An important part of creating the right customer touchpoints for your business begins with developing an accurate customer journey, even the unique customer paths.
Touch points are described as the interactions and exposures that consumers can have with a brand either deliberate communions or interactions that happen as apart of everyday life.
Brand communications are deliberately generated to increase brand touchpoints with consumers such as advertising; which may include radio, tv, magazine or newspaper advertising.
Other forms of promotions could be direct marketing such as mail, email or test messages or exposure to the brand from sponsoring and events.
Non-brand communications are touchpoints that are generated from retailers, media, bloggers and even individual consumers.
Word of mouth is a very useful touchpoint in the modern times of social media. Online word of mouth can reach a large number of people without the consumers feeling like advertising is being force-fed to them. Many brands take to social media as it is a free form of advertising and a way to interact with customers and even create an online community for the brand. In my personal experience, before I buy something or use a service, I look it up online first to see reviews and what others have thought of it, and vice versa, I have not used a service before because they had no online presence and I couldn’t find anything about it.
The key forms of touchpoints for banking businesses are;
- Social Media
- Online Ads
- Online Banking System
- Emails
- Phone Support
- Direct Mails
Website
Where banks are concerned, a key touchpoint is a website that represents a digital version of their branch. As my research showed, more frequently, consumers would rather fix any issues online than visit a physical branch. This website could be key for those very same customers who wish to gather additional information on your service.
Visibility for this website is just as important as having one in the first place. If your page doesn’t come up as one of the first results of the search, most users many not see if as they rarely go past the second page. It is for this reason, it is important that your website and its contents are optimised in order to increase your position in a search. one way to do this is by identifying the relevant keywords of the topics you cover so the relevant pages may be shown through search engines. Visual elements are also important on these websites as it may increase the average time spent on these pages as the content is more intelligible with things like infographics and are liked more by consumers.
Brand Rollout
I experimented with a few layouts of design an implemented them on various mockups to get a feel what it would look like with real life application. At this stage I’m still unsure of exactly which graphical elements to choose and mock ups help me see which ones work throughout many different layouts. I want my brands touchpoints to be applicable to the consumer base I am targeting. My main touchpoint will be the online app that I will create prototypes for.
Bank Card Mock-ups – My most important touchpoint is my bankcards. I did a case study on Monzo and their success in the early days of the brand was due to their eye catching coral card. I want to try and do something different that will also get people thinking and wondering where the card came from.
In this mockup, I imagine the half with the pattern is transparent which is something I haven’t seen before.
The simple forms on a white card that could be made of metal like the Monzo premium subscription holders have.
Canvas Bag Mockups – I used this touchpoint as at freshers I received a few different canvas bags. As my target customer base are 18-25 year old with my aim to help them learn how to budget and save, this would be a good touchpoint as the majority of university students are in this age bracket.
Shop Signage – Although my bank wont have a physical branch, this mockup of metal shop signage give me an idea of what it could look like if I had a popup store.
Billboard – This touchpoint is something that mountain would use, although not as affective as online advertising I like who the branding has come to life on a billboard.
Leaflet Design – This leaflet design idea came from Santander’s leaflets. I feel like out of all of my mockups this one looks the most realistic and is also the most likely touchpoint as banks use leaflets as a way to communicate with consumers.
Trifold Brochure – This works in the same way as a brochure only smaller and with a lot less detail. In this one I image the front logo is cut out and the gradient behind it comes through to fill the space. I would remove the pattern on the right side as I feel like it closes in the information on the card.
References
Digital touchpoints in banking: how to recognize and control them
Branding and rebranding – how to rollout a new brand identity
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