What's the best way to prioritize touchpoints and moments of truth in your customer journey maps?

I would encourage you to think about touchpoints as the interfaces and interactions where the company and customer connect, and the moments of truth as those steps in the customer journey that could lead to an abrupt end to the journey or a deepening of purchase intent, often due to an expansion or destruction of trust.

In my experience, every interaction a customer has with a brand is in pursuit of a desired outcome. Touchpoints are opportunities for brands to deliver value that enables customers to achieve their desired outcomes. Moments of truth are culminations of incremental value adds along a journey that turns into a conversion event - a purchase decision or abandonment, or in some cases a deeper commitment to brand in pursuit of knowledge such as white papers, etc.

Touchpoints are those magical points of interaction between your brand and your customer. It could be your website, a chatbot, a sales rep, an email, a social media post, or even a product package—anywhere and any time a customer comes into contact with your brand. Then there are the moments of truth. These are critical points in the customer journey that can make or break the customer's relationship with your brand. A moment of truth is when the customer has the opportunity to form (or reform) their impression about your brand, product, or service based on their interaction.

Ever heard the saying, 'if everything is a priority then nothing is'? This can often happen when people are identifying moments of truth. We must resist the temptation to make everything a moment of truth. We must focus on identifying that move the needle most. There should be no such thing as "moments of truth that have little or no relevance or impact."

When you’re orchestrating journeys, each touchpoint serves a purpose - it moves customers towards moments of truth or sets expectations around this. Rather than prioritizing touchpoints this should be more about optimizing touchpoints. As each touchpoint moves customers along a journey, the way to optimize is to assess how well that touchpoint helps customers move through the journey to the next touchpoint. If a touchpoint isn’t a priority, it’s a missed opportunity to create value and help customers achieve their outcomes. I’d argue if it’s not a priority, it may be a source of friction and could be eliminated to simplify and reduce the number of touch points along a journey.

In my experience, not all touchpoints and moments of truth are created equal. Some have more impact, are more influential, and drive decision-making more than others. Prioritizing them ensures we focus our energy, resources, and creativity where it can make the biggest difference. That's where the real magic happens!

ChatGPT kind of missed the mark here. You don't prioritize touchpoints or moments of truth when doing customer journey mapping. You select moments of truth from the stages of the journey based on those that could lead to abrupt end of a journey or a deepening of purchase intent. What you do prioritize are experience improvement opportunities, and one common way to do this is using a simple 2x2 matrix like effort vs. impact.

Here's my 4-step radical approach: Map it out: Start by mapping out every single customer touchpoint and moment of truth. Evaluate: Next, evaluate each touchpoint and moment of truth based on its impact and influence on the customer's experience. Consider aspects like frequency, duration, emotional intensity, and the potential for delight or disappointment. Rank: Now, give each touchpoint and moment of truth a rank. The ones with the highest impact and influence get top rank. This is your priority list. Test and iterate: Finally, don't forget to test and iterate. This isn't a one-and-done process. Keep your list dynamic and fluid, adjusting based on new insights, changes in customer behavior, and your business goals.

We're building on a bad foundation here. Please see my above point about not prioritizing touchpoints and moments that matter. Moments that matter are the parts of the journey that you want to make sure you are exceeding expectations on, while the pain points and experience improvement opportunities you identify in your journey mapping workshops will help you craft your funding requests for the next planning cycle.

It's time to get radical and disruptive. Focus your creativity, resources, and innovation on these high-priority areas. Reimagine these interactions and blow your customer's mind with a phenomenal experience. Think bold. Think new. Think different. Don't be afraid to challenge the status quo.

There are several inaccuracies in this article, one of which is that moments that matter are critical steps in the journey, not individual touchpoints within a step. Successful customer journey map creation starts with picking a persona for this journey, stepping into their shoes, and then identifying collaboratively the high level journey phases, then the steps within each phase, then the touchpoints within each step, before identifying the pain points and experience improvement opportunities that exist at each of these steps. Once we have all of this, THEN we can identify the moments that matter. Hope this helps!

Remember, friends, the customer's journey isn't just a path they tread—it's an adventure they embark upon. Make it one they'll never forget. Prioritize your touchpoints and moments of truth, and let's create some truly magical customer experiences!