I first learned about “touchpoints” years ago, when I came across Kevin Roberts’ Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands back in 2006. Kevin was then CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi.
Around the same time, I remember hearing Anthony Robbins describe one of the seven steps to business mastery: to create raving fans of your clients and people.
Was I creating raving fan clients and people? As a growing business, I felt entrepreneurial ego was strong, we were winning awards, were successful. I recall asking the team to STOP for a breath, so we could explore this together: were we in love with our company or our clients? It stayed with me and I asked myself that regularly in the years to come. Too often businesses fall in love with their brand, their bottom line, the idea of success, rather than the lived experience of those they serve.
In 2006 as we were rebranding Regional Nursing Solutions into RNS* Nursing, I sat quietly with the Lovemark messages and those ideas and asked myself:
What will we be remembered for? If someone said, “Do you recommend an agency?”, where would the other person’s mind go to first, and then say our name? How could we show up differently, uniquely us, and stand out from the crowd? Not just for the organisations we invoiced, but for our external staff: the nurses who came to us for work, for our team in the office, and for every person who crossed paths with us.
We were unique already in that we weren’t the usual agency of “nurses for nurses.” That was a risk I was conscious of in the nursing profession. We were all of our expertise and values for all those we served. We brought in external experts where needed, engaged independent directors as our advisory board. Our internal team were recruitment and operations managers, nurse educators and quality managers, marketing, accounting and allocations staff.
I recall one strategic review where our team stood together at a whiteboard mapping out a giant map of all the possible touchpoints.
For a nurse that was:
- the way a nurse first heard of us
- how did we answer the first call, in three rings (that sounds old school now, do people still do that – there is so much now managed online)
- how they felt walking into the office
- the uniform – we were known as the ‘blue shirts’ for the sky blue colour they wore
- the interview
- the 24/7 experience of working with us
- whether they were always paid correctly and on time (a big problem in the industry I refused to replicate), and
- when the time came to move on, how they spoke of us afterwards.
Those nurse touchpoints shaped the circle we built, and often became the reason people referred others to us. We also had ‘patient’ and ‘resident’ maps and ‘client’ and ‘internal staff’ maps.
Fast forward to this month, as I delivered a history-making 3VQ® trainer cohort, the first one for Asia Pacific.
I had the joy of co-creating that with Billie, an event manager in Melbourne, who really gets producing and leading teams with ‘run-sheets’. Briefing Billie on the outcome we were focusing on, the process, the runsheets and agendas, the mighty network, and all that we said we would deliver, we took a deep breath in and out and smiled, opening up the zoom room doors to greet the cohort with welcome arms.
In our prep session with the cohort, I shared the fourth of the Four Agreements: Always do your best. Touchpoints, to me, are about being that person. Doing the best we can, knowing our best will look different every day, and staying true to our values, listening and asking for feedback. All of that allows us to consistently improve.
In one of our facilitator manuals there is a line that caught my eye early on in being a 3VQ facilitator:
Facilitators have been selected for your willingness to learn and lead the various groups or teams of cohorts that will be taking the course together. As the Facilitator, you are the host and coordinator of the live sessions. Your responsibility is to open your mind and heart to this powerful work and be a personal model for its transformational power. – David Emerald & Donna Zajonc
This cohort leaned in and were vulnerable. We all were excited that this was a first. They gave me grace to share metaphors, poetry and meditations as we opened up each day. They allowed me to check for feedback as we went. All joined us in co-creating a safe learning environment from day one. It was an incredible thing to witness their pod debriefs and how they interacted back in the main room.
Touchpoints are like pins on a map, guiding our journey with the people we serve. And equally important is reviewing or connecting those pins backward, as Steve Jobs once said:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” – Steve Jobs
This cohort were leaders in business, choosing to add a new set of guiding principles to their people-empowering toolkits.
Afterward I found myself wondering: What did they spot were the touchpoints before, during, and beyond certification? How could the company improve on those touchpoints? Now, how do they want to show up as 3VQ trainers? Who do they want to be for those they lead? And what will others say about them? How will they make them feel, about how they showed up, when they’re no longer in the room?
Because in the end, touchpoints aren’t just about branding. They are about people. Every moment matters.