Touchpoints, interactions, whatever it's all about connecting and relating

April 29th, 2010

People need to relate to be exposed to a brand a few times before they feel comfortable with it.

Most research seems to put that number at 7.

(Side note: the average sales person gives up after 4 interactions, when the average successful transaction takes 7 interactions.)

That is 7 touchpoints or interactions… (or in short connecting ideas with people).

Did you sign up to Facebook the first time you heard of it? Nope.  You probably heard of it in passing, someone said you should sign up and then eventually you had no choice.

Sales people can get quite technical with this, trying to find shortcuts, to get to the magic number faster.  However it’s not as simple as that.  Once you get that methodical with it you will lose the value.

It’s not the touchpoints which win, it’s that each and everytime you’re building a rapport with your customer.  Making real connections and relating to them.

Never ever shortchange the process…

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2 Responses to “Touchpoints, interactions, whatever it's all about connecting and relating”

  1. Charlie Says:

    While the point about not making interactions a mechanistic formula is well received, I would add that the purpose of interaction is to provide service.

    Long term sales value comes from being known, being available, and providing for consumer needs. More so in a “pull” economy than a “push” economy – not saying that we are there yet, but things are changing quickly.

    While a lot of emphasis is put on the conversation, presenting a human face, and building trust – I think the foundation of this should be to build a deep understand of the customers motivation into the design of business services – across all channels, through all the touchpoints.

    This is what motivated me to self-educate on “service design” and start helping businesses see the value in designing channel architecture from the customer perspective.

  2. Phil Osborne Says:

    Bang on again Ben… the only thing i would like to add is that many of these interactions can be ‘third party mediated’ and therefore less likely to be controllable / influenced… To expand your example, Facebook never contacted me to sign up directly…. the interactions prior to commitment were from a wider network e.g. traditional media reports, mentioned in conversations etc…

    In terms of your seven interactions theory, for many brands this may have already occurred before you have even tried to interact once!

    The consequence might be that the message / meaning / brand / value proposition has already been determined before commence the courtship…

    Phil O



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