Every touchpoint leaves a trace

Why customer experience is everyone’s job, not just marketing

In every organisation, whether a small business, growing mid-sized enterprise, or employ 1,000’s of people your brand is shaped not by what you say but by what customers feel in the moments they interact with you. Every day hundreds of tiny moments: the speed of a reply, the tone of an invoice email, the way your team handles a small mistake. Your brand is not a logo or a tagline — it is the accumulation of countless impressions and interactions every day.

As branding specialist Elaine Fogel puts it, a brand is “a combination of a customer’s experiences with your business at every touchpoint… each memory, thought, impression, website visit, phone call and transaction contributes to your reputation.” That truth has never been more relevant.

Every touchpoint does leave a trace – and your customers are keeping score

Marketing may create the promise. But it’s every touchpoint across your business that proves – or disproves – that promise.

For business leaders, the crucial shift is understanding that customer experience (CX) is not a marketing function — it is an organisational operating system. Every person, every system and every process leaves a trace.

Why every touchpoint matters more than ever

Customer expectations today are not only higher; they are less forgiving. Research consistently shows that companies leading in customer experience grow revenue up to 80% faster than those trailing behind. In other words, customer experience (CX) excellence is not a soft metric — it’s a competitive advantage with hard financial impact.

But loyalty is fragile. Zendesk reports that nearly half of customers who left a brand they had been loyal to in the last 12 months did so because of poor customer experience, and 60% have chosen one brand over another based purely on the quality of service they expect. Meanwhile, BCG’s 2024 loyalty research highlights that consumer loyalty has weakened by approximately 20% since 2022, and engagement with loyalty programmes is down 10%. Customers may subscribe to more brands, but they commit to fewer — which means that a single negative experience can undo years of positive interactions.

Expectations around digital convenience also continue to evolve. A 2025 review of global consumer behaviour revealed that 80% of customers believe experiences should be better given the data companies collect, and 74% expect to be able to complete online almost everything they would previously have done in person or by phone. People no longer tolerate fragmented communication or unreplied messages. They expect seamlessness — and they expect it quickly.

CX expert Kate Zabriskie captures this simply: “The customer’s perception is your reality.” Whether that perception is built consciously or accidentally is up to the business.

Marketing doesn’t own every touchpoint

A common misconception is that customer experience begins and ends with marketing. In reality, marketing creates the promise; the business proves it.

Before a customer buys, their impressions might come from a website visit, a LinkedIn post, a Google search listing, or a call to your main number. The experience continues through sales conversations, proposal follow-ups, contract discussions, and onboarding. After purchase, the tone of your invoices, the ease of talking to support, your delivery accuracy, and how you handle small frustrations all reinforce or erode trust. Every interaction that customer makes with you counts too!

SurveyMonkey summarises CX as making customers feel “seen, heard and valued across every single touchpoint and interaction.” That spans far beyond the marketing department. Operations shapes the customer’s everyday reality. Finance influences how professional — or abrasive — invoices and payment reminders feel. HR determines how frontline staff communicate. Technology sets the tone for speed and convenience.

The difficult truth is that a brilliant campaign or ad can be undone by a curt accounts email or a slow support process. Customers experience the business as one system, even if internally it operates in silos.

Technology and AI: The Great Amplifiers

The rise of AI and digital tools has transformed the way SMEs deliver customer experience. Many leaders assume these technologies are the territory of large corporates, but the data tells a different story.

According to Verizon’s 2025 State of Small Business survey, 38% of SMEs already use AI across areas such as marketing, recruitment and customer service. An impressive 76% report that social media — powered increasingly by AI-generated content and insights — has had a positive impact on their performance. Another 2025 survey by ActiveCampaign and Talker Research notes that 75% of small business owners feel AI helps them compete with larger companies, with regular users reporting significant monthly time and cost savings.

Across the broader market, AI is reshaping CX expectations. IBM research shared via Plivo shows that 74% of executives believe AI will fundamentally transform their approach to customer experience, and the number of contact centres implementing AI is rising sharply between 2024 and 2025. Medallia’s 2024 retail insights report that over half of retailers now use AI-powered conversational assistants to guide shoppers, and three in five use AI to support staff with real-time recommendations. Consumers are becoming accustomed to fast, personalised and context-aware interactions — and they expect smaller businesses to keep up.

The impact is clear: AI can make experiences faster, more personalised and more consistent. But it can also expose weaknesses. Poorly designed chatbots, generic automated emails, disconnected CRM systems or AI tools lacking human oversight can produce experiences that feel robotic or frustrating. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted that generative AI will “reinvent every customer experience”, warning that organisations unwilling to adapt risk falling behind.

For SMEs, AI doesn’t replace human relationships; it scales them. It handles repetition so your team can focus on high-value, empathetic human moments. Used wisely, it becomes an extension of your brand. Used carelessly, it becomes another touchpoint that leaves a negative trace.

A practical approach for SMEs

You don’t need a big CX department to get this right. You do need leadership focus and a simple, repeatable approach.

1. Here’s a practical roadmap:

See what your customers see

• Secret-shop your own business: try calling the main number, filling in a contact form, or buying your own product or service
• Review the automated side: confirmation emails, invoice templates, notifications, chatbot journeys, out-of-hours messages.
• Look at your Google Business profile, review responses, social media replies and average response times.

Ask yourself: If I was a time-poor, slightly sceptical prospect, how would this feel?

2. Map the journey – end-to-end

Bring your leadership team together and sketch:

1. Stages (Awareness → Consideration → Purchase → Onboarding → Usage → Renewal/Advocacy)
2. Touchpoints under each stage (both human and digital)
3. Owner for each touchpoint (not “Marketing” – a named person or team)

This instantly shows where the experience is strong, patchy or “unowned”

3. Close the loop and keep learning

• Regularly share real customer stories – good and bad – in team meetings
• Track a handful of CX metrics (response time, repeat purchase rates, complaint themes, NPS or simple satisfaction scores)
• When you introduce new tech or AI, watch what happens to those metrics and adjust

This isn’t a one-off project. It’s a habit.

The Leadership Imperative

“Every touchpoint leaves a trace” is not philosophy — it is a strategic necessity. In a world where customers have infinite choice, shrinking loyalty and rising expectations, your business will ultimately be judged not by your best interactions but by your most inconsistent ones.

The businesses that win will be those where leaders champion a culture of intentional experience: where every email, every message, every phone call and every automated notification reflects the brand’s values. Marketing cannot do that alone. It must be shared across operations, finance, sales, HR, service teams and technology partners.

The crucial question for leadership is this:

If every touchpoint left a permanent fingerprint on your brand, would you be proud of the pattern it creates?

If the answer is “not yet,” that simply means there is opportunity — and in the current market, improving the experience you deliver may be the most powerful growth strategy available to any SME.