Latest / Customer Journey with Fexingo: Touchpoints, Mapping, and Multi-Channel Marketing / When Customer Journey Maps Miss the Interstitial Touchpoint
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot about the touchpoints in a customer journey map — the awareness stage, the consideration stage, the purchase stage — but there's this hidden layer that almost never gets mapped, and it's often where the real conversion leverage lives. Luna: What's the hidden layer? Lucas: I'm calling it the interstitial touchpoint. It's the moment that occurs between two officially mapped stages — the thing the customer does in the gap that nobody thought to design for. And last month I saw a case from a mid-market apparel brand that made it incredibly concrete. Luna: Before you dive into that — and I promise this ties in — if you've ever gotten value from these conversations, like actually applied a journey mapping technique or shared an episode with a colleague, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's small, it's voluntary, and it means we never have to run ads. Okay, back to interstitial touchpoints. Lucas: Exactly. So the brand I'm talking about — let's call them ApparelCo — they had a standard journey map: awareness, browse, add to cart, checkout, post-purchase. But when they looked at their analytics, they noticed something weird. Luna: What was the weird thing? Lucas: There was a consistent 47-minute gap between the 'add to cart' event and the 'view shipping details' event. And during that gap, about 18% of users who added to cart never came back. The default assumption was that they were comparison shopping or got distracted. But the team decided to actually watch session replays. Luna: And what did they see? Lucas: They saw that in those 47 minutes, many users were toggling between the product page and a competitor's site, checking sizing charts, or reading reviews on third-party sites. They weren't just idle. They were in a micro-research loop that the brand had zero presence in. Luna: So the interstitial touchpoint was that research moment — and they had no touchpoint designed for it. Lucas: Right. So they built one. They triggered an automated email — not a generic cart abandonment email, but a sizing reassurance email sent 30 minutes after cart addition, with a sizing guide, real customer measurements, and a link to a live chat stylist. Luna: And what happened? Lucas: Recovered 12% of the revenue that was previously lost in that gap. That's about $340,000 a year for a brand doing roughly $12 million in online revenue. And the email had a 42% open rate — way above their average. Luna: So the interstitial touchpoint was really about meeting a need the customer didn't articulate, but was clearly acting on. Lucas: Exactly. And the method to find these interstitials — I call it the 'transition tape' method. You take your journey map and for every transition between two stages, you ask: what does the customer actually do in that time window? You need behavioral data, not just assumption. Luna: Do you think most teams are even aware these gaps exist? Lucas: No. Most teams map the stages they've defined — the ones in their CRM or marketing automation. But the real customer journey includes all the unowned moments. And those are often where trust is built or broken. Another example: a SaaS company I worked with found that between the demo request and the demo call, about 30% of leads went dark. Luna: What was the interstitial there? Lucas: They discovered that leads were trying to self-educate during that gap. They'd visit the pricing page, read case studies, and often get confused about which tier fit them. So the company added a short automated email sequence in that 24-hour window — not selling, but helping them self-qualify. That cut the no-show rate by 22%. Luna: So the interstitial touchpoint can be an email, a chat prompt, a page — it's about the timing and the intent. Lucas: Right. But you have to be careful not to over-map. If you try to create a touchpoint for every five-minute gap, you'll overwhelm the customer and create noise. The key is to find the high-leverage interstitials — the ones where the customer is most uncertain or most likely to defect. Luna: How do you identify those high-leverage gaps? Lucas: Look for three signals: first, a significant drop-off rate between two stages. Second, a long time delay — any gap longer than what you'd expect from normal browsing behavior. Third, qualitative feedback or session recordings that show confusion or indecision. The apparel brand saw all three. Luna: What about the risk of adding a touchpoint that interrupts the customer's flow? Like, what if the sizing email feels pushy? Lucas: Great point. The interstitial has to feel helpful, not salesy. The apparel brand's email was framed as 'We want you to get the right fit' — no discount, no urgency. It was purely service-oriented. And they A/B tested it. The version with a discount code actually performed worse in terms of return rate and customer satisfaction. Luna: So the interstitial touchpoint is really about bridging the customer's unspoken need, not pushing them along the funnel. Lucas: Exactly. And once you start looking for interstitials, you see them everywhere. Another one I love is in B2B — between when a prospect downloads a whitepaper and when they request a demo. That gap is often weeks or months. Most companies just wait. But one cybersecurity firm I know sends a weekly 'industry threat brief' during that gap — completely non-commercial, but it keeps them top of mind. Luna: And that's essentially a nurture sequence, but timed to the interstitial rather than a generic cadence. Lucas: Yes. The difference is the trigger. It's not 'send email four of ten' — it's 'send this because the customer is in this specific gap.' And that's much more relevant. The cybersecurity firm saw a 15% higher demo booking rate from those leads compared to their standard nurture. Luna: So if someone listening wants to start finding their own interstitials, what's the first step? Lucas: Pull your journey map and for every transition, pull the time-on-task data from your analytics. Any gap longer than the median time for that stage is a candidate. Then watch three to five session recordings of users who went through that gap. You'll see patterns. Then prototype a lightweight touchpoint — an email, a page, a chat widget — and test it for two weeks. Luna: And measure not just conversion, but also customer satisfaction? Lucas: Absolutely. Because a bad interstitial can actually hurt. If you interrupt the research loop with a hard sell, you'll push people away. The goal is to be useful in the moment of need. And sometimes the best interstitial is no touchpoint at all — just removing friction from the stage transition itself. Luna: Can you give an example of that? Lucas: Sure. A travel booking site found that between flight search and selecting a fare, users were spending an average of 8 minutes — but 60% of that time was just loading results. They optimized the page speed and the interstitial collapsed. No new touchpoint needed. That's also an interstitial fix. Luna: So the interstitial can be either adding a touchpoint or removing friction. Lucas: Right. The concept is the same: look at what happens between the mapped moments. That's where the real customer experience lives. And it's almost always under-designed. Luna: I think the reason it's overlooked is that most journey mapping tools are stage-based. They don't naturally surface the gaps. Lucas: Exactly. The tools reinforce the stages you've defined. You have to intentionally look at the white space between them. And that white space often contains the highest-leverage improvements because nobody else is optimizing it. Luna: So next time you're reviewing your journey map, spend as much time on the transitions as on the stages themselves. Lucas: That's the takeaway. And if you find a good interstitial, let us know. We might feature it in a future episode.