Touchpoint Group: A Kea Connect Journey

Tell us about Touchpoint Group and the Ipiphany platform

Touchpoint Group is a customer experience technology company that offers data-driven solutions for customer-centric organisations. Our feedback collection and automation tools are complemented by Ipiphany, an analytics tool that uses AI to read large volumes of open text – like app store reviews or survey comments – to give businesses enough context and understanding that they can make improvements that matter. We developed Ipiphany to provide a solution for businesses that have “feedback overload” – they get high volumes of feedback from customers, but don’t have the resources to read through it all, much less be able to prioritise it and understand how they can make the biggest difference for their customers.

What were the key decisions Touchpoint Group needed to make to expand internationally?

During our initial expansion, Frank, Founder and CEO focused on making connections with key contacts in-market, and was able to do so using the Kea Connect network. Once these relationships were underway, we had a better understanding of what aspects of Touchpoint Group – and Ipiphany – could be offered for the biggest impact in these markets.

As a result, we developed a benchmarking service for mobile banking apps, and have just rolled out an eCommerce customer journey analysis service. Both of these services use Ipiphany to provide data-driven solutions for businesses who want to harness the power of customer feedback to make improvements that truly matter for their customers.

Tell us about your experience with Kea Connect since first engaging us in 2018

In 2018, Frank approached Kea Connect for advice about expanding overseas, and specifically sought introductions to Kiwis working in the financial services sector. Kea Connect set up 15 meetings for Frank in London, who spent six days talking to Kiwis who were established in senior roles at banks such as HSBC, RBS and Standard Chartered Bank. His conversation with the Digital Product and Experience Director at Barclays, stood out. Frank says that chat convinced him to take Touchpoint Group to the UK. The need for the service in the Asia Pacific region was clearly apparent in the UK as well. 

“The connection that Kea Connect delivered was exactly the right person. He gave me confidence that we could succeed in London with our product.” As a direct result of the connection, Touchpoint Group expanded into the UK.

Kea Connect then played an instrumental role in helping Touchpoint Group break into Australia by introducing Frank to World Class New Zealander David Thodey. Within just a few days, David had introduced Frank to the right people in the telecommunications industry. “I was very impressed with the speed.”

Talking to David led to numerous business opportunities for Touchpoint Group. “We’ve ended up with an agreed action plan with four potential consulting partners and one significant opportunity in the banking sector.” Based on his experience, Frank believes Kea Connect can play an important role for expanding Kiwi SMEs. It can show business owners that they have what it takes to make it offshore. “The main value of Kea Connect is that it can help SMEs to build confidence about expanding overseas.” 

While the concept of entering a new market can be scary, Frank has found that the Kea community enjoy giving back to fellow Kiwis. “Kiwis are often quite happy to spend 30 minutes of their time having a coffee.” He says that companies thinking about trying out Kea Connect “should just do it.” 

How has Touchpoint Group grown since 2018?

As a result of Frank’s introduction to a Digital Experience Director at Barclays, Touchpoint was able to complete a successful PoC (Proof of Concept) with Barclays. Due to instability following COVID-19 this year, Barclays plans to sign on in 2021, but in the meantime it was this PoC which allowed us to develop the mobile app benchmarking service which has now been sold in Australia, to Westpac bank, and in Canada to TD Bank.

For businesses that are considering whether they are ready to expand, what would be your number one consideration or piece of advice to share?

“Do your research in-market. You don’t have to be physically in the market – especially now, but do your research and understand what the market needs”, says Frank.

Your growth focus is currently AU and UK – can you elaborate more on key opportunities you see in these markets, and the key steps you foresee being crucial to success in these markets?

Our key steps forward are very much a result of the foundational work we’ve done to identify the needs in respective markets. We’ve since expanded to include an eCommerce analysis and reporting service which puts the power of Ipiphany’s AI analytics engine in the hands of businesses wishing to improve return and retention on their eCommerce platforms. This service came about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as we’ve all witnessed a huge shift to online shopping across all facets of the retail space. 

The Touchpoint Group eCommerce Analysis and Reporting service is designed to help eCommerce businesses improve retention, reduce operational costs, and prioritise improvements that will yield the biggest RoI as they adjust to the exponential growth they’ve seen throughout the pandemic. We use our AI customer analytics tool, Ipiphany, to conduct a comprehensive analysis of customer feedback which helps businesses understand their performance against their competitors, identify the cause of changing metrics, and most importantly, provide enough granular detail for a business to identify data-driven solutions and measure the effectiveness of changes made.

You can read more about the service here. To see it in action, we analysed publicly available data from Walmart during the period of the first US lockdown and compared it to eight other market leaders worldwide. Using Ipiphany, we were able to identify a major problem with Walmart’s eCommerce platform that was leading to lost sales at an alarming rate – you can read more about it here.

To learn more about Ipiphany, and how AI customer analytics can drive data-driven results for your business, read an overview or contact Touchpoint Group.