of mobile phone services. Like many readers, my experience cycle with
my mobile operator has involved multiple human, physical, service, communication, spatial,

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

and electronic touchpoint modes over many years As I reflect on my experience, I cannot
but reach one conclusion: While my experience at any one touchpoint at any specific period
of time may have been no more than mildly irritating, my overall experience can be
summarized in one word: horrendous. Seen holistically, I would judge my mobile operators
customer touchpoint architecture and its rendition and execution in terms of my experience
anything but compelling.
Two factors contributed to my anything-but-compelling holistic assessment:
1. Drip, drip, drip, Chinese water torture style, my overall experience over the course of the
entire experience cycle to date is qualitatively more irritating than the quantitative sum of
the individual irritating parts. Put differently, my customer-touchpoint-architecture
assessment tool did not just keep an additive tally of individual touchpoint experience
trespasses. Much to my mobile operators disfavor, it nonlinearly and multidimensionally upped the experiential impact.
2. Even more damaging was the role of inter-touchpoint-mode (intermodal) and intertouchpoint-occurrence (intertemporal) interdependencies. These are interdependencies
in terms of

expectations (after each touchpoint experience, I was updating my expectations for

the next touchpoint experience);

operations (my actions at each touchpoint freed or constrained me in terms of my

interactions at the next touchpoint); and

functionality

(in

terms

of

my

mobile

telecommunications needs).

operators

ability

to

meet

my

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

When it came to my overall experience, everything was connected to and with everything
else, and the whole was the result of the interdependence among the parts.
The above two factors profoundly impact the design of customer touchpoints.
Without a sense of the whole being more than the sum of its parts and the explicit recognition
of interdependencies, an enterprises touchpoint architecture will very much resemble
buildings whose floors, rooms, and architectural elements are incrementally added. Each
addition may make parochial sense and be locally optimal, but, overall, for residents, visitors,
and at-a-distance viewers alike, the experience would not be compelling. For customers, so
too will be an enterprise without a holistic approach to the design, implementation, and
management of customer touchpoint architecture.

DRAWING UP CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINT BLUEPRINTS

The customer touchpoint workshop alluded to at the beginning of this manuscript was
limited to the pre-purchase phase of the customer experience cycle. A preparatory exercise
for the participants was to identify a specific customer and sketch the full sequence of
potential touchpoints from the first contact between the enterprise and the customer to the
stage just before purchase. Later, when we convened for the workshop, it became clear there
were three generic stages in the pre-purchase phase: problem awareness, identification, and
definition, problem analysis and solution definition, and options identification, analysis,
and solution selection. Add to these six purchase-to-disposal stages purchase, delivery,
use, supplements, maintenance, and disposal (Kim & Mauborgne (2000, p. 131),
and we have a 9-stage customer experience cycle. The nine stages are more suggestive than
definitive. Depending on the context in terms of, say, customer segments, products and/or

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

services, industries, and market structures the actual number of stages may be different than
nine. The exact nature of the stages, too, may be different.
The customer experience cycle is one part of the customer touchpoint blueprint
exercise; the other part is the determination of the desired touchpoint configuration. This
configuration and understanding the relevant interdependencies can be arrived at through a
3-step process.

Customer Touchpoint Blueprint, Step #1: Customer Perspective

In the first step, we take the customers perspective and capture the following four
pieces of information:
1. From the customer side, who and/or what (especially if electronic) will be interacting
with the supplying enterprise for any given stage in the customer experience cycle?
2. What is the customers preferred touchpoint for each stage: human, product, service,
communication, electronic exchange, space, or any combination of these?
3. What is (are) the customers functionality need(s) for each preferred touchpoint?
4. What are the customers expectational, operational, and functional interdependencies
across different touchpoint modes at different experience stages?

Customer Touchpoint Blueprint, Step #2: Enterprise Perspective

Next, we take supplying enterprises perspective and collect the following four pieces
of information:
1. From the supplying enterprise side, who and/or what will be interacting with the
customer for any given stage in the customer experience cycle?

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

2. Given the customers preferred touchpoint configuration, what is the enterprises desired
functionality in terms of customer relationship, information, completed transaction,
electronic connection, and so on at each customer touchpoint?
3. Given the customers preferred touchpoint configuration, what are the operational and
functional interdependencies that the enterprise will have to manage? What are the
implications for the configuration of the enterprises competencies, assets, processes,
systems, and organization structure? Note: Similar to customers, the enterprise, too, will
have to manage operational and functional interdependencies across different customer
touchpoints at different stages in the customer experience cycle. In addition, there may
also be expectational interdependencies but, for a truly customer-centric enterprise,
enterprise expectations should be aligned with customer expectations.
4. Finally, what are the resource implications of delivering the customers and the
enterprises desired functionalities for the customers desired configuration of
touchpoints across the customer experience cycle.

Customer Touchpoint Blueprint, Step #3: Putting It Together

Having considered touchpoints from the customers perspective, and having
identified the functionality, interdependency, and resource implications for the enterprise, we
are ready to draw up the final touchpoint configuration blueprint. This blueprint may align
perfectly with customer-preferred touchpoints; failing that, there may be the need for an
iterative compromise.
In practice, the iteration is best achieved with the help of a neutral facilitator,
preferably someone from the outside or, if that is not possible, someone from the inside but
not deeply vested in the existing touchpoint configuration or the outcome of the touchpoint
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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

design exercise. Furthermore, to ensure the centrality of the customer in the compromise
process, it would be best to test what emerges with some sample customer groups. At the
very least, those working on customer touchpoint architecture should simulate the customer
experience with the help of a walkthrough of the blueprint with different people taking turns
playing the role of the customer.
The result (see Figure 1) will be a final customer touchpoint blueprint with
information on

touchpoint(s) for each stage of the customer experience cycle;

locus of interaction and desired functionality for both the customer and the supplying
enterprise;

expectational, operational, and functional interdependencies for the customer; and

operational and functional interdependencies and resource implications for the

enterprise.
[INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE.]
A closing comment on customer touchpoint blueprints. For any given product-market,

it is not uncommon to end up with not one but multiple blueprints, one for each customer
segment served by the enterprise. Case in point: the blueprint would be different for a
business-to-business customer segment supported by dedicated account managers than for a
business-to-consumer segment supported via a retail distribution channel.

REQUIREMENTS OF COMPELLING TOUCHPOINT ARCHITECTURE

In a second preparatory exercise for the customer touchpoint workshop I facilitated,
participants were asked to initiate a phone, web, or e-mail based query with three enterprises:

Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

their own, some other high-technology player, and a consumer products marketer. Having
started the inquiry, the participants were urged to push their query as far as they could to a
possible point of purchase. (The choice to stop before the point of purchase was determined
by the pre-purchase brief for the exercise.) I requested the participants to come to the
workshop with details of their experiences, noting what they especially liked or disliked
about the different touchpoints encountered in each case. The ensuing conversation was
enlightening. What emerged was a set of requirements for compelling customer touchpoint
architecture.

Customer Experience Must Be Consistent with the Enterprises Value Promise

Some enterprises are very intentional (as opposed to accidental) in their identity,
positioning, branding, and messaging. Two highly interrelated elements play a critical role in
this intentionality: (1) the enterprises own DNA (values, core beliefs, and ways of being
and operating that collectively define the self), and (2) the enterprises value promise to
the customer, ecosystem members, and the larger marketplace. Of the two elements, it is the
second, value promise, that is explicitly relevant to the conversation on compelling
customer touchpoint architecture. The value promise is greatly influenced by the enterprises
DNA. Everything the enterprise does and the way it does everything at every touchpoint at
every stage in the customer experience cycle must be such that the customer experience is
consistent with, and reinforce, the enterprises value promise.
Take Apple Inc. For many years, after legendary co-founder Steve Jobss return to
Apple in 1997, the companys tag line was Think different. The phrases grammatical
incorrectness notwithstanding (but that would not be practicing think different), Apple
practices think different in everything it does and the way it does everything. From the
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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

design of products to multiple pioneering product paradigms (the Macintosh computer, the
iPod music player, the iTunes business, the iPhone, the App store, and the iPad) to the oh-sochic retail stores, think different is evident everywhere. Steve Jobs made sure Apple knows
its value promise for its target consumers and the enterprises activities across all touchpoints
are executed consistent with this value promise. (By coincidence, I was reading Walter
Isaacsons biography of Steve Jobs while working on this manuscript and was struck by how
the seeds of Apples value promise were planted early in the enterprises history. To a large
extent, these seeds owed their origin to Steve Jobss fanatic dedication to a unique alchemy
of Buddhist and Zen sensibilities, the aesthetics of calligraphy, the precepts of Bauhaus
constructs and architecture, and the flair of Italian design.)
The Apple example suggests three conditions that must be met for the customers
experience to be consistent with the enterprises value promise: (1) The enterprise must have
an intentional as opposed to marketplace determined, de facto, value promise. (2) The
intentionality must be accompanied by enterprise-wide awareness: all in the enterprise must
know and act in accordance with the value promise. (3) The intentionality must be
practiced through the disciplined execution and management of everything the enterprise
does and the way it does everything. Of the three conditions, the second and third are a high
order and are often unmet. The result: customer touchpoint architecture that often is
unsatisfyingly soggy and not at all compelling.

The Enterprise and its Touchpoints Must Be Easily Accessible,

Customer Must Feel Genuinely Invited
Like many readers, I start to size up a building, a place, a space and, yes, an
enterprise well before I get to an actual touchpoint. Two questions inform my assessment:

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

First, is the building/place/space/enterprise interesting and distinctive enough for me to visit

or do business with? And second, is it easily accessible and genuinely inviting? I take up the
second question here and get to the first question when I discuss strategic differentiation, the
final of five requirements for compelling customer touchpoint architecture.
Over a decade ago, I attended a talk in which the speaker, Warren Bennis of the
University of Southern California, compared two then-new museums the Guggenheim in
Bilbao, Spain, and the Getty Center near Los Angeles, California. Years later, I weaved
together the comparison and my own readings on place, space, and customer touchpoint
architecture.
In terms of location and access, the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Los Angeles Getty
are very different. The former is situated in the city, next to a river, and adjacent to a major
thoroughfare. The latter is on a hill outside Los Angeles. The former is built so it can be
slotted into the city landscape without towering over neighboring buildings. The latter, atop a
hill, towers over the surrounding landscape. The former can be accessed by foot, and along a
series of walkways. The latter, one gets to by driving on expressway, parking the car at
street-level parking facility, and riding a tram to the top of a hill.
In their own ways, both the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Los Angeles Getty are
impressive statements, and I do not question their qualities as museums. The question
popping up in my mind in the context of the discussion on compelling customer touchpoint
architecture focuses not on the museums themselves but on access to the two spaces. Purely
from the perspective of getting to the respective museums, which was more easily accessible,
the in-the-city-by-the-river-and-accessible-by-foot Bilbao Guggenheim, or outside-the-cityand-on-a-hill Getty Center Los Angeles? Granted that for some visitors the drive out from

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Los Angeles and to a nearby hill may be part of the charm of the Getty Center, the question
of ease of access nevertheless is worth asking.
The same question should be asked of an enterprises touchpoint architecture: From
the customers point of view, across all touchpoints, is the enterprise in the center of things
and easily accessible, or is it remote and off on a hill somewhere? Does the enterprise bring
itself to the customer, or must the customer bring himself/herself/itself to the enterprise?
Ease of access is one requirement for making a customer feel welcome; a second
requirement is that the customer must feel genuinely invited. One way or the other, when
visiting a building, place, or space, we can sense whether we are really welcome or whether
we are unwanted guests. This is true as well for customers interacting with enterprises.
True, but often lost sight of as enterprises fret over quarterly results, organization
units squabble over resources, alienated employees go through the motion of doing their jobs,
and customers are left to fend for themselves via outsourced call centers. No good host would
treat guests that way and no enterprise should treat customers. Compelling customer
touchpoint architecture requires the enterprise and its employees consider customers as
guests and themselves as hosts offering a gracious welcome and sincere hospitality.

Customer Experience Must Be Operationally Excellent

Having gained easy access and sensing a genuinely inviting welcome, the customer
enters an enterprise and expects the visit to go not just without a hitch but, indeed, be
operationally excellent.
In a popular Harvard Business Review article Customer Intimacy and Other Value
Disciplines, the authors defined the term operational excellence as providing customers
with reliable products and services at competitive prices and delivered with minimal
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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

difficulty or inconvenience (Treacy & Wiersema, 1993, p. 84). Focusing on the phrase
minimal difficulty or inconvenience, I suggest enterprises assess whether customers find
the touchpoint experience to be operationally excellent using the following test: Does the
customers experience touching the enterprise at every stage in the experience cycle feel as
smooth as the finest silk and are the experiences at different touchpoints consistent and
reinforcing? Or does the experience at each stage feel as rough as the coarsest gravel and are
the experiences at different touchpoints dissonant and inconsistent?
Adherence to a few elementary principles can go a long way to achieving this goal:
1. Customers interacting with touchpoints must have the following three navigational
tools:
a map showing customers the touchpoint landscape,
a compass identifying some well known magnetic north and the direction in
which customers are headed, and
markers telling customers where they are, what they are doing, and the
progress they are making.
2. Whether on their own or helped or guided by the supplying enterprise, customers
must feel they are in control.
3. Customers must find the structure and operation of each touchpoint as well as the
collection of touchpoints clear, simple, and transparent.
4. Customers must find touchpoint interaction appropriately responsive.
5. The world being what it is, customers must find the touchpoint architecture adaptive
to their changing needs.

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Customer Experience Must Be Value-enhancing

Easy access, a sense of being genuinely invited, and smooth-as-the-finest-silk
operational experience are all well and good but, typically, it is not for these that people visit
places and spaces. For the most part, people visit these because they have a certain mission
they want accomplished, and all the easy access, genuine welcomes, and operational
excellence do not count for much if the desired mission is not accomplished.
The same is true for customers doing business with enterprises. Customers interact
with enterprises across multiple touchpoints at different stages in the experience cycle
because they have a need that must be met and/or a problem that must be solved. After all the
easy access and genuine invites and operational excellence, what a customer ultimately seek
from an enterprise is value. Value here is defined as benefits customers derive as they avail
themselves of the enterprises offering net of any costs they incur. It is important to note two
things: (1) Customers want not just value propositions but the actual delivery of value. (2)
What really gets customers excited is not just more value but fundamentally redefined value.
This means the delivery of entirely new dimensions of customer benefits and the yanking
away of some entire dimensions of customer costs. An enterprises customer touchpoint
architecture is not compelling unless customer value is enhanced in this two-fold deliver-andnot-just-promise and dont-just-deliver-more-but-redefine sense.
This basic requirement should be obvious given for any business enterprise.
Unfortunately, however, what should be obvious often is lost sight of in practice. Thus, for
example, it is not uncommon to find enterprises piling on product features when what
customers really want is product usability. Similarly, pricing gets so complicated no one,
customer and enterprise alike, can quite figure out the logic or the practice of prices.

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Distribution focuses on taking care of the channel partners interest than taking care of the
customers pain. And communications becomes a game of fonts, colors, graphics, and
PowerPoint presentations as opposed to a real and comprehensible conversation with
customers. This is hardly a recipe for proposing and delivering compelling customer value,
and hardly the building blocks of compelling customer touchpoint architecture.

Customer Experience Must Be Strategically Differentiating

In a world of enterprises intensely competing for the customers business, it is
absolutely vital that the customers experience across all touchpoints at all stages in the
customer experience cycle is strategically differentiating. This is true in the architecture of
buildings, places, and spaces: one is drawn to and likes to visit a building, a place, or a space
that is distinctive and stands out from the clutter. And it is true, as well, of enterprises: for the
most part, customers have a choice and, all else being equal, customers choose to do business
with one enterprise over another because the enterprise is, in some unique and customerrelevant way, different.
In the Harvard Business Review article What Is Strategy? it is headlined the
essence of strategy is choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do (Porter, 1996,
p. 64). An enterprise can perform activities differently by choosing a different set of activities
than rivals and/or by choosing the same activities but executing them differently. Customerenterprise interactions and exchanges that take place at customer touchpoints are activities
and/or the results of activities. Given that, the enterprise must choose touchpoint architecture
so that the touchpoint experience is strategically differentiating from the touchpoint
experience provided by rivals.

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

In the above paragraphs, I alluded to the enterprises strategic differentiation from its
rivals. There is a second dimension to strategic differentiation, and it is the differentiation
achieved by the customer from the customers rivals because of the compelling value and
experience realized from the customers interactions with the enterprise. Customer
touchpoint architecture is truly compelling when both the enterprise and the benefiting
customer are strategically differentiated from their respective rivals.

CONCLUSION
A great architect comes up with compelling architecture by taking a holistic
perspective, sweating over architectural plans and elevations and models, and with
inspiration and innovation delivering on five requirements:
1. consistency with the value promise,
2. ease of access and a genuinely inviting presence,
3. an operationally excellent navigational experience,
4. compelling value delivery, and
5. strategic differentiation.
Enterprise leaders, too, must be great architects. They must make sure the enterprises
customer touchpoint architecture is designed, implemented, and managed so that the
customers experience is truly compelling at every touchpoint over the course of the entire
experience cycle. Undoubtedly, this is hard to put in place, but then so, too, are truly
exceptional places and spaces that take the visitors breath away. Hard to put in place, but in
what it achieves in terms of customer experience, absolutely worth it.

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

REFERENCES
Hiss, T. (1990). The Experience of Place. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Kim, W.C., & Mauborgne, R.A. (2000). Knowing a Winning Business Idea When You See
One. Harvard Business Review, 78(5), 129-137.
Porter, M. (1996). What Is Strategy?, Harvard Business Review, 74(6), 61-78.
Treacy, M., & Wiersema, F. (1993). Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines.
Harvard Business Review, 71(1), 84-93.

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Toward Compelling Customer Touchpoint Architecture

Figure 1. Customer Touchpoint Blueprint Schematic

PRE-PURCHASE PHASE

Problem Problem
awareness analysis

Solution
selection

PURCHASE
PHASE
PHASE

Purchase

POST-PURCHASE PHASE

Delivery

Use

Supple-
ments

Mainte-
nance

Disposal

Blueprint records the following information:

FOR EACH TOUCHPOINT
1. From the customers perspective,

Who or what interacts with supplying enterprise?

Desired touchpoint functionality.

2. From the supplying enterprises perspective,

Who or what interacts with customer?

Desired touchpoint functionality.

ACROSS TOUCHPOINTS
3. Interdependencies among touchpoints that the supplying enterprise must manage
(expectational, operational, and functional interdependencies for customer; operational
and functional interdependencies for the supplying enterprise).
4. Resource implications for supplying enterprise.

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