journey mapping best practices

Skip navigation

• Log in to UX Certification

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Getting started with journey mapping: 27 tips from practitioners.

March 7, 2021 2021-03-07

• Email article
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Twitter

Journey maps visualize the process that a user goes through to accomplish a goal. They provide a holistic view of the customer experience , highlighting both positive and negative moments from the user’s point-of-view.

Leading a journey-mapping initiative is no small challenge. It takes product knowledge and research savvy, along with project- and stakeholder-management skills. To learn about journey mapping in practice, we surveyed more than 300 UX professionals on their journey-mapping experiences. Within that group, 206 respondents shared advice for people creating a journey map for the first time. In this article, we’ve consolidated the advice into 27 tips relevant not only to those getting started with journey mapping, but to all practitioners who want to learn from their peers’ knowledge. We grouped these into 6 categories:  learning about journey mapping, defining goals, gathering and conducting research, collaborating on the map, visualizing and communicating the journey, and bonus words of encouragement.

In This Article:

 getting started with journey mapping, defining goals, team, and scope, gathering and conducting research, collaborating on the map, visualizing and communicating the journey, final thoughts and words of encouragement.

• Educate yourself on journey-mapping fundamentals . Learning the basics can save you time in the long run because you’ll learn about common faults and pain points to avoid. One participant advises, “Educate yourself on various approaches, methods, and templates in order to make the right choices for your project.” If you’re looking to get started, we’ve published extensive content on customer journeys and even facilitate a course on creating and using customer-journey maps .
• Practice in a low-stakes environment . Once you understand the fundamentals, find ways to practice your approach and learn from your experience. One respondent recommended creating a journey map for something personally familiar, such as a recent, memorable experience. They wrote, “try it out on yourself and something you do and are familiar with.” For example, you might create a journey map documenting your journey to set up a new smart-home device.
• Research existing industry journey maps for inspiration . Search for case studies and artifacts relevant to your context. A quick search can return valuable examples that may inform project planning, communication, and scope or help you learn about communication formats that will work for your context.
• Set expectations for how the map will be used before starting. As you create a team and build buy-in, set clear expectations for the outcome. Journey maps are not created solely for visualizing the experience; they’re intended to help evaluate and improve it. One respondent commented, “Don’t expect it to solve everything. It’s one tool in a sea of many […] It’s up to you to use it to inform decision making.” As you sell journey mapping to your stakeholders, highlight the evaluative benefits, not just the visualization benefits.
• Spend time defining the objectives . Why are you creating a journey map and what do you hope to get out of it? Your goals should be clear and well documented. Share these goals with your stakeholders so you’re all on the same page. A participant notes, “make sure to outline the purpose of the journey map” while another respondent wrote, “define what is the question you need to answer.”
• Start with a small, focused scope . We recommend starting with a focused journey with known pain points and feasible quick wins that the team has authority to change. One participant commented, “Pick a very small project with easy to achieve, low-hanging–fruit outcomes.” With a small, focused scope, it’s likely that pain points uncovered during the initiative will be addressed.
• Accept that you can’t (and shouldn’t) map everything . Journey mapping is a great tool, but you can’t map everything at once. It wouldn’t be a good use of your time. You’d end up spending more time visualizing the pain points than solving them. Relatedly, one participant advises “Start small and scale. Accept that you don't map or `save’ everything.” Prioritize journeys with a significant impact on your experience so you can work on improving high-impact pain points.
• Involve a crossfunctional team . When deciding whom to involve in the initiative, consider the stakeholders or departments that play a role in the experience of the journey to be mapped. Crossfunctional journey-mapping teams often include people from engineering, marketing, sales, and customer support. As one respondent put it, “Do not make it alone. Speak to people who make the journey. Involve people who have to do something with the results.”
• Build a team of influencers and knowledge holders . One respondent said, “Figure out who has sway and influence and include them at early stages of this process!” Your core team should include well-respected influencers who can increase the visibility and positive perception of the initiative and knowledge holders with direct knowledge of the experience being mapped.
• Keep your stakeholders engaged. As one participant recommends, “share progress early and often.” Stay connected with stakeholders by involving them in relevant conversations and activities like research studies and workshops.
• Iterate and don't let perfectionism drag you down . This is an iterative process, so adapt and iterate your map as needed. One survey respondent said, “start small and understand you will make many revisions. Don't try to get it perfect the first time.”
• Focus on action and outcomes . As one participant said, “Have a plan for what you are going to do with the information to make it actionable. It doesn’t do any good to hang the map above the copy machine and expect everyone to know how that impacts their job/function.” In other words, the goal isn’t just creating the artifact, but acting on findings to improve the experience.
• Document assumptions and use them to argue for new research . Don’t let lack of buy-in for initial research derail your mapping goals. One respondent recommended, “start[ing] with assumptions if you can't get user interviews so that you can communicate the need for research.” Starting your mapping process by asking stakeholders to share already known insights or hypotheses can reveal gaps that require additional research. Another participant recommended that practitioners “start by mapping quickly the existing experience based on internal team feedback” before following up with additional user research.
• Know your users and your product. Journey maps require real user data to be effective. As one participant wrote, “Understand the user as well as the problem before you start solutioning.”  A basic map with the right insights is better than an extensive map based on assumptions.
• Use mixed methods to understand the full picture. The best research methods for journey mapping are qualitative methods. Even small-sample qualitative studies can give profound insights into what users do, think, and feel throughout a journey. Quantitative methods (e.g., analytics ) can be used as a second step to show the scale of key insights or add additional evidence for your recommendations. On this subject, a respondent commented, “start rough and use qualitative methods to go deeper. Put steps into perspective by adding quantitative metrics.”
• Make the process collaborative . There are immense benefits to creating journey maps collaboratively in a workshop environment. This approach takes considerable coordination and planning, so communicate expectations to management early on and explain why you need help. One participant recommends, “start with a simple 1-hour workshop with the most important internal resources and keep the map low fidelity on paper or a whiteboard.” Workshops involve everyone in the process and create buy-in.
• Asynchronous collaboration is better than no collaboration . This type of collaboration allows people to contribute to your map when it’s convenient for them to do so. For one method of doing this, a participant recommends, “Start a spreadsheet and find an ally who can help fill it in.” If getting everyone together for a workshop isn’t possible, this option might work for you: consider using the template we published for remote journey mapping .
• Involve end users in the process . Creating a journey map with an end user saves time without sacrificing insights. For example, you could have participants document their experience using sticky notes (or a digital equivalent) to create a quick, low-fidelity journey map. After the session, these artifacts can be refined and added to data from other sources. Such participatory-design sessions are especially useful for complex domain-specific workflows .
• Start low fidelity. Journey mapping is an iterative process, so don’t expect to create a high-fidelity map early on in the process. One respondent suggested: “Lay it out on a wall or huge piece of paper using sticky notes. That makes it easy to re-think, re-do, and move things around.” Whether you’re working in person or remote ly, use materials and tools that support iterating and moving things around.
• Use a template . Multiple participants recommended using a template to save time when creating the artifact, saying things like “use a baseline template to get started.” Journey maps don’t have to be works of art; often a simple spreadsheet template can be incredibly useful for tight timelines or iterative work. When selecting a template, be mindful of format and the potential bias certain tools may introduce — people unfamiliar with a tool will be unlikely to contribute.
• Keep it simple . The idea of focusing the artifact was mentioned by several respondents. Aim to provide a clear overview of key moments within the journey, rather than documenting every discrete interaction. As one participant put it, “It’s really easy to go down a rabbit hole and get stuck in the weeds.” Instead of attempting to record all the potential interactions and overlapping journeys, try to focus on one path at a time. Keep the conversation — and your recommendations — focused on the main journey being evaluated.
• Prioritize content over graphics . Polished graphic design is not the main focus of your journey map. One participant wrote, “ignore the fancy versions you see online, the content is core, not the graphics.” Yes, good visual design is important in that it assists the reader in consuming the content, but the content in the map should be the priority. Before jumping to complex visual tools, get your content ready and validated in an easy-to-edit, accessible format.
• Provide recommendations . Don’t just point out what’s wrong with the experience; provide some insight! As one participant put it, “Find the pain and the gain.” Another described: “[The map] is a communication tool…for you to create and finetune your experience,” not just an exhaustive log of problems to be addressed.
• Pilot your journey map . Before presenting your map, ask a colleague or team member to view and explain key takeaways from the artifact. One participant wrote, “Ask a colleague or team member to have a pre-client/stakeholder demo so you can work out as many kinks as possible.” This type of exercise will help reveal points of confusion ahead of time. For example, if there are certain terms or icons used that people don’t understand, you have an opportunity to change them or remove them before sharing the artifact widely.
• Optimize your presentation for the audience . One participant recommends, “make two versions —[a] detailed one for [the] design team and [a] simple one for management.” Don’t be afraid to create custom versions for specific audiences, to highlight insights that are relevant for that group. This approach will result in a compelling presentation tailored for your audience.
• Be patient and persistent. Initiatives like this require a team effort. Be patient with competing motives and persistent about evaluating and improving the experience. Journey mapping requires substantial effort, but as one participant said, “[It’s] worth the effort, and you'll get better with each one you do.” Stay motivated and home in on the outcomes.
• “Do the best you can with the tools and buy-in you have,” a great closing thought from one respondent. Your first-time journey mapping might not be perfect, but it will be a valuable learning experience. Apply your learnings over subsequent mapping initiatives to improve and perfect your craft.

Journey mapping is not new, and many teams have struggled, stumbled, succeeded, and sometimes even failed at it. No single case study can tell you what to do in your specific situation, which is why we research best practices across hundreds of UX projects. This distillation of lessons learned by many teams will position your mapping initiative for success.

Learn more in our full day course, Journey Mapping to Understand Customer Needs .

Related Courses

Discovery: building the right thing.

Conduct successful discovery phases to ensure you build the best solution

Effective Ideation Techniques for UX Design

Systematic methods for creative solutions to any UX design or redesign challenge

Interaction

Personas: Turn User Data Into User-Centered Design

Successfully turn user data into user interfaces. Learn how to create, maintain and utilize personas throughout the UX design process.

Related Topics

• Customer Journeys Customer Journeys
• Design Process

Learn More:

Journey Management vs. Service Design

Kim Salazar · 4 min

Types of User Pain Points

Sarah Gibbons · 4 min

What Is Journey Management?

Kim Salazar · 3 min

Related Articles:

A Guide to Service-Blueprinting Workshops

Alita Joyce · 8 min

Journey-Mapping Approaches: 2 Critical Decisions To Make Before You Begin

Kate Kaplan · 8 min

Journey Mapping: 9 Frequently Asked Questions

Alita Joyce and Kate Kaplan · 7 min

How to Run a Journey-Mapping Workshop: A Step-by-Step Case Study

Kate Kaplan · 10 min

7 Ways to Analyze a Customer-Journey Map

Kim Salazar · 7 min

Refine, Remodel, Rebuild: 3 Strategies for Experience Improvement

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Employee Exit Interviews
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Market Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO
• Experience Management
• Customer Journey Mapping

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey map template, the customer journey mapping process, data inputs for your customer journey map, why should you use customer journey maps, the uses of customer journey mapping, how to improve a customer journey, tools to help you with your journey mapping, see how xm for customer frontlines works, customer journey mapping 101: definition, template & tips.

22 min read Find out about how to start customer journey mapping, and how to improve it for the benefit of your customers and the business.

If you want to improve your customer experience you need to be able to understand and adapt the customer journey you offer when someone interacts with your organization. Whether their journey is entirely online , offline, or a blend of both, there are multiple journeys a customer might undergo.

Understanding the customer journey in depth helps you identify and take action on customer pain points and repeat what’s working. By doing this, you will improve the overall experience that your customers have, which will have better outcomes for your business.

Outlining the potential customer journeys your audience might go through requires a process called customer journey mapping.

Free Course: Customer journey management & improvement

Creating a customer journey map is the process of forming a visual representation of customers’ processes, needs , and perceptions throughout their interactions and relationship with an organization. It helps you understand the steps customers take – the ones you see, and don’t – when they interact with your business.

It enables you to assess:

• Insights – from your existing customer journey, how to understand it better
• Impact – how to optimize budgets and effort for changes we want to make to the customer experiences
• Issues/opportunities – Diagnose the existing customer journey
• Innovation – where you might want to completely change the existing customer experience

A customer journey map gives you deeper insight into the customer, so you can go beyond what you already know. Many brands see the customer journey as something that is visible – where the customer interacts with the brand. But in reality, this is not true, and only accounts for a percentage of the entire customer journey. Creating a customer journey map gets you thinking about the aspects of the journey you don’t see, but have equal weight and importance to the entire experience.

When mapping out the customer journey, you are looking for the moments that matter – where there is the greatest emotional load.

If you’re buying a car, then the greatest moment of emotional load is when you go to pick the car up because it’s yours , after picking the color, choosing the model, and waiting for it to be ready.

Ensuring these moments match your customers’ expectations of your product, brand and service teams are key to helping you reach your business goals. But you can only do that by understanding the journey your customers go on in order to get there, what they’re thinking and needing from you at that time. Developing a customer journey map puts you in their shoes so you can understand them better than ever before.

Getting started when creating a customer journey map template doesn’t have to be difficult. However, your customer journey map template will need to cover several elements in order to be effective.

There are several ingredients that make up the anatomy of a customer journey, all of which should be looked at carefully so that you can find out where the customer journey runs smoothly and meets customer needs at that moment in time – and where the experience does not, and needs some improvement.

Understanding their behaviors and attitudes also means you can fix bad experiences more effectively too because you know why you haven’t met your customers’ expectations and what you need to do to make amends. There may be times when things go wrong, but it’s how you adapt and what you do to fix these experiences that separates the best. Knowing how the customer will be feeling makes taking that decisive action much easier.

When exploring and visualizing the customer journey we are assessing:

• Customer behavior What is your customer trying to do?
• Customer attitudes What is your customer feeling/saying?
• The on-stage experience Who/what is your customer directly interacting with? (This includes various channels, such as TV ads or social media)
• The off-stage experience Who/what needs to be in place but which your customer is NOT directly aware of?

So what could the customer journey map examples look like when starting the process of buying a car?

Customer journey vs process flow

Understanding customer perspective, behavior, attitudes, and the on-stage and off-stage is essential to successfully create a customer journey map – otherwise, all you have is a process flow. If you just write down the touchpoints where the customer is interacting with your brand, you’re typically missing up to 40% of the entire customer journey.

There is no single customer journey. In fact, there are multiple. The best experiences combine multiple journeys in a seamless way to create a continuous customer lifecycle as outlined below.

Getting started with customer journey map templates

To begin, start by choosing a journey that you would like to create a customer journey map for and outline the first step that customers will take.

You can use this customer journey map template below to work out the customer behaviors, attitudes, the on-stage and off-stage processes – and the KPIs attached to measuring the success of this experience.

Download our free journey mapping template here

The step-by-step process of mapping the customer journey begins with the buyer persona .

Step 1 – Create a customer persona to test

In order to effectively understand the customer journey, you need to understand the customer – and this is where creating a persona really helps. You may base this around the most common or regular customers, big spend, or new customers you haven’t worked with before. This persona is beyond a marketing segment , but that can be a great place to begin if you’re just starting out on the mapping process for your organization.

What do you include? Start with these characteristics.

• Family status
• Professional goals
• Personal goals

These personas help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers and can be derived from insights and demographic data , or even customer interviews . This works for both B2B and B2C business models, but in B2B especially you’ll have multiple customers for each opportunity so it’s recommended you build out multiple personas.

To begin, start with no more than three personas to keep things simple.

Create a diverse team

When creating a customer journey map, you also need to build out a diverse mapping team to represent the whole business. Include frontline staff , day-to-day management, corporate teams, HR, and business support functions. They will give you vital feedback, advice, and perspectives you hadn’t thought of.

Step 2 – Choose a customer journey for mapping

Select a customer journey map to construct, then build a behavior line. This might be a new customer journey, renewal, or fixing a product issue. You might also choose this based on the most frequent customer journeys taken, or the most profitable.

Step 3 – Work through the mapping process

Ask yourself the following:

• Who are the people involved in this journey? E.g. if you’re in a car dealership, that might be the customer, the sales rep, and front-of-house staff.
• What are the processes or the things that happen during this journey?
• What are the customer attitudes ? What are they feeling at this time? Go beyond excitement or frustration. Bring these feelings to life. This car is my dream come true!
• What is the moment that matters? Identify the greatest moment of emotional load. The make or break where everything could be good up until that point, but if you get that moment of maximum impact wrong, then all that’s good is forgotten. The best experience brands get this moment right and identifying it is an important first step to achieving that. In that moment, ask yourself what are the things/people/processes involved? Think about this for the whole business – across your product , brand , and service teams.
• But beyond identifying this moment, you need to establish what your customers’ needs are. What are they getting out of this moment? How do their needs change if this experience goes badly? Knowing the answer to these questions can help you deliver experiences that will resonate , and respond quickly to unforeseen circumstances or issues.
• And finally, how do you measure how effectively you are meeting customer needs throughout the journey? Set KPIs to put benchmarks in place for your customer journey map and customer experience and track your progress.

Step 4 – Innovate

When you are mapping out your customer journey, brainstorm ideas for how to improve that moment that really matters . These ideas don’t need to be practical, but by putting together a diverse mapping team from around the business you can begin to filter through these ideas.

Then, test it.

Ask yourself: Is it feasible? Is it viable? Is it desirable? Don’t ask can we do it, ask should we do it? Then you can start to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Step 5 – Measure

Use the customer journey map to decide on your measurement framework.

Who are you measuring? What are you measuring? When on the journey are you measuring it? And why? And finally, what metrics and KPI’s are in place to measure this?

Your customer journey map process will require you to use several different data inputs to get an accurate picture of how your customers behave and where you can improve their experience.

A customer journey map is often developed using data gleaned from customer feedback you’ve requested . While this type of market research is useful, your research process needs to be deeper to gain a richer, more accurate understanding of your customer’s behavior.

To create a customer journey map that accurately reflects the truth of customer actions and intentions, you need to take into account both solicited and unsolicited data.

Use solicited data to understand the voice of the customer

Solicited data includes the customer feedback you gain when you conduct research through surveys such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or ask customers for feedback on social media. This approach can be very useful for understanding your customer’s point of view , rather than just making assumptions about how they think and behave.

However, your target audiences won’t tell you everything about what they plan to do when undergoing their customer journey. Though they might tell you that they’ve had a great experience in a particular part of their customer journey, this type of feedback presents a few issues:

• You have to know when to ask for feedback : You might already have a customer journey in mind when asking for feedback – but do you know all the routes a customer might take in your customer journey map?
• It’s a snapshot: When you survey customers, you’ll likely only get insights into their experience at that particular moment about a specific touchpoint
• It’s what customers say they think/will do, not what they actually think/will do: You’re relying on your customers to accurately reflect their sentiment and intentions in their responses, which isn’t always the case. For your customer journey map to be effective, you need to find the truth
• Your sample size might be too small : If you’re trying to understand how a relatively niche customer journey is doing, you might find that the number of customers who have not only taken the customer journey but are willing to respond with feedback is very limited. You can’t risk survey fatigue by polling the same audience several times, so your insights are limited
• You’re only getting part of the picture : You will likely have several types of useful customer data on file, but these are often not considered as part of the process when creating a customer journey design because solicited data takes precedence

You’ll need to infer how customers feel to be able to accurately predict the actions a customer takes. To do so, you’ll need to look at unsolicited data.

Unsolicited data

Unsolicited data covers everything your customers aren’t telling you directly when you ask them and contextual data that you likely already collect on them, such as purchase history. It can be taken from various sources, such as your website and social channels, third-party sites, customer calls, chat transcripts, frontline employee feedback , operational sources, and more.

This type of data is nuanced, but it allows you to establish the truth of your customers’ experience. The ability to gather unsolicited customer feedback from every channel enables you to see more than just what a customer tells you directly. Using real-time feedback gathering and natural language understanding (NLU) models that can detect emotion, intent, and effort, you’ll be able to understand your customers’ actions in a more profound way. Unsolicited data offers you a 100% response rate that better indicates what your customers actually think of each step in their customer journey.

Rather than be limited to a small sample size of customers who respond to surveys, you’ll be able to build an accurate picture of the average customer on each step of the customer journey map by using this richer insight data with your own operational data.

Why using solicited and unsolicited data is important data

With solicited data, you don’t always see why a customer behaves or thinks as they do. For example, a customer might tell you that they would recommend you to a friend or family – but they don’t renew their subscription with you. A customer might be an ideal candidate for a particular journey, but they abandon their basket when prompted to give their personal details. Understanding the why behind customer actions is key for designing a great customer journey, and that’s why both solicited and unsolicited data collection and evaluation are necessary for creating great customer journey maps.

Of course, knowing how customers will actually respond to your customer touchpoints is only part of the process. You may need to develop more than one customer journey map and create sub-audiences for your customer personas to accurately see where you can rectify pain points and improve outcomes. You will need to collect and analyze contextual data across all customer journey touchpoints and develop a highly detailed journey map that can unveil routes your customers might be taking without your knowledge.

Qualtrics’ Experience ID platform can overlay solicited and unsolicited data to provide an all-encompassing picture of your customer journey map, no matter how complex. Creating an effective customer journey map is easier with all your data collated and analyzed together, with actionable insights created automatically.

A customer journey map creates a common understanding for the organization of how a customer interacts during different stages of the customer lifecycle, and the roles and responsibilities of the different teams in charge of fulfilling that experience.

It will also bring an organization together, and foster empathy and collaboration between teams because people will know what is required from everyone in the business to deliver the experiences that customers expect. This will help you to develop a shared sense of ownership of the customer relationship, which ultimately drives a customer-centric culture . With everyone working towards a common goal, communication of what you learn about the customer and the journey they go through is vital in order to drive best practices throughout the organization.

Creating an accurate customer journey map will help your customer service team to focus on more specific issues, rather than handling problems generated by a less-tailored customer journey. Your customer experience will be improved with a customer journey that’s personalized to the specific personas you have generated. You’ll have put yourself in your customer’s shoes and adapted your strategy to reflect your customer’s perspective – which in turn will create more memorable experiences.

Creating a customer journey map will influence your journey analytics across the business. So for example, it will determine what you ask, who you ask, when you ask, why you ask it and how you ask questions in your Voice of the Customer Program .

So when should you use customer journey mapping?

There are four main uses:

• Assess the current state of your customer journey Understand and diagnose the specific issues in current experiences
• Understand what the future state of your customer journey should look like Design, redesign and create new experiences
• Blueprints For implementing change
• Communication Bringing teams together to train and scale up best practices.

Take stock and take action

To improve the customer journey you need a clear vision of what you want to achieve and you need to make a distinction between the present and the future.

• What is your customer journey right now?
• What does the future state of your customer journey look like?

This is why organizations blueprint their customer journey because they can see what works and act accordingly. By understanding your customers’ attitudes and needs at critical times in the journey, you can make amends to better meet them – and develop contingencies to cope when these needs aren’t or can’t be met. For example, during a sudden, unexpected surge in demand.

Orchestrate your customer journey

To offer your customers truly optimized experiences, you’ll need to go further than just creating a customer journey map. You’ll also need to orchestrate journeys using real-time customer behavior to adapt your strategy as your customers make choices. Orchestrating a journey means taking dynamic action towards optimizing your customer’s experience, using real-time customer behavior as informative data.

Improve your employee experience

Use your diverse mapping team to come up with ideas that incorporate experience from all aspects of the business to improve the customer journey – and remember that this has a significant payoff for your employees too. Improving the employee journey – by giving teams the tools to make a difference – can have a positive knock-on effect for the customer and improve their experience in those key moments. This is because employees have the autonomy and motivation in their roles to help their customers, and realize their own potential.

Your customer journey map isn’t just designed to improve the customer experience. Creating an accurate customer journey map can help you to improve your business outcomes.

Being able to link operational data to key touchpoints in a customer journey is transformative for organizations. This is because improving segments of the customer journey will see a direct impact on your business. The Qualtrics Journey Optimizer helps you do just that. By analyzing areas for improvement as outlined by your customer journey map, organizations can take actions that will have maximum benefit for their customers, and the business too.

With Qualtrics CustomerXM , you’ll:

• Create a common understanding throughout your workforce of how a customer interacts with your organization, and you’ll know the roles and responsibilities of your different teams
• Develop empathy and collaboration between teams, working together to achieve the same outcome
• Develop a shared sense of ownership of the customer relationship which ultimately drives a customer-centric culture

Free course: Customer journey management & improvement

Related resources

Customer Journey

B2B Customer Journey 13 min read

Customer interactions 11 min read, consumer decision journey 14 min read, customer journey orchestration 12 min read, customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer's journey 16 min read, request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

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

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

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

Journey Mapping 101: Fundamentals and Best Practices

One of the key tools in our toolkit is called »Journey Mapping«. It's a way for understanding what the customer or user is experiencing as they work towards a specific goal. A customer journey map helps us learn about the customer's experience across touchpoints at each stage of their journey, from the moment they first discover a product to after they've purchased it. In this article, we'll walk you through the fundamentals of journey mapping and provide practical tips and examples to help you get started.

What is Journey Mapping?

• Customer Experience
• User-Centric Design
• Product Management
• Product Innovation
• Customer Insights
• Stakeholder Alignment

A journey map is a visual representation of the customer's experience as they interact with a product or service. It typically includes the customer's goals, actions, emotions (even though we encourage you to not go this way), and pain points at each touchpoint, from discovery to purchase and beyond. By creating a journey map, you can gain a deeper understanding of the customer's perspective and identify areas for improvement that can enhance the overall customer experience.

Why is Journey Mapping Important?

Journey mapping is important for several reasons. First, it helps you see the customer's experience from their perspective, which can lead to more user-centric products and services. Second, it helps you identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, which can lead to better conversion rates, customer retention, and loyalty. Finally, it can help align stakeholders around the customer's jobs and goals, which can lead to a more effective product development process.

Types of Journey Maps

Journey maps come in different types, each serving a unique purpose to help businesses understand their customers better. Here are two of the most common types of journey maps:

Current State (As Is) Journey Maps

A current state, or “as is” journey map, is a visual representation of the customer’s current experience with a product. This type of journey map focuses on mapping out the customer’s existing touchpoints, pain points, and overall experience while using a product or service. By understanding the current state of the customer’s journey, businesses can identify areas of improvement and create solutions to enhance the customer experience.

Future State (To Be) Journey Maps

A future state, or “to be” journey map, is a visual representation of the ideal customer experience that a company wants to create. This type of journey map focuses on mapping out the desired customer touchpoints, interactions, and experience a company wants to provide. Future state journey maps are helpful in identifying the gaps between the current and desired customer experience and developing strategies to bridge those gaps.

By understanding the different types of journey maps, businesses can select the one that aligns best with their goals and objectives. Each type of journey map provides a unique perspective on the customer experience and helps businesses identify areas of improvement to enhance the overall customer experience.

How to kickoff your Journey Map?

If you start from scratch, creating a journey map involves several steps. The first step is to map out the customer journey based on your own expertise and assumptions. We call this an »assumption map.« Then, you you should consider to conduct research to validate your assumptions and gather data to fill in any gaps. You can use different research methods, like surveys, interviews, and analytics, to get the information you need. Anyway, from here you can create a narrative visualization, which is a high-fidelity map that highlights the strengths, weaknesses, and overall potential of the customer journey.

Depending on where you are in your product life cycle, we pursue different goals with Journey Mapping. 

Journey Mapping during Introduction

In the early stages of product development, we examine the context in which your product will operate. We support the product team with insight into the pain points and identify opportunities so that your solution addresses a suitable problem.

Journey Mapping during Growth

The more popular your product becomes, the more important it is to understand how customers use it and how it fits into their lives. We uncover gaps and weaknesses in the journey, so you can develop features that meet customer needs, improve the customer experience and capitalise on growth opportunities.

Journey Mapping during Maturity

In this phase, your product faces more competition. Armed with knowledge of market potential, strengths, weaknesses, and the jobs of your customers, we redraw the journey and create aspirational targets that help you to design change processes and remain competitive.

The path to your Journey Map depends on where you are and where you are heading. We help you to pave it and to walk it. In any case, we want to encourage you to get started. From then on, you have a living object that you can continue to study and correct. 

Analyzing Journey Maps for UX Insights

How Telekom closes weaknesses and gaps with the help of Journey Maps

Once you have completed your customer journey mapping, the next step is to analyze the data to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. Here are some key steps to follow:

• Review the Journey Map: Take a step back and look at the journey map as a whole. Identify patterns, recurring themes, and areas where customer’s experience frustration, confusion, or bottlenecks.
• Identify Key Moments: Look for key moments or touchpoints in the journey that stand out as particularly positive or negative. These moments may be critical for the customer's overall experience, and you can use them to focus your efforts on improving the journey.
• Quantify the Data: Use metrics to quantify the data, such as time spent on a task, completion rates, and customer satisfaction scores. These metrics can help you pinpoint where customer’s are struggling and prioritize which pain points to address first.
• Identify Opportunities: Once you have identified pain points, you can start brainstorming opportunities for improvement. Consider what changes you can make to the customer journey to reduce friction, increase engagement, and create a more satisfying customer experience.

By analyzing your journey map, you can gain valuable insights into the customer experience and identify opportunities for improvement. Use these insights to drive your design decisions and create a user-centric product or service.

Best Practices for Journey Mapping

When it comes to creating effective journey maps, here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Keep it real : Make sure your map reflects the actual experience of your customer’s. Uncover your own biases and reality check your assumptions to be more certain.
• Collaborate : Bring together stakeholders from across the organization to contribute their insights to the journey map. This will help ensure that everyone is aligned around the customer's needs and goals.
• Focus on jobs : Do not assign your target audience to socio-demographic segments, instead divide customers by their jobs. Group together everyone who has a common concern that you’d like to help them address. 
• Determine your goals : One journey mapping is not the same as another. In each phase of your product's lifecycle, you can gain different insights to shape the product experience. Think about your goals in advance to get the most out of your journey map.
• Iterate: Journey mapping is an iterative process. You may need to go back and refine your journey map based on your analysis and insights. You can also continue to iterate on your journey map over time as you gather more data and feedback from customers.

Using Journey Maps in Product Development

How Ryzon uses Journey Maps to investigate their customer experience.

Now that you have a customer journey map in hand, here are some ways you can use it to inform product development decisions:

• Get organized: Use your journey map to create a prioritized list of features to develop based on the customer's goals and pain points that come with their job. This will help ensure that you are focusing on the most important areas first.
• Design for the user: Use the insights from your journey map to inform your UX design decisions. By also considering your customers habits and constraints, you can create designs that are truly user-centric.
• Feed your research plan: Use blind spots and insights to raise relevant research questions and validate corresponding hypotheses. This will help choose the right research method to unlock potentials efficiently. 
• Get buy-in: Share your journey map with stakeholders across the organization to help build consensus around the customer's needs and goals. This will help ensure that everyone is aligned around a common vision for the product.
• Drive customer-centric change: Use this technique to involve customers in the product development process and ensure that their needs and expectations are met. This will help make informed decisions about customer experience investments.

Journey mapping is a valuable tool for anyone involved in product development. By mapping out the customer's exprience across touchpoints, you can gain a deeper understanding of their jobs, goals and pain points, and identify opportunities for improvement. By following the best practices outlined above, you can create effective customer journey maps that inform your product development decisions and lead to more user-centric designs. Happy mapping!

3 great reasons to stop using wireframes

The simple blueprint that drives youtube’s addictive ux (and why it matters).

A comprehensive guide to effective customer journey mapping

A brand's user experience shapes its target audience's entire perception of your organization. Maximize audience engagement with customer journey mapping.

Discover key challenges today's marketing teams are facing, as well as opportunities for businesses in 2024.

Incorporating customer journey mapping into your web design process helps elevate consumer engagement to drive loyalty and sales.

Many in-house teams and web designers strive to better serve users by optimizing their customer experience (CX). Considering how your customers use your platform or service helps you see your website from a user perspective, letting you shape your design to better meet their needs. To achieve this, web designers can look to customer journey mapping.

A particularly handy tool for user experience (UX) design , this process helps teams understand who their users are and how to fulfill their expectations, guiding development decisions for improved audience engagement. Learn more about customer journey mapping and how you can implement it to enhance your CX.

User journey mapping: an overview

User journey mapping, also known as customer journey mapping (CJM), maps a website visitor's experience from their perspective. Presented through a visual diagram, the customer journey map charts the user’s path as they seek information or solutions, starting at the homepage and tracking their routes across other menus and links.

To create a customer journey map, you begin by researching who users are, what they want from your site, and how positive or negative their experiences have been. 

There are two main purposes for mapping your customers’ journey.

1. Improve customer experience

This is the ultimate goal of CJM. Site navigation can be especially tricky to assess because you’re already familiar with the layout. A fresh perspective on your site often uncovers overlooked details such as navigation issues or broken links.

By conducting research on UX trends and visually mapping your results, you’ll identify any parts of your design that confuse or frustrate visitors. This process also reveals areas that work well, which you can repurpose elsewhere in the design.

2. Maintains ease-of-use as your site grows

A customer journey map can make even a simple site more straightforward to navigate. When your website or business grows, you may need to add content and features to accommodate the expansion. Implementing customer journey mapping ensures your website's fundamental flow remains intuitive and that new material and features are easily discoverable and usable.

Primary user journey map types

There are various ways to approach customer journey mapping based on the specific insights you’re seeking. The end result of each map will look similar, but the focus of each is different — which changes the information it offers. Here are three standard types of maps to get you started.

Current state

The current state map is the most common type. It evaluates your website’s present state to better understand visitors’ current experiences, helping identify improvement opportunities for its existing design.

Future state

A future state map explores a hypothetical "ideal" website, considering the visitor’s experience if every site component were optimized. This map is helpful when planning a total redesign or a specific change. When you collect user research and translate the results into your map, you can present a visual outline to your client or company for a straightforward explanation.

Persona-based

A persona-based map lays out the journey of a single designated type of user, or persona (which we will define below). This type of diagram is useful when optimizing your website for a specific sector of your audience with particular needs.

Learn best practices for integrating the workflows between design and development in this free webinar.

The 5-step customer journey mapping process

Once you’ve set clear goals for your map’s achievements, you can select the appropriate diagram type. To begin visualizing your user journey, follow this five-step process.

1. Define the map’s scope

Your map may focus on just one customer interaction or outcome, such as finding the newsletter sign-up sheet or making a payment, or it could cover the entire website’s navigation. A focused scope helps you troubleshoot a problem area or ensure an especially critical element functions properly. Alternatively, a larger-scope map provides a big-picture perspective of how the site works as a whole. Creating a comprehensive map is more complex, but high-level mapping helps comprehend the entire user experience from beginning to end.

2. Determine your user personas

A persona describes a particular type of visitor using your site. When imagining and defining these users, you can assign a name to each and include details about who they are, what they’re looking for, and why.

Focus on users who contribute most to your business goals, consulting your marketing or sales teams for insights. To define your customer personas, explore current user behavior through surveys, online reviews, and email list responsiveness.

For example, if you’re creating a website for a store that sells artisanal coffee-making tools, your personas could be:

• The gift giver. This user only knows a little about coffee but wants to select an impressive gift for someone else. They’ll need help with purchase decisions, so they might interact with an FAQ or chat feature before visiting the products page. They may also leave your site if overwhelmed by options, so it’s important to offer helpful information proactively. This will keep them engaged and more likely convert them to paying customers.
• The coffee nerd. This person is knowledgeable and always seeks the highest-quality tools, so easily accessible product details and customer reviews are important to them. To support their user experience and encourage them to purchase, ensure these elements are easily discoverable.
• The tourist. This user is on vacation and looking for a cute brick-and-mortar shop to visit. They aren't interested in your online store, but an appealing photo of your physical store with easily accessible hours and location information may convince them to come by in person.

These three types of users have very different needs and goals when visiting your website. To capture all of their business, create a map for each of them to ensure you accommodate their specific wants and circumstances.

3. Give the personas context

User context is the “when” and “how” of each persona visiting your site. A user will have a different experience loading your site on a mobile device than on a laptop. Additionally, someone in no rush may use your website differently than someone looking more urgently with a specific purpose.

Figure out when, how, and in what mindset your personas most commonly visit your site to map their experience accurately. This context has very concrete impacts on your finished design. If visitors tend to look for one specific page whenever in a hurry (like contact or location information), placing those details on the front page or prominently linking to it will smooth the user experience for those users.

Here’s an example of how to place a persona in context.

Persona: Jo is an apartment hunter in her early 20s and is still in college. She's looking for off-campus housing for herself and some roommates. The collective group values location and cost more than apartment features.

Context : Jo is in a hurry and trying to visit as many apartments as possible. She’s looking at property rental websites that clearly state apartment addresses in each listing.

Method : Jo is browsing the sites on her iPhone.

4. List persona touchpoints

Touchpoints mark when the user makes a purchase decision or interacts with your user interface (UI) . They include visitors' actions to move toward their goals and consider each associated emotion. The first touchpoint is how they reach your website — such as tapping a social media ad, clicking on a search result, or entering your URL directly.

First, list each action the visitor took and their corresponding emotional reactions. Subsequent touchpoints include instances when they navigate a menu, click a button, scroll through a gallery, or fill out a form. When you diagram the route through your site in an A-to-Z path, you can place yourself in the persona's mind to understand their reactions and choices.

A met expectation — for example, when clicking a "shop" button takes them to a product gallery — will result in a positive emotional reaction. An unmet expectation — when the “shop" link leads to an error page — will provoke an adverse reaction.

5. Map the customer journey

Illustrate the user journey by mapping these touchpoints on a visual timeline. This creates a narrative of users’ reactions across your entire service blueprint. To represent your users’ emotional states at each touchpoint, graph their correspondences like this:

The map helps you understand the customer experience as a whole. 

For example, based on the diagram above, touchpoint 3 is the largest navigation challenge on the website. The graph also shows that the user's mood eventually rebounds after the initial setback. Improving the problem element in touchpoint 3 will have the biggest impact on elevating the overall user experience.

Customer journey mapping best practices

Now that you understand the mapping process, here are some best practices to implement when charting your customer journey. 

• Set a clear objective for your map: Define your CX map’s primary goal, such as improving the purchase experience or increasing conversions for a specific product.
• Solicit customer feedback: Engage directly with customers through surveys or interviews so you can implement data-driven changes. Ask users about their journey pain points and invite both positive and negative feedback on the overall navigation.
• Specify customer journey maps for each persona: To specifically serve each customer persona, consider charting separate paths for each based on their behaviors and interests. This approach is more customer-centric, as not all user types interact with your website the same way.
• Reevaluate your map after company or website changes: As your business scales, your website must evolve — and so will your customer’s path. Review your map when making both large and small website adjustments to ensure you don’t introduce new user challenges. Navigational disruptions can frustrate visitors, causing would-be customers to leave your site and seek competitors .

Optimize your user journey map with Webflow

A user journey map is only as effective as the improvements it promotes. When redesigning your website based on insights your map provides, explore Webflow’s vast resource bank to streamline your design processes. 

Webflow offers web design support with diverse guides , tutorials , and tools for straightforward web design. Visit Webflow today to learn how its site hosting , e-commerce , and collaboration resources support enhanced user experience for better engagement.

Webflow Enterprise gives your teams the power to build, ship, and manage sites collaboratively at scale.

Subscribe to Webflow Inspo

Get the best, coolest, and latest in design and no-code delivered to your inbox each week.

Related articles

What is customer experience? An essential guide

Learn why customer experiences are essential for your bottom line, and discover practical strategies to implement across your digital channels.

How to create marketing personas that start with empathy

Treating customers with respect earns you loyalty. Dig into marketing personas that reflect real people to gain the most valuable insight.

How to implement and optimize effective customer-centric design

Implementing customer-centric design invites customers to collaborate with your brand and help shape truly unique products.

Multi-touch attribution models: A complete guide

Multi-touch attribution (MTA) enables you to assess multiple touchpoints to determine which ones are most critical in the path to purchase.

Keeping up with customer expectations in 2024

Tips for delighting your audience on the web in the new year

8 stunning wedding website examples to inspire your own

Check out these fun and inspiring wedding websites, all built in Webflow.

Get started for free

Try Webflow for as long as you like with our free Starter plan. Purchase a paid Site plan to publish, host, and unlock additional features.

Transforming the design process at

• Interactions
• Localization
• Figma to Webflow Labs
• DevLink Labs
• Feature index
• Accessibility
• Webflow vs WordPress
• Webflow vs Squarespace
• Webflow vs Shopify
• Webflow vs Contentful
• Webflow vs Sitecore
• Careers We're Hiring
• Webflow Shop
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of Service
• Privacy policy
• Cookie policy
• Cookie preferences
• Freelancers
• Global alliances
• Marketplace
• Libraries Beta
• Hire an Expert
• Made in Webflow
• Become an Expert
• Become a Template Designer
• Become an Affiliate

Crack the sales formula with CRM Lab

Twice a month, receive actionable CRM content to your inbox.

You have been subscribed.

Customer Journey 101: The ultimate guide to customer journey mapping

An important part of building better relationships with your customers is getting to know the process your customer goes through from prospect to checkout. This involves not only instances when they’re directly in contact with your business, but also stages such as becoming aware of your product, or clicking on a display ad.

This is what customer journey mapping is all about, helping you better understand and build rapport with your customers.

In this article, we outline everything you need to know about customer journey mapping, alongside the best practices for creating your own customer journey map.

So, let’s buckle up and get started with the ultimate guide to customer journey mapping!

What is a customer journey?

Customer journey is a term that describes the process a customer goes through from the moment they first interact with your business until they make a purchase. It's a roadmap of the customer's experience, highlighting their interactions, decisions, and feelings at each stage of the buying process.

Understanding the customer journey is crucial for businesses, and here's why…

• You can tailor your marketing efforts to match the needs and preferences of customers at each stage. This leads to more effective and personalised marketing strategies.
• You can identify areas where they may encounter difficulties or frustration. Addressing these issues can significantly improve overall customer experience.
• Customers appreciate businesses that understand their needs and provide a seamless shopping experience. You can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• You can better inform business decisions, from product development to customer service strategies. This leads to improved business performance.

Customer journey stages

The customer journey is not a single action, but a series of stages that a customer goes through when interacting with a business. Understanding these stages is crucial for creating a seamless and effective customer experience.

Here are the typical stages of a customer journey…

The Awareness stage of the customer journey

This is when a potential customer first becomes aware of your business or product. This could be through a social media post, a blog article, a Google search, or a word-of-mouth recommendation.

The Consideration stage of the customer journey

At this stage, the customer knows about your business and is considering whether your product or service could meet their needs. They might compare your offerings with those of your competitors, read reviews, or seek more information about your products.

The Decision stage of the customer journey

This is the critical stage where the customer purchases your product or service.

They've done their research, compared options, and decided that your offering is the best fit for their needs.

The Purchase stage of the customer journey

The customer makes the purchase at this stage. The ease and convenience of the purchasing process can significantly impact their overall experience.

The Retention stage of the customer journey

After a purchase, the customer uses your product or service. They will likely become repeat customers if they're satisfied with their experience.

The Advocacy stage of the customer journey

In the final stage, satisfied customers become advocates for your business, recommending products or services to others and contributing to your business's growth.

Each stage of the customer journey presents unique opportunities for your business to engage with customers and enhance their experience. By understanding these stages, you can tailor your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies to meet customers' needs at each point in their journey.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation or diagram that outlines the complete end-to-end experience of a customer as they interact with a company, product, or service. It depicts the various touch points and interactions a customer has from the initial awareness stage through the purchase process, post-purchase interactions, and potentially even beyond.

Types of customer journey maps

There are several types of customer journey maps, each with its unique focus and purpose. The type of map you choose to create depends on your business goals and the specific insights you're looking to gain about your customers. Let's delve into four main types of customer journey maps…

Current State customer journey map

The Current State customer journey map provides a snapshot of a customer's journey as it is right now. It outlines the existing customer experience, from the first point of contact to the final interaction.

This map is best used when you want to understand the current customer experience and identify areas of improvement.

Pros of the Current State customer journey map:

✅ Provides a clear picture of the existing customer journey. ✅ Helps identify customer pain points and areas for improvement. ✅ Useful for benchmarking and measuring the impact of future changes.

Cons of the Current State customer journey map:

❌ May not provide insights into potential future scenarios or opportunities. ❌ Requires regular updates to remain accurate as customer behaviour and business operations change.

Future State customer journey map

The Future State map visualises the ideal customer journey. It's a projection of how you want your customers to interact with your business in the future.

This type of map is best used when planning strategic changes or aiming to implement improvements to the customer experience.

Pros of the Future State customer journey map:

✅ Helps visualise and plan the desired customer experience. ✅ Useful for setting customer experience goals and objectives. ✅ Can inspire innovative ideas for improving the customer journey.

Cons of the Future State customer journey map:

❌ May not reflect the current reality of the customer experience. ❌ Requires a clear understanding of customer needs and capabilities to be effective.

Day in the Life customer journey map

A Day in the Life map is a detailed look at a customer's daily activities, including interactions with your business and other related activities. This map is best used when you want to understand the broader context of your customer's operations and how your business fits into it.

Pros of the Day in the Life customer journey map:

✅ Provides a holistic view of the customer's daily life. ✅ Helps identify opportunities to integrate your business into the customer's routine. ✅ Can reveal unexpected insights about customer behaviour and needs.

Cons of the Day in the Life customer journey map:

❌ May require more extensive research to accurately represent the customer's daily activities. ❌ A broader focus may dilute the insights specific to your business.

Service Blueprint customer journey map

A Service Blueprint map goes beyond the customer's journey and includes behind-the-scenes activities that enable a positive customer experience.

This map is best used when you want to understand how different parts of your business contribute to the customer journey.

Pros of the Service Blueprint customer journey map:

✅ Provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey and the business operations that support it. ✅ Helps identify inefficiencies in business processes that impact the customer experience. ✅ Useful for aligning different departments around the customer journey.

Cons of the Service Blueprint customer journey map:

❌ Can be complex and time-consuming to create due to the level of detail required. ❌ Requires input from multiple departments which can be challenging to coordinate.

Each of these customer journey maps serves a unique purpose and provides different insights. The key is to choose the type that best aligns with your business goals and the insights you're looking to gain about customers.

You can also leverage tools such as a CRM system. With NetHunt CRM you can easily manage and analyse customer data through features such as…

• Organised customer cards with the timeline of customer communication neatly presented at the side.
• WhatsApp , Instagram , and Facebook messages pulled into the timeline through integrations to get a more complete outlook on customer communications .
• Visualised sales pipeline to help track and nurture prospects along their customer journey.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

A customer journey map includes several key components to provide a comprehensive view of the customer's experience.

• The buying process outlines the stages a customer goes through when purchasing, from initial awareness and consideration to the final decision and post-purchase experience.
• Emotions capture the customer's feelings at each stage of the buying process. They help businesses understand the emotional impact of the customer experience and identify opportunities to enhance customer satisfaction.
• User actions detail the actions a customer takes at each stage of the buying process. They provide insights into customer behaviour and help businesses tailor their strategies to align with customer actions.
• User research captures information that customers seek and the sources they use at each stage of the buying process. It helps businesses understand the customer's information needs and the role of different information sources in the customer journey.
• Solutions are where businesses identify potential improvements to the buying process based on the insights gained from the customer journey map. They include strategies to address customer pain points, enhance the customer experience, and optimise the buying process.

Why do you need a customer journey map?

In today's customer-centric business environment, understanding your customers' experiences and expectations is paramount. A customer journey map serves as a powerful tool to help gain these insights.

Here are some compelling reasons why your business needs a customer journey map…

• Lets you see your business from your customer's viewpoint, helping you understand their needs and buyer motivates .
• Helps identify bottlenecks in the customer experience, allowing for improvements to sales processes and a smoother sales experience for both customers and sales reps.
• Allows you to develop and improve a more complex understanding of sales touchpoints that your customers will journey through. Additionally, you might spot touchpoints that you haven’t yet covered and implement them
• Visualises the customer's emotional journey through your business in a way where data-driven decisions can be made.
• Helps personalise content like never before due to a deeper understanding of customer needs, intents, and interactions with customers.
• Provides significant aid in the process of aligning the different teams and departments working within your company, keeping everyone on the same page when it comes to customers.
• Improves customer satisfaction, driving better customer retention , decreasing CAC and growing your ROI.
• Gives you the ability to identify potential opportunities to differentiate your brand from the competition.
• Helps spot future problems from a mile away, being able to identify a roadblock and start working on the solution before problems arise.

Remember, the customer journey map is not a one-time exercise. It should be regularly updated to reflect changes in customer behaviour, market trends, and business operations.

With a dynamic and up-to-date customer journey map, you can stay ahead of the curve and consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences.

How to create a customer journey map: Customer journey mapping best practices

Creating a customer journey map is a strategic process that requires careful planning, research, and collaboration. It's not just about sketching a diagram. It's about diving deep into your customers' experiences, understanding their needs and expectations, and aligning your business operations to meet these needs.

In the following sections, we'll walk you through the best practices for creating a practical customer journey map.

Set clear objectives for your customer journey mapping

In order for your customer journey map to be able to really have an impact on your business, you first need to become clear on what impact you want it to have.

A few objectives that you could set for yourself are…

• Identify areas where the customer experience can be improved, leading to higher customer satisfaction rates.
• Optimise your sales funnel and marketing strategies to increase conversion rates.
• Improve customer retention rates by ensuring a positive and seamless customer experience.
• Identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products and services, increasing revenue.
• Gain insights into customer needs and preferences, informing product development and innovation.
• Tailor marketing strategies to the needs and preferences of their customers at each stage of the journey.
• Improve customer service , ensuring that customers receive timely and effective assistance when they need it.
• Identify inefficiencies in your processes and take steps to streamline them, improving operational efficiency.
• Increase customer loyalty and advocacy.
• Align your operations with customer needs and market trends.

Develop buyer personas and define their goals

In order to be able to understand the customer journey, you first need to understand who your customers are. A buyer persona is a tool that can do just that. It is a semi-fictional outlined description of the person who best encompasses your target audience.

We have a whole article on our blog dedicated to helping you define your buyer persona, but here’s the short rundown of the steps from that article…

• Discover your audience
• Determine what pains your product alleviates
• Identify triggers and potential sales objections
• Discover your existing audience
• Bring personas to life
• Organise the persona into a neat template

To find more details, check out the article...

List all the touch points between you and your customers

After you find out who your customers are, it’s time to find out what makes them tick .

A customer touchpoint is like a handshake in a business meeting. It's the point of contact where the business and the customer meet, exchange information, and form impressions of each other. Typical touch points for businesses include…

• Social media pages
• Display ads
• Third-party reviews
• Email marketing campaigns

You should also consider the following when looking for touch points with customers…

Customer actions

List all the actions your customer takes during their journey, from typing in keywords or clicking on a display ad, to going through your payment provider steps and completing their order.

Knowing how much work your customers have to do to purchase a product can help you reduce the number of steps in their journey, leading to higher conversion rates.

Buyer motives

Knowing what motivates your buyers to make a purchase is also important. These motivations are a reflection of your buyer's needs.

They aren’t always rational. Sometimes, prospects show emotional buying motivation, buying a product purely due to the emotions it makes them feel.

Some common buyer motives include…

• Quality-of-life-based
• Impulse-based
• Prestige-based
• Financial-based
• Risk-management-based

Pain points

Another valuable thing to know is what challenges stop your customers from purchasing your product. Be it budget constraints, bureaucratic drag, or uncertainty in the validity of their problems.

Map out the obstacles a customer faces, from awareness to conversion and look into how they could be addressed to make the experience better.

Walk through the customer journey and adjust accordingly

The best way to test whether your customer journey map is complete is to complete the journey yourself.

If you notice any elements in the customer journey that haven’t been mapped, you can adjust the map accordingly.

Walking through the customer journey will also help you identify potential issues with the customer journey that might not have seemed that big in theory, but might cause significant bottlenecks in practice.

Free customer journey template

To get you started with customer journey mapping, we've prepared a free customer journey map template for you to use:

Understanding the customer journey is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for businesses aiming to thrive in a competitive marketplace.

A customer journey map serves as a strategic tool, providing valuable insights into your customers' experiences, needs, and expectations. It allows you to step into your customers' shoes, identify gaps in the customer experience, and tailor your strategies to meet their needs at each stage of their journey.

From defining what a customer journey is, outlining its stages, to exploring different types of customer journey maps, we've covered the essentials of customer journey mapping in this guide. We've also highlighted the importance of having a customer journey map and shared best practices for creating one.

Table of Contents

Stay tuned for upcoming newsletters in your inbox!

Join the Telegram channel NetHunt CRM

All about CRM and B2B sales.

Originally published June 29, 2023, updated June 29, 2023

by Kirill Skurikhin

facebook share

We value your privacy and keep a very high level of security. NetHunt uses the information you provide to us to email you about our relevant content. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy .

Top 15 sales and marketing events worth visiting in 2024

Read this and figure out which sales and marketing events you need to attend this year, online and offline.

5 best sales engagement platforms for your sales team

Five tools to maximize the efficiency of your communications with customers.

LinkedIn outreach in 2024: 8 experts share strategies for sales success

Discover actionable insights and proven techniques that promise to elevate your LinkedIn outreach, drive sales, and increase revenue.

NetHunt saves your time & grows your business

Twice a month, we handpick the hottest sales and marketing tips and deliver them to your inbox. Share your email now!

10-step guide to creating customer journey maps

Mapping your customers’ journeys can feel daunting. There are many steps involved, and you may even need to create different maps for different types of customers.

Once you understand how to break down the journey mapping process step by step, however, creating customer journey maps becomes not just manageable, but simple. As you'll learn, there are a variety of resources available to help create customer journey maps. The more you use them, the faster and more efficient your mapping process will be.

This post will discuss:

What is a customer journey map?

Benefits of a customer journey map, how to create a customer journey map, customer journey map best practices.

A customer journey map helps you visualize how customers experience your product and service. It does this by describing the storyline of every customer interaction step by step.

Like user experience (UX) maps, the customer journey map seeks to clarify potential interactions between a user and a brand. However, UX is most concerned with discrete and often digital-only interactions. In contrast, the customer journey represents a birds eye view of every touchpoint between individuals and your brand — starting with awareness.

Different kinds of customer journey maps include:

• Current State. The Current State customer journey map involves visualizing customers’ experiences with your product or service as it currently exists. This particular map represents a critical tool for identifying possible friction points that could be costing you customers.
• Day in the Life. The Day in the Life customer journey map describes the routine activities a potential customer might cycle through on any given day, regardless of whether or not they happen to interact with your business. Its utility lies in its ability to identify needs your service or product can address.
• Future State. The Future State customer journey map includes visualizing the ideal map you and your team hope to construct. This tool is especially helpful when introducing new products or services, or else when targeting new audience segments.
• Service Blueprint. To build a Service Blueprint, start with one of the above maps and then layer in all the technology, employees, and other services required as part of each touchpoint. Use it to visualize how your organization focuses its resources and identify possible shifts in allocation.

Most customer journey maps are designed chronologically, meaning they represent the customer experience as a timeline of events. But in reality, customer journeys — the series of steps from brand awareness to customer loyalty — are often not linear. Instead, customers follow a cyclical, multichannel set of steps as they engage with your business.

For example, they may make purchases online as well as offline during the same period (if you operate both types of sales channels). Customer journey maps need to account for the nonlinear nature of customer journeys, even as they also represent customer experience in a chronological fashion. To achieve the right balance, journey maps should include:

• Customer touchpoints. Every time your customer has some type of contact with your brand, even if it’s indirect, that touchpoint should be noted on the customer journey map.
• Customer moments of truth. Customer moments of truth happen when an event changes a customer’s perception of your brand. These are pivotal engagements and should be noted as such on the customer journey map.
• Customer pain points. Barriers or challenges that a customer experiences when interacting with your brand — such as hiccups in digital sales tools or delayed shipments — should be included on the map so you know how such events correlate with overall brand perception.
• Desired actions. Your customer journey map should note the actions you intend for customers to take, such as engagement with content or the completion of a purchase.
• Completed actions. Note the actual actions your customers take so that you can determine how often their behavior aligns with desired actions.

When your customer journey maps include all of the above information, you end up with the information that can help you deliver maximum benefits.

Understanding your customers’ experiences is critical to staying ahead of changing needs, technology, and global market shifts. According to Hanover Research , 79% of companies that invest in customer journey maps report becoming more customer-centric as a result.

More specifically, customer journey mapping allows companies to:

• Get targeted customer insights . The more you know about your customers, how they behave, and what they like and dislike, the better you can optimize marketing and sales processes.
• Increase customer engagement . Customer journey maps provide insights you need to create the kind of interesting and informative content your customers want to see, improving the effectiveness of your inbound marketing efforts.
• Experience higher customer retention . Satisfied customers are return customers. According to Zendesk, 61% of customers will abandon your brand after just one bad experience, but on the flip side, 71% of customers buy more from a brand they trust.
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints . Some customer touchpoints are more successful than others, and customer journey maps help you identify the most effective ones. They may reveal, for example, that a certain ad channel is associated with low rates of engagement — so to address that, you could redirect your marketing spend to a more effective touchpoint.
• Drive better customer focus . Mapping the customer journey helps to place customers at the forefront of your company’s operations and get ahead of challenges that could undercut their experiences. For example, if you are expecting a customer surge, you can proactively inform your customers of the expected delay and launch alternative resources for them.
• Acquire new business . The more you know about the journeys of your current customers, the better positioned you are to expand on what works to engage new types of customer personas through campaigns tailored to them.
• Avoid business silos . Customer journey maps help every department visualize its respective impact on the customer experience. In turn, these maps help increase cross-unit functionality with regard to serving customers.
• Assess ROI of future UX/CX investments . The best tool for predicting the future of your business is its past. Locking down specific spends on past and current customer maps will help you piece together an informed prediction for similar investments in the future.

Constructing a customer journey map boils down to 10 steps, which are listed below. Follow them to ensure an end result capable of delivering on all of the above benefits.

1. Set clear objectives for the map

First, you need a clear goal. Rather than creating a customer journey map just to create one, decide what you are hoping to accomplish through the map, which customers you are targeting, and which types of experiences you want your maps to highlight. In addition, your goals for creating the customer journey should reflect your overall company goals, such as increased revenue or improved customer retention.

Be sure to also decide on relevant metrics you can track as you create and use your customer journey maps. Setting clear goals is worthless if there’s no standard for measuring them.

2. Conduct research

Harvest internal and external quantitative and qualitative data on your customers to look for trends both in not only the types of buyers your business currently attracts, but how they feel about their experiences. Places to mine this information include your own website analytics, social media, call center recordings, support logs, or directly from customers themselves through surveys.

Keep your eye out for anything that has to do with how that customer determined they needed your product or service in the first place, how they discovered your business, why they chose it, and if they were happy with that choice in the end.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals

From that data, determine which customer personas you want to target when creating maps. If you don’t have well-developed personas or need to update them, you can pull the insights you need through surveys, interviews, testimonials, reviews, and feedback from customer relations teams. These teams tend to have a good perspective on the pain points that lead to fall-offs during the buying journey.

The more specifics you can collect about who your customers are and what they want, the more effective your customer journey maps will be.

4. Highlight your target customer personas

At this point in your process, you’ve likely gathered more information than is directly relevant to this particular project. Now is the time to revisit your target customer personas to help whittle your data down to only the most important information.

Take care, however, not to toss out any data that may feel irrelevant to the current project. Instead, store it somewhere safe should you later decide to create additional customer journey maps better suited to a different persona or personas.

5. List out all touchpoints

Identify the touchpoints that you’ll represent on your customer journey maps. Touchpoints are any point of engagement between customers and your brand, and they are the foundation for your customer journey map.

Consider all of the places where the customer may interact with your business. Be sure to factor in indirect engagements, like reviews of your brand that customers read on third-party sites, in addition to direct touchpoints that you maintain. Each and every touchpoint can drive customer conversion, so it’s critical to represent all the possibilities.

6. Map the current buyer journey

Once you’ve identified your customers and touchpoints, you can map the steps that buyers follow on their way to making purchases. Be sure to represent every variation on the buyer’s journey, including different types of sales channels, multiple product versions, and small-volume as well as large-volume purchases.

7. Map the ideal buyer journey

The journey you want customers to take may vary from their actual journey, especially if you release new products or services and the desired buyer journey changes as a result. Be sure to represent the ideal buyer journey alongside actual buyer journeys on your maps.

8. Determine the resources you have and the ones you’ll need

Translating a theoretical map into a lived experience for customers requires, at a minimum, employee time. Additional demands may include new software or an increased budget to help reduce costly friction points and holes responsible for lost revenue.

Create a detailed list of all that constructing the new map will require, and avoid getting halfway in before realizing you’re short the resources you need to complete the job.

9. Take the customer journey yourself

Don’t force your customers to double as your guinea pigs. Try out the journey yourself and identify places where the experience plays out differently in reality versus on paper. Does it feel confusing or tedious in any place? Are there any distractions that need to be eliminated?

Make note of all of these, then have someone else give it a go. Once you and several others have tested it, compare notes and see if and where tweaks are needed.

10. Make the necessary changes

Implementing those changes before you hit the green light may seem obvious. But it can be a challenge if, say, you’re already running behind the schedule you initially set for yourself.

The temptation will always be to release the current version and make adjustments over time. Do this, however, and you risk frustrating customers who may not return to see the improvements you have planned.

Avoid false starts and dead ends during the construction of your new map. Instead, maximize its potential reach and profitability by implementing each of these best practices.

• Set a goal for the journey map. Decide upfront what you hope to accomplish through the map, which customers you are targeting, and which types of experiences you want your maps to highlight. In addition, your goals for creating the customer journey should reflect your overall company goals, such as increased revenue or improved customer retention. Be sure to also decide on relevant metrics you can track as you create and use your customer journey maps. Setting clear goals is worthless if there’s no standard for measuring them.
• Survey customers to understand their buying journey. Don’t try and guess your customers’ behaviors or needs — ask. Simple questionnaires regarding how they found your company or what about that experience they would like to see improved are cost effective, easy to implement, and invaluable for ensuring your efforts respond to a real and not only perceived issue. Customers often will have thought of solutions that may not have occurred to you and your team. Be sure to include questions about the customers themselves. The information gathered from these questions will prove invaluable later as you narrow down your data to those you hope to focus your attention most with this current customer journey map.
• Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently. Then let their responses shape your map’s goal in tandem with your target personas. Don’t be intimidated by any surprises you might encounter. Rather, take any unexpected feedback for what it is — new opportunities to mine for growth.
• Orchestrate your customer journey. Avoid the tendency to think of the customer journey map you hope to create in isolation. As mentioned earlier, customers rarely follow a single linear journey. Harness real-time customer data to shape real-life behavior and optimize experiences.
• Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona. As a reminder, UX maps are a diagram of the steps a customer must take to complete a single task. These tasks can range from something as complex as finding and purchasing a product in your online store, to one as straightforward as signing up for an email newsletter. Even the latter can benefit from a thoughtful examination based on persona. For example, some older customers avoid using their phones for anything besides calling and texting, opting instead for the bigger screens found on computers or tablets when it comes to anything related to searching the Web. A UX journey optimized for a range of devices will ensure a better experience for a more senior demographic.
• Review and update each journey map after every major product release. Be sure to involve all relevant stakeholders in this process, particularly those parties closest to the product. Not only does this review and revision process help maximize the new product’s reach — it also serves as a general wellness checkup to ensure your maps remain effective in an ever-shifting marketplace.
• Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams. Defeat information silos and boost employee buy-in of your customer journey map by distributing it widely throughout your organization. For the most effective map possible, do so early in the process to allow other teams to weigh in from their unique vantage points, then again upon completion.
• Improve your employee experience. An effective customer journey map doesn’t just boost your bottom line. By eliminating inefficiencies and offering a better process, it helps to better life for your employees. This is especially true when they feel heard as part of the process — one more reason to make it available to all related teams early enough to adjust based on their input.

Tools to create customer journey maps with ease

Smart, research-backed customer journey maps deliver more than short-term positive business outcomes. They are critical to your organization’s long-term resilience in today’s experience-driven marketplace.

Although creating customer journey maps may seem complicated at first, getting started is merely a matter of identifying clear, concrete steps. This is especially true when you enlist the right tools designed to help you understand your customers’ journeys — both online and offline — quickly and get the necessary insights to meet them with real-time experiences at scale.

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics can help you break down, filter, and query years’ worth of data and combine it from every channel into a single interface. Real-time, omnichannel analysis and visualization further allow you to make better decisions with a holistic view of your business and the context behind every customer action.

Watch the overview video to learn more about Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.

Meanwhile, Adobe Journey Optimizer intelligently determines the next best interaction with scale, speed, and flexibility across the entire customer journey and creates and delivers scheduled marketing campaigns with tailored individual communications within the same application.

Get a free demo of Journey Optimizer .

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/customer-journey

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map

https://business.adobe.com/blog/the-latest/adobe-customer-journey-analytics-powers-next-generation-data-flexibility

Journey mapping in UX design

Last updated

21 February 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

Customers are essential to the success of a business. Without them, the company would cease to exist. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand the stages customers go through when interacting with a brand. You can use a journey map to visualize this across all digital channels over time.

If you’re looking to create user-friendly, intuitive experiences for your customers, journey mapping is a key part of UX design . Find out everything you need to know about journey mapping in this guide.

• What are the four stages of journey mapping?

A journey map should accurately represent your user’s experience from when they first find you and start to interact with you, through to them making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer.

The stages of a journey map will therefore depend on your product. The four stages of a customer’s buying cycle are:

During this stage, customers are looking for solutions to a problem. They become aware of your brand, services, or products via advertisements or other marketing vehicles.

Social media is a powerful tool that companies use to boost awareness. During the awareness stage, the brand should share pertinent information, such as business goals, ethics, and values.

Consideration

At this stage, customers consider the brand against similar companies offering the same products and services.

You need to give potential customers a deeper understanding of what you’re offering and why your brand is a better choice. They may engage with the business by signing up for a newsletter or visiting a brick-and-mortar store.

Customers have decided what they want and make a purchase. They have gathered the information they need before committing to a purchase. They may find this information in email confirmations, FAQs on billing and shipping, and online ordering pages.

Customer loyalty

This is the last stage, after customers have made their purchase and are evaluating the overall experience. This phase is about creating loyal, returning clients by offering membership programs and future discounts.

• How to make a simple journey map

Each customer journey is unique, so journey maps vary depending on the scenarios experienced by customers. Although the maps vary widely, the same steps are involved in creating them.

Let’s look at a step-by-step approach to making a simple journey map.

Step 1: Scope definition

The first step is to clearly define your goals. What are you hoping to achieve from this journey map? Do you want to make a particular aspect of the purchasing cycle more user-friendly? Or are you trying to find out why potential customers don’t follow through with a purchase?

Setting a goal will provide guide rails around the particular customer path you’re trying to understand. This will drive UX designers throughout the journey.

Step 2: Create user personas

Next, get a grasp of who your customers are. Gather information to create different personas to improve your knowledge of the different segments of your target audience. This helps you to:

Define your target market

Create better products and services

Appeal to them through your marketing

Step 3: List channels and touchpoints

Touchpoints are points of interaction between the user and the product. The channels may be through social media platforms, the path a user would take through your product, and other supporting applications or communication necessary to complete their goal.

List all the channels and touchpoints in the journey scenarios. Identify the touchpoints with higher engagement and those that need to be optimized.

Step 4: Collect customer feedback

Gathering customer feedback helps gauge how your users feel about your product or service. Methods used to gather information include:

Questionnaires

Rating systems

Your aim is to see your product through the eyes of your customers.

Step 5: Define pain points and points of friction

Using the customer feedback you gathered in the previous stage, identify gaps in the user journey that make it difficult to move through stages. Identify when they happen and what triggers them. 

This will help you to smooth out potential friction points in the customer journey.

Step 6: Improve and re-evaluate

The last step is to improve the overall experience of your customers. Once you have identified the pain points, opportunities, and goal metrics, brainstorm solutions to the identified flaws and implement necessary changes.

Regularly conduct further research and re-evaluate the customer journey.

• What are the elements of a journey map?

A journey map is made up of the following elements:

Persona (actor)

The persona is the one who experiences the journey; it may be a customer or a product user. Depending on the scenario, it could be a group or an individual.

The scenario is what the actor or persona is trying to achieve. A scenario describes the situation that the journey addresses. It primarily includes goals and expectations and can be real or imaginary.

Journey phase

Phases are the different stages of a journey, from awareness to purchasing and beyond. In each phase, try to visualize how you can meet the customer’s goals.

Thoughts and emotions

This refers to how the customer feels as they interact with your brand. Thoughts help the UX designer understand what the customer is experiencing, for example, relief, anxiousness, or frustration. Emotions allow the UX designer to focus on encouraging positive thoughts.

User actions

The action element details what the actor does in each phase to achieve their goal. It defines the actual steps taken by an actor throughout the journey.

Opportunities

This element offers the brand a chance to improve the customer's experience . They are insights gained from journey mapping and used to make informed decisions.

• Why are journey maps important?

Journey mapping brings the following benefits for a company.

Customer-centric philosophy

Using journey maps, UX designers can focus on how customers feel and think about the product being designed.

Journey maps help businesses understand their customers better, resulting in improved decision-making.

Broader business perspective

A journey map helps you to visualize situations experienced by a customer when interacting with your brand. The goal of a journey map is to remove obstacles and make the purchasing process intuitive and efficient.

Customer journey mapping helps a business owner gain an overview of their product or service from multiple viewpoints.

Improved customer experience

A journey map is the first step toward gaining a deeper understanding of customer engagement and fostering the flow of customer experience. It can help you to smooth out the customer experience and personalize it across all touchpoints.

Identification of opportunities

In complex business environments, gaps and breakdowns are common. Mapping out how a user interacts with your brand and/or product may reveal design flaws and areas that need change. 

By charting the entire process, a journey map helps identify gaps and opportunities for improvement that will enhance customer experience.

Competitive advantage

Journey mapping helps a company eliminate design flaws and make its product stand out. Once a UX designer has improved customer experience, this becomes a differentiation factor among competitors in the market.

• How does a customer journey map help?

A detailed and well-researched journey map will help you to: 

Build a customer-centric organization

Improve customer retention

Identify unmet opportunities that competitors may have missed

Understand the target audience

Align brand position with target market needs and expectations

Meet customer expectations

Understand different buyer personas

Optimize customer onboarding process

• How much does journey mapping cost?

The cost of journey mapping varies widely. The pricing depends on who’s doing it, how much research you want to do, and the complexity of the customer's journey.

• Designing journey maps

Journey maps are unique since they should represent whatever product or service they emulate. Variations of journey maps include:

Experience map

Empathy map

Service blueprint

You can use a third-party tool to build a well-designed journey map, such as:

Omnigraffle

However, there are no rules around what you use to build your journey map and can build it using a whiteboard, PDF format, and even Microsoft Paint. As long as it’s an accurate representation of the user’s journey, that’s what counts.

Experience maps

Experience maps are a zoom-out from journey maps. While journey maps represent a single persona’s behavior at each phase of the customer journey, experience maps can include multi-players that may interact with that user, additional products that customers typically use, or perhaps entirely different methods outside technology that users engage with to complete their goals.

Empathy maps

Empathy maps are used to understand customer personas . They do not follow a particular sequence of events along the journey. Empathy maps are divided into four parts and track what the customer does, thinks, says, and feels when using a product.

These can be helpful when defining who the persona is within your journey map.

Service blueprints

Service blueprints focus on how a brand delivers its products and services to customers rather than being customer-centric. In other words, they describe the behind-the-scenes details of the process.

They are mainly concerned with actions performed by every stakeholder in the purchase process. By focusing on service, gaps or friction points are identified and can be eliminated.

• Map your brand's path to success

Journey mapping offers many benefits to a company. Once your customer journey map is in place, you will fully understand your customers’ experience.

Get started today

Go from raw data to valuable insights with a flexible research platform

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 18 January 2023

Last updated: 27 April 2023

Last updated: 26 March 2024

Last updated: 24 June 2023

Last updated: 29 May 2023

Last updated: 28 February 2023

Last updated: 14 November 2023

Last updated: 3 April 2024

Last updated: 21 June 2023

Last updated: 19 November 2023

Last updated: 6 April 2023

Last updated: 31 July 2023

Last updated: 22 June 2023

Latest articles

Related topics, log in or sign up.

Get started for free

Learn / Guides / Customer journey mapping (CJM) guide

Back to guides

Lessons in customer journey mapping: what (not) to do, according to the pros

Customer journey mapping helps you understand the user experience from the customers’ perspective—there’s no doubt that journey mapping is one of the best ways to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. But developing a customer journey map isn’t always easy, and you probably won’t get it right the first time. (Don’t worry, you’re not alone.)

We interviewed nine professionals to learn about the customer journey mapping process from start to finish: how a journey map is researched, structured, designed, and implemented.

For this page, we’ve put together the best of the worst—that is,  the most valuable lessons on what   not  to do when you’re mapping the customer journey . A big thanks to the following pros for their expert advice (and for allowing us to learn from their mistakes!):

Melissa Halim, Enterprise Product Marketer— Miro

Georgiana Laudi, Co-founder— Forget The Funnel

Anastasia Schebrova, Chief Experience Officer— UXPressia

Ingrid van Beek, Optimization and Online Personalization Lead— Basic Orange

Shaheema Adams, CEO— The CEX Lab

David Weinberg, Co-founder and CPO— Vervoe

Cristina Apple Georgoulakis, Experience Consultant

Marcin Migas, UX/UI Designer— Senetic

Spencer Wong, Head of Digital Experience— MADE.com

Mistake 1: not defining the scope of the customer journey

I think at the very beginning, I would define exactly the scope of the customer journey… what personas are these for? What problems are we looking at? Is this a customer’s issue that has come up quite frequently and we're needing to clarify what this journey looks like? Is it an internal process that we want to operationalize or create more alignment on? I think clarifying what the objective is at the very beginning is obviously going to help.

It sounds super obvious to say that out loud, but… from my own perspective…‘customer journey map’ just sounds like this trendy thing in the name of Customer Experience. And if you do it, you feel like you’re being customer-centric, but in reality it does take some thought—at least to figure out exactly how you want to chart out this course. So, clarifying it upfront, what the objectives are, is really important. And I think on the other side of it too is ultimately, what is the goal?

So after the customers’ journey is said and done, what is the ultimate goal and vision of using this customer journey [map]: is it going to be shared with other teams, are other teams going to be added on to it?

Melissa Halim, Enterprise Product Marketer—Miro

A clarity of vision [is] really important to have: everybody needs to be excited about what they're going to build together. And if…people are apathetic about the process, or don't really understand what the big idea is, or aren't really clear on what they're trying to achieve, then it's not going to work.

Georgiana Laudi, Co-founder—Forget The Funnel

So start small, and define the scope of [customer journey] mapping. Think [about] what you want to improve in the first place… the most problematic areas.

At the end of the day we want customer journey maps… to bring value. And the only possible way to do that is actually knowing why are you building [the map] and what you expect to achieve.

Anastasia Schebrova, Chief Experience Officer—UXPressia

Mistake 2: not using the right tools and materials

We work with Post-its a lot. And that's also a common mistake: You should always use the super sticky Post-its because if you don't use super sticky Post-its they fall off the wall in the meeting. And we use Stabilo pens. And I'm not sponsored by either of them, but you need those materials because otherwise, it's just not worth having the session because then it's too much distraction if all your Post-its fall off the wall.

Ingrid van Beek, Optimization and Online Personalization Lead—Basic Orange

Well, if you're talking about building customer journey maps… I would say that [tools] that allow collaboration are must-have. Of course, you'll need the good old Google Docs with PowerPoint, and Docs and Excel. You just won't be able to get rid of that because everyone is using it. I would also recommend Miro as a whiteboard: online whiteboards, especially for distributed teams. When you don't have a possibility to conduct a workshop all together in the same room, [online whiteboards] are a good thing to have. In regards to gathering the data, I'm really a big fan of Airtable for storing the research data, and for actually storing all kinds of lists and data… that need to be accessible for the whole team.

We are also internally using Intercom as a tool for communication with customers and for support, and we have a huge number of insights coming from those kind of conversations. So having any voice-of-the-customer toolset is always a good thing because it always gives a lot of information to process. And web analytics… We are trying different kinds… We've played with Mixpanel a bit. We've used Hotjar… we use it… to tell the truth when we have a certain question.

Mistake 3: not including representatives from different teams

We really had representation from every single team and we felt like it was important to get that because if we were trying to get a holistic understanding of the customer experience across this long journey, this often long journey, we needed to have perspectives from every team represented.

So the first thing that I would do… is actually build a team. It might be a CX committee or customer journey mapping team or some sort of cross-functional team of people from across the organization. … Departments need to feel represented, their work needs to be accounted for, their insight—what is in their brain—needs to be accounted for. If they're not in the room when decisions are being made about… what the customer success milestones are… the details [of] each of those success milestones, they're going to feel less invested. They're going to feel like their team's time has not been accounted for.

[Customer journey mapping] helps foster team collaboration. So I, for instance, always have a mixed audience in the room to make sure that they all know what each [person is] experiencing in the process, and… the impact that [each decision] has.

Shaheema Adams, CEO—The CEX Lab

[A customer journey map] can be done by one person if needed, but my advice is always doing this in a small team, especially when the team is diverse and you have different representatives who are working with the customers directly, so they can contribute their knowledge.

To make this the most efficient, you'll need… one facilitator for a group of three to four people. So if you have only one facilitator, I would not advise to have a bigger group.

I think [we would be] the first to admit that when you get so far in the weeds, you kind of develop almost this mentality that, "No one understands our product or our market, or the problem we're solving, better than us." And that ends up being both true and powerful, but also a really big problem and weakness. And that's where I think it's important to get someone with fresh eyes to look from the outside and actually give you a bit of a reality check and help you see things that you're too in the weeds to see.

David Weinberg, Co-founder and CPO—Vervoe

Mistake 4: not using customer-centric language

Name your [customer journey] stages in a meaningful way. Name them something that will… stand the test of time, that will motivate the team … [names] like ‘interest’, like ‘evaluation’: not [names that are] associated with the business achieving its goals, but with the customer achieving its goals.

And the first place that I saw this done really, really well, which is what inspired me to do this process for the first time, was Airbnb. And when I visited their office in early 2013 I saw their customer journey map, which is infamous now, taped to the wall. It was very, very much from the perspective of the customer. And it was the first time that I saw a true customer experience being represented in stages as opposed to [names] like ‘MQL’, ‘SQL’, ‘lead’… So the difference was so stark for me at the time.

…It just was this sort of epiphany moment of looking at… a customer journey map and building a framework through the perspective of a customer versus the perspective of the business achieving its goal. So, naming convention, I think is really, really important.

Mistake 5: presenting an ugly or boring customer journey map

…get the [customer journey map] designed in a way that people are going to be excited about, because the spreadsheet nobody gets excited about: you can't [present an ugly map]—and it sounds superficial, but people give more credence and weight to things that look like they've been cared for.

So if you can get a designer on it, that's great. Obviously it doesn't have to be a designer, it doesn’t have to be perfectly pretty. But it should look like it's been respected. … If it looks like a piece of shit, people are going to think it's a piece of shit, so it can't look like a piece of shit.

Mistake 6: not communicating the process widely and constantly

…this whole process needs to be continuously communicated. So there should be, I don't know, lunch-and-learns or some way to get the work being done behind closed doors out in front of people- This is critical to the buy-in process, obviously. So [communication] has to happen throughout the whole process.

Mistake 7: getting excited about the customer journey map at the beginning, then forgetting about it

So typically, what happens with customer journeys at companies is you create a customer journey and it's like this document that takes a lot of time to make and build. And then you put it up on a wall somewhere and people get really excited about it for a certain amount of time. And then people forget about it, or it becomes irrelevant.

We need to make things practical for teams… because customer journeys are fantastic for a holistic view of what's happening with the customer.

The secret of getting value from customer journey mapping is not just building the map itself, it's taking actions based on what you saw and what you built. So a customer journey map actually should be a living document that is available for other team members, which is updated on a regular basis, and which gets you a list of things to do, actual things like tasks for different team members. This might be development, this might be marketing, whatever. But the idea is that you know what you need to change in the process. You prioritize that, you make the changes, and you measure the effect. So you know what's actually improved your experience, what didn't affect or maybe affected in a bad way. Anyway, you know what you're changing in the experience, and you keep track of that. Without it, it's just a fun exercise to do with your team.

Mistake 8: trying to do it all at once

The first time you do [customer journey mapping], do not do what I did, which is I tried to [do] everything… every moment, every step. Save yourself the pain and agony and go through the process—choose your top three critical moments and your top three moments to delight in each stage. Do not do more than three. If you have more than three, edit yourself and start there.

Mistake 9: not updating the customer journey map iteratively

Customer journeys never stop.

You're never done. Bake reviewing and auditing your customer journey into your monthly, quarterly processes. Because it's not fun to go back and audit. It's not fun to go back to this monster document that has so much on it, that is scary.

But if you're not auditing it, if you're not going back to it, if you're not refreshing it, each time there's a new product launch, you want to understand how you're going to then operationalize that into your customer journey. It becomes irrelevant very quickly. So baking that into your business as usual is really important.

[A customer journey map is] a very workable document. We work hard in my workshops, and there's a lifecycle that I follow. I go in, we do the process, we get down to the nitty-gritty, we sort out the issues, and then we commit... We prioritize in the meeting… and then you go and do, and then we have a check-in session again. That's how we keep it moving.

Mistake 10: not making the customer journey map part of new people’s onboarding

Anytime you have anyone new join your company, have them review [the customer journey map]— let that be a part of their onboarding. Their onboarding is they need to review this customer journey and they need to give three examples of things that could be improved. And three things that they thought [your company was] doing well. And they have to do that assignment before they move on to the next thing. And that way, you could create familiarity within the entire organization and you also get people auditing it from all different departments, with all different perceptions, and it stays fresh and relevant.

Mistake 11: assuming your team already understands the customer journey

…not everyone knows how exactly [the customer journey] happens—how the clients, our users, are behaving at some stage. For example, people from the shipping department may not know…how [the customer journey] works online, and for example, people from AdWords don’t know how customers behave after filing a complaint. And everything seems to be obvious, but when we see details, we see that a lot of people in our company don’t know how [the journey] works.

After collecting all the process and creating the whole customer journey map and sending it to all the company workers, we had a lot of feedback that, "Oh, I didn't know how it works, that it works that way, and that we have so many customer segments." … We had a lot of feedback that there were a lot of gaps we needed to fill right now.

Marcin Migas, UX/UI Designer—Senetic

Mistake 12: creating a global persona map (instead of maps for individual customer or market personas)

I learned not to create a global customer journey map but, for example, when I work with a Polish team, I should create a customer journey only for our Polish market—because when I send it, for example, to Brazil, they probably will not understand the personas. And the behavior of B2C customers is different from B2B. That's the first lesson.

Mistake 13: misalignment between the online and offline customer journey

When I look at [the] user journey, I’m making sure that the experience in the showroom complements what they're doing on-site, and that it all kind of comes together. So, we have been looking a lot at kind of that combined online/offline user journey. More and more…that's where personalization comes into things. Because [customers] are coming back multiple times just to complete one purchase… how can we make sure we are helping them, guiding them along the way.

Spencer Wong, Head of Digital Experience—MADE.com

Mistake 14: relying too much on numbers and data (not thinking about the journey from the customers’ perspective)

My CEO… wanted something more high level… So, I said okay, well I can do user journey mapping, maybe that will help explain where I think the opportunities in the journey are—demonstrate it better than just kind of diving down into funnels and conversion and stuff like that. So, I have taken a broader view of the whole customer lifecycle.

To tell the truth, I would never recommend using only one source of data because the best results are achieved when you're combining quantitative and qualitative data. But if we have to choose and you have only one source, that would definitely be interviews with customers because you can't build a customer-centric journey map without talking to them. It's just impossible.

Start collecting user behavior insights today 🔥

Grab a free Hotjar trial and find out the drivers/barriers/hooks behind your users' behavior.

CJM best practices

Previous chapter

Best CJM tools

Next chapter

Understanding the Customer:

Journey mapping provides businesses with a detailed understanding of the customer’s journey, including their motivations, needs, and pain points. By gaining a deeper understanding of the customer, businesses can tailor their customer success strategies and improve the overall customer experience. For example, a software company might use journey mapping to understand the pain points and needs of its customers during the onboarding process. By identifying the steps that are most confusing or frustrating for customers, the company can adjust its onboarding process to provide more support and resources, ultimately improving the customer experience.

Improving the Customer Experience:

Journey mapping enables businesses to identify areas where the customer experience can be improved and take proactive measures to address these issues. By identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement, businesses can make necessary changes to the customer experience and provide a more seamless and personalized experience that fosters long-term loyalty and success. For example, an e-commerce company might use journey mapping to identify pain points in the checkout process, such as a confusing payment flow. By addressing these pain points, the company can improve the customer experience and reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment.

Aligning Teams:

Journey mapping helps align customer success, marketing, and sales teams by providing a shared understanding of the customer journey and enabling teams to work together to provide a seamless customer experience. By creating a shared understanding of the customer journey, teams can more effectively collaborate and communicate, resulting in a more cohesive customer experience. For example, a telecommunications company might use journey mapping to align its customer service and sales teams. By understanding the customer’s journey from initial contact to ongoing support, the company can better coordinate its customer service and sales efforts, resulting in a more seamless and personalized experience for the customer.

Retaining Customers:

By identifying areas where the customer experience can be improved, businesses can proactively address issues and reduce the likelihood of customer churn. This can result in higher customer retention rates and increased revenue over time. For example, a subscription-based service might use journey mapping to identify the pain points and needs of its customers throughout their subscription. By proactively addressing these pain points and providing additional resources and support, the company can increase customer satisfaction and reduce the likelihood of churn.

Read here to know everything about Churn Analysis.

Identifying Opportunities for Growth:

In addition to improving the customer experience, journey mapping can also identify opportunities for growth. By identifying key touchpoints and areas where the customer experience can be improved, businesses can proactively engage with customers and provide additional value-add services, resulting in increased revenue and customer satisfaction. For example, a healthcare company might use journey mapping to identify opportunities for additional services, such as a health coaching program or additional medical resources. By identifying these opportunities and proactively engaging with customers, the company can increase revenue and provide additional value to its customers.

Additional Resource- 7 Proven Retention Strategy for SaaS business

Creating an Effective Customer Success Journey Map

Define the customer persona:.

Defining the customer persona is a critical step in creating an effective customer journey map. This involves identifying the target audience and understanding their needs, goals, and pain points. By defining the customer persona, businesses can gain a clear understanding of who they are creating the map for and what the desired outcome is.

A customer success platform can be a valuable tool in this process. By analyzing customer data, such as demographics, behavior, and preferences, businesses can gain a better understanding of their target audience and create more accurate customer personas. Customer success platforms can also help businesses identify trends and patterns in customer behavior, which can inform the creation of more effective customer journey maps.

Identify the Stages of the Customer Journey:

Identifying the stages of the customer journey is another important step in creating an effective customer journey map. This typically includes the initial research and discovery phase, the purchasing phase, and the post-purchase phase. Each stage should be broken down into key touchpoints or interactions with the brand.

A customer success platform can help businesses identify these touchpoints by analyzing customer interactions across different channels, such as email, social media, and chat. By tracking the customer journey at each touchpoint, businesses can gain a better understanding of where customers are engaging with their brand and identify opportunities for improvement.

Map the Customer Journey:

Once the stages and touchpoints have been identified, the customer journey map can be created. This involves visualizing the journey using a variety of tools, such as diagrams, charts, or infographics. The map should include information on the customer’s emotions, actions, and needs at each touchpoint.

A customer success platform can help businesses create more effective customer journey maps by providing a centralized location for customer data and insights. By integrating data from different sources, such as CRM systems, customer support tools, and marketing automation platforms, businesses can create a more comprehensive view of the customer journey. Customer success platforms can also provide tools for visualizing customer data, such as dashboards and reports, which can make it easier to identify trends and patterns in customer behavior.

Collect Data and Feedback:

To ensure the customer journey map accurately reflects the customer’s experience, it’s important to collect data and feedback from real customers. This can be done through surveys, interviews, or other customer feedback tools.

A customer success platform can help businesses collect and analyze customer feedback by providing tools for surveys, feedback forms, and sentiment analysis. By integrating customer feedback into the customer journey map, businesses can gain a better understanding of where customers are experiencing pain points or where they may need additional support.

Analyze the Results:

After collecting data and feedback, it’s important to analyze the results to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. This can help businesses refine their customer success strategies and provide a more seamless and personalized experience for customers.

A customer success platform can help businesses analyze customer data by providing tools for data visualization, analytics, and reporting. By analyzing customer data, businesses can identify trends and patterns in customer behavior, as well as opportunities for improvement in the customer journey.

Take Action:

Finally, businesses should take action based on the insights gained from the customer journey map. This may involve making changes to the customer experience, improving communication and collaboration between teams, or providing additional resources and support to customers.

A customer success platform can help businesses take action on customer insights by providing tools for customer engagement, communication, and support. By integrating customer data into these tools, businesses can provide a more personalized and effective customer experience, as well as identify areas for improvement in the customer journey.

Example Customer Journey Map:

To illustrate the process of creating a customer journey map, let’s take the example of a mobile app company looking to improve the customer experience for its users. The company has identified the following stages of the customer journey:

Research and Discovery Download and Installation Onboarding and Initial Use Ongoing Use and Engagement Feedback and Support Using these stages, the company maps out the key touchpoints for each stage, including the customer’s actions, emotions, and needs. The resulting customer journey map might look something like this:

In this example, the customer journey map highlights key touchpoints, such as downloading the app, setting up an account, and using the app for the first time. The map also shows the customer’s emotions and needs at each touchpoint, such as excitement at the initial download and frustration if the app crashes during use.

After collecting data and feedback from real users, the company may identify opportunities for improvement, such as simplifying the onboarding process or providing additional resources and support for new users. By taking action based on the insights gained from the customer journey map, the company can improve the overall customer experience and foster long-term loyalty and success.

In conclusion, customer success journey mapping is a powerful tool for businesses looking to improve the customer experience, retain customers, and drive revenue growth. By mapping out the customer journey, identifying key touchpoints, and proactively addressing pain points and opportunities for improvement, businesses can provide a seamless and personalized customer experience that fosters long-term loyalty and success.

Related Posts

Top 10 Customer Success Conferences to attend in 2023

Customer Churn Analysis: Understanding & Segmenting Churn

2023 is the Year for Customer Success: Trends that Tell Us Why

Get to know your customers better with reptrics cs.

9 Ways Customer Success Management Software Can Help Drive Net Revenue Retention

NPS VS CSAT: A Definitive Guide on Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Quarterly Business Review done right in 2023

Make your Customer Success Workflows work for you- Guide on building Actionable Workflows

Beyond the Numbers: How to Interpret Customer Health Scores

Recession to Force Customer Success to be more Efficient

© 2023 Reptrics, Inc, All rights reserved. |  Privacy Policy   |  Terms & Conditions

• Affiliate Marketing (2)
• AI Marketing (85)
• AI Marketing Tools (19)
• Book Reviews (9)
• Brand Strategy (33)
• Business Strategy (13)
• Digital Marketing (46)
• Marketing Insights (4)
• Marketing News (37)
• Marketing Strategy (124)
• Product Reviews (5)
• The Buy Button Series (15)

The 2023 Guide to Customer Journey Mapping.

Picture this: you’re an explorer, navigating through a dense and unfamiliar jungle. You need a map to guide your way and ensure you reach your destination. Similarly, in the world of customer experience, a customer journey map serves as an essential guide to navigating the complexities of customer interactions with your brand. This updated guide to customer journey mapping in 2023 will provide you with the tools and insights to create a comprehensive map that illuminates the path to customer satisfaction and business success.

Short Summary

Customer Journey Mapping provides visual representation of customer experience to inform business strategies and optimize customer experiences.

Key components include personas, touchpoints & channels, emotions & pain points for comprehensive view of the journey.

Best practices such as collaboration, regular reviews and focusing on actionable insights help drive satisfaction and success at every touchpoint.

Table of Contents

Understanding customer journey mapping.

Embarking on the journey to create a customer journey map might seem like a daunting task, but fear not! This powerful tool provides a visual representation of a customer’s experience, detailing the aggregate of steps taken by a customer to achieve a desired outcome. By mapping the twists and turns of the customer journey, businesses can gain valuable insights into existing and future customer interactions, ultimately informing business strategies and optimizing customer experiences.

Diving deeper into the customer journey mapping process, the key components of an effective map include customer personas, touchpoints and channels, emotions, and pain points. To create a comprehensive and actionable map, businesses need to follow a structured process, which includes setting goals and objectives, conducting research and gathering data, and visualizing and analyzing the customer journey. With the right approach, businesses can identify pain points and opportunities for growth, ultimately enhancing the customer experience.

The Purpose of Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey maps act as a compass, guiding businesses through the intricate landscape of customer journeys with their brand. By creating a visual depiction of a customer’s engagement with a brand, businesses gain insights that direct their strategies and improve customer experiences. Imagine stepping into the customer’s shoes, gaining a deeper understanding of their needs and motivations at each stage of their journey.

From the awareness stage, where customers first become aware of a problem they need to solve, to the decision stage, where they’re ready to make a purchase, customer journey maps provide a comprehensive view of the customer’s experience. By aligning each step of the customer journey with a goal, businesses can ensure customer success and uncover areas for improvement. It’s like having a treasure map that leads straight to gold: satisfied and loyal customers.

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

Beyond the thrill of discovery, customer journey mapping offers a range of benefits that can drive tangible business results. Enhanced customer satisfaction, loyalty, revenue, and the cultivation of a customer-centric culture within the organization are just a few of the advantages that customer journey mapping can bring.

By examining the outcomes of a customer journey map, businesses can pinpoint areas where customer needs are not being met, ultimately uncovering opportunities for growth and improvement. Involving the customer service team in the mapping process can provide valuable insights into customer pain points, ensuring that the map accurately reflects the real-world experiences of customers. To better understand this process, it’s helpful to look at customer journey mapping examples.

With a clear understanding of the customer journey, businesses can make data-driven decisions to optimize the customer experience and drive long-term success.

Key Components of an Effective Customer Journey Map

An effective customer journey map is like a well-crafted story, with distinct elements that come together to paint a vivid picture of the customer experience. To ensure the map is comprehensive and actionable, it should include key components such as customer personas, touchpoints and channels, emotions, and pain points. Each of these components plays a crucial role in offering a complete view of the customer journey, enabling businesses to identify areas for improvement and optimize the customer experience.

By carefully considering each component and conducting thorough research, businesses can create a customer journey map that accurately reflects the needs and preferences of their target audience. This detailed map provides the foundation for data-driven decision-making and strategic planning, ultimately leading to happier customers and a thriving business.

Customer Personas

Imagine trying to navigate a foreign city without knowing the language or customs. You’d likely struggle to find your way and feel lost and frustrated. The same can be said for businesses that lack a clear understanding of their target audience. Customer personas are the solution to this problem, acting as a representation of the target audience that allows businesses to better understand and empathize with their customers.

Creating customer personas involves collecting pertinent customer data through a variety of research methods, such as interviews, surveys, and analytics. By developing a deep understanding of their customer persona, businesses can tailor experiences to meet their needs and preferences, ultimately enhancing the customer journey.

With a clear picture of their target audience, businesses can confidently navigate the complex landscape of customer interactions and deliver experiences that resonate with their customers.

Touchpoints and Channels

Every interaction a customer has with a brand, whether it’s browsing a website, speaking with a sales rep, or receiving an email newsletter, represents a touchpoint in the customer journey. Customer touchpoints and channels, the various points of interaction between customers and the brand, play a vital role in shaping the overall customer experience.

By identifying and optimizing touchpoints and channels, businesses can ensure a seamless and satisfying customer journey. Just as a skilled conductor orchestrates a symphony, businesses must carefully coordinate each touchpoint and channel to create a harmonious and engaging customer experience.

With a clear understanding of touchpoints and channels, businesses can fine-tune their strategies and deliver unforgettable customer experiences.

Emotions and Pain Points

Customers are not just faceless statistics or data points; they are real people with emotions and feelings that play a significant role in shaping their customer’s experience with a brand. By incorporating emotions and pain points into the customer journey map, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of the emotional landscape that influences the behavior of the average customer, as well as the customer’s perspective on their journey.

Addressing pain points, those areas where customers may experience frustration or dissatisfaction, allows businesses to tackle the root causes of customer dissatisfaction and improve the overall customer journey. Like a skilled surgeon, businesses can use the insights gained from mapping emotions and pain points to diagnose and treat the issues that plague the customer experience, ultimately leading to happier, more satisfied customers.

Steps to Creating a Customer Journey Map

With a clear understanding of the key components and benefits of customer journey mapping, it’s time to embark on the exciting journey of creating a map that accurately reflects the customer experience. This process involves three main steps: setting goals and objectives, conducting research and gathering data, and visualizing and analyzing the customer journey.

By following these steps, businesses can create a comprehensive and actionable customer journey map that illuminates the path to customer satisfaction and business success. With a roadmap in hand, businesses can confidently navigate the complex world of customer interactions and make strategic decisions that drive growth and delight customers at every turn.

Setting Goals and Objectives

Before embarking on any journey, it’s important to have a clear destination in mind. When creating a customer journey map, setting goals and objectives ensures a clear focus and direction for the mapping process. These objectives may include enhancing the customer experience, gaining an insightful comprehension of the customer’s viewpoint, or pinpointing areas for improvement in the customer journey.

By establishing clear goals and objectives, businesses can ensure that their customer journey map is purpose-driven and focused on delivering tangible results. This strategic approach to mapping enables businesses to prioritize their efforts and resources, ultimately leading to more effective and satisfying customer experiences.

Conducting Research and Gathering Data

A solid foundation of research and data is essential for creating an accurate customer journey map. This research involves utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods to acquire data and insights regarding the customer experience at various touchpoints. Businesses should track customer activity through social media, emails, and online searches, as well as consult customer service representatives to identify customer pain points and translate them into business terms.

By gathering data from multiple sources, businesses can create a comprehensive and accurate map that accurately reflects the needs and preferences of their target audience. This data-driven approach to customer journey mapping ensures that the map is grounded in reality and provides actionable insights that can drive business success.

Visualizing and Analyzing the Customer Journey

Once the research and data gathering is complete, it’s time to bring the customer journey to life through visualization. Creating a visual representation of the customer’s journey provides valuable insights into the relationship a customer has with a business over time. By analyzing the customer journey map, businesses can identify patterns, trends, and potential areas for improvement, ultimately enhancing the customer experience.

Visualizing the customer journey is like painting a vivid picture that captures the essence of the customer experience. By identifying patterns and trends in the data, businesses can make data-driven decisions and implement changes that directly impact customer satisfaction and success. With a clear and comprehensive visual representation of the customer journey, businesses can confidently navigate the complexities of customer interactions and deliver memorable experiences at every touchpoint.

Tools and Templates for Customer Journey Mapping

As with any complex journey, having the right tools and templates at your disposal can greatly simplify the process and ensure a consistent approach across the organization. In the world of customer journey mapping, there are a wealth of tools and templates available to streamline the mapping process and facilitate collaboration.

From popular mapping tools like  Lucidchart  and  Smaply , to customizable templates that provide a starting point for creating maps, these resources can help businesses save time and resources while ensuring a consistent and effective approach to mapping the customer journey.

By leveraging these tools and templates, businesses can focus on the insights and actions that drive customer satisfaction and business success.

Popular Customer Journey Mapping Tools

In today’s fast-paced business environment, having the right tools can make all the difference. Popular customer journey mapping tools like Qualtrics, Lucidchart, and Smaply offer features and functionalities to streamline the mapping process and facilitate collaboration. These tools provide support for creating and sharing customer journey maps, user journey maps, and system maps, ensuring that businesses have access to the resources they need to create comprehensive and accurate maps.

By leveraging these popular tools, businesses can save time and resources, while also ensuring that their maps are informed by diverse perspectives and expertise. With the right tools in hand, businesses can confidently navigate the complex world of customer interactions and create maps that drive customer satisfaction and business success.

Using Templates to Simplify the Process

Templates are like a compass, providing a clear direction and starting point for businesses embarking on the customer journey mapping process. By using templates, businesses can save time and resources, while also ensuring consistency in their mapping efforts.

Templates offer a foundation for constructing customer journey maps, permitting businesses to customize and adjust them to their distinct requirements and objectives. By providing a framework for customer journey mapping, customer journey map templates facilitate the identification and resolution of customer pain points, ultimately enhancing the customer experience and driving business success.

Best Practices for Customer Journey Mapping

Armed with the knowledge, tools, and templates, it’s time to explore the best practices for customer journey mapping. By following these best practices, businesses can ensure that their maps are comprehensive, actionable, and focused on driving customer satisfaction and business success.

Key best practices for customer journey mapping include collaboration and cross-functional teams, regular updates and reviews, and focusing on actionable insights. By adhering to these best practices, businesses can create customer journey maps that truly capture the essence of the customer experience, ultimately driving satisfaction and success at every touchpoint.

Collaboration and Cross-functional Teams

In the world of customer journey mapping, collaboration is king. By involving diverse perspectives and expertise from across the organization, businesses can create maps that are more accurate and comprehensive, ultimately leading to more effective customer experiences.

Collaboration and cross-functional teams ensure that all points of view are taken into consideration when constructing the customer journey map, providing essential feedback, counsel, and insights that may not have been considered otherwise. With a diverse and collaborative team in place, businesses can confidently navigate the complexities of customer interactions and create maps that drive customer satisfaction and business success.

Regular Updates and Reviews

Just as a map must be accurate and up-to-date to be effective, customer journey maps require regular updates and reviews to ensure they remain relevant and reflective of current customer experiences. By conducting periodic reviews and updates, businesses can adapt and evolve their strategies to better meet the changing needs and preferences of their customers.

The process of updating and reviewing maps involves analyzing customer feedback, identifying customer pain points, and evaluating the effectiveness of customer journey mapping strategies. By staying vigilant and responsive to changes in the customer experience, businesses can ensure that their customer journey maps remain a valuable tool for driving customer satisfaction and business success.

Focusing on Actionable Insights

In the world of customer journey mapping, actionable insights are the true treasure. By focusing on the insights derived from customer journey maps, businesses can make data-driven decisions and implement changes that directly impact customer satisfaction and success.

Actionable insights provide businesses with the information they need to prioritize customer needs, devise strategies to address customer pain points, and optimize the overall customer experience. By leveraging these insights, businesses can confidently navigate the complex landscape of customer interactions and deliver experiences that resonate with their customers at every touchpoint.

Customer journey mapping is like exploring a new frontier, uncovering hidden treasures and insights that can transform the customer experience. By understanding the key components, benefits, and best practices of customer journey mapping, businesses can create comprehensive and actionable maps that drive customer satisfaction and business success. Armed with the right tools, templates, and strategies, businesses can confidently navigate the complex world of customer interactions and create experiences that delight customers at every touchpoint.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 stages of the customer journey map.

The five stages of the customer journey map are Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. These stages involve customers recognizing their need for a product or service, researching solutions, making a purchase decision, remaining loyal to the brand, and advocating for it.

What is a customer journey map in agile?

A customer journey map in agile is a visual process involving stakeholders, user personas, epics, features, user stories and tasks to plan the project from the user’s point of view. This process helps to identify the user’s needs and expectations, and to create a roadmap for the project that meets those needs. It also helps to identify any potential issues that may arise during the project. By understanding the user’s journey, the team can create a product that is tailored to the user.

• X (Twitter)

David is a Creative Director and Marketing Professional with a wealth of expertise in marketing strategy, branding strategy and growing businesses. He is a founding partner of a branding and marketing agency based in New York. Over his 25+ year career in the the world of Branding and Marketing, he has worked on branding and marketing strategy projects for companies like Coca-Cola, Intercontinental Hotels, AMC Theaters, LEGO, Intuit, American and Cancer Society. He has also published over 250 articles on topics related to marketing strategy, branding Identity, entrepreneurship and business management. You can follow his writing over at medium.com: medium.com/@dplayer View themarketinghustle.com Authors Page

Comments are closed.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

• Social Media
• Account-Based Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Digital Marketing

10 Best Practices for Crafting an Effective Customer Journey Map

A Customer Journey Map is the product of collaboration—between members of your marketing team and people in your company’s other functional areas.

But how do you know where to start? How do you keep the momentum going strong once it’s started? How can you make sure your Customer Journey Map is useful—and not just a nice-to-have project?

These best practices will help your marketing team create a useful Customer Journey Map.

Here are 10 best practices to consider as you get started:

1. Start with a clearly defined scope to ensure you have consensus on the project’s goals

Customer Journey Mapping is powerful because it gives marketing, sales, and customer service teams—as well as everyone else who interacts with customers—a shared understanding of how they can work together to deliver equal parts value and delight in every interaction.

But too often, Customer Journey Mapping works a little bit like a committee: we get together, talk about stuff and never seem to end up with much of anything useful.

As one professional marketer from our research tells us, “The Customer Journey Map gets shelved because the project felt overwhelming, or we didn’t have time.”

Often the result is that no one was happy—or that the Customer Journey Map was a waste of time.

To avoid these frustrations and make sure your team’s effort is productive, consider starting with an agreed-upon scope—including who will participate in the process, what you’ll map, and how far you’ll go down the path.

Negotiate this first step before you start to avoid any of the pitfalls that can pop up as you get started.

2. See your customer journey map as a conversation starter, not a project end point

Your Customer Journey Map likely will be the product of many meetings and constant communication over time.

And if people do their jobs well, it should reflect—and help to influence—how marketing, sales, and customer service teams work together to deliver exceptional experiences.

But don’t look for this map to be a solution in and of itself: it’s not a digital strategy or an online sales funnel or a customer service policy.

Your Customer Journey Map is just the beginning—and as you look at your map and find opportunities for improvement, keep those in mind as you move forward.

Keep your eye on the big picture, and focus on getting to “good enough” instead of aiming for perfection.

3. Start with where customers enter your business—and don’t think too small or too large

There are three questions you should consider when identifying where your journey begins: at what point do customers first interact with your company?

What is the most important product, service, or information you provide to them at that point?

And what should happen after they’ve interacted with you there—or before they even see that opportunity?

Look for opportunities to connect these dots across channels (web, social media, email) and mediums (print, TV, radio).

4. Consider how customers use your product or service throughout their journey—not just at any one point in time

Not every customer comes to you with the same mindset nor do they all leave that way.

If you consider each interaction as a stage along the path and focus on making sure each step is a positive experience, you’ll go a long way toward providing a great experience throughout.

5. Recognize that your customer’s journey is different than yours

We tend to focus on our own experiences, which makes it easy to forget how things look from the outside—from the point of view of customers we’re trying to serve.

A few years ago, I was working on an eCommerce PPC campaign and we decided to A/B test two versions of a new landing page.

The first version was more marketing-oriented, with the product featured prominently in the offer.

The second version focused on customer value—giving customers a sense of what they’d get out of the purchase, how it would help them, and what would happen if they decided to act.

The results were pretty surprising: version one had a conversion rate of 6%. Version two? 12%.

But here’s the really interesting part: we already knew that making the product more prominent would increase conversions—but when we looked at the data from a customer’s point of view, something different was happening.

The folks who saw version two told us that they liked the offer—but it didn’t solve their problem, which is what they’d come to solve on our site.

Their journey started with a problem and ended with an offer. We had asked them to make an emotional decision, not a rational one.

6. Don’t over-promise

Go easy on the adjectives like “world-class” or “exceptional” in favor of actionable items like “average wait time is only 2.5 minutes.”

And for goodness sake, avoid empty promises.

In an effort to be helpful but not fluffy, I made a list of things not to include in your journey map:

Don’t advocate for change. Instead, provide leaders with evidence of why things need to go a certain way.

Don’t clutter the canvas with too many elements. Pick three or five metrics that are really meaningful and actionable; otherwise, people will get lost in the weeds.

Don’t make it so easy to get the help that you take away the reason to do so.

Eliminate barriers like frequently asked questions instead of providing answers immediately where folks are already looking, like on Facebook or Twitter.

7. Use your customer’s voice—and theirs alone —to describe problems and opportunities

Data is great for discovery.

But when you’re crafting your map, it’s important to tell a story about why something is happening and how that situation could be improved, or what needs fixing.

Don’t use clunky phrases like “customer experience” or “happy customers.” And avoid passive phrasing, like saying “our brand has grown significantly.”

Let the data speak for itself without trying to oversimplify it.

8. Look at the whole picture—both digitally and physically

Look across channels, mediums, and interactions to glean insights about how people really experience your product or service in the real world.

And consider your company’s digital persona as well—what does the physical space look like?

Are there places where people are standing in line?

Are there materials on the tables?

What does that all mean for your brand?

9. Get help with your Customer Journey!

Don’t go it alone. Even if you’re an expert storyteller, set aside some time to meet with a professional storyteller (or two) who can help you distill your story and make it more easily digestible by others.

If you’re not a writer, find someone who can help you write it so that no single person is responsible for the final version.

Everyone’s got an opinion, but if there’s only one voice—yours or someone trusted—all other perspectives will be filtered through that lens.

And finally, loop in your cross-functional team: product, design, sales, and marketing to help them understand how their roles impact the customer experience.

10. Sell it!

When you’re done crafting your map, make sure you communicate its value—and don’t forget to invite collaborators into the conversation and keep them engaged.

Encourage them to reflect on where your product or service fits into the story you’re telling and what they can do to make it better.

Don’t be afraid to ask for input when it comes to turning that data into something actionable and meaningful.

Make sure everyone understands how their individual efforts connect—and support one another in making meaningful change happen.

Your journey map represents an opportunity to align your team around a single story.

Just be sure to frame the problem and layout your expectations before you embark on this journey together!

Ali is a digital marketing blogger and author who uses the power of words to inspire and impact others. He has written for leading publications like Business2Community, Inc. Magazine, and Marketing Profs. When not writing, he enjoys spending time with his family.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map: 5 Best Practices

If you don’t feel that you have a lot of insight into your customers’ decisions, it may be because you don’t have it written down yet.

The solution: a customer journey map.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is a quick path for getting inside the minds of your customers. At its most basic, a customer journey map is a sequence of all the possible events that your customer goes through. That journey takes an individual from their first interaction with your company until the completion of the transaction.

What is a customer journey map?

The goal of the customer journey map is really to get a holistic view of what the customer is going through from their point of view and really what it’s like for them on a personal level, that human level.

– Kerry Bodine, Moz.com

You don’t know much about the customer journey until you can write it down. The map is where that happens. This map gives anyone who reads it instant access into what’s going on with a specific type of customer at any point.

By mapping out this journey, your company not only identifies the various aspects of its own sales funnel, but is then able to identify strengths and weaknesses along the way.

Best Practice #1: Set clear objectives for your map.

It starts with knowing why you’re making a customer journey map in the first place. Creating one for its own sake won’t yield any marketing benefits. But understanding your goals will help you use this map to generate all sorts of customer journey insights.

Your objectives should also be clear. What is it that you want the map to accomplish? Here are some sample questions for you to consider when choosing an objective:

Weak points: Can the map identify weak points in your sales funnel ? Can you use insights from this customer journey map to identify areas where you install feedback systems to learn what’s going wrong?

Insights: What do you want to learn from this customer journey map? Where are customers getting hung up, and what might you have guessed wrong about your customers?

Challenges: Where does your customer most meet resistance along the customer journey? What don’t they like about your brand? What are their hangups?

Best Practice #2: Profile your personas and define your goals

How much do you know about your customers?

Only about 50% of companies report that they have a strategy for penetrating their key relationships. If you want a competitive advantage, it helps to learn just who your customers are.

Before you sit down and list all the touchpoints on your customer journey map, you’ll want to create a thorough customer persona. You may also see this all over the Internet, listed as a “buyer persona.”

There are a few ways to define your buyer persona :

Read through your analytics and get an idea of who’s already interacting with you.

Watch your competition. What sorts of personas are they appealing to? Do they make it obvious who they’re targeting?

Once you have a list of the demographics, needs, income, geography, and other details of your typical buyer, you’ll be able to construct a much more accurate customer journey map.

Best Practice #3: List out all the touchpoints.

A customer journey map lays out the various stages in which your customer might interact, including:

Awareness/acquisition: How is the customer finding you? Where is their first interaction with your brand?

Consideration: This is where the customer interacts with your content and considers whether to proceed with a purchase.

Purchase/Service: The point of the transaction. Does the customer buy? If not, do they first investigate by engaging your customer service?

Post-purchase: The purchase isn’t the end of the customer journey. Many companies follow up for feedback, loyalty bonuses, and look to convert the customer into a long-term follower.

You can split these individual touchpoints into different segments, but it’s important that each of these elements is present. You might also refer to old sales touch points—such as AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to construct a basic customer journey map.

You should also get detailed about your specific touchpoints, including all:

Landing pages

Social media platforms

Product pages

Calls to Action

If it all sounds overwhelming, refer to our article on managing a sales pipeline for your business.

Best Practice #3: Take the customer journey yourself.

Once you have a draft and the basic touchpoints mapped out, it’s time for you to put yourself in the shoes of a customer. That means approaching your company with fresh eyes.

As you test this journey, make sure that you keep a detailed list of notes of the positives and negatives you encounter along the way. You might even adopt the mindset of your buyer’s persona and try to approach things from their perspective. What sorts of concerns do they have? Does your customer journey actually address these concerns?

Make sure that you also take data-driven journeys. If you haven’t already, install analytics. The more you can install here, the better. Using resources to track email marketing, landing page traffic, and social media engagement will help you understand what the customer journey looks like not from your perspective, but theirs.

Best Practice #4: Perform A/B testing.

We had you set clear objectives for your map earlier because it’s essential that this map becomes more than just a document that you look at once. Use it to inform a variety of tests you run, especially when it comes to awareness, acquisition, and customer consideration.

A/B testing is the best way to measure your customers’ real feedback. By tracking the paths they do and don’t choose along your path, you’ll have answers to questions like your map’s weak points or unique customer challenges.

Related Blog:  How to use A/B testing to increase conversion rates

Best Practice #5: Continually implement any necessary changes.

The final step: action.

You have to make the changes to your customer journey that will have an impact on future customers. Remove the obstacles. Remove unnecessary steps. Add engagement points that they’re looking for.

The more you use A/B testing and data-driven insights to map your customer’s journey, the more insights you’ll gain into your customers. This will help you be a better seller—and a better business.

Related Posts

• Best Help Desk Software in 2023
• Top FAQs About Customer Feedback Software
• Best Business Process Management Software Tools in 2023

Marcin Kordowski

Hello, thanks for the superb article. Do you have more detail on how to analyze data, algorithms best practices?

Leave a Comment

Cancel reply.

Tell us what you think. To comment, please fill in the required fields marked with an asterisk (*). Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Recent Posts

• 10 Content Planning Tool FAQs And The Answers You Must Know
• Best App Integration Software in 2023
• App Integration Tool Made Easy: A List of Commonly Asked Questions
• A Comprehensive Guide To Using An Appointment Scheduling Tool – FAQs
• Top 12 FAQs About SEO Software: Get Answers to Your SEO Questions
• 10 Most Common Questions about Live Chat Tool Answered
• A/B Testing
• brand experience
• Business Growth
• Collaboration
• Contact Management
• Content Marketing
• Content Markting
• CRM Software
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Journey
• Customer Service
• Deal Tracking
• Email Marketing
• Gamification
• Getting Started
• Google Apps
• Infographics
• Integrations
• Landing Pages
• Lead Generation
• lead generation tools
• Lead Scoring
• Lockdown Series
• Marketing Automation
• Productivity
• Project Management
• push notification
• QR Code Generator
• Recruitment
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Gamification
• Small Business
• SMS Marketing
• Social Media
• Uncategorized
• URL Shortener
• Web Analytics
• Web Engagement

Keep Social

• Entries RSS
• Comments RSS
• WordPress.org

Best Practices for Journey Mapping

( 16 ratings )

Cohort-based Course

Boost the impact of your journey maps with principles & best practices derived from interviews with 60+ journey mappers!

Julie Francis

UX Researcher & Journey Mapping nerd; Founder of BellaVia Research, ex-Meta

Course overview

Learn to maximize impact of your maps/mapping!

Are you frustrated with the lackluster impact of your Journey Maps? This course will help you learn what you can do differently next time to ensure your mapping efforts result in impact.

Whether you are an early or late-stage, in-house or independent UX Researcher, this course has something for you. You'll learn the 4 principles for maps with impact, plus best practices to help ensure your mapping delivers impact to your clients or colleagues. These principles and best practices are derived from over 60 interviews with people who have been involved with journey mapping as researchers, designers, and stakeholders.

This course does not focus on design. (I'm a researcher, not a designer!) I'll show you lots of examples ranging from low-polish to high-polish, low-detail to high-detailed maps...including simple templates to help you make maps yourself, without bringing in a designer! Or, to get you well prepared so you are ready to partner with a designer.

Who is this course for

Qualitative UX Researchers: in-house, vendor-side or independent

People with at least a little knowledge about journey mapping (and maybe some experience)

YOU! Quant UXRs, Market Researchers, Designers, Product Managers are welcome! But, heads up, this course is optimized for qualitative UXRs.

You'll learn the 4 principles for maps with impact, plus best practices for each

Principle #1: journey maps need to be focused.

A high impact journey map has a clear reason for existing: clear objectives, audience, etc. When people don't take the time to get focused, it shows. You need to be clear and aligned on what you are mapping, why you are mapping it, how it will be used, etc.

Principle #2: Maps need to be based in Data

You might put a stake in the ground with a "strawman" map based on hypothesis, but you'll be much better off basing your map on a very solid understanding of people's process, needs, pain points, etc. Use existing & bespoke qual, quant, & data analytics to inform your map.

Principle #3: Maps need to be Customized

Maps need to be tailored / customized based on their objective, their audience, etc. A micro-interaction or map for a design sprint will be very different than a map for senior leaders with the goal of impacting strategy.

Principle #4: Maps need to be well Integrated

So often maps land with a thud and fall short of their full impact because they are shipped and then abandoned. It's very important to help your team/client learn how to use the map and how to integrate it into their existing processes. e.g., for design sprints, roadmapping, etc

And one more underlying principle that underlies all of the others: Maps need to be collaborative

What's a main differentiator for maps with impact? Collaboration. The involvement of diverse team members throughout the entire process - from planning, through research, early mapping, and launch...

Course syllabus

What students are saying, meet your instructor.

UX Researcher

Best practices for Journey Mapping was born from a talk that Julie and her then-client Jeanne Bard gave at UXPA. For that talk, Julie and Jeanne interviewed 30 journey mapping practitioners, to learn their advice for how to ensure journey maps are worth the time & effort they take to make. Since then, Julie has interviewed another 30-ish people. This course is based off the learned wisdom of people who have been there, done that, and learned from their successes & mistakes. Julie has taught Best Practices for Journey mapping to hundreds of people...in person, via zoom, and once as an avatar in Virtual Reality!

Be the first to know about upcoming cohorts

Get reimbursed

Bulk purchases

Course schedule: live instruction & hands-on activities to reinforce learning

12+ hours over one week.

9:00 - 11:30 PST

Kickoff the week with an intro to Journey Mapping. After a short lecture on Principle #1: Focused, we'll look at real examples of journey maps. We'll finish the day by putting what we learned about the importance of Focus into action by creating a Journey Mapping brief.

9:00 - 11:30 pst

We'll begin with a lecture about Principle #2: Data-based, and discuss the types of data you can use to inform your maps. After instruction on how to gather qualitative research insights, we'll put it into practice: first conducting, then analyzing, journey-focused interviews.

After a short lecture on Principle #3: Customized, we'll use the insights gathered from Day 2 to create a first draft journey maps in Mural.

9:00 - 12:00 PST

There is no lecture on Thursday. You'll continue working in small groups or individually on your journey map, using the tool or template of your choice.

We wrap up the week with discussion of Principle #4: Integrated, with case studies and suggestions for what you can do to "activate" a journey map in your org (or your client's org). You'll end the week poised to ensure maximum impact of your journey maps, and journey mapping.

Principles for Journey Maps with Impact

Get this free resource, learning is better with cohorts.

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to help each other elevate their craft

Learn by doing

Via interactive live and asynchronous activities, you'll put your learning into practice

Learn from & share with your peers

In addition to learning from the 60+ interviews Julie has conducted with journey mappers, you'll have an opportunity to share your own successes, failures and lessons learned...and learn from others!

At the conclusion of the course, you'll be invited to join Julie's Best Practices for Journey Mapping slack community, to keep learning (and sharing!)

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is this course not recorded.

This is a small, cohort based course with lots of hands-on activities & discussion. To create an open learning environment that respects the privacy of participants, the course is not recorded.The course materials include the deck with full speaker notes.

What happens if I can’t make a live session?

Sometimes students have to miss live sessions due to work or other conflicts. life happens! There's no way to make up the live hands-on activities with your peers, but I can send you the decks (with speaker notes) if you miss lectures.

I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?

2.5 hours per day for 5 days straight, typically 9-11:30 PST.

This live course is a blend of lectures and hands-on activities, all of which build on what comes before. And, it's not recorded (for participant privacy). If you are not able to make all sessions, let me know what you'll miss & we will find a workaround!

What’s the refund policy?

• Life happens! Got a work or other conflict? A full refund is available up to one week before the start of the course. (This gives me time to find someone off the waitlist to fill your spot.)
• 50% refund if requested before Day 3 of the 5 day course
• I want you to feel you got value from the course. if you aren't completely satisfied, let me know!

Stay in the loop

Sign up to be the first to know about course updates.

Join waitlist

What you’ll get out of this course

The importance of collaboration.

You'll learn why collaboration is key for journey mapping (it's more about the mapping than the map), and get ideas on how you can make journey mapping more collaborative through the entire process

How to get focused via a mapping brief

You'll learn the 6 facets to cover in a mapping brief (aka, project plan), including Why, For Whom, What, Who, When, & With Whom (and you'll walk away with a template you can use for your own mapping projects!)

How to uncover users' journeys via in-depth interviews

You'll learn how to use a simple emotional trend line to capture user journeys in interviews. And you'll put it into practice in a real interview.

How to analyze data to create a journey map

You'll learn how to use affinity diagramming in a digital whiteboarding tool to organize your research insights and identify key components of a map: what the user is thinking, feeling, doing...what the user needs...what's working, what's not...etc.!

How to customize a map

You'll learn how maps are customized based on the objectives, audience, fidelity of the data, and company/team culture. And you'll walk away with templates you can use as a starting point for your own maps, plus leads on journey mapping tools!

How to activate a map

You'll learn why it's best to avoid "throwing it over the fence" and instead bringing your team along for the journey of journey mapping. You'll get workshop ideas for helping team members use the map to go from understanding users to solutions for key user needs & pain points.

Powered by Maven

Prospect Journey Mapping Best Practices

Home » Prospect Journey Mapping Best Practices

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations are seeking innovative ways to harness the power of data to understand and serve their customers better. Prospect journey mapping is a critical component of this endeavor, allowing businesses to visualize the path their customers take from initial awareness to final purchase and beyond. In this write-up, we will delve into the best practices for prospect journey mapping, ensuring that your organization can create a seamless and insightful experience for both your team and your customers.

Understanding the Prospect Journey

The journey a prospect takes is not just a linear path from point A to B; it is a complex web of interactions, emotions, and decisions. To effectively map this journey, it is essential to gather comprehensive data from various customer touchpoints. This includes analyzing customer interviews, conversations, and feedback across multiple channels. By doing so, you can identify common pain points, desires, and behaviors that influence the customer's decision-making process.

One innovative approach to gathering and analyzing this data is through AI-assisted tools. These tools can transcribe customer interactions, analyze them for sentiment, and identify key themes and patterns in near real-time. This capability not only accelerates the time to insights but also ensures that the data is comprehensive and actionable.

Best Practices for Prospect Journey Mapping

Gather Comprehensive Data : Start by collecting data from all customer touchpoints, including interviews, surveys, and digital interactions. Ensure that this data is detailed and includes attributes necessary for effective segmentation.

Identify Key Themes : Use AI tools or manual analysis to identify common themes across customer data. Look for patterns that reveal customer pain points, desires, and goals.

Segment Your Customers : To tailor the journey for different customer segments, classify your customers based on relevant criteria such as revenue, employee size, and industry. This allows for a more personalized approach to addressing their needs.

Visualize the Journey : Create a visual representation of the journey that highlights the stages your customers go through. Include the insights, pain points, and opportunities at each stage to provide a clear roadmap for your team.

Integrate Feedback into the CRM : Connect your customer feedback tools with your CRM to ensure that all insights are centralized and accessible. This integration enables a holistic view of the customer journey and facilitates better decision-making.

Leverage Real-Time Data : Utilize tools that provide real-time updates on customer sentiment and behaviors. This allows your team to respond promptly to changing customer needs and preferences.

Create Actionable Insights : Ensure that the insights derived from the data are actionable. Assign a score or prioritize insights based on their impact on customer satisfaction and your business goals.

Use Insights for Content Creation : Translate the insights from your prospect journey mapping into relevant content. This could include blog posts, case studies, or marketing strategies that resonate with your audience.

Continuously Refine the Journey : Prospect journey mapping is not a one-time exercise. Continuously collect and analyze data to refine the journey and ensure it remains relevant to your customers' evolving needs.

Prospect journey mapping is a powerful tool for organizations seeking to deepen their understanding of customer needs and behaviors. By following the best practices outlined above, businesses can create a prospect journey that is insightful, personalized, and ultimately leads to a stronger connection with their customers. Remember to leverage the latest tools and technologies to gather comprehensive data, generate actionable insights, and create content that truly speaks to your audience. With a well-crafted prospect journey map, your organization can navigate the complexities of customer interactions and pave the way for sustained growth and success.

Improving B2B Customer Experience with Journey Templates

Related posts, transcribe mp3 file to text with microsoft word.

Transcribe mp4 file to text with Google Meet

Transcribe mp3 file to text with google docs, leave a reply cancel reply.

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

Unlock Insights from Interviews 10x faster

• Request demo
• Get started for free

Customer Journey Mapping: Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield

In accordance with SQM Group's Privacy Policy , you must check the box to demonstrate express consent.

Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans (Federal Employee Program) - Customer Journey Mapping Best Practice Case Study

SQM Group Helped Regence Achieve:

The Call Center is Performing at the World-Class Standard for Customer Service

Company Description

Regence serves more than two million members through Regence BlueShield of Idaho, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah, and Regence BlueShield (select counties in Washington).

Each health plan is a non-profit, independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Regence is part of a family of companies dedicated to transforming health care by delivering innovative products and services that change the way consumers nationwide experience health care.

Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans (Federal Employee Program) has 59 Customer Service Professionals (CSP) who handle member and provider calls and 10 Claims Experience Advocates (CEA) who receive claim inquiries from CSP and do back-office work.

First Call Resolution and Customer Satisfaction Results

Since 2015, we have steadily improved our First Call Resolution (FCR) rate from 74% to 86% and Customer Satisfaction (Csat – top box survey response) from 84% to 90%. As a result, SQM has certified us as a world-class customer service performing call center. To be certified as a world-class customer service performing call center, the FCR rate must be 80% or greater.

In addition, based on SQM's customer service benchmarking studies for 500 leading North American call centers, our FCR and Csat performance has consistently been at the top 5% level. Moreover, of the 500 call centers' SQM benchmarks, only 5% of their clients perform at the world-class FCR standard of 80% and Csat standard of 85%.   

In 2021, our world-class calls increased by 3% compared to 2020. The 2021 customer service improvement is remarkable when you considered in 2020; we were already performing at the world class FCR and Csat levels. The FCR and Csat improvement resulted from our customer journey mapping and ensuing people, process, and technology improvements.

Opportunity Statement

Our member (also known as a customer) journey mapping program is designed to identify opportunities to better serve and change how we work to promote a member-obsessed culture. We assess 6 to 8 member journey maps per year to improve customer service. In addition, we use non-First Call Resolution (FCR) interactions to identify opportunities to improve customer service.

As an example of a member journey that we mapped, our non-FCR analysis identified an opportunity to improve our member-submitted claims process. By identifying the painpoints in the process that drove unnecessary repeat calls, we were able to improve the information gathering process so that claims could be processed on their initial receipt. Utilizing customer journey mapping and incorporating non-FCR into the process ensures we focus on the right areas to improve customer service (e.g., FCR and Csat) and reduce operating costs (e.g., call avoidance) goals.  

The journey mapping of the member experiences visually tells us the story (e.g., moments of truth) or persona type experience over time. Furthermore, the member journey mapping helps us discover potential gaps and opportunities for achieving alignment on goals for change.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A journey map visually tells the story of a customer's experiences or persona over a period of time. Journey maps are valuable for helping discover opportunities and fail points for improving customer service. In addition, journey maps help achieve alignment on goals and required changes.

The essence of the customer experience (CX) journey map is to walk in the member's shoes as they interact with us using our call center. For example, our CX journey map focuses on specific interactions (e.g., medicare certification letter, member-submitted claim) that have been identified as having high non-FCR that need to be improved.

The journey map illustrates and describes the sequential activities or tasks that customers or employees experience when interacting with our call center. Each activity or task is plotted on the journey map on the horizontal axis. Furthermore, the journey map illustrates the customer's emotions associated with each activity or task on the vertical axis.

The journey map illustration for current and future member experience must be understandable to ensure the workgroup responsible for implementing new people, processes, and technology changes know what needs to be done.

How Does the Member Journey Mapping Work?

Our member journey mapping uses a holistic approach for tools, such as my SQM™ Contact Center FCR software, speech analytics, map illustration, and workgroup employees (e.g., leaders, managers, QA, and subject matter experts) to assist us in our journey mapping initiatives.

The starting point of a customer journey mapping initiative is to determine what customer interaction call reason we need to improve CX. To assist us in deciding which journey map we want to work on is based on SQM Group's voice of the customer (VoC) FCR research; it's the most accurate because it is from a customer perspective to determine non-FCR call reasons.

In addition, focusing on VoC non-FCR interactions for a specific call reason ensures that we are working on the areas that our members want us to improve. Furthermore, focusing on non-FCR repeat call reasons allows us to identify root causes that need improvement to increase the FCR rate and Csat rating.

We incorporate the FCR metric in the beginning, during, and after the customer journey mapping initiative. The FCR metric allows us to determine what to work on and provides insights into whether or not we have been successful in our member journey initiatives. Put differently; the FCR metric keeps the journey mapping workgroup focused on improving CX.

To validate that our workgroup journey mapping team will be improving the right failure or opportunity, a collaborative group consisting of leaders, managers, supervisors, and QA auditors will listen to non-FCR calls. The collaborative group assesses together what theme to work on, which is not always the highest repeat call reason frequency, but what is the impact on CX.

The leadership group has the authority on what failure or opportunity to journey map current and future CX. Part of the decision-making process is where they think they can improve CX. We use speech analytics at this phase to help quantify how often that non-FCR call reason frequency occurs and the member experience for a specific interaction.

For example, a member makes their claim but does not understand what they must do or what info to include. So, they call an agent to ask questions, finally send in the form, and it takes a long time to process, so they have to call back to get a status update. So, part of the project is to resolve claims quicker, so the customer doesn't have to call back to check.

Furthermore, after a repeat call reason has been chosen, the journey map group takes over the improvement initiative, bringing in subject matter experts on the topic. The group uses speech analytics to determine a sentiment score for each critical activity or task. Speech analytics is also unbiased in letting us know the scripting and what was said in specific scenarios.

The below journey map shows member-submitted claims opportunity that needs to be fixed. The problem to be fixed was members contact us to submit a claim for a nonparticipating provider, and then the claim is not processed due to missing information. The map shows the positive (e.g., happy face) and negative (e.g., unhappy face) member emotions they experience for each activity or task required (also known as moments of truth) for them to fill out a form and call the call center to submit a claim.

In this journey map, the member experienced negative emotions for receiving a claim denial, the member phoning the call center, and the agent reprocessing the claim for the member to be reimbursed for covered expenses.

JOURNEY MAP FOR MEMBER SUBMITTED CLAIMS OPPORTUNITIES TO BE FIXED

How to use the Journey Map Steps:

• Identify customer interaction to be mapped based on FCR insights  
• Determine the steps and sequence of steps in a customer interaction  
• For each step, identify questions, tasks, decisions, activities required, and for the company (behind the scenes activities that directly impact the customer's journey)  
• How did the customer rate the emotional experience of each step? 0 is neutral, plus 5 is extremely positive, and minus 5 is extremely negative. After each moment is rated, plot the steps along the timeline using the emotional scale  
• Draw a line connecting each point in the sequence  
• Identify which moments offer the most significant opportunity for redesign. Focus on the moments with the lowest emotional experience rating and the moments with the greatest opportunity to lift the line.

Tips. You can use this process to map one customer, multiple customers, or customer personas. You can use the journey map process for all touchpoints and interactions or just focus on critical moments of truth.

Journey Mapping Results

After completing the above journey map steps, we improved the member journey experience. The member impact goal was to eliminate claims returned for missing information and educate members before submitting a claim on what is needed.

As a result of FCR measurement as a validation, they improved the member-submitted claims call type by 4%, from 73% FCR to 77% FCR. Furthermore, we were also able to reduce the number of returned claims for a quality issue due to missing information from member-submitted claims by over 30%.

The below journey map illustrates the member experience after we fixed the problem with members submitting a claim for a nonparticipating provider, and then the claim is returned for missing information. In addition, we conducted a post changes journey map to assess member emotions with members submitting a claim to verify that our changes had a positive CX impact. The journey mapping results showed only positive emotions (e.g., happy face) for all the steps associated with submitting a claim.

JOURNEY MAP FOR MEMBER SUBMITTED CLAIMS OPPORTUNITIES AFTER FIXES ARE MADE

Journey Mapping Progress and Insights

To assist us in our member journey mapping initiatives, we have the workgroup assigned to the project complete a commitment progress and insights form, which is shared with management. We use this form to ensure we have effectively managed our journey mapping initiative. Furthermore, the form identifies the owner and the timeframe for the journey mapping initiative.

For example, the journey mapping form includes goals (e.g., What is the desired member impact?), targets (e.g., What was supposed to happen?), results (e.g., What actually happened?), achievements (e.g., At above or below expectations?), and insights (e.g., What has been learned?). If achievements are below expectations, a plan is developed to describe what actions we need to take to achieve our goals.

A best practice for journey mapping initiatives goals includes FCR and Csat metrics. Including FCR and Csat metrics allows us to understand the member CX performance prior to the interaction journey map improvement. In addition, after we made changes to the member journey map experience, it is essential to measure if we improved the CX by using the FCR and Csat metrics.

What has helped us successfully use journey mapping initiatives to improve CX is incorporating the FCR metric into the mapping process to understand what to improve and determine after we made changes if we improved CX. In addition, we keep the maps very simple, focusing on critical moments of truth that have the most significant impact on the member experience. Put simply, we ensure that our maps are easy to understand so that the workgroups that need to implement the changes can focus on making the changes that drive improvement instead of worrying about a complicated journey mapping process.

SQM Awards Received

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practice (Federal Employee Program): 2021 Call Center World Class FCR Certification (Federal Employee Program): 2021 Call Center World Class FCR Certification (Federal Employee Program): 2020