customer journey report example

Learn / Guides / Customer journey mapping (CJM) guide

Back to guides

How 5 businesses successfully mapped out the customer journey

Creating a customer journey map puts you in your customers’ shoes to help you understand the user experience—what your users think, feel, and do at each stage of their buying journey.

Last updated

Reading time.

We’ve put together a list of five brilliant customer journey mapping (CJM) examples to show you how it’s done, so you can learn how to improve the user experience (UX) for your customers. 

Want to know how customers really interact with your product?

Hotjar’s product experience insights tools let you see things through their eyes. 

5 great examples of customer journey mapping 

A good customer journey map identifies buyers’ actions, desires, and experiences at every key touchpoint—from when a customer lands on your webpage all the way to conversion, onboarding, and beyond.

Our list of customer journey examples breaks down the best B2B, B2C, ecommerce, and SaaS journey maps—and shows you how to understand your customers better to build your own.

1. Hotjar’s B2B customer journey map 

At Hotjar (👋), we make product experience (PX) insights tools to help businesses understand how their customers interact with their websites and digital products. And, of course, we’ve done some B2B customer journey mapping of our own to understand what our customers want, by tracking their interactions across key touchpoints. 

The result was the digital customer journey example shown above that maps our customers' experience when they use Hotjar tools for product testing. We visualized the key actions, questions, technical limitations, and opportunities of customers using our tools to get granular data to validate our product ideas and experiments. 

We started by identifying one specific customer journey, then used Google Analytics, Hotjar tools, and data from customer interactions with our brand to understand user actions, thoughts, and feelings. Then, we got UX, dev, engineering, and customer success teams to fill out empathy maps before mapping the journey. 

To increase empathy with our customers, we included two rows dedicated to pain points and happy moments—like the pain of finding patterns in complex customer data, and the ‘a-ha moment' when our users first realize value.  

We made our map flexible enough to be updated as customer needs change and new information becomes available, so we continually validate our assumptions against customers’ real-world experiences.

The benefits of customer journey mapping included helping us visualize customer motivations, drivers, and pain points, align cross-functional teams , eliminate silos, and clarify who owns each part of the buyer journey. 

How B2B companies selling self-serve digital products can create a similar map: 

1. Define the goal and scope of your customer journey map. We recommend starting with a narrow scope and only a few people involved. Focus on a specific problem you can break down into a few steps—like identifying where you’re losing users, and mapping out the pains, desires, and experiences of customers who exit your site.

Ask yourself: 

What do you want to achieve? 

Which customer journey touchpoints do you want to focus on? 

What KPIs do you want to measure? 

Where can you get the data you need? 

Which teams need to be involved?   

2. Use Google Analytics and Hotjar's Observe tools to collect user insights about online interactions:

Create Hotjar Heatmaps on key product pages to see where users are clicking and which parts of your page aren’t engaging users or working as intended. Then, improve UX and optimize the placement of on-page elements to boost conversions. 

Use Session Recordings to see how users scroll, click, and move around your site across an entire session. Focus on spotting bugs and blockers that cause them to bounce. 

3. Add qualitative user data from service chat logs, emails, or by asking customer support teams. 

4. Get key product and customer service teams to fill in an empathy map detailing what your buyers do, say, see, hear, think, and feel. Feel free to steal our free template below!

5. Map the journey with Post-its and pens before digitizing it and sharing it across the company. 

2. Rail Europe’s B2C journey map 

B2C ecommerce travel provider Rail Europe gives customers an easy way to book rail tickets online. Their on-site user interface (UI) is strong, but the company wanted to go deeper to understand the customer journey across all touchpoints. 

Mapping the customer journey produced a full spectrum customer experience map that illustrates the buyer's journey before, during, and after a purchase. It reminded their team that the buyer journey starts long before a customer lands on the website to book a ticket—and continues after the trip, through touchpoints like post-trip refunds, sharing recommendations, or publishing photos on social media. 

Rail Europe’s customer journey map also shows the transition between stages or channels to accurately visualize what is often a non-linear journey . For example, in the initial research, planning, and shopping phases, customers often move back and forth between comparison pages, checking timetables, and website chat and planning features.  

Mapping the journey like this helps Rail Europe understand different customers’ channel preferences, see which touchpoints aren’t working as they should, and which aspects of the user experience need more attention from design teams, marketing, and customer support. They visualized actions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences and rated the customer satisfaction of each stage, as well as the relevance and helpfulness of Rail Europe, to home in on areas for improvement.

The map doubles down on customer empathy by identifying travelers’ overall concerns and frustrations while on the trip, even those unrelated to their rail journey—the overall travel experience is still connected with the company brand in customers’ minds. 

This stand-alone map can be understood across teams without supporting materials, and there’s a focus on actionable insights—like the need to address customer frustrations over snail mail ticket delivery. 

Ecommerce website analysis like this is valuable for any company selling experiential products or services, like concert tickets, vacations, or tours. If that’s you, follow Rail Europe’s example and conduct customer journey map research by surveying current and potential customers to uncover exactly what they’re hoping for, thinking, and feeling as they engage with your brand.

Tips to map out the ecommerce customer journey:

1. Ask yourself: 

How can we access users who aren’t yet customers? 

What happens before the customer gets to our web page? How do they do research for a trip? What kinds of search keywords do they use online?  

Is the buyer journey non-linear? If not, how can we represent this? 

2. If your buyer journey has multiple touchpoints, group them into categories like 'research and planning', 'shopping', 'booking', etc. 

3. Match survey insights to touchpoints and map out the journey visually, adding qualitative insights about what the customer is thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage. 

💡 Pro tip: use Hotjar Surveys to collect real-time suggestions about your website or app from users to make data-driven decisions and validate assumptions that inform and elevate your customer journey map. 

Hotjar’s no-code UI makes it easy to create drag-and-drop surveys  

3. Rewind’s SaaS customer journey map 

Rewind makes backup & restoration software for SaaS platforms. Their team decided to map out the B2B SaaS customer journey when revenue fell short of expectations after the acquisition of a similar product. It also became clear that marketing efforts weren’t attracting the ideal customer.

Like many SaaS companies, Rewind relied on sales calls and customer relationship management (CRM) data to understand their users. But they were missing key insights about what happens before the customer lands on their website. 

To map the journey, the Rewind team defined their ideal customer profile (ICP) before conducting customer interviews to deeply understand buyer motivations and the decision-making process. They also used Google Analytics, Hubspot , and PX insights tools to understand users’ online behavior and how they were interacting with marketing materials. 

This showed them a short, high-intent, back-and-forth customer journey that happens almost exclusively online—since Rewind is installed in SaaS platforms, a lot of traffic is referred from their app marketplaces. 

The map showed event triggers and the customer’s thoughts and feelings as they moved through becoming aware of their problem (loss of important data), understanding the need for a solution, and doing online research—before arriving at Rewind.  

By mapping the full journey, the Rewind team discovered that customers often use professional forums or communities as part of solution research, and discovered a new buyer motivation and market segment: data compliance. 

According to Content Lift Founder Ryan Paul Gibson , who helped Rewind conduct customer interviews, the company also realized “potential buyers don’t want to speak with sales or ‘get a demo'. They want to research the product themselves and evaluate it. They also don’t want to enter a credit card to test it; they want to try it first and pay if it’s a good fit.” 

Rewind updated their go-to-market strategy, personas, product positioning , and marketing to complete these missing steps in the customer journey map.

The result? A two-fold increase in product installations, and better internal alignment on their ICP—which has improved their efficiency and helped them maximize resources. 

To create a great SaaS customer journey map: 

Set your research objectives

Create a list of topics that align with your ideal buyer journey. For example, in Rewind’s case, they were customers’ reasons for buying, details about their company and role, and what caused them to start searching for a solution. 

Create questions to ask customers during interviews, but leave flexibility for discussion.

Run in-depth customer interviews to capture the exact order of events in the buyer journey and make sure you understand every customer action and touchpoint—from users identifying a problem to making a purchase.

Bucket interview insights into user priorities, pains, and anxieties—what happened to trigger a search; which research channels the customer uses; how they evaluate solutions.

4. Spotify’s B2C customer journey map 

When music streaming app Spotify mapped the user journey, their team focused on tracking touchpoints for one specific feature: sharing playlists via third-party apps.  

Their map zeroes in on clearly defined user personas and identifies key areas of customer engagement with a focus on users’ emotions and thoughts at each stage.

The team’s journey mapping research revealed a key customer pain point—fear of being judged for their music taste—that can hold users back from sharing music. They also identified an awareness gap to address: some users didn’t know the feature existed. 

By mapping the user journey, Spotify improved their UI and in-app flows to streamline the customer experience and make every touchpoint relevant to how real customers use the product.  

Mapping user flows is key for digital B2C brands with a product that lives and dies by good usability—and a business model that relies on customer loyalty. 

To map the user journey before improving or launching a feature:  

Conduct market research based on direct and indirect competitors to understand how people use similar features, and what they expect from yours. 

In user interviews , focus on the specific feature or stage of the journey. Why aren’t customers using it as you’d like? What are the barriers to product adoption? Dig deep into what motivates users to complete a specific action—and what blocks them.  

Using interview data, create a buyer persona and include their key needs and motivations. What can you do to bring this feature to their attention and boost adoption? 

Create a customer journey map combining stages in the user’s interaction with the feature, and break down the actions they take and the thoughts and emotions they have at each stage. 

Use these insights to remove friction and improve user flows, validating your design with real users. 

Pro tip : use Hotjar's Observe tools to study Session Recordings and Heatmaps and get insights into the product experience of real or test users at every point in the customer journey.

Heatmaps show you an intuitive aggregated view of which parts of your site are attracting attention and which aren’t to help you make changes that improve UX

5. Emirates Airline’s multi-channel customer journey map 

To reflect their customers’ multi-channel journey, flag carrier Emirates created a CJM that covers reservations, check-in, and onboarding experiences. 

As well as digital channels, the map includes call center interactions, which provide context for interactive voice response (IRV) technology and human service agents. It also sheds light on customer desires, broken down into categories like ‘comfort’, ‘safety’, ‘confidence’, and ‘freedom & control’, shown in the corners of the map.

With a global brand like Emirates, customers expect the same experience at all touchpoints, in all countries. This exercise helped the Emirates team understand customers’ main interactions and expectations to better coordinate service touchpoints and provide a consistent, high-quality experience across each one.  

For example, they set up a single, virtual contact center platform to increase efficiency and ensure consistent interactions across every channel. It’s not just the customer who benefits: the Emirates team now better understands exactly how to meet user needs across several channels and countries.

This map is ideal for businesses whose customer journey combines online and offline touchpoints, especially companies looking to differentiate themselves through the quality of their service. 

How to implement a multi-channel customer journey map: 

Define your key goals for producing the map.

Conduct thorough market research and customer interviews to reduce your assumptions and understand every single interaction and channel customers experience.

Interview customer experience and support staff members at all touchpoints and in all regions.

Use analytics tools and product experience insights software to understand how buyers interact with your digital marketing, website, and chat functions across channels and locations.  

Use AI to analyze customer call recordings for tone and sentiment.

Pro tip: use Hotjar Feedback widgets to get in-context insights about what users really think about your app or website. You can filter feedback by region or channel to better understand your global customer touchpoints.

Hotjar's non-invasive Feedback widgets allow customers to give their opinions of your website or product as they experience it.

You’ve reached your destination: a truly valuable customer journey map  

Customers interact with your brand over a variety of channels and touchpoints, and their journeys aren’t always linear. But understanding their journey is key to improving your product and boosting customer acquisition, adoption, and retention. 

Follow these customer journey mapping examples to experience key touchpoints from your users’ point of view and grasp their pains, needs, and frustrations so you can build a journey your customers will love.

Want to know how customers really interact with your brand?

Frequently asked questions about customer journey mapping, what are the stages of the customer's journey.

Buyer journeys can typically be broken down into three steps or stages: 

Awareness of a problem or pain

Consideration (researching and evaluating solutions)

Making a decision

What does a strong customer journey map look like?

A good customer journey map includes all the touchpoints where a customer interacts with your brand. It should include the various stages of the marketing and sales cycle, customer touchpoints across your product and website, and map out customers’ actions, thoughts, and feelings at each stage, as well as KPIs.

For example, Rail Europe’s customer journey map tracks all the stages of research, planning, and shopping, through to booking, travel, and post-travel. At each stage, it maps out customer questions, concerns, and feelings, as well as the helpfulness and relevance of Rail Europe.

What are the stages of customer journey mapping?

Customer journey map stages are: 

Collecting data and conducting customer interviews or surveys 

Mapping the customer journey in a workshop

Extracting insights and producing a report

CJM tools: features and how to choose

Previous chapter

CJM research

Next chapter

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer
• QuestionPro

• Solutions Industries Gaming Automotive Sports and events Education Government Travel & Hospitality Financial Services Healthcare Cannabis Technology Use Case NPS+ Communities Audience Contactless surveys Mobile LivePolls Member Experience GDPR Positive People Science 360 Feedback Surveys
• Resources Blog eBooks Survey Templates Case Studies Training Help center

7 Practical Customer Journey Examples + Free Template

Carrying out your first Customer Journey is very difficult, even though you know the steps to follow to define it and capture it graphically. However, starting from a reference can make this process much easier.

This is why this time we want to share some customer journey examples to help you in your process of evaluating your customers’ experience.

The customer journey is a methodology used by many companies to understand the process that their customers go through when interacting with their brands. 

Representing it graphically and using the correct canvas allows each touchpoint to be evaluated and areas for improvement to be found to improve the experience offered.

In this article, we have compiled the best customer journey examples to help you define your own. You will find some that are more creative and others that are functional. Surely one of them will be able to inspire you in this process.

What is it and why should I use a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of all the steps and interactions that a potential consumer goes through during the purchase process. It can have different shapes. and canvas according to the needs of each company.

Mapping a customer journey allows you to represent all touchpoints not only to show them visually to all team members but also to take action on them.

The most common way is by evaluating each one of them. Today, most customer experience management platforms allow you to use these maps as a guide to launch evaluations and identify strong and weak areas in your business.

If you like reading about customer journey examples, you might find it interesting learning about Customer Journey vs Customer Experience .

Most common mistakes when drawing the customer journey

Not defining a clear objective. The first question you should ask yourself is why do I want to draw the customer journey? What goals do I intend to achieve and how am I going to quantify them?

Not having your customer persona well defined. You must go beyond traditional segmentation and fully understand what the motivations of customers and expectations are at all times.

Draw the customer journey according to your perception. It is very common for the owner of the process or responsible area, as the most knowledgeable about it, to help you with the customer journey. But that is a common mistake because the first thing to keep in mind is that the customer’s perception must be counted on at all times.

Create a customer journey for each area. Precisely, the client perceives his journey as unique and does not have to know if one phase depends on one department and the next on another.

LEARN ABOUT: Client Management

Make it too complex. It should be avoided, especially at the beginning, making the drawing of the customer journey too complex. It must be easy to understand by all areas and employees involved. 

If you are on you’re way to start building your customer journey, you might find it useful to review the 10 best customer journey mapping tools .

Customer Journey Map Examples

Customer Journey maps take a wide variety of forms. Here are seven examples that we have selected for you.

Example 1: Digital Experiences Journey

This CJM example adopts a simple structure that only includes the crucial moments when marketing can exert its influence. The map outline portrays the key touch points of a fictional hot chocolate shop in a digital customer journey .

The map highlights the importance of identifying opportunities but also examining potential risks. It makes it easy to spot a customer’s ultimate marketing goal and how different marketing technologies affect buying behavior and purchase decisions.

If you like reading about digital experiences journey, you might find it interesting to learn about User Journey Map .

Example 2: Health Insurance Customer Journey

The example of the customer journey map brings us closer to the CX strategy. The scheme forces even the world’s largest banks to focus on each customer.

The finance, insurance and banking sectors are crowded. Many companies compete for customers. Leveraging customer experience insights could set them apart from the competition. Improving the CX strategy and being customer-centric keeps them loyal.

Example 3: LEGO’s wheel of experience

It is a wheel of experiences created in a simple and exciting way to show the analysis of a flight to New York. The central part of the image mentions the characteristics of the person. The next circle has three experience levels before, during, and after the flight. Each step is also marked with an emotion that reflects positive, neutral, or negative shopping experiences .

This form of a map is a great approach to looking at the company’s product or service from the customer’s perspective.

Example 4: Car Buyer Journey

The map breaks down the methods customers use to find out when buying a vehicle and what factors are beneficial. 

The car buyer journey goes from the initial stage of research , to engagement, then experience (i.e, test drive), the purchase, and ending with the customer advocacy towards your vehicle brand.

It provides companies with great insights into the avenues customers use to find out about the solutions they offer. It even makes it easy to find the most popular with them.

Learn More: Buyer Journey 

Free Customer Journey Map Template

At QuestionPro, we know that all this information can be overwhelming and starting to create your Customer Journey without help can be intimidating.

That is why we have created a Customer Journey Map Template that we hope can help you start sketching the stages, UX and overall satisfaction of your customers with your brand.

DOWNLOAD CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP TEMPLATE

Example 5: Customer Journey Product Plan

This map takes a more visual approach. The outline makes the map as widely seen in the organization as possible, as it is understandable and rewarding to look at.

When a customer journey map is made more visual, the intended information can be conveyed with a creative twist. It is a way of making the information more interesting.

Example 6: Starbucks’ Customer Journey

This Starbucks customer journey map follows a timeline style that outlines the various touchpoints and a foundation that distinguishes the enriched experience.

Although the map is unlikely to work for e-commerce, it inspiringly shows the possible areas and the emotions a customer might feel at each stage.

If you are thinking of building your own customer journey map, you might find it interesting to learn about how to create a customer journey map .

Example 7: B2B Customer Journey Map

This B2B customer journey map example is structured to break down the journey stage by stage and align each step with the customer’s goals. 

The scheme makes it feel like walking a mile in the client’s shoes.

It’s important to understand how customers engage with your business and learn what you need to improve from a customer perspective and experience. This customer journey map visualizes you in a B2B environment.

Do you want a head start on building your customer journey? Here you will find a completely free template:

Customer Journey Canvas

How to get the most out of your Customer Journey Maps with QuestionPro CX

To build your own you could take inspiration from an existing customer journey template. At the end of the day, remember to pick and adapt the customer journey map that best illustrates your customer touchpoints.

This way your team can focus on what needs to be improved to enhance your customer experience and boost customer loyalty with the CJM style that best fits and represents your brand.

LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey

However, choosing the best customer journey map for your company is just the start. If you really want to make the best use out of it, you need to evaluate the level of satisfaction and how your brand makes your customer feel. 

Tools such as closed-loop feedback, NPS+ , sentiment analysis, and promoter amplification provided by the QuestionPro CX customer experience management platform can help your team evaluate each of the touchpoints with actionable insights to offer the best experience to your customers. 

If you would like to learn more about this tool, we invite you to request a free demo or create a free account to take advantage of everything QuestionPro CX has for you.

LEARN MORE         FREE TRIAL

MORE LIKE THIS

21 Best Customer Advocacy Software for Customers in 2024

Apr 19, 2024

10 Quantitative Data Analysis Software for Every Data Scientist

Apr 18, 2024

11 Best Enterprise Feedback Management Software in 2024

17 Best Online Reputation Management Software in 2024

Apr 17, 2024

Other categories

• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Assessments
• Brand Awareness
• Case Studies
• Communities
• Consumer Insights
• Customer effort score
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Experience
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Research
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Retention
• Friday Five
• General Data Protection Regulation
• Insights Hub
• Life@QuestionPro
• Market Research
• Mobile diaries
• Mobile Surveys
• New Features
• Online Communities
• Question Types
• Questionnaire
• QuestionPro Products
• Release Notes
• Research Tools and Apps
• Revenue at Risk
• Survey Templates
• Training Tips
• Uncategorized
• Video Learning Series
• What’s Coming Up
• Workforce Intelligence

• Woopra Logo
• Platform Customers Pricing Resources Company
• Log in Start For Free
• Automations
• Integrations
• Documentation

7 Interesting Real-Life Customer Journey Map Examples

Creating a customer journey map is vital for any business to optimize its sales and marketing processes.

According to Salesforce , “among high-performing teams, 88% say a customer journey strategy is critical to the success of their overall marketing.”

An effective customer journey map will include each customer touchpoint a shopper interacts with on the way to making a purchase.

If you’re looking to create this document from scratch or looking for ways to improve your map, below are some customer journey map examples from highly successful companies.

Customer Journey Map Examples

When doing customer journey mapping, you should think deeply about your business and the customer experience. On that note, let’s dive into some real-life customer journey mapping and walk you through what makes customer journey maps so valuable.

Consumer SaaS Customer Journey Map Examples

Customer journey maps are essential to B2C companies in the SaaS space. It can be expensive to acquire a new customer and each month that you’re able to keep a subscription active deepens your ROI and ROAS.

Understanding each customer interaction, pain points and customer needs is vital for maximizing value throughout the customer lifecycle - and a user journey map will help identify these areas.

Spotify is one of the world’s most popular audio streaming services. When Spotify wanted to improve the music-sharing experience for its customers, it hired a marketing firm to create a customer journey map .

The goal of this user journey map was to determine where music sharing features the best fit into the customer experience .

In this example, we see the user experience mapped out from the moment the user first opens Spotify on a mobile device, all the way through to whether they like a song that a friend has shared.

Also Read: Effective Customer Journey Design

Throughout each stage and every touchpoint, the brand lists what a customer is engaging with, doing, thinking, and feeling (something that's commonly done with an empathy map ). The agency used data research and customer surveys to better understand how users felt at each touchpoint in the customer journey to collect this information.

Based on the customer journey map, Spotify was able to identify pain points for users and address those pain points so that the music sharing experience is smooth and seamless, encouraging more users to share music -- and to do it more often. \

This journey map is excellent because it identifies key areas of customer engagement, takes into account customer behavior , and has the goal of making the customer experience as enjoyable as possible.

The end result is significantly higher customer satisfaction, which can have several key benefits, including a smoother buyer journey, greater customer loyalty, and in many cases, existing customers becoming brand advocates.

2. TurboTax

Turbo Tax is a leading online software package for preparing taxes. When the TurboTax team was ready to launch a new product called Personal Pro, they created a customer journey map to better understand the overall customer experience with this new product.

The team used a mix of data research, customer surveys, and key conversations with tax professionals to understand how the product fits into the lives of those using it.

TurboTax’s customer journey analytics exercise starts when someone enters the website and is in the consideration phase through to the completion of the tax filing.

This customer journey map is great because it allows the team to see each customer pain point experienced and, therefore, address these pain points to make the customer experience smoother and more satisfactory.

Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Examples

The Ecommerce space is highly competitive in almost every niche these days. To maximize profit margins while keeping pricing competitive, it’s important to convert as many shoppers that visit your site as possible.

Also Read: Customer Journey Template

In addition to converting first-time customers at high rates, it’s important to have up-sell and cross-sell touchpoints in your customer journey as well. This increases the lifetime value of your customers and drives up the ROI against your acquisition costs.

Customer journey mapping is a vital exercise that can help E-commerce businesses skyrocket conversion rates from all online shoppers and achieve higher customer success.

1. Columbia Road

E-commerce agency, Columbia Road, created this map template for a fictitious online grocery shop . Here the agency demonstrates the core activities, goals, touchpoints, and experiences that a customer will go through during the decision-making process to place an order.

In this customer journey mapping exercise, the Columbia Road team went one step further than others by also including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and which department is responsible for ensuring a customer has the best experience possible at each stage within the user journey.

Including KPIs is important because it lets you know if your customer journey map template is effective or if it needs to be adjusted to better serve your shoppers.

Amazon is one of the largest E-commerce shops in the world, with its own technology and custom systems in place for moving a customer through the sales journey. Its customer journey map is one of the most complex around and would take most people days to read through and understand each customer journey stage.

The good news is that the map can be broken down into several more digestible parts for analysis.

Here we can see Amazon’s customer conversion funnel and how the customer journey is enabled by its own products that push users through the sales funnel to maximize customer engagement.

Most interesting here is how Amazon includes its success metrics for each stage of the customer journey. These are the same success metrics that just about every E-commerce shop should be monitoring:

• Impressions
• Add to list
• Add to cart
• Purchase assists
• Conversion rate
• Subscriptions
• Repeat purchase rates

When conducting your customer journey mapping exercise, be sure to include these key metrics to monitor your success and gain deeper insight into the overall customer experience.

3. A More Common Scenario

If looking at the Amazon customer journey map feels overwhelming to you know that you’re not alone. Most E-commerce businesses will have a much less complicated customer journey to map out.

Here's a customer journey map template for the checkout process for online shops.

For instance, you see the most important stages of the checkout process, including the technology involved, common customer frustrations, and space to include solutions to make the process smoother.

For example, if a customer finds creating an account to be a barrier to checkout in the very first step - then offering a guest checkout option would be one solution for improving the customer experience.

Start your E-commerce customer journey mapping exercise using the above customer journey mapping template as an outline and then customize it for your own needs.

(If this isn't a good fit for your company, check out these other customer journey templates .)

B2B Customer Journey Map Examples (SaaS)

In the B2B customer journey , the sales cycle can vary significantly based on price point and the buy-in from stakeholders needed to make a business purchase.

When it comes to a B2B SaaS purchase for something reasonably inexpensive like Hootsuite’s social media management platform or the MailChimp email marketing platform, most of the customer journey will happen digitally with minimal to no involvement from a sales representative.

In this case, customer journey maps might be made using a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Because there are few high barriers to conversion, the customer sales journey can happen quickly and easily as long as the right digital touchpoints are in place.

The journey map example above shows that touchpoints can all be online assets from social media for awareness, to blog posts for research, to case studies or webinars for consideration. Finally, there might be a personal touchpoint at the very end if someone has a question right before or after purchasing.

If your customers go from Awareness to Purchase (or even Free Trial purchase) quickly, a simple user journey mapping might work for you.

If a B2B SaaS company has a longer sales cycle with a more highly considered product or service, the customer journey map should be more complex and done differently.

Below is an example from HubSpot. The first part of their customer journey map includes the various stages of the journey throughout each customer touchpoint:

Because this is an example of a journey with a longer sales cycle, it also breaks down the stages into substages to dig further into the mindset of a potential customer.

Under the Awareness Stage would be the Stranger. Under the Consideration Stage would be the Subscriber/Lead and MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). And under the Decision Stage would be the Opportunity and the Deal Closed/Handoff.

As a customer moves from, say, Subscriber to MQL in the Consideration Stage, they will experience different emotions and require different touchpoints to move through the sales funnel.

For example, a blog subscriber or newsletter subscriber might not even be able to afford your product or service, so it wouldn’t make sense to assign them a sales rep and waste that rep’s time.

However, once a subscriber becomes an MQL, and you know they fit your customer profile you can start treating this person as a real potential customer by dedicating more time and resources.

This also makes for a more relevant experience from your customer’s perspective. No one likes to be hassled to buy a product they can't afford.

In the overall customer journey, the subscriber and the MQL are both still in the Consideration Stage but they should be treated in a different way which is why it’s important to break the journey down into smaller stages if you have a longer sales cycle.

What Makes a Good Customer Journey Map

Above we walked through several interesting examples of customer journey maps and discussed the pros and cons. Now, as you get ready to create your own map, let’s talk about key elements to keep in mind for best practices.

1. It Should Be Based on Market Research Plus Real Customer Data

According to a study from Ascend2 in partnership with Ansira, enterprise marketers are using customer feedback surveys (53%) and customer journey marketing research (47%) to build journey maps.

This is a great combination because it includes work based on theory as well as the real-world experiences of shoppers. And having this mix is critical for constructing effective journey maps and ultimately optimizing the customer experience.

Why is this combination key?

Customers don’t always know what they want or what they would prefer if they have never experienced a new product or feature before.

Therefore, it’s up to the business to continuously innovate and present ideas to shoppers. These new products and features should be workshopped based on a customer persona and user research.

Then, once the product or new feature is created, to make it as beneficial to the user as possible, feedback should be collected so improvements can be made.

Because customer journey maps need to take into account the thoughts and actions of users, compiling a document that includes a combination of market research and customer feedback surveys is the best way to get the data you need to make an effective journey map for your ideal buyer persona.

2. It Expands Beyond Your Marketing Funnel

A common pitfall for many companies when customer journey mapping is making a storyboard of the marketing funnel or marketing plan.

The marketing funnel is a good basis for creating a skeleton of the marketing portion of experience maps, but the user journey map should go well beyond marketing.

What does this mean?

The marketing funnel can be broken down into customer journey stages , just like your customer’s journey. It starts with awareness with your target audience and ends with a purchase from your ideal customer persona in the most basic sense (we often like to take this beyond purchase to gaining a loyal customer and getting a repeat purchase).

This means in the awareness stage of your marketing funnel you may talk about social media, Google Ads, and other forms of awareness building.

Then in the interest section, you may discuss email marketing, webinars, and other forms of content that increase interest. And in the consideration phase, you may talk about the UX design of your website, sales demonstrations, customer service, and so on.

A good marketing funnel will detail basic activities that should be carried out at each stage of the funnel for your user persona.

The Customer journey maps goes well beyond these basic activities and also lists out what a customer is thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage of the marketing funnel.

Think of it as a marketing funnel on steroids! It’s a much stronger and more powerful document than just your basic marketing funnel or marketing plan.

Additionally, any customer experience mapping needs to go beyond the marketing funnel. It should include the entire user experience with the product or service, each step in the sales cycle, and the touchpoints a person may routinely have with customer service.

3. It Includes KPIs

Good customer journey maps will include the various stages of the sales and marketing cycle as well as the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the user at each stage. Great customer journey maps will include KPIs for each stage.

Including KPIs is important so that the map can be evaluated by each customer touch point and adjusted when necessary.

Also, note that a customer journey map isn’t a document that is set in stone. It should be updated when new information is learned about:

• Customer behavior
• Customer needs
• Customer goals
• Customer expectations
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer support
• Customer service

It should also be evaluated and adjusted if overall sales and marketing goals are not being met.

Because the world is always evolving, so is the entire customer journey.

Whether you’re using a basic platform like Google Analytics or something more advanced like Woopra that’s specifically designed with the customer journey in mind, it should be capable of tracking all essential KPIs.

Get Started Creating Your Customer Journey Map

There's no better time to start laying the foundation for your customer journey mapping process than today.

By creating a visual representation of the buying process, you’ll gain valuable insight into the customer experience and reasons why customers do and don’t buy from you.

Once you’ve identified customer pain points you can make improvements at the necessary customer journey touchpoints, as well as optimize your customer service blueprint to position your business for sales success.

Remember, the whole goal is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes to create the best possible shopping experience for customer retention!

End-to-End Customer Journey Analytics Tool

Acquire and retain more customers with advanced analytics. Woopra is your single source of truth for tracking your customers.

Related Articles

The beginner’s guide to behavioral targeting to increase conversions.

How to get Started with Analytics

From Emails to Customers — Woopra Campaign Tracking

5 actionable methods to engage mobile customers, explore topics.

© Woopra, Inc. 600 California St 11th Floor San Francisco, CA 94108

• Request a demo
• Product Analytics
• Customer Analytics
• Customer Journey Analytics
• Google Analytics F.A.Q.
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of service

How to Create a Customer Journey Map with Templates and Examples

Using data gathered from feedback surveys , online reviews, and other customer satisfaction metrics , a customer journey map is used to tell the story of a customer’s lifetime relationship with a company. Depending on the customer persona, this relationship can be as short as a few minutes or as long as many years. Customer journey maps are useful tools for visualizing the quality of each interaction and the customer’s reaction to that touchpoint as they move up the brand equity pyramid .

You can download our customer journey map template, or continue reading to learn more about creating your own.

Table of Contents:

Customer Journey Map: Understanding the Basics

• How to Create a Customer Journey Map in 7 Steps:
• Determine Target Personas
• Define Your Customer Touchpoints, Actions, and Reactions
• Break Out Touchpoints and Actions Into Phases
• Test the Customer Journey Map
• Complete the Customer Journey Map with Persona Data
• Identify Areas of Improvement
• Create a Corresponding “Business Actions” Map

Customer Journey Map Examples

• Customer Journey Map Downloadable Template

Before we dive into creating your own customer journey map, it’s important to cover the basic ideas behind these types of visualizations and why they’re helpful for businesses.

How Journey Map Tracking Helps Businesses Understand Customers

As we briefly mentioned earlier, customer journey maps are tools that help you visualize the specific steps customers go through when interacting with your business. Using buyer personas (a semi-fictional representation of a type of customer based on market research and real customer data, as defined by Hubspot ) you can track the path different customers take on the road to conversion and pinpoint failed or successful interactions. This ultimately helps you do things like:

• Allocate advertising budgets to channels that produce the most positive responses
• Collaborate across teams to improve touchpoints that continuously produce a negative reaction
• Retain and satisfy existing customers by improving previous customers’ churn points

What Are Customer “Touchpoints”?

Customer touchpoints are any interaction someone has with your brand. These could be awareness-based touchpoints, where a potential customer learns about your company for the first time through things like:

• Social media ads
• Reading an online review
• Finding your site through organic search

Or, touchpoints can be more direct interactions such as:

• Clicking a product and reading the description
• Adding a product to their shopping cart
• Making a call to your customer service center
• Signing up for an email newsletter

Depending on the structure of your business, your customer journey map can cover just the main customer touchpoints on your buyer journey, or it can encompass any small interaction that can occur as well. Your ability to create a broad or detailed customer journey map will also depend on the customer data available to you.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map in 7 Steps

Though there are many customer journey map templates available online (including ours at the end of this article) it’s still good to understand the fundamental ideas behind how these maps are created so you can learn to customize each to suit your needs.

Step 1: Determine Target Personas

Each customer journey map is meant to demonstrate just one segment of your customer base, so it should be built specifically for each persona. Many businesses already have personas built for other purposes such as targeted ad campaigns, but if you haven’t, they aren’t too hard to construct. Utilizing your existing user data, create mock customers based on factors like:

• Demographic data (age, gender, location, etc.)
• How they first learned about your company
• Their budget
• What their goals are when purchasing from you
• What’s most important to them when buying
• Pain points that your company either does or could address

Then, decide which persona you’re going to target for this iteration of your customer journey map. For example, you could focus on the “tech-forward business executive” or the “Millennial startup owner,” whichever customer type you want to learn more about and improve the customer experience for.

Step 2: Define Your Customer Touchpoints, Actions, and Reactions

Once you’ve decided on your target persona, the next step is to define the customer touchpoints you want to track. As we talked about earlier, customer journey maps can be used to paint a broad picture of the buyer journey or track every little interaction possible. It’s up to you to determine what the most useful route will be for your project and where you want to focus your efforts.

It can be helpful at this step to list out every touchpoint you can think of, and then narrow down as needed. You’ll likely need to collaborate across teams to make sure you’re covering every type of customer interaction.

When you have your list of touchpoints compiled, it’s then easy to construct a corresponding list of customer actions. For example, if the touchpoint is “reads online review,” then the logical action would be “searches for company/product online.” After that, the next touchpoint would be “homepage/landing page” and the action would be “reads about product details.” You can see how building your customer journey map becomes easier once you get started.

In addition to touchpoints and actions, the third metric you will need to track in your journey map is customer reactions. These can be as basic as “positive and negative,” or be broken down further into numerical scales or other ratings. Customers take each action based on their reaction to the previous touchpoint. For example, a progression could look something like:

Touchpoint: targeted ad, Reaction: positive, Action: clicks ad > Touchpoint: ad landing page, Reaction: neutral, Action: reviews additional competitor options

It’s important to track each of these points concurrently to understand where customer pain points come from.

Step 3: Break Out Touchpoints and Actions Into Phases

Once you have all of your touchpoints, actions, and reactions listed, put them in a logical order that follows the actual buyer journey. At this point, it can be helpful to break out the list into overall phases in order to get a clearer visualization of the process. Again, these phases can be named whatever makes the most sense for your business. If you want to keep things general, you could follow a specific model, for example, the brand equity pyramid, and use the related phases of “brand salience,” “brand meaning,” “brand response,” and “brand resonance.”

It may be more helpful to name your phases something more specific, however, so you could also structure the map into sections labeled “Discovery,” “Exploration,” “Comparison,” “Conversion,” and “Retention” in order to better represent the customer’s thought processes. Though this step is optional, it’s easier to look at a chart that is broken down into larger phases vs a timeline that just details every specific interaction.

Step 4: Test the Customer Journey Map

Now that you’ve established the basic structure of your map via touchpoints grouped into phases, you should have a few different people run through the map to make sure your model is sound. Put yourself into the shoes of your target persona and pretend you are going through each touchpoint as that type of customer. At each point, stop and ask yourself “What would the customer do next?” The point of this exercise is just to ensure that you’re not leaving out any vital steps in the customer journey and that the map follows a logical progression.

Step 5: Complete the Customer Journey Map with Persona Data

Now that you’ve properly set up your customer journey map and tested it for any missing pieces, all that’s left to do is fill in the persona data. From your persona creation process, you should already have a good understanding of each type’s reasons for interacting with your business and what their specific pain points are. Using customer feedback data, abandoned cart data, advertising data, page bounce rate data, and other sources of customer information, you can reconstruct what the typical buyer’s journey looks like for this segment, including their unique actions and reactions at each step.

Step 6: Identify Areas of Improvement

The main purpose of creating customer journey maps is to display your data in a way that’s easier to visualize than numbers in a spreadsheet. If you’ve displayed your persona data accurately, then it should be simple enough to determine where customers are dropping out of the buyer’s journey. Look for places with negative reaction scores, especially scores that lead to customers bouncing from your site, and identify why this is.

At this point in your analysis, it can be helpful to add a new section to your customer journey map called something like “Pain Points,” “Reaction Explanations,” or simply “Why?” In this section, you can add notes or theories about why those negative reactions are occurring. Sometimes figuring out the issue can be a simple matter of walking through the buyer’s journey yourself (perhaps you discover something like an ad pointing to an unrelated landing page) or running additional customer feedback surveys to gather more data about a particular touchpoint.

Step 7: Create a Corresponding “Business Actions” Map

Now that you’ve pinpointed steps on the customer journey that are causing negative reactions, you should be able to identify what your company needs to do to improve these interactions. However, when you aren’t able to determine exactly what is causing these negative reactions, it’s hard to know what to do to fix them. As mentioned, you can always run additional customer feedback surveys to try to shed some light on the issue, but you may be able to discover more immediate fixes by creating a “business actions” map that corresponds to your customer journey map.

While a customer journey map is structured from the customer’s point of view, this reverse map would look at the same touchpoints and actions but from the business’s point of view. For example, if a customer submits a return request, what actions does the returns team take in response? Having each step detailed like this helps you paint a more holistic picture of your business processes to find unexpected areas of customer friction where things may be slipping through the cracks.

Just like customer data in a spreadsheet, there’s only so much you can explain with words on a page. Take a look at the customer journey map examples below to better visualize how these tools can help your business operations.

Hubspot’s simple example helps you understand customer motivations on a basic level, and is most useful for companies without in-depth persona data.

Bright Vessel’s customer journey map is color-coordinated so each department can easily see which touchpoints and actions they are responsible for.

Digital.gov’s example allows for more in-depth customer details, helping you better visualize your personas.

Customer Journey Map Template

Below is a customer journey map template that you can download, edit, and customize to represent your business’s needs.

Customer journey maps are an essential tool for any business looking to learn more about customer pain points on the buyer’s journey. But in order to create these maps, you first need to gather customer data. Chattermill can help you collect, manage, and analyze your customer feedback with our AI-powered software. Contact us to learn more.

Related Articles

Want AI to make your breakfast for you?

AI can do everything, right? In this post, we explore how even the most sophisticated technology alone, won't solve everything - especially the challenges faced by CX and customer insights professionals.

Customer Experience Intelligence: The Top 7 Use Cases for Finance

Learn about the top use cases for finance in this guide, including where Chattermill is currently adding value to fintech, banks, and insurance companies.

Coming Soon: CX Intelligence Academy from Chattermill

We’re launching a brand new set of resources built to help you prove the value of CX, and become a better, more data-driven CX expert.

See Chattermill in action

Understand the voice of your customers in realtime with Customer Feedback Analytics from Chattermill.

The Complete Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (With Examples)

Looking for practical customer journey analytics examples to inspire your own strategy? You are in the right place!

This guide discusses how customer journey analytics can help you understand customer interactions with your business.

It will also dive into examples that can help you improve your customer journey based on insights into your customer behavior.

• Customer journey analytics means ensuring your customers enjoy the best possible customer experience across every touchpoint.
• Customer journey analytics informs the customer journey map, while customer journey mapping visualizes the customer experience.
• The benefits of customer journey analytics include improved customer experience, increased customer satisfaction , retention, and customer lifetime value .
• To take advantage of customer journey analytics for your business, collect customer data from multiple channels, including customer feedback surveys and web analytics.
• Create customer journey maps to outline the challenges and expectations of your customers.
• Use data analytics tools to analyze customer journeys and spot patterns in user behavior.
• Act on the collected data to improve user sentiment .

Here are 8 insightful customer journey analytics examples that can improve your operational efficiency:

• Funnel analysis to identify drop-offs in different customer journey maps .
• Path analysis to understand the best path to activation .
• Heatmaps to analyze feature adoption .
• Product trend analysis to improve engagement .
• Individual user analytics to get granular insights into customer interactions .
• Cohort analysis to understand customer retention drivers .
• Path analysis to identify the happy path .
• Segmentation to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities .
• Userpilot is a powerful customer journey analytics platform that can improve your customer journey. Book a demo !

Try Userpilot and Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level

• 14 Day Trial
• No Credit Card Required

What is customer journey analytics?

Customer journey analytics is the process of tracking customer interactions across various channels over time to measure how their behavior impacts business outcomes.

The data can help you understand what customers experience from the moment they learn about your product , even beyond the point of purchase. You can also use customer journey analytics to understand the effect of each interaction and improve the user experience at each touchpoint .

Customer journeys analytics vs customer journey mapping

Customer journey analytics and customer journey mapping are related processes that can help improve your customer experience and enhance retention . However, there are also several differences.

Customer journey mapping helps companies visualize their customer experience. It also helps organizations discover every interaction that the ideal customer has with the business, so you can identify their motivations as well as the obstacles they face through each step of the journey.

On the other hand, customer journey analytics informs the customer journey map. It tells organizations if there are friction points in the customer’s journey and helps identify opportunities for improvement .

Benefits of customer journey analytics

Leveraging customer journey analytics has several important benefits that ultimately help you drive business growth .

Here are some of the specific benefits of customer journey analytics in more detail:

• Improve customer experience : Visualizing the user journey can help you detect bottlenecks customers might face with your product. With these insights, you can continuously improve the user journey , reduce friction , and enhance customer experience.
• Improve customer satisfaction : Analyzing customer interactions will reveal pain points in the customer journey, so you can address them. This will ultimately improve customer satisfaction .
• Increase the customer lifetime value : Satisfied customers stay with your brand longer and even expand their accounts by investing in upsells and cross-sells, ultimately leading to a higher lifetime value .

How to use customer journey analytics

Now that we have discussed the benefits of customer journey analytics, let us take a look at how to set things in motion.

Collect customer data from multiple sources

The data that feeds into your customer journey analytics should come from various channels.

Customer feedback surveys , web analytics, product usage data, reviews, and social media comments, are some of the best sources of customer data.

You will likely need a dedicated tool to capture customer behavior throughout the journey.

For example, you may need a user feedback tools that enable you to collect direct input from users or an analytics tool that allows you to track user interactions in your web app.

Map out the entire customer journey

While all your customers may use the core features of your product, they have different needs and expectations.

Create user personas that depict customers’ actions, the touchpoints they interact with, their thought process, their feelings, and solutions to their pain points .

With this detailed customer journey map, determine the resources you have and those you’ll need to create the perfect customer experience for each persona.

Take your journey mapping one step further by trying it out yourself. This will reveal where customers may experience roadblocks and drop-offs .

Analyze customer behavior data to spot patterns

Use data analytics tools to analyze your collected data.

This way, you can spot trends in their behavior and understand the drivers of positive and negative experiences.

You will be able to make informed decisions that help you address the changing demands of your customers.

Act on data to improve customer satisfaction

The final part of the customer journey analytics process is to act on the insights gained. Address issues in order of priority, focusing on the most common or vital issues first, to improve user sentiment .

For example, if you notice that most users are struggling to use a feature, trigger a tooltip to guide them through the process and drive adoption .

8 insightful customer journey analytics examples

Customer journey analytics will help you understand the impact of the sub-journeys that make up the entire customer journey.

Let us take a critical look at practical examples that can help you create successful journeys for your customers.

1. Use funnel analysis to identify drop-offs in different customer journey maps

Funnel analysis lets you keep track of your customers’ progress through different stages of the journey. With it, you can identify drop-off points and then investigate them to determine where obstacles lie in the user experience .

Combining funnel analysis with session recordings or interviews will help understand why users are dropping off.

Done right, funnel analysis will help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your strategy to serve customers better.

2. Use path analysis to understand the best path to activation

Since the customer journey does not always follow a linear path, funnel analysis isn’t a suitable method in many situations.

This is where path analysis comes in. It allows you to choose a starting point and examine the steps users take to (or from) that point to achieve a goal.

In UX design , path analysis is most commonly used for identifying the happy path , aka the path with the least friction.

3. Use heatmaps to analyze feature adoption

Heatmaps are usually used to reveal what works or doesn’t work on a website.

But you can also track UI clicks on page elements like images, buttons, and links when combined with other analytics functionalities such as UI element tagging.

You can also use heatmaps to track hovers which can help you identify features that receive the most and the least attention from visitors.

After collecting this type of data, you can, for example, use in-app messages to draw attention to features with low engagement.

4. Use product trend analysis to improve engagement

Monitoring and analyzing your product trends will help you spot issues quickly, address them, and improve customer retention.

For example, you may see a behavior pattern of users constantly engaging with a specific feature but not completing the workflow associated with it.

After identifying this trend, you can then employ different qualitative research methods to identify what exactly is blocking users.

5. Use individual user analytics to get granular insights into customer interactions

Tracking customer journeys on a user level can help you learn more about each user persona , and understand their specific challenges, behavior patterns, and sentiment .

Understanding the motivations and emotional drivers of individual user personas will help you optimize your products and messaging to be aligned with their needs.

It can also represent mental anchors that help your product team make informed design decisions.

6. Use cohort analysis to understand customer retention drivers

Cohort analysis can help you learn how different user segments interact with your products and identify which features make users stick .

Then, you can use insights from this data to promote these killer features to other similar segments in your user base.

Analyzing cohorts can also give you insights into how long users continue engaging with your product after the initial point of purchase. This will help you identify users who are close to dropping off and take action to win them back.

7. Use path analysis to identify the happy path

Examine all the existing paths users take inside your product and identify the one with the least drop-off rates.

Document the sequence of events involved in achieving successful outcomes to understand the process that helps users complete their goals.

Continue monitoring the process to identify areas for improvement in your happy path and optimize it further to improve conversions .

8. Use segmentation to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities

Segmentation lets you group users with similar characteristics.

For instance, with segmentation, you can identify your power users who are ready for upsells and cross-sells.

Then, you can send personalized in-app messages that resonate with each user group to drive account expansion.

4 Best customer journey analysis tools

Customer journey analytics tools can help you gain actionable insights that enhance decision-making.

Here are four of the best customer journey analysis tools for collecting and analyzing different types of data.

Userpilot – best customer journey analytics solution for web apps

Userpilot is a no-code product growth platform that enables product teams to track and improve key growth metrics . It can also help teams gain granular insights into user behavior at all stages of the customer journey.

Some of Userpilot’s analytics functionalities include:

• Feature tags : This feature allows you to track the engagement of specific UI elements of your SaaS app. You can track the clicks, hovers, and text inputs and see how customers interact with the features of your product.
• Custom events : The custom events feature lets you group multiple events into a single group. Once the specified events occur, the custom event will match. With this feature, you can track the completion of vital workflows and optimize them.
• Analytics dashboards : Userpilot offers powerful and intuitive dashboards that display the most important metrics and data in one place. You can track popular pages and features, trends, top interactions, adoption rates , browser preferences, time to value , and much more.

Userpilot has three pricing tiers – Starter, Growth, and Enterprise, with the cheapest being $249/month if paid annually.

Pendo – best for collecting customer journey data for mobile apps

Pendo is a product analytics platform that helps product teams monitor product usage, analyze user behavior, and make data-driven product decisions.

The platform has a free plan that offers product analytics tools, as well as paid plans (Growth and Portfolio) that serve organizations with a single product and those with multiple products.

Hotjar – best for heatmap data analytics

Hotjar is a user behavior analytics tool that lets you see how users engage with your website with interactive heatmaps. This information can help you optimize your product/service for improved retention.

Hotjar’s pricing comprises a free plan and two paid plans (Plus and Business) that let you view all your data in one dashboard.

Google Analytics – best for analyzing customer journeys across websites

Google Analytics is a web service that lets you measure user actions on apps and websites and gives you the tools to better understand the pain points of your customers.

There are two plans: a free one and a paid one known as Google 360.

As user needs continue to evolve, customer journeys are getting increasingly complex. It is essential, therefore, that you start laying the foundation for a solid customer journey today.

Book a demo today to find out how you can create a delightful customer journey analytics journey with the right customer experience initiatives.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Get The Insights!

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth,Management & Trends.

The coolest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends. Delivered fresh to your inbox, weekly.

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends.

You might also be interested in ...

Net promoter score definition: your key to customer loyalty insights, in-app feedback: how to collect it + 6 tools for the job.

[email protected]

12 Best Customer Insight Tools for SaaS Companies in 2024

Saffa Faisal

Customer Journey Map (2024): How-to & Examples [+ Template]

Home » Customer Journey Map   | 🕑 

Gust de Backer

November 10, 2023.

The Customer Journey is the process your customers go through with your company. This then covers the first to last interaction someone has with your company.

Many companies do not have a map of how their customers orient, what they care about or when the company comes into the potential buyer’s mind.

Not having enough mapping of the Customer Journey puts you at risk of having, perhaps unknowingly, negative touchpoints with your (potential) customer.

I’m going to show you:

• What the Customer Journey is
• How to create your Customer Journey
• And what good examples of a Customer Journey are

Let’s get started…

Table of Contents

What is the Customer Journey?

The Customer Journey is the process that maps every interaction with your brand:

The first interaction someone has with your brand is the beginning of the Customer Journey. If you find yourself in a niche market, it can also be interesting to map interactions with your niche.

The Customer Journey for B2B and B2C often looks quite different:

The Customer Journey is relevant to any business, but particularly important for companies that:

• Are customer-centric
• Want to improve customer satisfaction
• Want to increase sales

In general, you often see in companies that the marketing department is responsible for ensuring that (potential) customers have a positive experience with the brand.

A nice trend you see is that marketing/growth teams are becoming more responsible for the entire funnel rather than just reaching and bringing in new customers.

7 Stages of the Customer Journey

There are different models you can use to map out the Customer Journey, but in the end they all boil down to the same thing:

Keep in mind the different roles of the Decision-making Unit , but essentially there are 7 steps you can include in the Customer Journey….

Your (potential) customer can have 2 types of needs:

• Latent need : the person does not yet know he needs something. If you are going to buy a car you are not yet directly concerned with insurance.
• Concrete need : the person knows they have a certain need, here it is important to be visible with your brand. For example, think of buying a phone when your old one is broken.

Every Customer Journey basically starts with a certain need.

In practice, you can encounter 5 types of customers in this:

• Unaware : don’t realize they have a problem or need.
• Problem Aware : realize they have a problem or need.
• Solution Aware : they know there are solutions to their problem or need, but they don’t know you.
• Product Aware : they know you, but haven’t bought you yet.
• Most Aware : brand ambassadors.

2. Orientation

The orientation process has changed a lot in recent years thanks to digitalization, which makes it extra important to map it out using research.

You want to be visible with your brand at least in the orientation phase so that you will eventually be included in the consideration phase .

Some examples of behavior in the orientation phase:

• Concrete keywords in search engines
• Asking acquaintances for their opinions
• Checking out inspiration platforms such as Pinterest, TikTok or Instagram

3. Consideration

In the consideration phase, we examine which option from the orientation phase best meets the customer’s wishes and needs.

Here it is important to know which decision criteria weigh most heavily for the customer; this should be properly researched.

Some examples of decision criteria:

• Brand awareness

4. Decision

In the decision phase, a product or service from a specific vendor is actually chosen.

There are a number of things that make it easier for the customer to choose your product or service:

• Make it easy to compare
• Provide a good selection in different options
• Offer a good deal, make sure your customer can’t say no
• Provide a smooth payment process
• Increase engagement in your brand by providing valuable content, offers and support

Provide as few distractions as possible during the decision phase, people who are still Googling “[company name] discount code” from the checkout want to be convinced to convert.

5. Delivery

After someone has become a customer, a product or service will need to be delivered.

Here the first moments of evaluation will be whether someone actually made the right choice to choose your company, product or service.

• Make sure you deliver on time and that your product arrives in the right condition or that your service is of high quality.
• Give clear instructions on how to use or what the added value of the service is.
• Provide good support if the customer experiences problems in using your product or service.

In the use phase it is important that customers get the most out of your product or service and that they really see the added value .

You can stimulate this in a number of ways:

• Include tutorials
• Measuring and communicating impact
• Aftersales phone call

This is the ultimate evaluation moment ; if your product or service did not help the customer well, there is little chance that they will make a repeat purchase or become a brand ambassador .

In any case, it is important to prevent people from talking badly about your brand, so make sure that in the earlier stages you already make sure that people who are not ideal customers for you are excluded and that you make sure that customers see the added value of your product or service.

It is 5 to 7 times cheaper to retain a customer than to bring in a new customer. This is precisely why it is so important to encourage loyalty.

Loyalty can be expressed in the number of repeat purchases or upsells a customer eventually makes with you. You can encourage this by offering valuable content, offers and support.

The goal is for people to remain loyal to your brand and not switch to a competitor or go out of business in the first place.

There are different forms of loyalty:

• Transactional Loyalty : getting customers to make repeat purchases by giving offers.
• Social Loyalty : interacting with your customers on social media, for example.
• Engagement Loyalty : you reward people who engage with you where you can receive points for subscribing to a newsletter, for example.
• Emotional Loyalty : if your brand is positively aligned with your customer’s emotions, you can’t get this kind of loyalty with offers. In this, you want to make people feel part of something.
• Behavioral Loyalty : a level of loyalty in which you want to make customers do something like buy higher volumes where you give a third product for free after buying 2 products.
• Advocacy Loyalty : you are going to reward people who recommend others to become customers of your brand.

Customer Journey Mapping

Download the Customer Journey Canvas:

Good choice! Check your e-mail for the resources...

How do you complete the Customer Journey Canvas?

Once you know who all is in your Decision-making Unit, you can start creating personas and empathy maps so you can better understand the behaviors, needs, problems and wants of those individuals.

Determine what questions you would like to have answered after doing your Customer Journey Mapping research. Some common questions are: – When do you experience X? – On a scale of 1 – 10, how much would you like a solution to X? – How much are you willing to pay for a solution on X? – How would you orient yourself to a solution for X? – What brands would you consider in a solution for X? – What should a solution for X satisfy you in? – How would you go about determining if the solution was effective?

The threshold in terms of time and cost is often somewhat lower for quantitative research than for qualitative research. In it, you can gather good insights about your target audience from a helicopter perspective. Consider, for example: – Questionnaire – Post-purchase survey – Exit-intent Survey – Search volume

Once you have a high-level validated understanding of your target audience, you can begin to supplement your findings at a detailed level using qualitative research. Consider: – Customer interviews – User tests – Screen recordings

If you have made your Customer Journey Map comprehensible, you have gathered many insights on which you can improve your Customer Journey. To prevent it from becoming a dusty document that is no longer looked at, it is important to determine follow-up actions and evaluate them accordingly.

Common mistakes

There are a number of mistakes that you often see passed in Customer Journey Mapping:

• Based on assumptions : often you see that a Customer Journey is completely based on assumptions and not on validated research.
• Wrong scope : critically determine in advance where you want your Customer Journey to begin and end otherwise you quickly lose focus and overview.
• No customer perspective : reason the Customer Journey from your persona or customer and not from your company.
• Inside-out : if you start from how you do it as a company you are not customer-centric and there is going to be a mismatch in how the customer experiences something and how your company does it. Make sure your Customer Journey is actually completed from the customer’s perspective.
• Stakeholders : it is important to involve all relevant stakeholders so that you start creating support for the Customer Journey.
• End goal : the Customer Journey is not an end goal, but a starting point. It is something that will continuously play out and needs to be changed.

And now you…

Now you’re armed with enough knowledge to start visualizing your Customer Journey.

I’m curious, what has been the biggest insight for you in understanding your target audience?

Let me know in a comment.

P.S. if you would like additional help you can email me at [email protected]

Frequently Asked Questions

The 7 steps of the Customer Journey are: need, orientation, consideration, decision, delivery, use and loyalty.

A customer journey is a term used in marketing and customer experience management to describe the path a customer takes through the stages of awareness, consideration, purchase and use of a product or service. The term can also be used to describe the path a potential customer takes.

A customer journey map is a visualization of a customer’s experience with a company, product or service. It begins when the customer first becomes aware of a need and ends at the level of loyalty. The map tracks all the contact moments the customer has with a brand, both online and offline. Customer journey maps can help companies understand where they need to make improvements to provide a better experience for their customers.

The Customer Journey for every business is different. It is important to research for your business what the most ideal customer journey is, in doing so you want to validate all assumptions.

I try to help business surpass their growth ceiling with my content.

Sounds interesting?

Let’s connect on LinkedIn!

Account-Based Marketing | Business Strategy | Customer Development Process | Customer Journey | Decision-Making Unit | Digital Marketing | Lead Generation | Market Research | Marketing and Sales | Marketing Strategy

Gust’s Must-Reads 👇🏼

• TAM SAM SOM
• Value Proposition
• Brainstorming
• Decision Making Unit
• Product-Market Fit
• North Star Metric
• Market Research
• Customer Development
• Growth Hacking
• Brand Identity
• Customer Journey
• Account-Based Marketing

OGSM Model (2024): How-to & Examples [+ Template]

OGSM Model: a solution that helps with strategic planning and goal setting. You know where you want to go, but you don't have a clear picture of how you're going to get there. Ideas and goals are often not realized because there is no clear planning associated with...

Rapid Experimentation: The Road To Innovation (Complete Guide)

You read it left and right, companies that owe much of their success to experimentation.... Of course, experimentation can be understood in a hugely broad way, so in this article I'm going to get you started with: Understanding why experimentation is important...

Cognitive Biases (2024): Complete List of 151 Biases [Psychology]

Cognitive biases, there are so many of them... Decisions we make based on emotion, cognitive biases are irrational 'errors' that are programmed into people's brains and affect the decision-making process. Plenty of different articles have been written and an entire...

Ziet er zeer volledig en praktisch uit.

Bedankt Nicole!

Thanks! I’m trying to understand how to explain this approach in simple words, and your material is one of the best so far.

Thank you, Marie!

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Submit Comment

Customer Journey Map

You have successfully subscribed.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Creating a customer journey map can help you gain a deeper understanding of the steps, interactions, and emotions that a customer experiences as they move through their journey.

In this blog post, we’ll cover what we mean by a journey map, the benefits and challenges, and provide a step-by-step guide to building your own, including free (and editable) templates you can share with your team.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps and experiences a customer has as they interact with a business, product, or service. It can be used to identify areas of friction, understand customer preferences, and create a personalized experience for each customer.

By creating a customer journey map, businesses can gain insight into how customers move from awareness to purchase, and build meaningful relationships with them.

Why is it important to map the customer journey?

• Customer journey maps provide businesses with an in-depth understanding of the steps and experiences of their customers.
• They can help identify pain points in the customer experience and identify areas for improvement.
• Customer journey maps can be used to personalize the customer experience, creating a more meaningful relationship with customers.
• They can help businesses identify new opportunities and growth areas.
• Customer journey maps can help teams create and manage customer-centric strategies.

Benefits and challenges of customer journey mapping

Creating a customer journey map can provide businesses with invaluable insights into their customers' experiences, while also presenting some challenges in terms of gathering customer data and creating a strategy to address customer pain points.

Benefits of customer journey mapping

Creating a customer journey map can provide businesses with invaluable insights into their customers' experiences. It can help identify pain points in the customer experience, understand customer preferences, create a personalized experience for each customer across different touch points, and identify new opportunities and growth areas. It also helps teams create and manage customer-centric strategies, which can help businesses stay ahead of the competition.

Challenges of customer journey mapping

Creating an accurate customer journey map can be challenging, as it requires gathering customer data from multiple sources and understanding customer needs and preferences. It can also be difficult to create an actionable strategy to address customer pain points, as different customers may have different needs and preferences. Additionally, customer journey maps can quickly become outdated, making it important for businesses to stay up-to-date on customer trends and preferences.

How to create a customer journey map

To build your customer journey map, you’ll need to follow the seven steps below. Each of these steps has multiple components that require cross-functional teamwork, making having a shared, digital space key to your success.

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: 2-10 people

1. Gather customer data from multiple sources, such as surveys, interviews, online reviews, and analytics.

The first step in creating an actionable customer journey map is to ensure that you have a very solid understanding of your customers. Without a deep appreciation for their experience and a holistic view of your interactions, it’s impossible to capture accurate insights or make informed decisions.

2. Analyze the data to understand customer needs and preferences.

It is essential to thoroughly analyze customer needs and preferences in order to create an effective customer journey map that accurately reflects the customer experience. This is where you’ll be challenging any assumptions you may have had and beginning to look for patterns or insights that can be drawn from the data impact the overall experience.

3. Identify key customer touchpoints and create a timeline of the customer journey.

Once you’ve done your analysis, it’s time to start mapping your customer journey. To map the experience, you should:

• Narrow your focus to a facet of your customer experience (for example, when building solutions for Agile teams, you may want to focus on a particular ritual, like a retrospective )
• Decide on a single user, customer, or persona whose experience your diagram will represent
• Using sticky notes, have your team collect all the places, people, and items your persona will interact with (be as comprehensive as possible)
• Make sure you include instances where you have less control (e.g., the timing of a meeting vs. the structure)
• Consider the aspects of the experience that may be connected, even — especially — where those connections may not be immediately obvious

For this, a visual, collaborative platform like Mural can be a huge help, allowing you to connect what may seem like disparate elements of an overall experience, painting an accurate picture of your customers’ experience as a whole.

4. Identify areas of friction and opportunities for improvement.

After documenting the existing state of a person’s experience, it’s time to focus on key moments to deepen your understanding. Visualize the journey as pain points, bright spots, and opportunities to create a clear picture of how to improve the product or service experience, overall.

Things to do:

• Bring together the team that created the Experience Diagram(s) or people who are familiar with the experience
• Review your notes and any other artifacts collected during diagramming or early research (notes, photos, audio or video files, etc.)
• Select three colors of sticky notes (physical or digital) to capture Roses, Thorns, and Buds — we recommend Pink (Roses), Blue (Thorns), and Green (Buds) — to capture what is going well, what needs improvement, and any opportunities to expand upon in the future

5. Create an actionable strategy to address customer pain points.

Now that you’ve conducted your analysis and brainstormed ways to improve, it’s time to turn all that good information into actionable next steps.

Once you’ve organized all the information into categories, you can assign teammates to specific tasks all within the same visual platform, so everyone knows who is working on what, and expectations are transparent for every team member.

6. Test and refine the customer journey map.

Once you have a prototype of your customer journey map, you can begin to test it. You might start by applying your changes to a segment of your audience’s experience, and seeing what the preliminary results tell you. If it works, do more of it. If it’s not working so well, gather your team again to analyze performance and see what might be negatively affecting the experience.

7. Monitor customer trends and preferences to ensure the customer journey map stays up-to-date.

Iterate, iterate, iterate. Just because you’ve successfully created a customer journey map doesn’t mean the work is finished. As you begin to implement your changes, you’ll also be collecting new feedback — use that data loop to continuously improve your customer experience by returning to check in and reflect on progress with your team at regular intervals.

Customer journey mapping templates

Mural offers free, customizable customer journey mapping templates that you can share with unlimited members, so your whole team can get engaged.

Customer journey map template

The Mural customer journey map template, built by the Product School, has five components: entice , enter , engage , exit , and extend. Each of these steps includes a breakdown of interactions, goals and motivations, positive and negative moments, and opportunities for improvement.

Experience diagramming template

With the Mural experience diagramming template, you can pull back and come to grips with an individual experience for a customer, allowing you to consider each interaction in a more open, but also more granular way.

Rose, thorn, bud and affinity clusters template

The Mural rose, thorn, bud & affinity clusters template, built by the experts at the LUMA Institute (part of Mural’s Collaboration Design Institute), is a great brainstorming tool that allows your team to identify as many positive and negative aspects of a customer journey, while also providing space to investigate opportunities and organize feedback.

Use this template after the experience diagramming template to effectively map the interactions and emotions in a customer’s journey.

Customer journey maps are a stepping-stone to a better experience

Creating an actionable customer journey map is essential for businesses to stay ahead of the competition and provide a meaningful customer experience. By turning the customer journey map into actionable next steps, businesses can identify areas of friction in the customer experience, understand customer needs and preferences, create a personalized experience for each customer, and identify new opportunities for growth.

Mural makes extraordinary teamwork simple . Get started building your customer journey map today with a Mural Free Forever plan , and invite unlimited team members, so that you can ensure broad engagement and valuable insights that can be easily lost in traditional meetings, or with traditional brainstorming methods.

{{mural-luma-system="/cta-components"}}

About the authors

Bryan Kitch

Tagged Topics

Related blog posts

4 steps to creating digital customer & employee journey maps

Mural cited as a strong performer in Forrester’s Q2 2022 Forrester Wave™: journey mapping platforms

Win, wow, and retain customers: Mural features and templates for sales and success teams

Related blog posts.

How to conduct a strategic analysis

20 top strategic planning tools and frameworks [templates & examples]

How to make a digital vision board: A complete guide

Get the free 2023 collaboration trends report.

Extraordinary teamwork isn't an accident

Customer Journey Mapping: How to Understand Your Buyers and Enhance Their Experience

• 14 min read
• 14 Dec, 2023
• No comments Share

The recent State of the Connected Customer Report  by Salesforce revealed that for 80 percent of people, the experience a brand provides is as important as its product . With customer expectations at an all-time high, businesses must deliver the best service  possible to satisfy consumers and stay competitive. For that, it’s crucial to understand what customers want and anticipate their actions.

A customer journey map is vital in this context. It helps businesses understand and manage interactions with their clientele at every touchpoint, from the first encounter to the final transaction. So this post is all about the tool that guides you in creating exceptional customer experiences and how you can get the most out of it.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is creating a visual story of customers' interactions with the brand or product. It's like drawing a route people usually take from the moment they first become aware of your product or service all the way through to purchasing and even after-sales support.

A customer journey map includes all the touchpoints the customer can have with your brand, such as seeing a social media ad, visiting a store, calling customer support, and so on. Also, it should reflect the customers’ pain points , emotions, and reactions at every stage of the journey so that you understand them better and see how to improve their experience.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

Before we delve into the details of customer journey mapping, let’s say a few words about why do it at all. Here are some of its benefits.

Understand your customers better . Customer journey mapping helps you see your business through your customers' eyes. You get to understand what they like, what bothers them, and what makes them happy.

Find problems . Sometimes, there are bumps in the road that can make your customers unhappy, like a confusing website or long wait times. Journey mapping helps you spot these problems so you can address them.

Adjust your strategy . As you get to understand your customers better, you might realize that you have to tailor your offerings, pricing range, marketing campaigns, support team workflows, etc.

Improve customer experience and foster loyalty . When you know what your customers go through, you can make their journey smoother and more enjoyable. This means increased conversion  and retention  rates. Happy buyers are likelier to keep returning and recommend your brand to others. Research states that 88 percent  of customers repeat the purchase if they like the customer service.

In essence, customer journey mapping is a tool that helps businesses empathize with their customers and improve their interaction journey, leading to better customer-brand relationships and business success.

Customer journey stages

As we start exploring a customer journey map, let’s first look at what a common customer journey looks like. Here are its main phases.

Awareness . This is the initial stage where potential customers realize they have  a need or a problem that requires solving and become aware  of a product or service.

Potential touchpoints at this stage: social media, industry events, online/offline ads, search results, etc.

Consideration . At this stage, customers look for solutions. They are considering  different products or services and are researching to find the best option.

Potential touchpoints at this stage: your website, blog, knowledge base , reviews, testimonials, case studies, etc.

Decision . This is the point where the customer decides  on a solution that best fits their needs.

Potential touchpoints at this stage: email newsletter, pricing information, your website, physical store, sales reps, etc.

Purchase . The customer buys the product or service and starts using it.

Potential touchpoints at this stage: customer support (phone, messages, chatbots), help desk/FAQ sections, etc.

Retention . A fter the purchase, the focus shifts to keeping the customer happy and engaged with the product or service. This stage is about building loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases.

Potential touchpoints at this stage: email, newsletters, sales reps, etc.

Please note that this is the typical scenario but not the only one. The stages can vary across industries and product types, so you might want to include other phases in your customer journey map. Or else, you might need to map out only one part of the journey, for example, pre-purchase, to better understand how your marketing campaigns work.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

When creating a customer journey map, you’ll evaluate your buyer’s interactions with your brand and look for opportunities to enhance their experience. So here are the main elements of a customer journey map.

Elements of a customer journey map

Buyer/user/customer persona  – a prototype of your target audience.

Scenario  – a short description of the interaction story.

Customer’s goals/needs/expectations  – why people turn to your brand.

Stages  – the phases your customer goes through in the interaction scenario.

Actions and touchpoints – what customers do and where the interaction happens.

Emotions and experiences  – what customers feel and think as they interact with your brand.

Emotional curve  – the visual line of how the customer sentiment changes depending on their experience.

Opportunities  – how you can improve the customer experience at each touchpoint or stage.

You can also include other elements like KPIs to track, designated people responsible for implementing improvements, and so on. T he complexity and elements of a customer journey map can vary based on the nature of your business, the type of customers, and your goals.

A simple example of a traveler journey map that an OTA or a hotel could create

The components of the customer journey map also depend on its type. There are many different modifications you can create for various business goals, so let’s talk about some of them.

Customer journey map types

Each customer journey map has its own focus and purpose. The choice of which one to use depends on your specific objectives, the complexity of your customer experience, and the information you want to capture. Here are some of the main types.

Current state journey maps provide a detailed view of the existing customer experience (just like in the illustration above). It’s the most basic map that documents touchpoints, interactions, and emotions “as is.”

Future state journey maps  envision the ideal customer journey after implementing improvements or changes. They serve as a roadmap for designing and delivering a better customer experience and help teams set goals and prioritize initiatives to reach the desired state.

Day-in-the-life journey maps  focus on a specific persona or customer segment's daily activities and how they interact with a product or service throughout their day. These maps help businesses understand a customer's routines and identify opportunities to provide value.

Channel-specific journey maps  concentrate on a particular customer interaction channel, such as a website, mobile app, social media, or in-store experience. They help businesses optimize touchpoints within a specific channel.

Service blueprints  go beyond the customer perspective and provide a comprehensive view of the entire service ecosystem. They include the customer journey, frontstage interactions (visible to the customer), and backstage processes (invisible to the customer). Service blueprints help improve alignment and coordination within an organization.

An example of a service blueprint for visiting a restaurant. Source: Miro

Some other types are emotional journey maps, lifecycle journey maps, cross-channel journey maps, etc. You can focus on a specific category or use a combination of these maps to better understand your customer journey and drive improvements in the customer experience.

How do you create and use a customer journey map ?

There’s no single best format for a customer journey map. It can be a linear timeline, flowchart, or any other visual representation that best suits your needs. You can draw it on paper, put sticky notes on a whiteboard , or design it in specialized software (we’ll talk about digital tools further on).

Since customer journey mapping is part of market research, usually, it’s the marketing or sales department that’s responsible for creating it. However, it’s worth engaging different teams in this process.

Define objectives

First of all, you have to decide on your goals – or why you want to analyze your customer journey. For example, it can be something as specific as checking how a particular marketing project works, i.e., how effective ad retargeting is. Or it can be a strategic business objective like attracting more customers, increasing sales volume per customer, or improving retentio n.

Pro tip: Make a customer journey map for a specific interaction scenario for a certain customer segment. This way, it won’t be too generic, so you’ll be able  to explore your buyers’ sentiments  more deeply at each stage of their way and get more concrete results to work with.  

Create a buyer persona

As we said, you must create a fictional representative of your target audience. To understand their needs and pain points, design a persona with a specific traits -- professional background, motivations, lifestyle, goals, and so on.

Pro tip : Add as many details as possible to make the most accurate representation of your customer. Later on, it will help you better understand their perspective.

Identify touchpoints and map the customer journey

As we said, you have to define the ways customers interact with your brand at each stage. Make a list of all the potential touchpoints and then map them out on the customer journey stages.

Use various data sources such as website analytics, customer feedback, social media interactions, and sales data to gather information about where and how customers interact with your brand. Also, engage teams from various departments (sales, customer support, marketing) and encourage their input.

Pro tip : Look at your competitors to see where they engage with customers. This can provide insights into touchpoints you haven’t considered.

Understand the customer's perspective

As you record your customers' actions at each stage, remember to make the  map from the customer's point of view. It must show what they think and feel  at each touchpoint, what they're trying to achieve, and any challenges they might face.

Watch our expert explain customer research in product discovery

Get feedback directly from your customers  through surveys, interviews , or email questionnaires to understand their  experience at different touchpoints. Ask about their motivations  and any difficulties they encountered.

Pro tip : Tools like website heat maps, open rates for emails, and engagement rates on social media can help you understand your customers’ behavior better.

Highlight emotions and experiences

A customer journey map goes beyond the actions customers take. It dives into their emotional experience, whether they're happy, frustrated, or confused at different stages.

It’s important to record both positive and negative emotions. The former exhibits opportunities to enhance the experience or exceed customer expectations, while the latter highlights pain points or bottlenecks where customers face challenges or frustrations.

Pro tip : Ask your customer support which questions they get most often. Also, pay attention to what customers say about your brand on social media, online review platforms, or other resources.

Identify opportunities for improvement

By mapping this journey, you can see where you're providing a great experience and where you fall short. This helps you find ways to enhance your strong sides and improve the weak ones. For example, some reasons for poor customer experience include long waiting times to get to customer service, unintuitive website interface, missing app functionality, high prices, and so on.

Pro tip : Conduct brainstorming sessions with different teams and encourage active cross-department collaboration. Also, try to go through the journey that you’ve depicted yourself to get first-hand experience.

Create a better customer experience

Ultimately, the goal is to use this map to make strategic decisions that enhance the customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. Develop strategies and initiatives to address the pain points, optimize touchpoints, and leverage opportunities identified in the customer journey map.

Pro tip : Focus on your business goals when you analyze the impact of customer experience and prioritize your activities.

B2B customer journey map

If your company doesn’t work with individual customers but deals with other businesses, you can still take advantage of a customer journey map. A B2B customer journey map is a useful tool for managing client relationships. Just like the B2C analog, it visualizes the process they go through and experiences they have when interacting with your company. However, there are certain differences that impact the components of the customer journey map. 

The complexity of the decision-making process . In the B2B context, there’s a more complex decision-making process, often with multiple stakeholders. The journey may include stages like RFP (Request for Proposal) submission, detailed product evaluations, approvals from different departments, and a longer negotiation phase. In B2C, the decision-making process is usually simpler and quicker, often involving only the individual consumer or their immediate family.

Length of sales cycle . B2B sales cycles are typically longer, sometimes lasting months or even years, as they involve higher-value transactions and more deliberation. B2C sales cycles are shorter, often concluding within a few days or even instantly.

Touchpoints . B2B touchpoints include industry events, professional networks, detailed product demos, and extensive follow-up communications. B2C touchpoints often focus more  on mass marketing channels like social media, online ads, reviews, and retail environments.

Customer goals and expectations . Business customers often have specific, pragmatic goals like improving efficiency, increasing ROI, or integrating with existing systems. Meanwhile, individual consumer goals may be more diverse, including personal enjoyment, convenience, price, and brand alignment.

Relationship and engagement . B2B focuses more on building long-term relationships and ongoing engagement.   In the B2C model, while repeat business is also important, engagement is often more transactional and less personalized unless it’s a high-value product or a niche market.

Just like in a B2C context, delivering a positive experience to your business clients is important. Customer journey mapping helps you understand how you can enhance your relationships.

Customer journey mapping softwa re

As we said, you can certainly map your customer journey on a sheet of paper, but we recommend you use a specialized digital tool instead. The software helps automate this process, allows for convenient collaboration, and enables easy editing, sharing, and so on. Besides, most platforms offer several editable templates for different purposes.

There are multiple tools available to help you with customer journey mapping. A simple online search will give you a list of relevant platforms. Some are designed specifically to manage customer experience, while others are more general-purpose and can be used for different scenarios.

When choosing a tool, we recommend you consider the following factors:

• available templates,
• integration options,  
• interface intuitiveness,
• customization options,
• collaboration features, and
• customer support and training.

We’ll take a look at some of them to give you an idea of what’s out there. Please note that we don’t promote any of the tools; the choice was based on their popularity.

Customer journey mapping tools compared

Smaply  is a specialized, user-friendly tool for journey mapping. It allows businesses to create detailed customer personas,  journey maps, and other related visuals. It’s particularly good for visualizing complex customer interactions over multiple channels.

Miro  is a multipurpose online collaborative whiteboarding platform. It offers numerous templates and tools for creating detailed customer journey maps, making it easier to visualize the customer experience.

UXPressia  is specifically designed for creating customer journey maps with 100+ templates and customization options. It offers a persona creation feature, impact mapping, and the ability to integrate real data into your maps. You can also connect it to Jira, Google Analytics, and other external apps to add information to your maps.

Lucidchart is a diagramming app that helps create flowcharts, organizational charts, customer journey maps, etc. Besides creating visuals, it offers integration options with popular business tools like Google Workspace, Atlassian, and Slack.

Custellence  is another focused customer journey mapping app. It has numerous templates for different industries and an intuitive, drag-and-drop user interface.

Customer journey map templates

As we’ve already mentioned, most software tools provide interactive templates for different scenarios. But if you don’t want to work on any focused platform, here are some downloadable templates for you:

• the most basic PDF template  from Nielsen Norman Group,
• a collection of PowerPoint templates  from HubSpot,
• an editable Google Docs template  from WordStream, and
• a set of colored templates  available in Google Slides or PowerPoint from Slidesgo.

We realize it might be confusing at the beginning when you don’t have a clear idea of how to approach customer journey mapping. For inspiration, check out some examples of how it might look.

Customer journey map examples

Companies create customer journey maps for a wide range of scenarios and with different purposes. While the objective isn’t always about getting more profit, it’s always about enhancing customer experience.

M ultiple use cases. UXPressia has a big section with customer journey map examples  for many industries, including banking, travel, entertainment, and so on. Within each industry subsection, they cover multiple scenarios, plus they provide different user persona examples.

A customer journey map for an airplane passenger. Source: UXPressia

Attending city tours . Mural, a visual planning and collaboration tool, has created a customer journey map  for travelers on guided city tours. The steps include browsing, booking, attending, and rating the tours.

Sharing music on Spotify . Meghana Bowen, a UX/UI designer, presented a customer journey map  of using the Spotify app and sharing music with others. The author has also defined a user persona and depicted the following process of creating the sharing feature design.

Spotify customer journey map. Source: Meghana Bowen

New students coming to the university campus . Iris Wu and Mei Xue created a service to facilitate traveling to Carnegie Mellon for incoming students. As part of their research, they’ve designed current and future  customer journey maps  to better understand the difficulties that international students encounter.

Best practices

We’ve already included some pieces of practical advice in the previous sections, but we still have a few more final tips.

Collaborate . We’ve mentioned it above but still want to emphasize the importance of cross-department collaboration when creating and working with the customer journey map. And, of course, involve your customers as well. Only in this case you’ll be able to have the most detailed information about your customer experience and improve it throughout all touchpoints.

Designate . As you implement changes, it’s crucial to assign responsibilities so that everyone knows their roles and tasks in these projects.

Track . It’s also important to develop KPIs so that you can track progress. The metrics you choose will depend on your objectives, but some examples are customer satisfaction score, net promoter score , conversion rate, or churn rate.

Update . Remember that the customer journey is dynamic and can change over time. Regularly revisit and update your customer journey map to reflect any changes in customer behavior or market conditions.

• Help Center
• Knowledge Base Setup, how-to, and troubleshooting guides
• API Documentation Reference for API Development
• CMS Documentation Reference for CMS Development
• Academy Content Library A complete library of Academy’s free online video lessons and certification courses.
• Academy Certification Courses A collection of lessons and practical exercises leading to an industry-recognized certification in HubSpot’s tools or strategy.
• Classroom Training Schedule in-person training for a hands-on and personalized HubSpot training experience.
• CRM & Sales Hub Ask and answer questions about using HubSpot’s CRM and Sales Hub.
• Marketing Hub Discuss and learn HubSpot’s marketing tools and inbound strategy.
• Service Hub Learn about Service Hub and share your expertise.
• Meet the Experts Learn how to get the most out of HubSpot from those who know it best.
• Submit Ideas Search, vote for, and submit ideas to improve the HubSpot platform.
• HubSpot Developers Ask questions and connect with users building on HubSpot.
• HubSpot User Groups Meet regularly with your local community of HubSpot users.
• HubSpot Blog Marketing, sales, agency, and customer success blog content.
• Customer Blog Examples of how real customers use HubSpot for their business.
• Product Updates Blog Updates on the latest releases from HubSpot’s Product team.

Customer journey report steps and filters

Last updated: March 13, 2024

Available with any of the following subscriptions , except where noted:

When creating a customer journey report , use steps and filters to define the journey a contact or deal must take. The sections below highlight some of the most common steps and filters to use in your customer journey analytics report.

Steps are the individual events that a contact or deal must complete to move on to the next stage in the journey. Multiple steps can be included in a stage.

Ad interactions: the time when a visitor engaged with an ad connected to the HubSpot account. HubSpot can capture ad interactions that occurred from users who haven’t yet converted into a contact in your HubSpot account, this means that this event supports anonymous visitors.

Learn more about using ads in HubSpot .

Calls started: the time when the start of a call with a contact began. Use Calls started to measure whether a rep placed a call with a contact. This event captures a call whether or not it is outbound (i.e., began on the contact record or in the conversations inbox) or inbound (i.e., the user called in and the call was logged to their CRM record).

Calls ended: the time of the end of a call with a contact. This event captures a call whether or not it is outbound (i.e., began on the contact record or in the conversations inbox) or inbound (i.e., the user called in and the call was logged to their CRM record).

Learn more about using calling in HubSpot .

Campaign ID: populates the campaign that the interaction is associated with.

CTA views: the time when a visitor or contact viewed a CTA. HubSpot can track CTA views regardless of whether or not the person is a contact in your HubSpot account, this means that this event supports anonymous visitors.

CTA clicks: the time when a visitor or contact clicked a CTA. HubSpot can track CTA clicks regardless of whether or not the person is a contact in your HubSpot account, this means that this event supports anonymous visitors.

Deal stage: populates deal stage data from any of your pipelines.

Contacts finished viewing documents: the time when a contact in your account finished viewing a document.

Contacts viewed documents: the time when a contact in your account began viewing a document.

Documents shared with contacts: the time when a HubSpot user shared a document with a contact. This event is tracked when a document is sent to a contact through an email or sequence where the user's inbox is connected to HubSpot.

Learn more about using documents in HubSpot .

Form view: the time when someone’s browser loaded a form on their screen, meaning the user had scrolled to the point that they could view the form. HubSpot can capture form views that happened from users who haven’t yet converted into a contact in your HubSpot account.

Form interaction: the time when someone began filling out a form. This event is captured when someone has clicked into the form and/or has begun to fill out the form. HubSpot is able to capture form interactions that happened from users who haven’t yet converted into a contact in your HubSpot account.

Form pop up view: the time when someone’s browser loaded a pop up form on their screen. This is specific to pop up forms and happens when the HubSpot tracking code registers that the user’s browser loaded the form. HubSpot can capture pop up form views that happened from users who haven’t yet converted into a contact in your HubSpot account.

Form submission: the time when someone successfully submitted a form. Form submissions require a user to provide their email address. Therefore, this event does not need to have the ‘include anonymous visitors’ option checked to see all form submissions in a journey report.

Learn more about using forms in HubSpot .

Marketing emails

Clicked links in email: the time when a contact clicked a link in a marketing email.

Emails bounced: the time when an email sent to a contact bounced.

Emails delivered: the time when an email sent to a contact was delivered successfully.

Opened emails: the time when a contact opened a marketing email.

Reported spam: the time when a contact marked an email as spam.

Updated email subscription status: the time when a contact updated their email subscription status.

Marketing events

Attended marketing event: the date and time when a contact attended a marketing event.

Canceled marketing event: the time when a contact canceled their registration for a marketing event invitation.

Registered for marketing event: the time when a contact registered to attend an upcoming marketing event.

Learn more about marketing events in HubSpot .

Media played: the time when a contact played a media file stored in your HubSpot account.

Meetings booked: the time when a contact scheduled to attend a meeting. This can either happen when a contact books through a HubSpot meeting link or a HubSpot user schedules a meeting with a contact directly from the record. 

Meeting outcome changes: tracks when a contact’s meeting outcome was changed or set. On the contact record, HubSpot users can set the meeting outcome. For example, the meeting outcome could be Scheduled , Completed , No show , etc. This event tracks when this value has been set.

Outbound message deliveries: the time when a WhatsApp message was delivered to a contact. Outbound message failures: the time when a WhatsApp message failed to deliver to a contact. Outbound message opens: the time when a contact opened a WhatsApp message. Outbound message sends: the time when a WhatsApp message was sent to a contact.

Learn more about using WhatsApp in HubSpot .

Payment failed: the t ime when a contact’s recurring card or bank transfer payment failed to process.

Payment initiated: the t ime when a contact’s bank transfer payment was initiated.

Payment refund failed: the t ime when a contact’s payment refund failed to complete.

Payment refund initiated: the t ime when a contact’s payment refund began.

Payment refund succeeded: the t ime when a contact’s payment refund was completed.

Payment succeeded: the t ime when a contact’s payment was successfully processed.

Learn more about using payments in HubSpot .

Sales email

Sales email clicks: the time when a contact clicked a link in a one-to-one email.

Sales email opens: the time when a contact opened a one-to-one email.

Sales email replies: the time when a contact replied to a one-to-one email.

Sales email sends: the time when an one-to-one email was sent to a contact.

Learn more about sending one-to-one email in HubSpot .

Contacts booked meetings through a sequence: the time when a contact booked a meeting through a sequence.

Contacts enrolled in a sequence: the time when a HubSpot user enrolled a CRM into a sequence.

Contacts unenrolled in a sequence: the time when a contact is no longer enrolled in a sequence. This could happen because the contact booked a meeting through the sequence, replied to an email in the sequence, unsubscribed from the sequence, or the sequence came to an end.

Contacts unenrolled manually from sequence: the time when a HubSpot user manually unenrolled a contact from a sequence.

Contacts unsubscribed from sequence email: the time when a contact unsubscribed from a one-to-one email while enrolled in a sequence.

Sequence emails bounced: the time when an email sent to a contact bounced.

Sequence steps executed: the time when a step was executed in a sequence.

Sequences errored: the time when an error occurred in a sequence.

Sequences finished: the time when a contact reached the final step of a sequence.

Learn more about using sequences in HubSpot .

Link in short messages clicked: tracks when a contact clicked a message in an SMS message. Short messages delivered: tracks when an SMS message was delivered to a contact. Short messages dropped: tracks when an SMS message was delivered to a contact but was dropped. Short messages failed: tracks when an SMS message failed to deliver to a contact. Short message sent: tracks when an SMS message was sent to a contact.

Learn more about using SMS messaging in HubSpot .

Pages visited: the time when a visitor viewed a page that was tracked by the HubSpot tracking code . HubSpot is able to capture page visits and interactions that happened from users who haven’t yet converted into a contact in your HubSpot.

After adding your steps you can use the below filters to further refine your report:

Ad campaign ID: populates the ad campaign that the ad interaction is associated with.

Ad network: populates the name of the network where the interaction occurred. (i.e. Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn.) Learn more about ad tracking in HubSpot .

Interaction type: populates which type of interaction occurred. An interaction can include either a site visit or a form submission..

Network placement: populates the different methods of publishing ads. For example, Facebook Messenger or Google Display Network.

Call owner: the user who initiated the call.

Call country: the country where the call recipient received the call.

Content ID: populates the content pages where the CTA is. For example, the name of a specific blog post or a specific landing page where a CTA is embedded will display in the dropdown menu.

CTA guid: populates the specific name of a CTA. 

Content ID: populates the content pages where the form is placed. For example, the name of a specific blog post or a specific landing page where a form is embedded will display in the dropdown menu.

Form ID: populates the specific name of a form.

Business units: filter by any of the business units you’ve set up in your account. Learn more about business units .

Email content ID: filter by the unique name of the marketing email.

Original URL:  the specific URL a contact clicked in your email. 

Event name: filter by the specific name of a webinar. This allows you to view which specific marketing events are generating the most interest, indicating which types of content you should be creating more of.

Origin: filter by two options; Online or in-person.

Learn more about using marketing events .

Content page: populates the specific content pages where media has been embedded. For example, you could analyze a specific landing page where a video is embedded.

Meetings booked: measures when a contact books a meeting that is logged in your HubSpot account. This can occur through a meeting link or when a meeting is logged on a contact record.

Meeting outcome (only available when using meeting outcome changes step): allows you to take the journey a step further and specify the result of the meeting in the journey. You can see multiple meeting outcomes in a single stage by using branching.

Form ID: if a meeting link is connected to a form, you can filter to only include meetings that are tied to a specific number of forms.

Meeting owner: filter by a specific meeting owner. This is useful if you want to view how prospects and customers are flowing through specific reps, which can provide opportunities to see if a particular group of reps are yielding better results.

Meeting type: filter by Round Robin , Personal , or Group to view if one meeting type creates a higher conversion rate.

User ID: populates the name of the different users in your HubSpot account who are emailing prospects. Unlike sequence enrollment, a HubSpot user does not need to enroll a prospect into a sequence for this to count in the journey report, they only need the HubSpot sales extension to be installed in their email. This property allows you to see if a specific sales rep is driving higher engagement than others, allowing you to analyze what the rep may be doing differently.

Enrolled by user: populates the different users in your HubSpot account who are using the sequences tool to engage prospects.

Sequence ID: populates the unique sequences in your HubSpot account that reps can use to nurture prospects. A unique Sequence ID is generated each time a user enrolls a prospect into a new sequence.

Template ID: populates the name of templates that you have set up in your HubSpot account for users to nurture prospects.

Content ID: allows for a like-for-like comparison between any blog posts, landing pages, and more. You can analyze if a certain piece of content is resonating more with web visitors.

Advanced tracking code properties

Many properties are unique to your HubSpot account and require you to manually input the values. This is especially true for interactions that rely on the HubSpot tracking code.

Some of the most popular properties that require you to manually input values are listed below. 

• Browser: allows you to filter based on a specific browser, like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. You can view this data in the Traffic Analytics tool .
• Content type: allows you to choose a specific type of your website. For example, you can choose between blog posts, landing pages, website pages, and knowledge base articles. Learn more here .
• Country: allows you to filter on a specific country as defined by the International Organization for Standardization. For example, ‘US’ would filter to web traffic from the United States, while ‘DE’ would filter to web traffic from Germany. For a full list of country codes, reference the Alpha 2 column .
• Device type: allows you to filter on what type of device was being used when a visitor engaged with your brand. For example, you can use ‘desktop’ or ‘mobile’. Learn more about device types .
• Region: allows you to filter on a specific subdivision (e.g. a province or state) of a country as defined by the International Organization for Standardization. For example, ‘TN’ would filter to web traffic from the American state of Tennessee while ‘75C’ would filter to web traffic from the French metropolitan of Paris. View the full list of region codes from the United Nations Economic Commision for Europe .

Related content

• Create sales goals
• Create custom events codelessly with the event visualizer
• Create sales reports with report collections

How HubSpot Created Its Customer Journey Map

Published: June 09, 2022

How does customer experience influence user interactions with different teams and products? There are many components that factor into a customer’s experience with a product or service and it can be tricky to view a customer’s journey in a comprehensive manner, but a customer journey map can help alleviate those challenges.

A customer journey map visually describes the customer's experience and is authored through their eyes. This image charts out every user interaction with the business so marketing, sales, product, and customer service teams can identify opportunities to improve their experience.

A Salesforce study found that 80 percent of customers view the experience with a company as important as its products and services. The same study found that 91 percent of those polled say they’re more likely to purchase again after a positive experience with the company.

While customer service mapping is an incredibly useful tool, it's extremely detailed and labor-intensive to complete, especially when customers can follow unique journeys within your business. Nevertheless, going through the process of completing one is well worth the investment.

In this post, let's dive into my team's process for creating HubSpot's customer journey map and highlight some best practices you should consider when making one at your company. Learn about:

• HubSpot’s Customer Journey Map

Customer Journey Map Best Practices

Hubspot's customer journey map.

Before we jump into my team's process, let's look at the map we came up with.

Click to enlarge image

While there are a few ways to structure your map, we decided that a linear design would be best for our company. We highlighted common customer experiences on a timeline and color-coded them to symbolize whether the situation was a pain point or a moment of delight. With this format, our map was easy to read and more actionable for other teams.

Another feature we had were testimonials. While not depicted in the visual above, we asked customers to provide feedback on their experience, categorized their results based on where they were in the customer's journey, then picked one that best summarized our customers' perspective of that interaction. These stories connected the map back to our customers and created problems that felt more relevant and urgent to our employees.

Now that we've broken down the structure and details of our map, let's discuss some best practices to keep in mind when creating one at your business.

1. Think about your design last.

Since a customer journey map is a visual representation of your customer data, you may think its structure and format are incredibly important. While these elements influence the clarity of the visual, they shouldn't be the sole focus of your project.

Instead, you should center attention around your data and don't think about design until you have a detailed understanding of your customers. Use Excel to organize information then analyze different interactions that customers have with your company. Over time, the structure and format of your map will become clear, but you have to deeply understand the customer's journey, first. Once you do, there's plenty of software that can transform your spreadsheet into a map for you.

2. Lean on qualitative data.

The biggest challenge we faced was obtaining data that would validate the feedback from customer interviews. We thought we needed empirical evidence to persuade stakeholders that our customer journey map was accurate. However, we found that stakeholders, both internal and external, were paying more attention to our qualitative data like testimonials and interviews. These excerpts from actual customers solidified the points we were making on our map.

Recognizing this, we shifted our focus from obtaining as much feedback as possible to gathering high-quality feedback that represented major themes and problems. Instead of interviewing 100 customers, we interviewed 10 then looked for similarities across each one.

Since we observed consistent feedback from each response, we didn't need to spend time interviewing more users. We knew that our data's quality was enough to support our conclusions.

3. Survey internal and external stakeholders.

While a customer journey map is based heavily on customer feedback, this information only provides one side of the story. Sometimes, customers don't know how your team influences their experience and if you solely rely on their feedback, you might overlook an important factor that's impacting customer satisfaction . Therefore, it's important to interview internal stakeholders as well as external ones.

For our map, we hosted customer journey map workshops called, "Touchpoints." These were 90-minute sessions with employees from all over the organization that highlighted instances where HubSpot influenced customer experience. Any time employees generated a customer interaction via phone, email, or in-person, that moment was recorded and labeled a touchpoint. You can see how these meetings were set up in the image below.

This brought to light a variety of inconsistencies we had when communicating with customers. By bringing representatives from each department together, we addressed issues that affected the business as a whole and created a more consistent experience for our users.

4. Be aware of your bias.

One roadblock that played a larger role than expected was bias. We expected customers to tell us one thing when in reality, they would tell us something completely different. Or, they would be afraid to tell us the truth and potentially hurt our feelings. If we wanted our customer journey map to be accurate, we needed to implement safeguards that filtered out any influence we had on our customers' feedback.

To do this, we worked with our research team to create unbiased survey questions . They gave us a template of questions to ask and encouraged us to have conversations instead of conducting interviews. This created a more casual environment which made customers more likely to share both positive and negative feedback.

You can check out the template we used for interviews here .

5. Create buy-in.

If you want your map to be effective, your organization as a whole needs to be exposed to it and agree that it’s important. So, before you begin your work, you should get leadership from across your company to meet and discuss your project. This will create buy-in and demonstrate the significance of your customer journey map. 

For our map, we created a project management document that linked each team’s needs back to the customer journey map. This resource logged the desired outcome for each team and created an understanding that we may need time to gather all the information needed to fulfill their goals. 

Once the map was finished, it became immediately actionable. If we didn’t take this step beforehand, it would’ve just been a pretty picture to look at. 

6. Take your time.

Image Source: HubSpot

If you want to do it right, you're not going to put together a customer journey map overnight. It's going to take time to gather all of the information you need to truly understand the customer's perspective.

For us, it took about three months to set up customer interviews and we conducted one or two each week. We had to find users who not only met specific criteria in terms of NPS® and purchase history but also ones who would agree to meet and speak with us in person or over the phone.

Additionally, we had to find time to meet with our internal teams, which, at a growing company like HubSpot, is much easier said than done. Every team at HubSpot is working towards their quarterly goals, so to make our project stand out, we had to position it in a way that was relevant to our company as a whole. This removed pesky data silos and made our customer journey map seem more urgent and actionable to our coworkers.

7. Start with a simple adoption path.

For many businesses, the customer's journey isn't straightforward. Take HubSpot, for example, where customers can begin their relationship with us in a variety of ways. They can download our free tools and grow to be enterprise accounts or start with marketing features and add sales and customer service, or purchase all of our subscriptions together and reassess them over time. There's no "right" and "wrong" path, just some have more steps than others.

For our journey map, we chose an adoption path that was simple but touched as many products and services as possible. This gave us a baseline to work with and narrowed our focus down to one type of customer.

And, that's important to remember. Your customer journey map must be directed towards one customer persona. If you try to encompass your entire customer base , your map will either be too hard to follow or too vague to have value. Narrowing it down to one persona gives you a thorough depiction of that customer's experience.

8. Make more than one customer journey map.

Since your customer journey map should only target one type of customer, you'll likely need to create more than one map. But, this can be a tricky sell for stakeholders. After all, if you're spending all this time and effort to complete one, why should they invest in it for every buyer persona?

The key is to get started with one and then you'll get buy-in from the rest of your organization. Customer journey maps can be intimidating, especially when you need to do five of them to capture every persona at your business. But, once you start having these conversations with customers and employees, you uncover opportunities to optimize the customer experience. The map is simply a visual aid that showcases everything you've learned from all of your conversations.

9. Present your map.

A customer journey map benefits your entire business, so it should be shared with everyone once it's completed.

In our case, we wanted to share it with leaders across HubSpot. Since we didn't have quantitative data, we presented it by playing audio snippets from our customer interviews. These clips humanized problems that were highlighted on the map and connected our conclusions back to our customers' feedback. Once employees heard the feedback firsthand, the map felt much more relevant to our company's goals.

If you're excited to start this process at your business, learn how to create a customer journey map .

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

How AI Image Misuse Made a World of Miscommunication [Willy's Chocolate Experience]

7 Ways to Delight Your Customers This Holiday Season

14 Customer Experience Fails that Companies Can Learn From

How Customer Experience Has Evolved Over the Last Decade [+ 2024 Trends]

Memorable Examples of AR in Customer Experience [+Tips for Implementing the Technology]

Digital Customer Experience: The Ultimate Guide for 2023

How to Implement a Hybrid Customer Service Strategy That Works [Expert Tips]

User Flows: 8 Tips For Creating A Super Smooth User Experience

11 Best Practices for B2B Customer Experience

Customer Experience vs. User Experience: What’s the Difference? [+ Examples]

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

Service Hub provides everything you need to delight and retain customers while supporting the success of your whole front office

Your browser appears to have JavaScript disabled or does not support JavaScript. Please refer to your browser's help file to determine how to enable JavaScript.

• HubSpot Community
• HubSpot Advocates

Advocates Blog

• Improve Customer Experience with HubSpot Customer Journey Analytics
• Subscribe to RSS Feed
• Mark as New
• Mark as Read
• Printer Friendly Page
• Report Inappropriate Content

• Analytics & Reports
• Dashboards and Reporting
• Back to Blog
• Next Blog post
• Previous Blog post

You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.

• Guide to HubSpot’s Drag-and-Drop Email Markup
• Unleashing the Power of AI in HubSpot: A Quick Guide
• Collaborative Product Development: Partner Admin + Client Access Manager
• Is HubSpot Overtaking the Markets of Salesforce?
• Navigating the Sales Cycles: How CRM Can Streamline Your Company’s Process
• 5 HubSpot Lessons Gleaned from 2,000 Trainings
• The Role of Automation in Modern Marketing Using HubSpot
• Exciting Updates Ahead for HubSpot Sales Hub & How HubSpot Administrators Can Elevate Your Business
• What Are the Most Common Mistakes When Doing HubSpot Onboarding By Yourself

• Integrations
• Learning Center

A Customer Journey Map of the ProductPlan First Time User Experience

Jeremy Rawson Lead Designer at Crossnokaye

I was asked by ProductPlan to create a journey map that maps out their customers’ experience during the 30 day free trial. In this post I am sharing the process I used to create the journey map for ProductPlan.

As discussed in our previous article, How Journey Maps Can Help Product Managers Build Better Products , a customer journey map is a graphic or narrative representation of the customer’s relationship with a company, product or service. It shows the customer’s interactions with the business over time and across service channels. Based on the customer’s perspective, it shows the meeting points between the customer’s expectations and the requirements of the business.

Like most designers, I’ve had to wear two hats — one hat as the designer who knows the application inside and out looking for pitfalls and pain points to help identify how to make the product better, and the other hat as the customer who is reviewing the product for the first time and wants to see if it fits their organization’s needs. This article is a peek into my process of creating a journey map and the insights gained while evaluating the first time product experience of a ProductPlan customer. Along with this post, I’ve included the customer journey map my team and I created so you can use the final deliverable as a reference when and if you choose to create your own organization’s customer journey map.

Tweet This: “Journey maps uncover problems, show gaps in service, and help align members of the company to company goals.”

Creation Process

To create the customer journey map , the team got together to set our objectives and decided that the journey map had to:

• Identify ways to get customers more engaged with the product from the beginning
• Uncover problems that might be turning customers away
• Increase the number of customers who move from using the free trial to purchasing a plan

To move forward, we first needed to pull together all our existing research findings. The information that would tell us about customers’ experiences with the product came from customer surveys, interviews, and in-app feedback. From looking at the many great journey map examples out there, it’s clear that there is no universally correct way to make one, and it can be overwhelming to decide the right elements to include. This is the phase where “analysis by paralysis” can kick in and one must be diligent in deciding what to include and, just as important, what to leave out. To avoid that problem, the team and I decided to narrow our focus on three aspects of the customer experience: customer actions, pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Understanding the Customer’s Journey

Customers come to ProductPlan because they need a roadmapping solution that visually communicates the progress of their company’s goals, highlights opportunities, and prioritizes initiatives. When potential customers become aware of ProductPlan, their first stop is the ProductPlan website . The home page provides a high level overview, while subsequent pages dive into details on how the product actually works.

As customers review the ProductPlan website and its competitors’ websites, we imagined typical questions that come up and included them in the journey map:

• There are several roadmapping products out there. Which one is best? I don’t have time to research every solution and read details.
• How will ProductPlan integrate with existing project management tools within my organization?

After signing up, customers are invited to take the product tour, participate in a webinar, and watch our video tutorials. In addition, we message them in the support chat to let them know we’re here if they have any questions. After that, users are on their own to explore the product.

Employees at ProductPlan who regularly chat with customers share that users report having different needs when getting started. While some users are ready to dive in by starting from scratch, many new customers often ask for templates or samples to get a sense for how a roadmap could be used for their particular situation. Other customers want an easy way to import their data from third party project management tools like JIRA or Pivotal Tracker. Our team thought, “Why not provide roadmap samples and make importing data accessible to users from day one during the onboarding process?”

From the large number of team accounts, we know that users don’t typically create roadmaps in silos, but often do so in collaboration with their team. Looking through our customer database, we found a lot current free trial users who work at the same company and are evaluating ProductPlan separately.

In addition to analyzing our customer database, we looked at key usage metrics and discovered that a large percentage of users who purchase ProductPlan frequently share roadmaps with others. We hypothesized that facilitating collaboration during the signup process by allowing users to invite colleagues would increase total customer engagement and awareness of ProductPlan while getting increased buy-in from their team to justify the purchase.

During our research for this project, the ProductPlan team conducted tests on usertesting.com and ran participants through the entire sign-up flow, allowing them to explore the various areas of the product. After each test, we surveyed them and asked, “What onboarding formats do you like best in order to get started with a new software application?” The multiple choice answers included:

• Video Tutorials
• Contextual Tool Tips
• Educational Emails
• I prefer no onboarding process

The majority of users chose video tutorials and contextual tool tips. We also got usage data that the videos we send through the support chat don’t get a lot of attention. The team realized that embedding the videos in the product tour could potentially improve the customer’s learning while at the same time encouraging them to explore the interface.

From surveying several hundred customers who didn’t purchase a paid plan after their free trial expired, we discovered that a large percentage of users who didn’t purchase ProductPlan said it was because they felt they didn’t have enough time to evaluate the product. Today, we don’t do a good job of making it clear to customers how many days are left in their free trial and we don’t present an obvious way to upgrade to a paid account. We hypothesized that users’ free trials were expiring without them realizing it and decided to experiment with different approaches to this problem.

Making the Customer Journey Map Actionable

In my experience, stakeholders often look at a customer journey map and say, “This a great visual, but how am I supposed to use this?” That’s a great question. In our case, as soon as the ProductPlan customer journey map was complete, the team took the insights we gathered and added them to our “First Time User Experience” roadmap.

Putting the opportunities into the Planning Board helped us weigh the benefits and costs of each item. We defined our benefit categories as “Faster customer success in app” with a weight of 30 and “Increase engagement” with a weight of 20. We then defined our cost categories as “Dev team involvement” with a weight of 35 and “Other team involvement” with a weight of 15 giving us a total score of 100.

Once we added our opportunities to the Planning Board and defined our cost and benefit categories, we scored the costs and benefits of each item on a scale of 1-5. We then prioritized each item according to its total score. (Tip: we regularly use Google Hangouts for our meetings and discovered an easy way to vote on the ranking for each item by simultaneously entering our scores into the Google Hangouts chat box.) After scoring each item, we moved the top 4 items to the roadmap and set about adding these items to our product backlog for future experimentation.

Reflections on the Customer’s Journey

ProductPlan offers lots of flexibility to customers, but customers still need some targeted guidance based on their unique needs when they’re first getting started. With some tweaks to the process of guiding customers on day one, I believe ProductPlan can improve overall user engagement and ultimately increase its conversion rate of free trial users to purchased plan customers.

In summary, here are a few of the opportunities we discovered from the journey mapping process:

• Include FAQs on the sign up page
• Allow users to invite team members during sign up
• Embed video tutorials in the product tour
• Provide sample roadmaps from the outset
• Allow users to import their data right after signing up
• Add a friendly “Subscribe Now” button in the interface
• Display an indicator of how many days are left in the free trial

Final Thoughts on the Journey Mapping Process

There is no one correct way to create a journey map. It depends on variables such as the stakeholders involved, the UX expert facilitating the process, and of course, the business’s product or service that is being mapped.

Tweet This: “As designers and product managers, we must walk a fine line between educating users while not overwhelming them.”

How your customers use your product is rarely straightforward. As designers and product managers, we must walk a fine line between educating first time users while not overwhelming them with too much information.

Getting people through the process from signing up to try your product all the way to becoming a paying customer doesn’t always happen smoothly. But, spending time to learn as much as you can about your users’ goals and how they’re using (or not using) your product makes for happy customers and better business. When used correctly, customer journey maps can be an effective tool in facilitating that process.

The Busy Product Manager’s Guide to The 2024 State of Product Management Report

Calling busy product professionals! We get it–your days are packed with roadmap review meetings, brainstorming sessions, and making (what sometimes...

Product Planning is a Year-Round Endeavor

Sticking to inflexible annual planning cycles can introduce significant challenges in the era of rapid technological advancements. The static nature...

How Product Organizations Can Balance Big Bets Versus Short-Term Wins

When plotting out our product’s trajectory, there’s a constant tension between two competing mindsets. On the one hand, there’s the...

Continue exploring

You can search or explore specific categories.

Prioritization and Backlog

Company news and updates, templates and workbooks, remote product management, product metrics and analytics, product strategy example, product managers, tools and resources, customer-centricity, product leadership, product management, roadmap and roadmap management, product strategy, agile & product development, career and interviews, share on mastodon.

Hey there! Free trials are available for Standard and Essentials plans. Start for free today.

Get the job done with a pro

From training to full-service marketing, our community of partners can help you make things happen.

• Help Center

About Customer Journey Reports

Enable tracking on customer journeys to collect and analyze data on clicks, opens, social activity, purchases, and more. Customer journey reports display data from the beginning of each journey to the present day. This data can help you identify patterns in contact engagement. Applying these insights can help you improve and target your campaign content.

In this article, you’ll learn how customer journey reports work and what information is included.

Things to know

Here are some things you should know about customer journey reports.

• Journey reports are available for active and paused journeys.
• Open and click tracking must be turned on in an email campaign for those statistics to populate in a report.
• Journey reports can be viewed on your mobile device. To learn more, check out View Customer Journey Reports on Mobile .

View a customer journey report

To view the analytics for a series of journey points, follow these steps.

About customer journey metrics

You’ll see summary report data in the Performance section and a list of campaigns in the Emails section.

Performance

The Performance section gives you an overview of campaign statistics.

To customize the Performance section, click on the Edit icon to choose the displayed metrics.

You can choose any of these metrics:

• Emails sent The number of emails that were sent.
• Open rate The percentage of total recipients (successful deliveries) who opened the email campaign.
• Click rate The percentage of delivered emails that registered at least one click.
• Unsubscribe rate The percentage of recipients who opened the email campaign and unsubscribed.
• Opened The number of recipients who opened the email campaign.
• Total opens The number of times an email was opened.
• Clicked The number of recipients who clicked any tracked link.
• Unsubscribed The number of recipients who unsubscribed from an email campaign.
• Clicks per unique opens The percentage of recipients who opened the email campaign and then clicked a link.
• Revenue The dollar amount you've made on an order after it's placed, minus taxes and shipping fees.
• Orders The total number of orders placed, including any refunded or canceled orders.
• Average order revenue The average dollar amount of revenue generated from each order, minus taxes and shipping fees.
• Total journeys started The number of times the journey has been started by contacts, including multiple starts from the same contact.
• Total journeys completed The number of times the journey has been completed by contacts, including multiple completions from the same contact.
• Unique journeys started The number of unique contacts who started the journey.
• Unique journeys completed The number of unique contacts who completed the journey.

If you have additional metrics, click View More to see the full list.

The Emails section lists all the campaigns from the beginning of the journey to today, as well as recipient count, open rate, and click rate. Click on a listing to see the report for that campaign. Click Export to download a report.

Technical Support

Have a question?

Paid users can log in to access email and chat support.

Filter by Keywords

Project Management

10 executive summary examples and how to write one yourself (with ai).

February 14, 2024

In a world where people have the attention span of a goldfish (or less), we don’t make time to read long, detailed documents unless they are valuable to us. So, how do we convince the reader that the document is valuable? That’s where the executive summary comes in.

What is an Executive Summary?

1. identify the story, 2. bring the data, 3. expand on the benefits, 4. conclude powerfully, best practices for writing executive summary, 1. board report executive summary, 2. research report executive summary example from mckinsey, 3. study report executive summary by the un, 4. project performance report executive summary, 5. payroll report executive summary template, 6. mailchimp content style guide’s tl;dr, 7. clickup release notes, 8. the title and description of a new yorker article, 9. survey report executive summary by harvard, 10. meta executive summary with clickup ai.

An executive summary is a shorter version of a longer corporate document. It summarizes the salient points of a business plan, proposal, or report so executives can get the gist and read further about what matters to them.

In other words, the tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) version.

A typical executive summary includes:

• Problem statement
• Proposed solution
• Expected outcomes

This might vary depending on what you write an executive summary for. Let’s take the example of a project report. You might have to replace the proposed solution and expected outcomes with execution solutions and actual outcomes achieved, respectively. Or, if you’re writing a business plan, research proposal, or market analysis, you might include your methodology, too.

Now that you know the purpose of an executive summary, let’s see how to write one.

How to Write Executive Summaries and Examples

While an executive summary is just a condensed version of a longer report, it isn’t easy to write. It needs to capture the essence of the report, outline the salient points, and tell a story as compelling as the full report. Here are some ways you can achieve that.

Just stating facts and data wouldn’t be a compelling read for anyone. So, identify the story that really impacts people’s lives. While industry terms like workflow optimization or cost control capture people’s attention, they don’t tell the real story behind your efforts. Focus on the latter.

If you’re writing the project executive summary in software development, you might begin with what matters to the reader as follows.

In 2020, the retail major was managing its inventory on spreadsheets. So, whenever a customer asked whether a product was in stock, a staff member had to walk across the 5000 sq. ft. store to check, often with the customer in tow. The new ABC digital inventory management system records stock in and out online in real time. The staff member can check and confirm in a flash. More pertinently, the customers themselves can check at any of the 25 kiosks throughout the store.

While the story is more important, data isn’t useless. Accurate and relevant data helps establish credibility. Your next section might say the following in the ABC digital inventory management system example.

Since the implementation of the ABC inventory management system, the retail major has seen: 85% decrease in time taken to check stock 75% decrease in time taken to find where stock is placed

The data demonstrates that there has been real improvement. However, for the reader to understand its impact, you must explain the benefits. This can be done with real-life scenarios or even quotes. For example,

Adrian, the customer service manager at the Central Park store, says, “Now, from anywhere—a kiosk, the checkout counter, or my mobile phone—I can quickly check stock and confirm we have the products the customer needs. I see that customers are delighted at getting their answers instantly.”

You can also use data to do this. For example, you can explain how the decreased time taken to check stock has increased staff productivity, customer satisfaction, or company revenue. Or you can include your suggestions here. Based on your observations, explain the process improvement methodologies you recommend.

This is the time to complete the story. Here, talk about how your project has delivered the changes in the present and sets up for an even more prosperous future. This could be something like:

The ABC inventory management system marks the first step in the retail major’s digital transformation journey. By Q2 next year, we will link the store solution to the e-commerce inventory platform to give 360-degree visibility into the stock situation. This would also enable a new sales channel in the form of Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS), enabling same-day fulfillment.

While you write your executive summary, here are some best practices to remember.

Keep it short and simple : The length might depend on the report you’re summarizing, but it’s best to keep it under one page for quick reading. Also, avoid cliches and jargon; make it easy to read. A quick business plan under one page is the best first impression you can make.

Focus on the target audience : Not all executive summaries are read by business executives. Often, you might want to address your summary to peers, vendors, partners, or even teens. Know your target audience and customize your executive summary accordingly.

Use the right tool : You can, of course, use Notepad or Word doc to write your executive summaries. But give it a boost with modern document software like ClickUp Docs .

• Use rich formatting features without jumping through hoops
• Style the critical information with color-coded banners, buttons, and more
• Collaborate in real time with comments, action items, and trackable tasks
• Securely share with anyone with appropriate access controls

Pick a suitable template : If it’s your first time writing an executive summary, we’ve got your back. Fire up one of ClickUp’s executive summary templates or content writing templates , and kickstart your work.

Get the AI boost : If you’ve thoughtfully created your report, you can write your executive summary much quicker with one of the many AI writing tools . For instance, ClickUp AI offers a single-click summarize option right on ClickUp Docs.

What’s more? ClickUp AI supports you in brainstorming new ideas, writing the first drafts of your executive summaries, and proofreading them for good measure.

10 Executive Summary Examples

Now that we have discussed the theory of executive summary writing, let’s look at some examples to see what it looks like in practice. Here are ten to learn from or emulate.

Periodically, the board would expect to see a report on the organization’s performance. Various departments typically write their reports, which are consolidated into a board report. An effective executive summary of this would include the following.

• Revenue and expenditure
• Key areas of focus
• Critical success factors
• Financial information
• Challenges and roadblocks

This ClickUp Board Report Summary Template brings all these aspects together to get you started on your executive summary right away. You can customize this free executive summary template to suit your needs and fill in the data as appropriate.

McKinsey, one of the world’s leading consulting firms, publishes dozens of research reports annually. For every one of them, they write executive summaries, often called ‘in brief.’

In this report titled, ‘ Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage ,’ the executive summary takes a two-pronged approach. It presents key insights in text on one page and data in infographics on the next.

Insights in text : The report begins by directly addressing the primary purpose of the research. Below are the first few sentences.

How does developing talent affect financial returns for firms? This research finds that companies with a dual focus on developing human capital and managing it well have a performance edge.

This section summarizes the key insights from the research. The headlines of each section are presented in bold, making it easy for the reader to skim.

Data in visuals : The text section is followed by an infographic of the key findings from the data. Within one page, it presents all the graphs relevant to the reader engagingly.

Within two pages, McKinsey gives the reader a bird’s eye view of what to expect, customized for the target market, from the 40-page document.

You can read the executive summary of this report on McKinsey’s website .

The Adaptation Gap Report 2023 by the United Nations Environment Programme is a 112-page report with a rather detailed executive summary, stretching eight pages. The depth of information and seriousness of the topics covered demand an extended executive summary.

Yet, the writers make every effort to make it engaging with a combination of typography, design, and graphs. It begins with the following.

Despite the clear signs of accelerating climate risks and impacts worldwide, the adaptation finance gap is widening and now stands at between US$194 billion and US$366 billion per year. Adaptation finance needs are 10–18 times as great as current international public adaptation finance flows – at least 50 percent higher than previously estimated.

In the following pages, it presents graphs to demonstrate the underpinnings of these key findings.

Every project manager creates performance reports at the end of each week, month, or quarter. This typically includes the tasks tracking , burn up, burn down, hours spent, etc.

While this can be written down in a list, presenting this information as a slide with visual elements is far more effective.

One way to achieve this is to use ClickUp’s project summary templates , which offer custom-designed templates for various project management purposes.

The other way is to use the dynamic reports on the ClickUp Dashboard , which brings together all the key metrics and keeps them updated in real time for you to share with anyone you’d like to.

Human resources or people management teams create payroll reports, typically in spreadsheets, for every payment period—bi-weekly or monthly. This data is also helpful for building financial projections. For the senior finance leaders, they often create an executive summary of critical information, such as:

• Total salaries paid
• Deductions across categories
• Year-to-date salary expenses
• Paid time off credits
• Net pay summary

ClickUp’s Payroll Summary Report Template can save time by automatically gathering all relevant data from the platform. When data is unavailable on ClickUp, you can highlight any text to @mention team members who can fill in the correct information.

Once complete, you can update the Doc’s settings for access control and share it with the management team instantly.

A company description or how it projects itself is often important to stand out in a crowded market. Mailchimp stood out with its style guide. The guide is comprehensive and widely used by smaller content teams that don’t yet have their own.

Mailchimp has made it public and available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license for anyone to adapt to their needs.

While every section in this style guide is engaging and valuable, for the purposes of this article, we want to draw your attention to the tl;dr section , which acts as a quasi-executive summary.

It is a bulleted list of seven sub-sections, highlighting the foundations of Mailchimp’s writing style.

The striking thing about this tl;dr version is its simplicity. Even without any visual elements, infographics, or charts, this page gives readers a real and actionable summary of the entire style guide.

When we speak of executive summary, we almost always think of a smaller version of an entire document. It need not be so.

For a software engineering team, the release notes are a kind of executive summary of all the changes/upgrades made in the latest version.

Take the example of ClickUp’s release notes 3.04 . Each release gets:

• An organized yet concise summary of all the changes that have been made
• “ClickTips” to help readers make the best use of new features
• Visuals and app images to show how the changes look
• Links to help pages of each of those features so the reader can learn more
• A list of bugs fixed
• And any other resources, such as on-demand webinars or training

These release notes inform users and developers of the latest upgrades to the ClickUp platform without overwhelming them with the details.

The New Yorker Magazine wrote a 10,000-word profile of Geoffrey Hinton , a computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, for their November 20, 2023 issue, titled ‘Metamorphosis.’ Even in podcast form, it’s over 60 minutes long.

When it was published online, they needed a title and description that summarized the article in a way that attracted a lay reader’s attention to click and read. The headline captures the primary conflict explored in the article. The description introduces the protagonist.

While this is typically not what we’d categorize as an executive summary, it is a fantastic example of capturing the essence of a long article in a few powerful words.

This executive summary serves as an inspiration for writers, irrespective of what you’re writing about, to summarize their main points not just briefly but also powerfully and attractively.

In the spring of 2019, Harvard University conducted its first-ever survey about campus culture. The executive summary of the report on these survey responses makes for great reading. It is also a great example of how to honestly and authentically present key findings, even unpleasant ones.

The executive summary is honest on multiple fronts. It admits that:

• 2019 was the first time in history that Harvard surveyed campus culture
• Three in ten of the Harvard community don’t feel like they belong
• 34% of students disagreed with the belief that Harvard will take appropriate action against incidents of harassment and discrimination
• Those from historically underrepresented and disadvantaged groups reported less positive views

At the end of this, the executive summary outlines the specific steps Harvard will take to address these responses from the community.

Project managers can use this as inspiration for handling executive summaries of projects that have gone awry. It helps leaders take responsibility for what has occurred and build systems to prevent future mistakes.

Not all executive summaries have to be written manually by you. A free executive summary template is also something to explore. Plenty of tools offer it. Dozens of AI tools for automation can summarize text in seconds. Here’s what ClickUp AI returned when we inserted the article above and asked for a summary.

The article discusses the purpose and importance of an executive summary, which provides a brief overview of detailed documents, making them more palatable for readers with limited time. Executive summaries typically include problem statements, proposed solutions, expected outcomes, and a conclusion. To create a compelling summary, it’s crucial to identify the main story, incorporate relevant data, expand on benefits, and conclude powerfully. The use of modern document software like ClickUp Docs and AI tools like ClickUp AI can enhance the quality and efficiency of writing executive summaries. The article also provides practical examples of executive summaries across different fields, showcasing their versatility and applicability. This provides a great starting point for those who fear the blank page. You can now edit this to add details, add images, or insert a quote.

With ClickUp AI, you can choose the tone (from professional, straightforward, inspirational, optimistic, casual, confident, friendly, or humorous) and creativity (low, medium, and high) to customize the summary to your needs.

That’s not all! For project managers and business leaders, ClickUp AI offers a wide range of writing and summarizing tools for scope documents, project briefs, meeting agendas, statements of work, survey questions, and more.

You can tag people to invite input or feedback. You can also convert comments into tasks and manage them effortlessly, all in one place.

Never used AI for writing before? No worries there, too. Here are AI prompt templates that will get you started instantly.

With a custom-built AI assistant tailored to your role, you can work faster, write better, spark creativity, and be significantly more productive.

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

Receive the latest WriteClick Newsletter updates.

Thanks for subscribing to our blog!

Please enter a valid email

• Free training & 24-hour support
• Serious about security & privacy
• 99.99% uptime the last 12 months