Client TouchPoint Modeling: Making the Invisible Visible within IT Service Delivery Organizations

Front stage interactions, or touch points, take place between service providers and clients and play an important role in shaping the clients´ overall service experience. Service delivery teams engage client personnel in a variety of touchpoints for the purposes of delivering services, resolving problems, managing customer relationships, and developing new business opportunities. Some of these touchpoints may be intentional or planned, while others are unexpected or informal. The division of roles and responsibilities within service delivery organizations often conceals the interdependent network of touchpoints that occur, and makes it difficult for service delivery team members to form a consistent and detailed understanding of how individual and team performance affect the customer experience and quality of service. Therefore, understanding which service delivery personnel are talking to the client and for what purposes can become a challenging management task for service delivery teams. To address this challenge, we introduce the first step of a Client Touch Point Modeling process, a novel approach for identifying, evaluating, and managing service delivery team´s interactions with client personnel.