Managing Customer Touchpoints and Customer Satisfaction in B2B Mass Customization: A Case Study

Abstract

Most businesses agree that high customer satisfaction is important. Many are aware that it is a
prerequisite for success, but few measure and monitor it in a structured way, thus failing to improve it.
The aim of this article is to develop a customer touchpoint management tool that allows small and
medium-sized, B2B mass customization companies to measure, monitor, and improve customer
satisfaction. This case study identifies 48 customer touchpoints – classified in human, product,
service, communication, spatial, and electronic interaction – in a three-step approach: Employees and
existing customers were involved in identifying customer touchpoints, weighting them in terms of their
general importance, and assessing some specific customer touchpoint’s importance for customer
satisfaction. The results presented in this article suggest that not all existing customer touchpoints are
perceived to be important or relevant, and that employees and customers largely agree regarding
which customer touchpoints are most important. Customer touchpoints classified as human interaction
were found to be most important and have the highest importance for customer satisfaction.

Full text

International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management (IJIEM), Vol. 8 No 3, 2017, pp. 131-140
Available online at www.iim.ftn.uns.ac.rs/ijiem_journal.php
ISSN 2217-2661
IJIEM
UDK 005.6:655.1
Managing Customer Touchpoints and Customer Satisfaction in
B2B Mass Customization: A Case Study
Thomas Aichner
Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Alfaisal University,
P.O. Box 50927, Riyadh 11533, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, mail@thomasaichner.eu
Benjamin Gruber
Head of Marketing, H. Gruber & Co. KG,
Gampenstraße 20, 39011 Lana, Italy, benjamin@gruberdruck.com
Received (16.03.2017.); Revised (20.06.2017.); Accepted (02.08.2017.)
Abstract
Most businesses agree that high customer satisfaction is important. Many are aware that it is a
prerequisite for success, but few measure and monitor it in a structured way, thus failing to improve it.
The aim of this article is to develop a customer touchpoint management tool that allows small and
medium-sized, B2B mass customization companies to measure, monitor, and improve customer
satisfaction. This case study identifies 48 customer touchpoints – classified in human, product,
service, communication, spatial, and electronic interaction – in a three-step approach: Employees and
existing customers were involved in identifying customer touchpoints, weighting them in terms of their
general importance, and assessing some specific customer touchpoint’s importance for customer
satisfaction. The results presented in this article suggest that not all existing customer touchpoints are
perceived to be important or relevant, and that employees and customers largely agree regarding
which customer touchpoints are most important. Customer touchpoints classified as human interaction
were found to be most important and have the highest importance for customer satisfaction.
Key words: Customer Touchpoints, Customer Satisfaction, Mass Customization, Printing Industry
1. CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINTS PLAY A KEY
ROLE FOR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Honeywell CEO, David M. Cote said that “With every
customer contact and whenever we represent
Honeywell, we have the opportunity either to strengthen
the Honeywell brand or to cause it to lose some of its
luster and prestige” [1]. These interactions of customers
with a company are called customer touchpoints, which
are many critical moments on the customer’s journey
from awareness to purchase and after [2]. A customer
touchpoint can be literally everything that transfers
some type of information from the supplier to the client
or vice versa. It includes visiting the company’s website
or social media page, talking to a sales representative
by phone or personally, sending an email or letter,
watching a TV ad, and even seeing the company logo
on the delivery van. The quality of these customer-
company interactions affects, for example, how the
company or brand is perceived, the customer’s
willingness to buy, and customer satisfaction.
Achieving and maintaining a high level of customer
satisfaction is one of the most important goals of a
company [3]. This is because customer dissatisfaction
is the major reason why customers leave a company [4]
and because it generates negative word-of-mouth [5]. In
contrast, customer satisfaction generates positive word-
of-mouth, brings in new customers, and increases
revenue [3] and profits [6]. Customer satisfaction has, in
fact, a strong positive impact on willingness to pay [7]
and it leads to an increase in firm value that is added to
the impact of earnings [8]. It is therefore no surprise that
even top managers from world market leaders such as
Haier believe that customer satisfaction is the key to
success [9].
With this article, we aim to develop a customer
touchpoint management tool (i.e., a tool that facilitates
the coordination of all corporate efforts to optimise
customer experience in all relevant customer
touchpoints in a way that customer satisfaction is
increased) for small and medium-sized, B2B mass
customization companies. We experiment the tool by
conducting a case study in an Italian printing house that
mainly serves business customers, offering highly
customized products and solutions. To this end, we:
• Identify all customer touchpoints.
• Determine the importance of these customer
touchpoints from both an internal (employees) and
external (customers) perspective.
• Assess the importance of specific customer
touchpoints for customer satisfaction.

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2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Every company gets in touch with customers in different
ways at different touchpoints [10]. While the term
“touchpoint” has been used for a long time in practice, it
is relatively new to academic literature [11].
Touchpoints are defined as distinct points in the
experience of contacts between the company and the
customer [12], including cognitive, emotional,
behavioural, sensorial, and social components [13, 14].
Some researchers argue (e.g. [15]) that other terms
may be synonyms for touchpoint, including “contact
point” [16] and “moment of truth” [17, 18].
Each customer touchpoint can lead to positive or
negative customer experiences. Generally, each single
interaction between the customer and the company can
be a determinant and lead to an overall positive or
negative customer experience [19]. A longer-than-
expected waiting time, a single unfriendly employee, or
a slowly loading website can lead to an unsatisfied
customer, even though all the rest may have been
perfect [20]. From a business perspective, customer
experience is “encompassing every aspect of a
company’s offering – the quality of customer care, of
course, but also advertising, packaging, product and
service features, ease of use, and reliability. It is the
internal and subjective response customers have to any
direct or indirect contact with a company” [21].
Customers and companies now interact through a
multitude of channels and media, which makes
customer journeys even more complex [13, 2]. For
example, a customer may initially get in touch with the
company through its website, then send an email, get a
call back from the company, meet with a consultant at
the production site, and after one week post a question
on the company’s Facebook page. Companies that
manage to improve these interactions at all touchpoints
across the entire customer journey have a competitive
advantage and can best enhance relationships with
customers [22].
According to the model of demand chain management,
understanding the customer situation and need leads to
better co-operation, which results in superior demand
chain efficiency and customer satisfaction [23]. More
recent evidence highlights that the nature of the product
impacts the perceived importance of each touchpoint
[13]. This implies that it is necessary to assess
customer-company interactions in diverse settings and
for different products. For example, a customer
touchpoint management tool that has been shown to
work in B2C may not be necessarily appropriate in B2B
as well. The same may be true for companies offering
mass produced versus mass customized products [24].
For mass customization (MC) companies; i.e.,
companies with a business model that combines the
ability to provide products with enough variety and
customization that nearly every customer finds exactly
what he wants with the ability to avoid substantial trade-
offs in cost, delivery, and quality [25, 26, 27, 28, 29],
one key to successfully managing customer touchpoints
and subsequently to increase customer satisfaction is to
ensure that the customer is equipped to handle the
variety [30]. To maximise customer satisfaction,
companies must therefore make sure to control the way
attribute-based and alternative-based information is
presented and the way consumer input is provided [30],
which are both activities that lead to several customer
touchpoints. For example, a customer reads information
on the website, chats with an employee through social
media, and/or talks to a technical staff member over the
phone before he provides his input through an online
sales configurator, by email or personally to a sales
representative.
Since the beginning of MC in the 1990s, companies
have been shifting the focus from manufacturing to
customer interaction [31]. A more visionary definition of
MC highlights the importance of this company-customer
interaction, stating that MC “is a strategy that creates
value by some form of company-customer interaction at
the design stage of the operations level to create
customized products, following a hybrid strategy
combining cost leadership and differentiation” [32, 33].
The ease of interaction as well as the interaction quality
may therefore be a determinant to implement a
successful MC strategy. In fact, MC generally requires a
close interaction between the supplier and the customer
[34]. Successful MC companies establish systems that
facilitate this interaction, obtaining specific information
needed to translate individual customer needs into
concrete product specifications [35]. This results in a
close company-customer interaction or system of co-
creation 36], adding value for both the MC company
and the customer [36, 37, 38].
Although MC is becoming increasingly popular in
consumer markets, it was originally implemented in B2B
[39] where it still plays an important role for many
businesses [40]. Depending on whether high-level MC
or low-level MC is offered, customer-company
interaction takes place earlier (i.e., at the design or
fabrication stage) or later (i.e., at the assembly or
distribution stage) [41]. Generally, B2B companies are
more likely to offer pure customization, i.e., customized
design, fabrication, assembly, and distribution [33, 42].
This results in a higher degree of customization but also
in more complexity for both the supplier and the
customer. In order to satisfy customers, B2B companies
must be equipped to manage this complexity in addition
to a variety of customer touchpoints that may be
specific for MC companies, for example providing
information about the customer’s specific preferences
and needs.
Several studies demonstrate that the two main drivers
of customer satisfaction are product/service quality and
interaction quality [43]. To achieve high customer
satisfaction, it is therefore necessary but not sufficient
to deliver high quality MC products. Companies are also
required to create and manage customer touchpoints in
a way that meets customer’s expectations. The full
customer journey determines customer satisfaction [2],
but understanding which customer touchpoints are
perceived to be most relevant and finding to what extent
they are important for customer satisfaction seems to
be the key to develop a successful customer touchpoint
management tool.

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Customer touchpoint management is a relatively young
marketing tool that aims to find, assess, and control
customer touchpoints by gathering feedback from
customers [44]. Some of the main goals of customer
touchpoint management are enhancing customer
experience, increasing customer satisfaction, and
generating positive word-of-mouth (WOM) [20]. This
leads to the following three research questions (RQs):
RQ
1
: Which are the customer touchpoints in a small-
sized B2B mass customization company relevant
for optimising customer experience?
RQ
2
: Which customer touchpoints in a small-sized B2B
mass customization company are most relevant
for customer satisfaction?
RQ
3
: What are the main reasons why satisfied
customers would recommend the company
through word-of-mouth?
3. METHODOLOGY
To answer the three RQs presented in the previous
section, a case study has been performed, following a
three-step approach (see Figure 1). First, employees of
the investigated company identified all customer
touchpoints. Second, the importance of the identified
customer touchpoints was determined from both an
internal and an external perspective. Third, a customer
satisfaction survey regarding the most important
customer touchpoints was carried out. All steps,
including data collection, were carried out between
January and February 2017.
Figure 1. Steps of the experiment
This case study includes responses from both
employees and business customers of a small-sized
Italian printing house based in South Tyrol, a bilingual
(German-Italian) region in Northern Italy. The company
has nine full-time employees and a yearly sales volume
of about one million EUR. More than 94 % of the
company’s clients are business customers who
generate more than 95 % of the company’s revenues.
The company offers customized products and solutions
in terms of quality, material, delivery, project
management, and customer service at prices and lead
times that are competitive with larger, mass production
printing houses. More than 99.5 % of the business
volume may be considered MC. One co-author of this
study is an employee of the company.
The printing industry has largely adopted MC, using
highly sophisticated integrated systems to achieve
economies of scale even if many orders are relatively
small. The majority of companies in the printing
industry fall under small and medium-sized
enterprises (SME) [45], as the company in this case
study.
Over the past decade, the market structure changed
and is now being dominated by online printers such
as the Dutch company Vistaprint (about 1.7 billion
EUR revenue in 2016) and the German company
Flyeralarm (about 330 million EUR revenue in 2016).
These companies offer online sales configurators,
also referred to as mass-customization toolkits [46],
which are software applications designed to support
customers in customizing the product according to
their individual needs and preferences [47, 26].
These environments are characterized by minimal or
no human interaction. However, many business
customers require and demand personal interaction
with suppliers, for example, because it results in
improved communication and problem-solving [48].
Researchers argue that, especially in B2B, “as high-
tech as the world becomes, the need for human
interaction is still a crucial element to all business” [49].
Traditional printers such as the company assessed in
this case study may therefore be able to offer consulting
and sales talks, which are not offered by its online
competitors. In fact, expert-oriented management is one
of the main characteristics of the printing industry [50].
Although it is impossible for traditional printers to
achieve price leadership, many are offering at least the
same degree of customization, usually with a similar
degree of automation but with higher flexibility in
manufacturing and delivery, additional services
including human interaction, and comparable prices.
To be able to compete in an increasingly competitive
and globalized market such as the printing industry,
these SMEs must make sure to understand their
business customers and to guarantee high customer
satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction, which is the dominant customer
feedback metric, is used by both researchers and
practitioners [51, 13] and has been shown to increase
loyalty, keeping customers from switching to a
competitor [52].
3.1 Step 1: Identification of Customer
Touchpoints
As part of the first step, all employees (N=9) were
asked to attend a meeting to identify all customer
touch points, including human, product, service,
communication, spatial, and electronic interaction
(based on [10]).
They were told what a customer touchpoint is and
how to identify them using customer journey mapping
[53]. Independently from each other, every employee
had to imagine being a customer of the company and
to note each customer touchpoint he may encounter
on a typical customer journey.

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3.2 Step 2: Weighting of Customer Touchpoints
In step 2, all customer touchpoints that were
identified in step 1 were summarized and a
questionnaire was prepared. We took a conservative
approach: even if a customer touchpoint was just
mentioned by one single employee, it was included in
the second step. It did not make a difference whether
a customer touchpoint was mentioned once or more
than once in step 1.
The questionnaire used in this step included 48
customer touchpoints, which had to be weighted
based on their perceived relative importance on
customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. To avoid anchor
effects, 16 different versions of the questionnaire
were developed, with a random sequence of the 48
single items.
The survey participants were asked to select the 10
most important customer touchpoints and to
distribute 25 points depending on how important each
one was perceived. The importance weights were
therefore derived directly by applying a constant-
sum-scale approach [54], which is a common
practice in research about customer satisfaction (e.g.
[55]). At least one point had to be allocated to each
of the 10 selected customer touchpoints, which
means each respondent had another 15 points to
express each customer touchpoint’s importance,
resulting in a maximum of 16 points allocable to one
item by each individual survey participant. For
example, one respondent may allocate 9x1 point and
1x16 points, while another may allocate 4x1, 3x2,
1x3, and 2x6 points, both adding up to 25 points
allocated to 10 customer touchpoints.
The survey participants (N=28) were both employees
(N=9) and customers (N=19). A total of 50 customers
were selected randomly from both the customer data
base that includes 3,002 entries and from customers
visiting the production site. 23 customers agreed to
participate in this step. However, four questionnaires
had to be excluded from the analysis, e.g. because
the participant selected less or more customer
touchpoints than requested, resulting in a customer
response rate of 46 %.
3.3 Step 3: Customer Satisfaction Survey
Finally, an online-based questionnaire was
developed to measure customer satisfaction as well
as the relative importance attributed to the 10 most
important customer touchpoints identified in step 2. In
addition, we included five random customer
touchpoints that were considered to be less important
or not important at all to further validate the results of
step 2; i.e., the importance attributed to each
customer touchpoint. We decided to limit the number
of customer touchpoints as shorter questionnaires
are easier to fill in and usually result in higher
response rates [56]. While for some customer
touchpoints we used single item scales, others were
measured using multiple items of product and service
attributes that are important for customer satisfaction,
such as cordiality of staff [57] and price–performance
ratio.
Based on Vogt and Johnson [58], we used 5-point
Likert-type scales with the following values to
evaluate each item to measure customer satisfaction:
very poor (1), poor (2), fair (3), good (4), very
good (5). In addition, the importance of each item
had to be indicated using a 4-point scale ranging
from very unimportant (--), unimportant (-),
important (+) to very important (++), which we
translated for data analysis to 0 %, 33 %, 67 %, and
100 %, respectively. All questions included an open-
ended question that gave the respondents the
chance to further elaborate on the respective set of
questions.
An exception from this approach is the question
about WOM, where we first asked if the customer
would recommend the company (yes/no). In the case
of a positive response, he could choose from a list of
seven options (adapted from [59]), indicating why he
would recommend the company. If he chose no, he
was asked to indicate the reasons why he would not
recommend the company. Questions about
complaints were only shown to customers who
indicated that they actually filed a complaint, i.e., the
survey respondent was redirected to the subsequent
set of questions if he did not file any complain with
the company in the past. The questions about
delivery were customized; i.e., customers who collect
the products themselves received a different set of
questions than customers who use a delivery service.
The presentation of the question categories followed
– as far as possible – the customer journey of a
typical customer.
The online survey was tested for comprehension,
functionality, and duration in a pre-test with eight
respondents. Some minor errors were identified and
eliminated. The duration of about 5-10 minutes was
perceived to be short and acceptable.
For the participation in the survey, we invited all
business customers, which generated an annual
turnover of more than 500 EUR in at least one of the
three solar years from 2014 to 2016. We identified
328 customers fulfilling this condition; 156 with a
turnover of 500-1,000 EUR and 172 with a turnover
of more than 1,000 EUR.
Before the invitation to the online survey was sent
out by email, all customers with a turnover
exceeding 1,000 EUR were informed by phone.
After one week, a reminder was sent by email.
Participants who started filling in the questionnaire
could come back at any time and complete the
remaining questions.
After two weeks, 121 customers participated and the
survey was concluded. Three incomplete
questionnaires were excluded, resulting in 118
responses and a response rate of 36.9 %. More
information about the participants of the survey are
provided in Table 1. The relatively high number of
CEOs participating in the study may be explained by
the fact that many of the company’s clients are
SMEs.

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Table 1. Information about the survey participants (N=118)
Age Range 21-77 years
Average 44 years
Gender Male 48 %
Female 52 %
Position CEO or equivalent 47 %
Senior management 13 %
Other 40 %
Power to take
decisions
Full 60 %
Partial 36 %
None 4 %
Average work
experience In current position 15 years
Total 23 years
Industry
Commerce 19 %
Tourism 18 %
Handicraft 17 %
Non-profit 17 %
Freelancer 8 %
Advertising 5 %
Manufacturing 5 %
Other 11 %
Annual turnover ≤ 1,000 EUR 58 %
> 1,000 EUR 42 %
4. RESULTS
The results presented in this section include, first, all
the customer touchpoints that were identified in the
internal analysis by employees, second, a list of the
most important customer touchpoints as perceived by
employees and customers which are the core of the
customer touchpoint management tool (RQ
1
), third, the
customer touchpoint’s relative importance for customer
satisfaction (RQ
2
), and fourth, reasons why satisfied
customers would recommend the company through
WOM (RQ
3
).
4.1 Customer Touchpoints (Step 1)
The employees of the printing house identified 48
customer touchpoints (see Table 2), which includes
human, product, service, communication, spatial, and
electronic interaction, as suggested by Dhebar [10].
Note that the customer touchpoints “consulting” and
“sales talk” have been categorized as both human and
service, and “company tour” has been categorized as
both human and spatial interaction. Table 2 includes
numerical codes from (01) to (48) which are used from
here either in combination with or instead of the
respective customer touchpoint, e.g. “company tour
(01)” or simply “(01)”.
The internal analysis shows that the biggest number of
customer touchpoints is electronic, e.g. email (34), the
company’s website (48), and third-party websites
including social media. Human interaction, e.g. taking or
making a phone call (06, 07), and communication, e.g.
advertising (22), also include a big variety of different
customer touchpoints. However, the pure number of
customer touchpoints is not very meaningful. For
example, the figure of 15 electronic interactions could
be easily increased by adding a vast variety of social
media pages and applications such as business
networks, photo sharing, video sharing, etc.
Table 2. Customer touchpoints identified in the internal
analysis by employees in alphabetical order (N=9)
Human
(01) company tour (also spatial),
(02) complaints, (03) consulting (also
service), (04) courses attended by
employees, (05) fairs, (06) phone calls
incoming, (07) phone calls outgoing,
(08) private surroundings of employees,
(09) professional surroundings of
employees, (10) project meetings,
(11) sales talk (also service),
(12) word-of-mouth (WOM)
Product (13) delivery slip, (14) letterpress, (15) logo
on products, (16) packaging, (17) products
Service (18) billing, (03) consulting (also human),
(19) cost estimate, (20) delivery, (21) press
proof, (11) sales talk (also human)
Communi-
cation
(22) advertising, (23) booklet, (24) branded
garment, (25) business cards,
(26) Christmas cards, (27) partner
agencies, (28) press, (29) promotions,
(30) sponsoring, (31) yellow pages
Spatial (01) company tour (also human), (32) logo
on storefront, (33) shop window
Electronic
interaction
(34) email, (35) Facebook page,
(36) Facebook recommendations,
(37) Facebook Messenger, (38) fax,
(39) Google AdWords search, (40) Google
organic search, (41) Google
recommendations, (42) Google+ page,
(43) looptown recommendations,
(44) online magazine, (45) online register,
(46) tender portal, (47) company website
contact form, (48) company website
Consulting (03) is a core service of the company, as it is
the main channel for product configuration. It essentially
involves a company representative explaining the
customization options to the client. Other customer
touchpoints related to product configuration are phone
calls (06, 07), project meetings (10), which are progress
meetings with existing customers, and email (34). Sales
talks (11) are generally not about product customization
but pricing and other details such as terms of delivery.
Letterpress (15) is a traditional technique of relief
printing. It was mentioned by several employees and
included as a customer touchpoint because the use of
this technique is a unique capability that is not offered
by any regional competitor. Existing and potential
customers therefore recognize products produced or
customized with letterpress printing and associate it
with this specific company, which often leads to further
interaction and new customers.
4.2 Relevant Customer Touchpoints (Step 2)
While it is certainly important to be aware of all the
customer touchpoints of a company, knowing which
ones are perceived to be most relevant is key to
successful customer touchpoint management. Table 3
summarizes the results of the internal and external
evaluation. As described in the methods section, each

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respondent had to allocate 25 points to what he
considered the 10 most important customer
touchpoints. More points equal a higher relative
importance.
Table 3. Weighting of customer touchpoints by employees
(internal) and customers (external), ordered by combined
perceived importance (N=28). Letters (H, P, Se, C, Sp, E)
indicate customer touchpoint categories
Customer
touchpoint
Internal
(N=9) External
(N=19) Combined
(N=28)
pts. % pts. % pts. %
H, Se:
(
03
)
22 9.8 63 13.3 85 12.1
P:
(
17
)
27 12.0 46 9.7 73 10.4
H:
(
10
)
24 10.7 33 6.9 57 8.1
H:
(
02
)
25 11.1 25 5.3 50 7.1
H:
(
07
)
17 7.6 26 5.5 43 6.1
Se:
(
20
)
9 4.0 30 6.3 39 5.6
E:
(
34
)
6 2.7 27 5.7 33 4.7
H:
(
12
)
9 4.0 22 4.6 31 4.4
H, Se:
(
11
)
18 8.0 12 2.5 30 4.3
H:
(
06
)
12 5.3 16 3.4 28 4.0
Se:
(
19
)
5 2.2 23 4.8 28 4.0
P:
(
14
)
10 4.4 17 3.6 27 3.9
Se:
(
21
)
2 0.9 23 4.8 25 3.6
E:
(
4
8
)
7 3.1 18 3.8 25 3.6
H:
(
08
)
- - 16 3.4 16 2.3
C:
(
30
)
3 1.3 13 2.7 16 2.3
H:
(
09
)
- - 14 2.9 14 2.0
P:
(
15
)
7 3.1 6 1.3 13 1.9
H, Sp:
(
01
)
- - 12 2.5 12 1.7
E:
(
35
)
7 3.1 5 1.1 12 1.7
H:
(
04
)
- - 8 1.7 8 1.1
P:
(
16
)
3 1.3 4 0.8 7 1.0
C:
(
22
)
2 0.9 2 0.4 4 0.6
C:
(
27
)
1 0.4 3 0.6 4 0.6
E:
(
41
)
3 1.3 1 0.2 4 0.6
P:
(
13
)
- - 3 0.6 3 0.4
C:
(
29
)
2 0.9 1 0.2 3 0.4
Se:
(
18
)
- - 2 0.4 2 0.3
Sp:
(
32
)
- - 2 0.4 2 0.3
E:
(
44
)
2 0.9 - - 2 0.3
C:
(
25
)
- - 1 0.2 1 0.1
C:
(
26
)
- - 1 0.2 1 0.1
C:
(
28
)
1 0.4 - - 1 0.1
E:
(
47
)
1 0.4 - - 1 0.1
H:
(
05
)
- - - - - -
C:
(
23
)
- - - - - -
C:
(
24
)
- - - - - -
C:
(
31
)
- - - - - -
Sp:
(
33
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
36
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
37
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
38
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
39
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
40
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
42
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
43
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
45
)
- - - - - -
E:
(
4
6
)
- - - - - -
Total
225 points 475 points 700 points
The customer touchpoint that was rated the highest in
terms of relative importance is consulting (03), which is
classified as both human interaction and service.
12.1 % of all available points were attributed to
consulting. Considering that the respondents had to
choose 10 customer touchpoints and allocate at least 1
point to each of those, the percentage of available
points allocated to consulting equals 19.0 %. While it
was ranked first by customers, it is ranked fourth in the
internal analysis. The second most important customer
touchpoint is the product itself (17), which received
10.4 % of all and 16.3 % of the allocable points.
Figure 2 shows the relative importance of the top10
customer touchpoints as perceived by employees and
customers. It is shown that both groups of respondents
agree in principle, but that the internal weighting of the
top10 items is higher on average. Four of the top5
customer touchpoints are human interaction, including
consulting (03), project meetings (10), complaints (02),
and outgoing phone calls (07). Outgoing phone calls
are cold calls, follow ups, and calls to thank the
customer for their business.
Figure 2. Relative importance of the top10 customer
touchpoints in % as perceived by employees (internal) and
customers (external) (N=28)
Overall, human interaction appears to be the most
important, with a total of 53.4 % of all points allocated to
11 customer touchpoints. The second most important
category is service, with 29.9 % of all points. It is
important to note that two highly relevant touchpoints –
consulting (03) and sales talk (11), which account
together for 16.4 % – are included in both human and
service interaction. The category with third most points
allocated is product, accounting for 13.4 %, followed by
electronic interaction with 11.0 %, communication with
4.3 %, and spatial with 2.0 %. Spatial interaction
includes company tours (01), which accounts for 1.7 %
and is also classified as human interaction.
Nine out of 15 electronic interaction customer
touchpoints did not receive a single point in neither the
internal nor the external analysis. Another three
received four or less points, and only two made it into
the top15: Email (34) and the company website (35).
Likewise, both employees and customers do not
attribute a high degree of importance to communication
efforts. In fact, not a single customer touchpoint from
this category is found in the top15. The highest ranked
communication item is sponsoring (30) on the 16
th
position.
The result is a customer touchpoint management tool
that includes the 10 most important customer
touchpoints. For the final step of the analysis, these
top10 customer touchpoints identified in step 2 (see
Table 3) will be considered.

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4.3 Importance of Most Relevant Customer
Touchpoints for Customer Satisfaction (Step 3)
In this section, we present the results of the customer
satisfaction survey amongst 118 business customers
who were asked to indicate the relative importance of
15 customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction. As
described in the methods section, five less important or
unimportant customer touchpoints were added to the
survey in addition to the 10 most important ones
identified in step 2 (see Table 3).
An exception is the customer touchpoint WOM (12),
which was not measured in terms of relative importance
on customer satisfaction, but regarding which factors
lead to positive or negative WOM. Although the goal
was to assess both positive and negative WOM,
negative WOM could not be evaluated as 100 % of
survey respondents indicated that they would
recommend the company.
As shown in Figure 3, each one of the top10 customer
touchpoints is considered to be highly influential on
customer satisfaction, with values of 85.6 % to 91.1 %,
with the exception of delivery (20). The importance for
customer satisfaction of this customer touchpoint was
rated with 83.5 % from customers who use a delivery
service (20a), and 75.3 % by those who collect the
products themselves at the production facility (20b).
The additional customer touchpoints included in the
survey, i.e. press proof (21), the company website (48),
the Facebook page (35), packaging (16), and fax (38)
were given significantly less importance, with values
ranging from 44.5 % to 73.0 %. These percentage
values were calculated by attributing a value of 0 %,
33 %, 67 %, or 100 % to the responses of 118 survey
participants who indicated the importance of the specific
customer touchpoint on a 4-point scale.
Figure 3. Importance of customer touchpoints for customer
satisfaction, as attributed by survey respondents (N=118)
The customer touchpoint products (17), which was
measured in terms of product quality and price–
performance ratio, was found to have the highest
importance for customer satisfaction. The company’s
Facebook page (35) is considered to be least important.
Table 4 finally refers to WOM (12) and shows why
customer would recommend the company. Survey
respondents could select multiple options and/or add
additional reasons. The first seven items in Table 4
were given options, while speed and flexibility were
specified by four different respondents.
Table 4. Reasons why satisfied customers would recommend
the company through WOM (N=118)
Mentions %
Friendliness 99 83.9
Product quality 94 79.7
Reliability 91 77.1
Trust 82 69.5
Price–performance ratio 58 49.2
Warmth 46 39.0
Expectation exceeded 10 8.5
Speed 2 1.7
Flexibility 2 1.7
Other 4 3.4
5. DISCUSSION
We followed a three-step approach (see Figure 1) to
develop (steps 1 and 2) and experiment (step 3) a
customer touchpoint management tool in a small-sized
B2B mass customization company. Step 1 was to
identify customer touchpoints. In step 2 all customer
touchpoints were weighted in terms of their relative
perceived importance to find the most important ones.
In step 3 the individual customer touchpoint’s
importance for customer satisfaction was assessed.
The findings presented in the previous section lead to a
number of interesting and relevant implications for both
research and practice.
5.1 Implications for Research
Products were found to be the second most important
customer touchpoint and have the highest importance
for customer satisfaction. This substantiates previous
findings in the literature, which showed that – besides
interaction quality – product quality is the main driver of
customer satisfaction [43]. Except for products, all
customer touchpoints in the top5 and seven of the
top10 are human interactions, which supports the
postulated need for human interaction in B2B [49].
As shown in Table 3 and Figure 2, the internal and
external analysis regarding the perceived importance of
customer touchpoints is relatively consistent. As
discussed, the company’s employees were asked to
imagine the typical customer journey; i.e., they had to
put themselves in the shoes of their customers and to
first identify and then weigh the respective customer
touchpoints. As only two of the top10 customer
touchpoints would vary if the internal and external
analysis would be considered separately, our findings
suggest that an internal analysis only or an external
analysis only rather than both an internal and external
analysis may be sufficient to identify the most important
customer touchpoints. This can be relevant if
researchers face time or budget restrictions, or lack
access to one or the other group.
In step 2, employees and customers were asked to
attribute the relative importance of each customer

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touchpoint. The results of the customer satisfaction
survey (step 3), i.e., the relative importance of specific
customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction, clearly
reflect the ranking of step 2. Interestingly, this indicates
that the importance attributed to customer touchpoints
correlates with the importance for customer satisfaction.
In other words, when employees and/or customers are
asked about the importance of a customer touchpoint,
they may imply its importance for customer satisfaction,
which reinforces the results of studies underlining the
general importance of customer satisfaction (e.g. [6]).
5.2 Implications for Practice
Every customer touchpoint can play a determinant role
when it comes to customer satisfaction or
dissatisfaction. However, businesses are limited in
terms of human and capital resources, and therefore
have to set strategic priorities and allocate their budget
to some activities. A customer touchpoint analysis can
help in identifying the most relevant customer
touchpoints and give valuable insights that help to take
strategic decisions. With this knowledge, the
management can systematically focus their efforts on
improving interaction quality, information quality, and
other factors such as response speed, if applicable. The
more important and/or the higher the importance for
customer satisfaction of a specific customer touchpoint,
the more time, effort, and financial resources should be
invested in improving it.
The customer touchpoints identified in step 1 and
weighted in step 2 allowed to develop a management
tool that helps in measuring, monitoring, and improving
key customer touchpoints over time. In the future, the
company can regularly repeat step 3; i.e., conducting
the customer satisfaction survey, to assess if
implemented changes led to an increase or decrease in
customer satisfaction.
Using our three-step approach, it is also possible to
identify less important customer touchpoints. The
company assessed in this case study offers 15
customer touchpoints classified as electronic
interaction, including different social media channels
(see Table 2). However, they appear to be rather
unimportant. Besides email (34), only the company
website (47) and the Facebook page (35) seem to be
relevant. In step 3, the latter was rated to have the
lowest importance for customer satisfaction, which
leads to the question of whether companies should offer
a wide range of electronic interaction or focus on a
limited number of tools and social media. Companies
should critically review the range of this type of
customer touchpoints, considering time and money
spent to maintain each channel. It is better not to be
present on a specific platform rather than not being
active, which means to provide up-to-date content and
not just responding to user comments [60].
With an average value of 91.1 %, products (11) have
been shown to be the most important customer
touchpoint that determines customer satisfaction. In
addition, almost 80% of customers recommend the
company through WOM if they are satisfied with the
product quality. However, positive WOM can also be
generated with actions that are not related to the
company’s products, such as being friendly, reliable,
and trustworthy.
5.3 Limitations and Future Research
Developing a customer touchpoint management tool
and assessing the current situation is just the first step
of customer touchpoint management [44]. Further steps
include the optimisation of the tool to continuously
improve customer experiences [44], which has not been
done in this case study.
Another downside regarding our methodology is that we
included exclusively existing customers. The needs and
preferences of potential new clients were not
considered. This does not limit the validity of our
results, but needs to be taken into consideration, e.g.
when the results are used by start-ups or by established
businesses that want to win new customers.
With regard to reasons why satisfied customers are
using WOM to recommend a company (see Table 4),
the responses may be biased by the specification of
seven items. Assuming, for example, speed and
flexibility were given as additional options, it can be
assumed that more than just a few customers would
have chosen them. Therefore, these results may be
helpful to assess the relative importance of the seven
predetermined options, but not as an exhaustive list of
factors influencing WOM.
Previous findings highlight that the nature of the product
impacts the perceived importance of customer
touchpoints [13]. Thus, the findings from this study may
not be applicable to SME from other industries. Future
research should replicate this research and extend it to
a variety of other industries to find differences and
similarities, which may be applied to a wider range of
B2B MC companies.
Although this study assesses a company that can
clearly be defined to use a MC strategy, we did not
assess some features that are considered to be typical,
e.g. online product configurators. Although this may
limit the contribution of this case study to MC literature,
it is justified as long as the company operates in this
specific way, i.e., offering mass customized products
but no online product configurator.
We also found that all customers participating in the
customer satisfaction survey would recommend the
company. Even though all companies work towards the
goal of having as many satisfied customers as possible,
this situation does not reflect the average business
landscape. We do not believe our results are influenced
by any self-selection bias; i.e., that satisfied customers
agreed to participate in the survey while dissatisfied
customers did not, because previous studies showed
that both highly satisfied and highly dissatisfied
customers are equally likely to respond to customer
satisfaction surveys [61]. However, the fact that only
satisfied customers participated in the survey may limit the
generalizability of the results. Further research with less
satisfied and dissatisfied customers should be carried out
to find possible differences regarding the impact of specific
customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction as
indicated by satisfied versus dissatisfied customers.

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And last, our findings indicate that electronic interaction
is not very important nor very relevant for customer
satisfaction. This could be because email (34) has been
defined as a single customer touchpoint, although it
may include several distinct customer touchpoints such
as advertisements, promotions, and offerings. In
addition, the importance of electronic interaction may
heavily depend on corporate use of these tools and
channels. As social interaction has been shown to be
relevant for MC [62], future research may include
additional measures such as the corporate social media
use [63] to assess the relationship between the degree
the company actually uses social media and the
perceived importance and/or the impact on customer
satisfaction. This is to say that if a business posts more
often on their Facebook page, uploads videos regularly
on their YouTube channel, and shares images on
Instagram on a daily basis, these customer touchpoints
may also be considered more important.
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Upravljanje tačkama dodira sa korisnicima i zadovoljstvo korisnika
u B2B kastomizovanoj industrijskoj proizvodnji: Studija slučaja
Thomas Aichner, Benjamin Gruber
Primljen (16.03.2017.); Recenziran (20.06.2017.); Prihvaćen (02.08.2017.)
Apstrakt
Većina kompanija se slaže da je visoko zadovoljstvo korisnika veoma važno. Mnogi su svesni da
zadovoljstvo korisnika predstavlja preduslov za uspeh, ali samo mali broj kompanija ga meri i prati na
struktuiran način, zbog čega ne uspevaju da ga unaprede. Cilj ovog rada je da razvije upravljački alat
koji omogućava malim i srednjim B2B preduzećima koja se bave kastomizovanom proizvodnjom da
prilikom dodira sa korisnicima mere, prate i unaprede njihovo zadovoljstvo. Ova studija identifikuje 48
tačaka dodira sa korisnicama koje su podeljene u sledeće grupe: međuljudska interakcija, interakcija
kroz proizvode, usluge i komunikaciju, kao i prostorna i elektronska interakcija. Istraživanje je
zasnovano na pristupu koji sadrži 3 faze: zaposleni i postojeći korisnici su bili uključeni u proces
identifikacije tačaka dodira sa korisnicima, zatim su ih merili u smislu njihovog značaja i na kraju su
procenjivali važnost određenih tačaka dodira sa korisnicima za njihovo zadovoljstvo. Rezultati ukazuju
da nisu sve identifikovane tačke dodira sa korisnicima važne, kao i to da se zaposleni i korisnici u
velikoj meri slažu oko onih tačaka dodira koje zaista jesu najvažnije. Utvrđeno je da su tačke dodira sa
korisnicima koje su svrstane u grupu međuljudskih interakcija najvažnije i da imaju najveći uticaj na
zadovoljstvo korisnika.
Ključne reči: tačke dodira sa korisnicima, zadovoljstvo korisnika, kastomizovana industrijska
proizvodnja, grafička industrija