Introduction 

A touchpoint is an interaction between a company and its customer(s). Emails, Phone Calls, and Chats are different channels of interaction. 

For example, 

• A sales rep at Grasspods may send an email to a customer stating the specifications of a Grasspods product. 
• A customer may report a problem with a Grasspods product through a phone call. 

Feature Availability 

How Vtiger CRM Tracks Touchpoints 

Vtiger helps you maintain details of touchpoints for your contacts and organizations. Let us categorize touchpoints as direct or indirect based on the type of interaction with the customer.

• Direct touchpoints displayed on a deal record
  • Touchpoints that establish a direct connection with the customers – Events, Phone Calls, Emails, and SMS – are shown in the Activity section of deals, contacts, and organizations.  
  • Filtering direct touchpoints: Activity section
    • The Activity section has a filter that can be used to customize the deals’ activity view. Updates on specific types of activities can be turned on or turned off using the filter.
  • Events
    • Events that are related to a deal and marked as Held or Not Held are recorded in the Activity section of the deal. Vtiger tracks events of types – Call, Meeting, and Onsite Meetings under the Activity section.
    • Emoticons can be attached to events marked as Held, to map a customer’s emotional journey. 
    • Alerts on the upcoming and overdue activities on the deal are also displayed in the Activity section under the  Up Next section.
  • Phone Calls
    • Deal-related Phone Calls with the status set to Completed or Hangup are logged in the Activity section as touchpoints. 
  • Emails
    • Emails that are sent to or received from a deal-related contact or organization are logged in the Activity section of the deal. Emails include both ad hoc and email campaigns. 
    • Email sentiments are tracked automatically, and an emoticon is displayed against the email update in the Activity section, depicting the emotional journey. 
    • Note: When a sent email has a Bcc address, then Opens and Clicks for the Bcc address are tracked under Main Menu > Actions > Engagements. 
  • SMS
    • Messages sent to a deal’s contact via SMS are recorded in the deal’s Activity section, along with the SMS status – Dispatched, Delivered, and Failed. 

• Indirect touchpoints
  • Documents and Cases are considered indirect touchpoints as they do not involve direct interaction with customers.
  • Documents
    • Documents shared with the contacts and organizations related to a deal are logged in the Documents widget. You can also add documents under the widget by using the ‘+’ button.
    • To learn more about documents in Vtiger CRM, click here.
  • Cases
    • Cases are complaints registered by customers. Cases related to a deal’s contacts and organizations are listed in One View. Sales reps can view the required details related to a case under One View.
  • Customer portal
    • Vtiger CRM’s records logins and logouts that happen on the customer portal. When a customer logs in to or logs out of the customer portal, the activity is logged in the Activity section of the contact record in the CRM.

Using Touchpoints 

Information captured by touchpoints is used in the Actions dashboard, Sales Insights, and the Last Contacted fields.

• Actions dashboard
  • Actions dashboard provides a single view of all the upcoming, overdue, and completed activities under the Me tab. When no activity is performed on a deal in a long time, then the deal is said to be idle. To get idle alerts, you can go to Main Menu > Essentials > Actions > Configuration > Smart Alerts.
• Sales Insights
  • Touchpoints such as emails, phone calls, and events are used to generate Activity Reports on deals in Sales Insights. 
  • For example:
    • Activities Added: This report shows all the activities added by your sales team in the form of a bar chart. This information helps you ensure that your sales team is on the right track to seal a deal.
    • Activity Completed: View all the activities completed by your sales team by glancing at this chart. Hover on the chart to view activity metrics such as count and effort (duration).
    • Activity Efficiency: The chart displays the average number of activities performed by a sales rep to win deals assigned to him or her. It also shows an estimate of the number of activities required by a sales rep to win a deal, along with the duration of each activity. 
• Last contacted details: Last Contacted Via and Last Contacted On fields in Contacts and Organizations get updated automatically when a touchpoint occurs. You can refer to these fields to identify when the last connection was made with a deal-related contact or organization.
  • Consider this example: A sales rep’s last interaction with a customer was through Email at 10:30 AM on 27th June 2019. In this case, Last Contacted Via gets updated to ‘Email’, and Last Contacted On takes the value ‘27-6-2019 10:30 AM’.
  • Note: Last Contacted Via can take the following values: Email, SMS, Phone Call, Email Campaign, Meeting, Call, Onsite Meeting, and Onsite Service.
  • Usage of last contacted details 
    • Workflows:  Last Contacted Via and Last Contacted On  can be used to create Entry Criteria in Workflows.
    • List conditions: Last Contacted Via and Last Contacted On can be used to add conditions when creating a custom list.