Touchpoint Group

Our Story

Touchpoint Group, the brain-child of Frank van der Velden and Steve Shearman, was established in 2000. Launched after the sale of Web Masters in 1999, Frank & Steve saw the power the internet provided for businesses and the masses alike to communicate in a far more effective and dynamic way.

Touchpoint Group was formed as the vehicle to develop data driven customer centric products. In 2000 this was email only, which grew to multi-channel communications, encompassing mobile in 2003. This formed the foundation for the automated marketing platform, TouchpointMX. In the early days of the Global Financial Crisis, Touchpoint began working with major retail banks, this experience became the basis for the dedication to data security and customer privacy, now firmly embedded in the company’s DNA.

During the Financial Crisis, banking customer relationships were severely damaged. Our banking customers wished to repair these relationships and using TouchpointMX we experimented extensively with customer feedback using the survey module. This was so effective we decided to build a Voice of Customer product, TouchpointCX, which enabled the automation of data collection, while providing case management features, reporting and analytics.

Touchpoint Group’s data repository grew exponentially, while customers were asking for more effective ways to analyse their data, their preference being without expensive data analysts! Steve Shearman has always maintained a keen interest in technology developments in artificial intelligence and neural networks. Driven by the benefits of automation he was eminently suited to lead our newest project for Touchpoint Group. The NZ Government Innovation Agency, Callaghan Foundation, backed the proposed project with funding and in just 18 months Touchpoint Ipiphany was born. It proved the hypothesis that AI could indeed do most of the heavy lifting in finding root cause more effectively than humans from customer data.

Touchpoint Group is the only business world-wide that offers a seamless 3 suite platform of customer centric solutions that really drive business impact. Our expertise in gathering the data, marketing to the customer and analysing results for over 20 years, gives our clients the reassurance we are the best in the market.