Touchpoint-driven Customer Satisfaction

I joined a company with a -16 NPS score. Four years later, we hit +39 NPS and grew revenue from $161M to $264M. Here's exactly what we did. When I walked in the door, the situation was rough: Customers were disengaged and churning at a concerning rate. There was no structured approach to customer engagement. The renewal motion was broken. No forecasting, no predictability, and very few long-term renewals. All of this during a pivotal platform transformation, moving our legacy customers from on-premise to SaaS. So we built a plan around five core moves: 1. Mapped the entire customer journey: We didn't just fix onboarding. We redesigned every touchpoint from the first touch as a prospect to their renewal. Proactive check-ins. Milestone tracking. No more hoping customers would figure it out. 2. Built a global CS team from scratch: Hired 20+ team members and three senior leaders in the first six months. You can't scale without the right people. 3. Launched an Executive Sponsor Program: For our enterprise accounts, we assigned executive sponsors to deepen relationships and build trust at the highest levels. 4. Implemented Strategic Business Reviews: Regular, structured account reviews that aligned customer goals with the value we were delivering. Not just status updates. 5. Started actually measuring satisfaction: Implemented NPS and CSAT tracking to identify pain points in real time. You can't fix what you don't measure. We then took the feedback and turned it into action through our CX team. The results over four years? NPS went from -16 to +39. Revenue grew from $161M to $264M. Gross retention grew from 84% to 96%. Net retention exceeded 130%. Customer engagement and satisfaction improved across the board. And the company eventually sold to a leading PE firm. This wasn't an overnight fix. It took four years of consistent, strategic execution. This is what happens when you treat Customer Success as a strategic growth engine, not a support function. If your CS team is struggling with retention, satisfaction, or expansion revenue, these five moves are your starting point. Want to talk through how to implement something similar at your company? DM me.

Want to level up your practice? Audit your patient experience from start to finish. Here’s how: Put yourself in your patient’s shoes. Have your team get involved too. Walk through every touchpoint like it’s your first time. Start at the very beginning: 📞 The phone call  Was it easy to get a human? Did your team sound rushed or reassuring? Did they confidently explain what to expect and build confidence that you're the right place for their needs? 📧 Pre-consult touchpoints  Are emails, forms, or reminders clear and well-branded…or generic and forgettable? Do they build confidence and reduce friction or add confusion? 🏢 Arrival & lobby  First impressions matter. Are the chairs clean? Are magazines outdated? Is the lighting welcoming? Are cables visible? Does it smell nice? 👋 Greeting & check-in  Was the front desk warm and attentive, or buried in a screen? Did you feel seen and reassured? 🚶 Walk back to the consult room  Is there friendly small talk? Clear explanations? Or just awkward silence down a dim hallway? 🩺 The consultation itself Does the clinician build rapport first, or jump straight into data? Is the appointment collaborative or lecture-style? Are visuals and explanations clear, or overwhelming? 🤝 Recommendations & wrap-up  Was the solution tailored or generic? Did the patient leave feeling confident in their next step, or like they were being sold to? ✅ Follow-up  Was next contact clear and proactive? Or did the relationship just fizzle out? Every one of these steps is an opportunity to build, or lose... TRUST. Audit it all at least once a year as a team. Because the experience of what you do matters just as much as what you do.

Your customer journey map is missing the 8 touchpoints that matter most. You've optimised your ads, polished your landing pages, and A/B tested your emails to death. But whilst you've been obsessing over the obvious touchpoints, your customers have been forming opinions about your brand in places you've completely overlooked. These hidden moments of truth determine whether customers stick around or silently disappear. The good news? Your competitors are probably ignoring them too. 1. Pre-awareness Influences • What it is: Social conversations & word-of-mouth before formal brand discovery • Why it's missed: Difficult to track & attribute • Optimisation tip: Create shareable content specifically designed for peer-to-peer sharing • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 2. Post-Purchase Onboarding • What it is: The critical first 24-48 hours after purchase when buyers seek validation • Why it's missed: Teams focus on acquisition, not retention • Optimisation tip: Create "success accelerator" emails with usage instructions • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 3. Product Documentation • What it is: Help guides, FAQs, & support materials • Why it's missed: Often delegated to technical teams without marketing input • Optimisation tip: Inject brand personality into help documentation • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐ 4. Customer Support Interactions • What it is: The conversations with service teams that shape perception • Why it's missed: Viewed as cost center, not marketing opportunity • Optimisation tip: Create scripts that highlight complementary products/features • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5. Digital "Dead Ends" • What it is: 404 pages, out-of-stock notifications, & other negative pathways • Why it's missed: Seen as technical errors, not opportunities • Optimisation tip: Transform dead ends into discovery points with recommendations • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐ 6. Transaction Confirmations • What it is: Receipts, shipping notifications, & order confirmations • Why it's missed: Treated as operational communications only • Optimisation tip: Include personalised next-best action recommendations • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 7. Post-Usage Check-ins • What it is: The period after customer has used your product for intended purpose • Why it's missed: Customer journey maps often end at purchase or initial use • Optimisation tip: Create timely follow-ups based on typical usage patterns • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 8. Community Participation • What it is: Customer-to-customer interactions in forums & social spaces • Why it's missed: Difficult to scale & often understaffed • Optimisation tip: Identify & empower customer advocates within communities • Impact potential: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Your marketing doesn't end where your analytics dashboard stops tracking. The brands that will win tomorrow are already investing in these invisible touchpoints today. Which one will you optimise first? ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost to share with your network.  ⚡ Want more content like this? Hit follow Maya Moufarek.

What worked in Customer Success five years ago doesn’t work anymore. When was the last time you had a real conversation with that customer who’s been “doing fine”? A week ago? A month ago? Or has it quietly stretched into two? That gap, that silence is where most relationships start to fade. Five years ago, silence meant stability. Today, it usually means distraction. Your customer is busy. Their priorities have shifted. Their team might be exploring new tools while you assume everything’s fine. And this is why the old CS mindset of “no news is good news” doesn’t work anymore. In Customer Success today, silence is a signal. It means something’s happening, you’re just not part of it yet. So what do you do? 1. Catch the quiet early. If there’s been no meaningful contact for 30 days, treat it like a health alert. It’s easier to restart a conversation than to rebuild trust. 2. Replace “check-ins” with context. Don’t ask, “How’s it going?” Share something specific. A usage trend, a new idea, an observation about their industry. Give them a reason to want that next call. 3. Keep a pulse beyond one person. If you only talk to your champion, you’re one re-org away from losing visibility. Make space for leadership conversations, even informal ones. 4. Humanize the touchpoints. Remember the last challenge they shared or the small win they mentioned. Those details make follow-ups feel genuine, not scheduled. We’re all moving fast. There’s always another meeting, another deck, another deadline. But Customer Success was never about keeping customers on paper. It’s about keeping them in conversation. And if you’re thinking of that one account that’s been “quiet for a while”, maybe today’s the day to pick up that thread again.

My biggest priority at Junction is improving renewal conversations. Not by adding more touchpoints. By making every interaction count. Here are three tactics that actually moved retention: Tactic One: Segment Your Book Most CSMs treat all customers the same. Same cadence. Same agenda. Same deck. That's the fastest way to become background noise. Instead, segment your book by outcome they're driving: → Revenue growth customers → Cost savings customers → Efficiency/workflow customers When you group similar outcomes, you stop context switching between completely different value stories. You get in flow with relevant case studies, metrics that matter, and strategic conversations they actually care about. Tactic Two: Mine for Intelligence Not every customer call needs to drive immediate action. Sometimes you're gathering intelligence for the renewal conversation 90 days out. When you hear "gold nuggets" like: → Upcoming board priorities → Budget reallocation plans → New executive KPIs → Competitive pressure points You capture them. Then you use those insights to frame your value story around what their CFO actually cares about. Tactic Three: Outcomes, Not Features Your customer messages used to sound like this: "Checking in on adoption metrics and wanted to schedule our quarterly review..." Now they sound like this: "I noticed your team is focused on reducing time-to-market by 30% this quarter. Most ops leaders we work with are facing the same tension: pressure to move faster while maintaining quality and compliance." What's more likely: Your customer is thinking about the business outcome you impact? Or your customer is thinking about your product features? Message accordingly, and engagement increases. --- The shift isn't more customer touches. It's more intelligent customer touches. Stop optimizing for activity volume. Start optimizing for strategic relevance. How are you teaching your CS team to segment, mine intelligence, and lead with outcomes?

What does neuroscience teach us about the customer journey? It's a predictable, human process: ➡️ Value is learned. The brain uses reinforcement learning to make action-outcome associations and inform future decisions. This means the customer’s journey is not only about learning to use new technology, but evaluating the offering and deciding whether you can be trusted. ➡️ Expectations matter. During reinforcement learning, the brain reflexively compares outcomes to expectations and determines if the decision produced a reward or a punishment. This means expectations are as important as outcomes, and ensuring you meet or exceed them is essential. ➡️ Expectations change over time. Once an outcome occurs, the brain adjusts expectations in the direction of the reward or punishment to minimize prediction errors. Past is prologue; a series of good or bad experiences affects what your customer expects will happen next. ➡️ What starts right, stays right. Initial expectations are very fluid, based on perceptions, similar experiences, and what other people say. Once it coalesces, this anchor point has outsized influence on the trajectory. So your crucial first step is ensuring expectations are properly set with all decision-makers. ➡️ Not every touchpoint is important. Memory is extremely limited, so the brain only bothers to store events that are novel, relevant, salient, surprising, or filled with emotional content. This means you must manage a critical few moments well, rather than a trivial many. ➡️ Emotions rule. Besides the preferential recall, emotions dominate decision-making. Logic mostly sits on the sidelines unless greater discrimination is needed for a decision. This means you must pay closer attention to how your customers feel than what they think. ➡️ Bad events are more impactful than good ones. Due to natural selection, the brain weighs negative episodes about twice as much as positive ones, especially when it comes to subconscious threats. So minimizing negative experiences trumps maximizing positive ones. ➡️ Once established, beliefs linger. During reinforcement learning, the brain gains confidence when expectations, good or bad, become accurate predictors. This creates a belief, which is then used to filter new information. So time is limited to shape your customer’s perceptions for the long term. The takeaways? Science underscores the critical need to do things right the first time, from clearly setting value expectations before the sale to ensuring value is realized afterwards. And the process can’t be left to chance. Executing a few things well makes all the difference between a customer that leaves and one that stays and buys more.

"I Get It, But I Don't Know How to Do It" Two weeks after communicating our new customer journey touchpoints, I sat in on a customer call. The CSM understood what we were trying to do. She could explain the why. She'd asked great questions. And yet, she completely froze when it came time to execute. She understood the concept. She just had no idea how to actually deliver it. This is where many transformations break: the gap between communication and enablement. In the customer experience transformation I led—taking a disorganized team to a cohesive organization that improved GRR by 10 percentage points—enablement was where we almost lost people. Here's what we got wrong: We communicated the what and why. People nodded. We thought: "Great, let's move forward." Then reality hit. CSMs knew we wanted value-add touchpoints but didn't know how to prepare. They understood segmentation but couldn't apply it. They believed in it but felt paralyzed. Communication = "Here's what's changing and why" Enablement = "Here's how to do it, the resources to use, and let's practice together" What enablement requires: Make it personal - "How does this impact MY work?" Hands-on practice - Mock sessions with scoring rubrics with direct coaching & guidance Partner through early execution - Leaders in meetings until people are confident Create checkpoints - Don't go live until ready Build feedback loops and iterate quickly For our touchpoints, we ran practice sessions with scoring rubrics. Leaders joined their first 5-10 calls for live support. We created templates, talk tracks, and FAQs. We held weekly office hours. We adjusted quickly based on what we learned. Timeline? Hours for simple changes. Weeks for complex ones. Here's what happens: Most companies do one training session and call people "enabled." But enablement is a process: Get people in motion, gather input from execution, iterate based on feedback, update the team, repeat until it's working. How do you know it's working? People stop asking "What am I supposed to do?" and start asking "I have some thoughts about this edge case." That shift—from seeking direction to problem-solving—tells you they're capable. (em-dashes added by this human!) But here's the challenge: Even when people know HOW, that doesn't mean they believe in it. Understanding + capability ≠ adoption That's the next gap where transformation dies. Question: Did you communicate but skip enablement? Train once and assume people were ready? If people aren't executing, it might not be resistance. It might be that they genuinely don't know what's expected. #ChangeManagement #Enablement #Leadership #Transformation Next up in the #TnT series: Enablement vs. Internalization—the 80% failure point where capability doesn't translate to belief.

𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲. 👇 Most brands obsess over traffic, but ignore 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 happens at each interaction. ↳ That’s why your “customer journey” stalls (and conversion rates flatline). 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: → Mapped every touchpoint: From first ad view to post-purchase follow-up. → Zeroed in on the friction: Missed emails, weak cart recovery, unclear product info. → Revamped with CRO tactics: Personalized emails, frictionless checkout, clarity at every step. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁: Revenue +34%. NPS up. Returns down. Customers 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. A few slides from HappyFresh’s playbook say it all—small changes, compounding impact. Want customers who stick (and spend)? Start with the details no one else sweats. How are you optimizing YOUR touchpoints this quarter? https://lnkd.in/gyEU9-vc #eCommerce #CustomerExperience #CRO #Retention