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The 7 best research methods for customer journey mapping

Getting authentic insights from customers is essential to effectively map out their journey. And understanding how users really interact with your product is the best way to provide tailored experiences that fit your customers’ diverse needs.

But it’s often hard to know where to begin the customer journey mapping research process and which methods to use.

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This article outlines the seven most effective research methods for customer journey mapping. Use our guide to prioritize the right qualitative and quantitative research processes for your needs—and implement them right away.

Use product experience insights to map your customer journey

Hotjar helps you understand your users by combining observational data with voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights

7 effective customer journey mapping research methods

A customer journey map is a visual representation of how your users engage with your brand, from initial discovery—like searching online for a solution to their problem—to browsing your site, trying out your product, making a purchase—and beyond. 

Make sure your customer journey maps are informed by user-centric research rather than assumptions and guesswork.

Carry out both qualitative and quantitative research using the methods below to create a map that accurately represents your users' product experience (PX):

Qualitative research methods

Quantitative research methods are essential for effective customer journey mapping: they provide hard data that’s easy to track and compare over time. But qualitative methods uncover the how and the why behind the numbers, helping you deeply understand your customers' experience.

Hotjar Product Designer Iga Gawronska stresses the importance of diving into customer emotions in research:

"I think it’s important to map out the actions, and also the emotions and thoughts of the people that perform the actions, your users."

Use the following four qualitative research methods to get an in-depth understanding of how customers engage with your brand online.

1. Customer interviews

Customer interviews are one-on-one conversations with people who actually use your product or service. Conducting them in-person often yields the best results because it’s easier to pick up on non-verbal cues and the interview can flow more naturally—but video conferencing with tools like Zoom is a good secondary option.

By engaging in an open-ended conversation with customers, you’ll get unexpected insights and granular details about your customer’s journey, which helps you empathize with the user experience (UX).

Structuring your user interviews in different stages can help get the conversation going. Start with a warm-up that establishes trust and builds rapport, then home in on your core questions, and end with more informal, concluding thoughts from both parties.

Input your results into a user research repository as you go, so you don’t get overwhelmed at the end of the interview process. Some researchers make simple spreadsheets in Google Sheets or Excel, while others use dedicated tools like EnjoyHQ or Dovetail .

Once you’ve aggregated your interview data, you’ll start to notice trends and commonalities between interviewees and understand how they’re engaging with key touchpoints in your customer journey and what’s most important to them.

Pro tip : use a transcription tool like Otter.ai to stay focused on conducting your interview without having to take detailed notes. Having a written record of interviews at your fingertips also speeds up your data organization and analysis later.

2. Remote observation

Remote observation lets researchers see how users are behaving using online tools like video calling and screen recordings.

Remote research is convenient for both researchers and participants—neither party has to leave the comfort of their home or workspace and they can do what they need to do when it suits their schedule. Using remote research gives you insights into how your customers interact with key touchpoints on the customer journey in their everyday environment and context.

Here are two effective ways to observe your customers’ journey remotely:

Use a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Google Meet and ask users to share their screen with you while they’re interacting with your site, app, or product. Draw on the data you gather to inform your customer journey map.

Use a product experience insights tool like Hotjar Session Recordings and watch playbacks of real users interacting with your site or product across an entire session, as you observe how they scroll, what attracts attention, and where they backtrack or bounce.

Recordings are particularly valuable tools to understand the customer journey because they let researchers observe users remotely without them feeling ‘watched’ and behaving differently than usual.  

Filter your Hotjar Recordings to show certain user sessions based on referrer URL, the landing page they visited, whether they’re a new or returning customer, their session, the specific action they take, their location, and u-turns. This helps you spot trends, understand behavior patterns for different user personas , and dig deeper into the customer journey.

#Hotjar Session Recordings are a great way to remotely research how people engage with your site as part of their customer journey.

3. Lab observation

In lab observation, the researcher observes the participant in person, either in a formal ‘lab’ setting or another professional, controlled environment.

Lab observation can be complicated to carry out because of the cost and logistics involved, and it’s often more time-consuming than remote methods. But it’s a valuable research technique, with a reduced risk of technical difficulties and a great opportunity to build a friendly rapport with participants.

If you op for lab observation, record your conversations with participants or use a note-taking tool like Notion or Evernote to write down your observations while the participant is interacting with the site or product, so it’s easy to find the data later. As the participant explores key customer journey touchpoints , take the opportunity to ask follow-up questions to understand why your test customers are making certain choices.

4. Qualitative surveys

Qualitative surveys usually involve asking open-ended questions that prompt detailed, long-form user responses. They give you great customer insights to inform your journey map, are easy to put together, inexpensive, and work well with large numbers of participants.

The success of your survey depends on the UX research questions you ask . 

It’s important not to (knowingly or unknowingly) ask leading questions, as you’ll likely get biased responses from your participants, which won’t help you in accurately mapping out your customers’ journey. Let’s imagine you ask a research participant the following survey question:

“Did our ‘sign up for a free trial’ button catch your attention on our homepage? Why?”

This doesn’t work because the participant can’t really answer your question freely: you’re implying that your homepage CTA button should have caught their attention, so they’re more likely to answer ‘yes.’ 

Instead, you should ask:

“What site element attracts your attention most on our homepage? Why?”

Or, if they’ve already converted:

“What made you decide to click the ‘sign up for a free trial’ button on the homepage?’

Here, you’re letting the research participant fill in the blanks on their own, which will get you a more accurate picture of their user experience.

Pro tip: use Hotjar’s Survey tool and s urvey templates to quickly and easily create your own qualitative surveys and get all the details about your customers’ journey—in their own words. Filter responses and set up automations for your team to receive alerts when you get certain survey responses to uncover trends in your user data all in one place.

#Use Hotjar Surveys to connect with customers and hear about all the stages in their journey with your brand.

Use Hotjar Surveys to connect with customers and hear about all the stages in their journey with your brand.

Quantitative research methods to complement qualitative data

While qualitative research is the best way to build empathy with your customers and get a holistic view of their product experience, you also need quantitative data to get an objective, granular understanding of key moments in the customer journey.

Use these three quantitative research methods to gather precise information about your customers’ digital journey with your product:

5. Website analytics

Because website analytics show you hard data about how people are interacting with your site, they’re a great resource for customer journey mapping research. Investigate these key metrics to better understand how your users move across touchpoints:

Traffic source: are customers searching for your site on Google, clicking on a landing page, or visiting from a social media channel?

Bounce rate : do visitors arrive on your site and navigate away soon after? Or do they stay for a while, browse, and take a conversion action, like making a purchase?

New vs. returning customers: how many users are new leads and how many are existing customers?

Session duration: how long do customers spend engaging with your site on average?

While website analytics don’t explain why your users are taking certain actions, they clearly show what customers are doing on your site —and how they got there .

For best results, use a PX insights platform like Hotjar to fill in the gaps between the numbers with rich qualitative insights.

Matthew Nixon, managing director of  Molzana , illustrates how teams can combine website analytics and qualitative research tools for optimal customer journey mapping:

"Using tools like Hotjar adds color to our quantitative analysis. Before, events like button clicks, scroll rate, and video plays might not have been tagged. This is where Hotjar comes in; click and scroll maps allow us to quantify user behavior in a much more granular way, which complements the trend data we collect from web analytics."

Google Analytics is a great option for quantitative website or app data: it’s both powerful and relatively easy to set up and navigate. Use Hotjar’s Google Analytics integration to go deeper and gather both qualitative and quantitative insights to inform your customer journey map .

6. Quantitative surveys

Quantitative surveys ask customers closed-ended questions that can be answered quickly—by checking yes or no, typing in one word, or selecting a multiple-choice answer.

Quantitative surveys can take a bit longer to put together, but they’re quick and easy for customers to fill out. With Hotjar, you can quickly create quantitative surveys by modifying questions from our question bank, and build surveys your users can address in a click or two, without disrupting their experience. 

While quantitative surveys don’t give you the same level of in-depth information as qualitative, open-ended questions, they’re helpful to get a statistical overview on the customer journey, or if you’ve already identified a potential problem and want to better understand the issue.

Imagine you've discovered, through qualitative research, that several customers report difficulties browsing your website. Place a quantitative survey on key web or product pages to get more details about the exact issues they’re experiencing with questions like:

Did you experience friction when browsing our website?

What was the biggest problem you experienced when browsing our website:

Difficult to navigate on mobile

Bugs or glitches

Confusing navigation menu

Pages loaded slowly or incorrectly

I had trouble finding what I wanted

Collecting enough responses to quantitative questions helps you prioritize the most important elements of the customer experience to map out an improved user journey.

7. Customer satisfaction scores

#Use Hotjar’s Feedback widgets to conduct on-site NPS surveys without disrupting UX.

Measuring customer satisfaction is important to understand which touchpoints are working well for your users, and which you need to improve. In particular, Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is a great indicator of overall customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

Researchers calculate this metric by asking existing customers how likely they are to recommend your product to their network on a scale of 1 to 10. Their ratings help you understand overall customer satisfaction levels, and also split users up into specific groups:

Promoters (9-10): your biggest fans. They’re highly likely to stay loyal to your company and recommend you far and wide.

Passives (7-8): middle of the road. These customers are more or less satisfied with your brand but would consider jumping ship to a competitor who meets their needs better.

Detractors (0-6): these users may have had a negative experience with your company that’s made them unlikely to return—they may even write negative reviews or testimonials about your product or services. However, negative feedback is also useful as it helps you understand which parts of your customer journey you need to focus on and fix.

While NPS scores give you an idea of how well your brand is serving your customers, they don’t tell you why customers are so loyal they regularly recommend your company. That’s why it’s a good idea to ask a couple of quick follow-up questions in your NPS survey , like “What can we do to improve your score?”

Use Hotjar’s non-intrusive Feedback widgets and Survey tools to get NPS survey responses from customers while they’re navigating your site.

Once you’ve calculated your NPS score, use your findings to identify how you can improve the customer experience and where the customer journey needs updating. For example, if many customers complained about friction in the checkout process, that’s a good indication you should focus on optimizing that part of your on-site customer journey.

Deep customer knowledge makes for easy journey mapping

Thorough research is the best way to build a customer journey map that lets you truly understand your customers and their user experience. It’s essential to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to dig deep into how customers are behaving on your site and understand why and how they’re carrying out certain actions.

Combine these methods to understand your customers’ experiences from different perspectives and prioritize creating a stellar user journey.

Hotjar helps you understand your users by combining observational data with voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights.

FAQs about customer journey mapping research

Why is customer journey mapping research important.

Customer journey mapping is important because it helps teams understand how customers interact with their brand in the wild. Customer journey mapping research makes sure your maps are based on accurate user data rather than guesswork and assumptions. By doing research, teams dig deep into the customer experience, uncover the touchpoints that are most impactful, and optimize their products or services accordingly.

What methods are good for customer journey mapping research?

Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to get a full picture of how customers experience brand touchpoints and engage in strong customer journey mapping research. Here’s what we recommend:

Qualitative methods: customer interviews, remote observation, lab observation, and qualitative surveys

Quantitative methods: website analytics, customer satisfaction scores like Net Promoter Scores®, and quantitative surveys

Is quantitative or qualitative research better for customer journey mapping?

Neither quantitative nor qualitative research is better for customer journey mapping—both approaches complement each other and should be used together to get a full picture of how customers are behaving—and why they’re behaving that way. While qualitative research excels in uncovering genuine customer feelings and emotions, quantitative research is valuable because it gives research teams hard data that’s easily measurable and useful for analytics and spotting trends.

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

Aaron Agius

Published: May 04, 2023

Free Customer Journey Template

customer journey mapping research

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

Thank you for downloading the offer.

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2021? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map right at the last second?

person creating a customer journey map

The thing is -- understanding your customer base can be extremely challenging. And 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.

Download Now: Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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While it isn't possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a very handy tool for keeping track of important 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?

Customer journey stages.

  • What is a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

What's included in a customer journey map, steps for creating a customer journey map.

  • Types of Customer Journey Maps
  • Customer Journey Map Best Practices

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

  • Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

customer journey mapping research

  • 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 to consider, evaluate, and decide to purchase 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.

Free Customer Journey Map Template

Fill out this form to access the free templates..

For example, at HubSpot, our customer's journey is divided into 3 stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

HubSpot customer journey map stages

The stages may not be the same for you — in fact, your brand will likely come up with a set of unique stages of the customer journey. But where do you start? Let's take a look.

Generally, there are 5 phases that customers go through when interacting with a brand or a product: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

Customer journey stages

1. Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage, customers realize they have a problem. At this point, they may not know that they need a product or service, but they will begin doing research either way.

During this stage of the customer journey, brands should deliver educational content to help customers diagnose a problem and offer potential solutions. Your aim should be to help customers alleviate their pain point, not encourage a purchase.

Some educational content that I've created in the past are:

  • How-to articles and guides
  • General whitepapers
  • General ebooks
  • Free courses

Educational content may also be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Social media
  • Search engines

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers have done enough research to realize that they need a product or service. At this point, they begin to compare brands and offerings.

During this stage, brands should deliver product marketing content to help customers compare different offerings and, eventually, choose their product or service. The aim is to help customers navigate a crowded marketplace and move them toward a purchase decision.

Product marketing content may include:

  • Product listicles
  • Product comparison guides and charts
  • Product-focused white papers
  • Customer success stories or case studies

Product marketing content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Your website
  • Conferences

3. Decision Stage

In the decision stage, customers have chosen a solution and are ready to buy.

During this stage, your brand should deliver a seamless purchase process to make buying products as easy as possible. I wouldn't recommend any more educational or product content at this stage — it's all about getting customers to make a purchase. That means you can be more direct about wanting customers to buy from you.

Decision-stage content may include:

  • Free consultations
  • Product sign-up pages
  • Pricing pages
  • Product promotions (i.e "Sign up now and save 30%")

Decision-stage content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

4. Retention Stage

In the retention stage, customers have now purchased a solution and stay with the company they purchased from, as opposed to leaving for another provider.

During this stage, brands provide an excellent onboarding experience and ongoing customer service to ensure that customers don't churn.

Retention-stage strategies may include:

  • Providing a dedicated customer success manager
  • Making your customer service team easily accessible
  • Creating a knowledge base in case customers ever run into a roadblock

Retention-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

5. Loyalty Stage

In the loyalty stage, customers not only choose to stay with a company — they actively promote it to family, friends, and colleagues. The loyalty stage can also be called the advocacy stage.

During this phase, brands should focus on providing a fantastic end-to-end customer experience. This should span from your website content to your sales reps all the way to your social media team and your product's UX.

Most importantly, customers become loyal when they've achieved success with your product — if it works, they're more likely to recommend your brand to others.

Loyalty-stage strategies may include:

  • Having an easy-to-navigate website
  • Investing in your product team to ensure your product exceeds customer expectations
  • Making it easy to share your brand with others via a loyalty or referral program
  • Providing perks to continued customers, such as discounts

Loyalty-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Your products

To find out whether your customers have reached the loyalty stage, try a Net Promoter Score survey , which asks one simple question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?" To deliver this survey, you can use customer feedback software like Service Hub .

Now, let's get to the good stuff. Let's talk about creating your customer journey map.

What is the customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer's experience with a company. It also provides insight into the needs of potential customers at every stage of this journey and the factors that directly or indirectly motivate or inhibit their progress.

The business can then use this information to improve the customer's experience, increase conversions, and boost customer retention.

Now, the customer journey map is not to be confused with a UX journey map. But, for clarity, let's distinguish these two below.

What is UX journey mapping?

A UX journey map represents how a customer experiences their journey toward achieving a specific goal or completing a particular action.

For example, the term "UX journey mapping" can be used interchangeably with the term "customer journey mapping" if the goal being tracked is the user's journey toward purchasing a product or service.

However, UX journey mapping can also be used to map the journey (i.e., actions taken) towards other goals, such as using a specific product feature.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

While the customer journey might seem straightforward — the company offers a product or service, and customers buy it — for most businesses, it typically isn't.

In reality, it's a complex journey that begins when the customer becomes problem-aware (which might be long before they become product-aware) and then moves through an intricate process of further awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

The customer is also exposed to multiple external factors (competitor ads, reviews, etc.) and touchpoints with the company (conversations with sales reps, interacting with content, viewing product demos, etc.).

Keep in mind that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.

By mapping this journey, your marketing, sales, and service teams can understand, visualize, and gain insight into each stage of the process.

You can then decrease any friction along the way and make the journey as helpful and delightful as possible for your leads and customers.

Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a customer journey map — the visual representation of a company's customer experience. It compiles a customer's experience as they interact with a business and combines the information into a visual map.

The goal of this process is to draw insights that help you understand how your customers experience their journeys and identify the potential bottlenecks along the way.

It's also important to note that most customer journeys aren't linear. Instead, buyers often experience a back-and-forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey.

Let's look at the stages that you should include in any customer journey.

  • The Buying Process
  • User Actions
  • User Research

1. The Buying Process

To determine your customers' buying process, you'll want to pull data from all relevant sources (prospecting tools, CMS, behavior analytics tools, etc.) to accurately chart your customer's path from first to last contact.

However, you can keep it simple by creating broad categories using the typical buying journey process stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — and mapping them horizontally.

2. Emotions

Customer journey map template service

Whether the goal is big or small, remember your customers are solving a problem. That means they're probably feeling some emotion — whether that's relief, happiness, excitement, or worry.

Adding these emotions to the journey map will help you identify and mitigate negative emotions and the pain points that cause them.

On HubSpot's journey map , we use emojis to represent potential emotions at different stages of the customer journey. 

3. User Actions

customer journey mapping: user actions

This element details what a customer does in each stage of the buying process. For example, during the problem-awareness stage, customers might download ebooks or join educational webinars.

Essentially, you're exploring how your customers move through and behave at each stage of their journey.

4. User Research

customer journey mapping: user research

Similar to the last section, this element describes what or where the buyer researches when they are taking action.

More than likely, the buyer will turn to search engines, like Google, to research solutions during the awareness stage. However, it's important to pay attention to what they're researching so you can best address their pain points.

5. Solutions

customer journey mapping: solutions

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 the life of your customer, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company's buyer persona. Not only will this lead to improvements to your product, but also a better 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 would recommend creating a buyer persona . This is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics representing 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 at the ready.

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

Some great ways to get valuable customer feedback are questionnaires and user testing. The important thing is to only reach out to actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services and 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 would recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a UX journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company — so 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.

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 UX 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 also need to 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.

Customer-Journey-map-meeting

HubSpot's free customer journey map template makes it easier than ever to visualize the buyer's journey. It saved me some time organizing and outlining my customer experience and it made it clear how a website could impact my user's lives. 

The customer journey map template can also help you discover areas of improvement in your product, marketing, and support processes.

Download a free, editable customer journey map template.

Types of Customer Journey Maps and Examples

There are four types of customer journey maps , each with unique benefits. Pick the one that makes the most sense for your company.

Current State

These customer journey maps are the most widely used type. They visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience while interacting with your company. They're best used for continually improving the customer journey.

Customer Journey Map Example: Current State Journey Map

Image Source

Day in the Life

These customer journey maps visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience in their daily activities, whether or not that includes your company.

This type gives a broader lens into your customers' lives and what their pain points are in real life.

Day-in-the-life maps are best used for addressing unmet customer needs before customers even know they exist. Your company may use this type of customer journey map when exploring new market development strategies .

Customer Journey Map Example: Day in the Life

Future State

These customer journey maps visualize what actions, thoughts, and emotions that your customers will experience in future interactions with your company. Based on their current interaction with your company, you'll have a clear picture of where your business fits in later down the road.

These maps are best for illustrating your vision and setting clear, strategic goals.

Customer Journey Map Example: Future State Journey Map Example

Service Blueprint

These customer journey maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including people, policies, technologies, and processes.

Service blueprints are best used to identify the root causes of current customer journeys or the steps needed to attain desired future customer journeys.

Customer Journey Map Example: Service Blueprint journey map

If you want a look at a real customer journey map that HubSpot has used recently, check out this interview we conducted with Sarah Flint, Director of System Operations at HubSpot. We asked her how her team put together their map (below) as well as what advice she would give to businesses starting from scratch. 

Hubspot customer journey map examle

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

  • Set a goal for the journey map.
  • Survey customers to understand their buying journey.
  • Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.
  • Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.
  • Review and update each journey map after every major product release.
  • Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

1. Set a goal for the journey map.

Determine whether you aim to improve the buying experience or launch a new product. Knowing what the journey map needs to tell you can prevent scope creep on a large project like this.

2. Survey customers to understand their buying journey.

What you think you know about the customer experience and what they actually experience can be very different. Speak to your customers directly, so you have an accurate snapshot of the customer's journey.

3. Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.

Sometimes, customers aren't aware of their specific pain points, and that's where your customer service reps come in.

They can help fill in the gaps and translate customer pain points into business terms you and your team can understand and act on.

4. Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.

It's easy to assume each customer operates the same way, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Demographics, psychographics, and even how long someone has been a customer can determine how a person interacts with your business and makes purchasing decisions.

Group overarching themes into buyer personas and create a UX journey map for each.

5. Review and update each journey map after every major product release.

Every time your product or service changes, the customer's buying process changes. Even slight tweaks, like adding an extra field to a form, can become a significant roadblock.

So, reviewing the customer journey map before and after implementing changes is essential.

6. Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

Customer journey maps aren't very valuable in a silo. However, creating a journey map is a convenient way for cross-functional teams to provide feedback.

Afterward, make a copy of the map accessible to each team, so they always keep the customer top of mind.

Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success .

Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping.

1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

Rather than discovering customers through outbound marketing, you can have your customers find you with the help of inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing involves tactics targeted at generalized or uninterested audiences and seeks to interrupt the customers' daily lives. Outbound marketing is costly and inefficient. It annoys and deters customers and prospects.

Inbound marketing involves creating helpful content that customers are already looking for. You grab their attention first and focus on the sales later.

By mapping out the customer journey, you can understand what's interesting and helpful to your customers and what's turning them away.

2. You can create a new target customer base.

You need to understand the customer journey properly to understand your customers' demographics and psychographics.

It's a waste of time and money to repeatedly target too broad of an audience rather than people who are actually interested in your offering.

Researching the needs and pain points of your typical customers will give you a good picture of the kinds of people who are trying to achieve a goal with your company. Thus, you can hone your marketing to that specific audience.

3. You can implement proactive customer service.

A customer journey map is like a roadmap to the customer's experience.

It highlights moments where people experience delight and situations where they might face friction. Knowing this ahead of time allows you to plan your customer service strategy and intervene at ideal times.

Proactive customer service also makes your brand appear more reliable. For example, when I worked in customer support, we would anticipate a surge in tickets around the holidays. To be proactive, we'd send out a message to customers letting them know about our team's adjusted holiday hours. We would aalso tell them about additional support options if we were unavailable and what to do if an urgent problem needed immediate attention.

With expectations set, customers won't feel surprised if they're waiting on hold a little longer than usual. They'll even have alternative options to choose from — like a chatbot or knowledge base — if they need to find a faster solution.

4. You can improve your customer retention rate.

When you have a complete view of the customer journey, it's easier to pick out areas where you can improve it. When you do, customers experience fewer pain points, leading to fewer people leaving your brand for competitors.

After all, 33% of customers will consider switching brands after just one poor experience.

UX journey mapping can point out individuals on the path to churn. If you log the common behaviors of these customers, you can start to spot them before they leave your business.

While you might not save them all, it's worth the try. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

5. You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company.

As your company grows, it can be tricky to coordinate all your departments to be as customer-focused as your customer service, support, and success teams are. That's because each department has varying goals, meaning they might not be prioritizing customer needs -- they might focusing on website traffic, leads, product signups, etc.

One way to overcome this data silo is to share a clear customer journey map with your entire organization. The great thing about these maps is that they map out every single step of the customer journey, from initial attraction to post-purchase support. And, yes, this concerns marketing, sales, and service. 

For more examples of customer journey maps, read on to the next section for a few templates you can use as a baseline for your company's map. 

Customer Journey Mapping Examples

To help guide your business in its direction, here are examples to draw inspiration from for building out your customer journey map.

1. HubSpot's Customer Journey Map Templates

HubSpot's free Customer Journey Map Templates provide an outline for companies to understand their customers' experiences.

The offer includes the following:

  • Current State Template
  • Lead Nurturing Mapping Template
  • A Day in the Customer's Life Template
  • Customer Churn Mapping Template
  • Customer Support Blueprint Template

Each of these templates helps organizations gain new insights into their customer base and help make improvements to product, marketing, and customer support processes.

Download them today to start working on your customer journey map.

free editable customer journey map template

2. B2B Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map clearly outlines the five steps Dapper Apps believes customers go through when interacting with them.

As you can see, it goes beyond the actual purchasing phase by incorporating initial research and post-purchase needs.

B2B customer journey map example

This map is effective because it helps employees get into the customers' minds by understanding the typical questions they have and the emotions they're feeling.

There are incremental action steps that Dapper Apps can take in response to these questions and feelings that will help it solve all the current problems customers are having.

3. Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Example

This fictitious customer journey map is a clear example of a day-in-the-life map.

Rather than just focusing on the actions and emotions involved in the customer's interaction with the company, this map outlines all the actions and emotions the customer experiences on a typical day.

ecommerce customer journey map example

This map is helpful because it measures a customer's state of mind based on the level of freedom they get from certain stimuli.

This is helpful for a company that wants to understand what its target customers are stressed about and what problems may need solving.

4. Future B2C Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map, designed for Carnegie Mellon University, exemplifies the usefulness of a future state customer journey map. It outlines the thoughts, feelings, and actions the university wants its students to have.

future BTC customer journey map

Based on these goals, CMU chose specific proposed changes for each phase and even wrote out example scenarios for each phase.

This clear diagram can visualize the company vision and help any department understand where they will fit into building a better user experience.

5. Retail Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map shows an in-depth customer journey map of a customer interacting with a fictitious restaurant.

It's clear that this style of map is more comprehensive than the others. It includes the front-of-stage (direct) and back-of-stage (non-direct or invisible) interactions a customer has with the company, as well as the support processes.

customer journey map example for retail

This map lays out every action involved in the customer experience, including those of the customer, employees directly serving diners, and employees working behind the scenes.

By analyzing how each of these factors influences the customer journey, a company can find the root cause of mishaps and problem-solve this for the future.

To get your business from point A — deciding to focus on customer journeys — to point B — having a journey map — a critical step to the process is selecting which customer mindset your business will focus on.

This mindset will determine which of the following templates you'll use.

1. Current State Template

If you're using this template for a B2B product, the phases may reflect the search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

For instance, in our Dapper Apps example, its phases were research, comparison, workshop, quote, and sign-off.

current state customer journey map template

2. Day in the Life Template

Since this template reflects all the thoughts, feelings, actions, needs, and pain points a customer has in their entire daily routine — whether or not that includes your company — you'll want to map out this template in a chronological structure.

This way, you can highlight the times of day at which you can offer the best support.

Get an interactive day in the life template.

day-in-the-life

3. Future State Template

Similar to the current state template, these phases may also reflect the predicted or desired search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

Since this takes place in the future, you can tailor these phases based on what you'd like the customer journey to look like rather than what it currently looks like.

Get an interactive future state template.

Customer journey map template future state

4. Service Blueprint Template

Since this template is more in-depth, it doesn't follow certain phases in the customer journey.

Instead, it's based on physical evidence — the tangible factors that can create impressions about the quality and prices of the service — that often come in sets of multiple people, places, or objects at a time.

For instance, with our fictitious restaurant example above, the physical evidence includes all the staff, tables, decorations, cutlery, menus, food, and anything else a customer comes into contact with.

You would then list the appropriate customer actions and employee interactions to correspond with each physical evidence.

For example, when the physical evidence is plates, cutlery, napkins, and pans, the customer gives their order, the front-of-stage employee (waiter) takes the order, the back-of-stage employee (receptionist) processes the order, and the support processes (chefs) prepare the food.

Get an interactive service blueprint template.

Customer journey map template service

5. Buyer's Journey Template

You can also use the classic buyer's journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — to design your customer journey map.

Get an interactive buyer's journey template.

Customer journey map template buyer

Charter the Path to Customer Success

Once you fully understand your customer's experience with your business, you can delight them at every stage of their buying journey. Remember, many factors can affect this journey, including customer pain points, emotions, and your company's touchpoints and processes.

A customer journey map is the most effective way to visualize this information, whether you're optimizing the customer experience or exploring a new business opportunity to serve a customer's unrecognized needs.

Use the free templates in this article to start mapping the future of customer success at your business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August, 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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How to Research and Build a Customer Journey Map: 201

In this three-part blog series, we’re breaking down one of our favourite service design tools: Customer Journey Maps! We cover:

Customer Journey Mapping 101: What are customer journey maps, and why do you need them?

Customer Journey Mapping 201: How to Research and Build a Customer Journey Map (this post)

Customer Journey Mapping 301: Designing for the future, evolving your map, and making it actionable

In this post, we’ll really get into the “nuts and bolts” of customer journey research and map building.

We will explore:

The best mixed method research to collect data for your journey map

Goal-setting and research questions to ask to get at the data points you need

Anatomy of a good journey map

How to visually bring it all together

Begin with the end in mind, before you start.

It’s very important to identify and set clear goals to truly reap the benefits of customer journey mapping. The clearer and more precise your research goals are, the clearer your findings will be.

A few examples of strong research goals include:

To better understand the factors that contribute to first-year renewal of an online membership/subscription

To better understand the decision-making process for first-time home buyers seeking a mortgage provider

To uncover why such a high volume of customers are making calls to a company’s support centre

Remember to also strategically select the type of journey map you’d like to build (we explore this at length in Part One of this series ), and the user groups/personas you should be targeting with your research.

Research and Data Collection

Conducting mixed methods research is the best way to gather information from and about your customers to build an effective and insightful journey map. As you conduct user research, try to ensure that, as much as possible, you are capturing their journey––the step-by-step process that each individual user takes during their day (or month/year) as they interact with a service or product.

As a rule of thumb, you should also seek to engage in “data triangulation”. This means using three (or more) data sources (e.g. a survey, user interviews, and a workshop) to ensure your findings are robust.

Here are the five top research methods we recommend for building journey maps:

Surveys are great when you have easy access to a large pool of target participants (e.g. through a newsletter or mailing list). Surveys also allow you to gather quantitative as well as qualitative feedback all at once.

User Interviews (in-depth and one-on-one) will allow you to flesh out journey maps in detail. In another blog post , we explore how to conduct effective and well-organized one-on-one interviews with users/customers.

Observations (contextual research) involve observing participants in their “natural habitat”, like a fly on the wall. We highlight our best practices for conducting observations here .

Diary studies involve giving participants a “diary” or workbook to complete on a daily or weekly basis. Read more about how to conduct an effective diary study here .

Participatory workshops involve hosting a workshop with users where you have them actually map out the journey themselves. We explore best practices for holding a design workshop in a previous post , as well.

Asking the Right Questions

Once you’ve selected the research methods you’ll use to collect data for your journey map – what questions should you ask? This will depend on your goals.

In general, the key information you’ll need to collect from the research activities to build your journey map includes:

Demographic and segment information

User goals, motivations, and needs

Journey Information: Questions related to specific touchpoints, activities, and tasks, e.g. “Please describe a typical day in your life”, “Tell me about your experience with X,Y, Z”, or “Can you describe the steps you took to ….”

User Pain Points: What are the most frustrating parts of their journey? How do users feel, and what are they thinking? Try to capture verbatim quotes here from users, as well as images/video if you are shadowing or conducting a diary study.

A few more things to consider as you conduct research:

Consider the time interval you would like to map. Are you seeking to map a user’s interaction with a brand over a year? A few months? One day?

Consider the level of detail you need to show in the map. For example, if you are trying to understand a “day-in-the-life” of a user (e.g. a person’s experience arriving at and watching a sporting event), you could shadow them and capture their day in a lot of detail. But if you are mapping a journey over three months, the level of detail will naturally be less (otherwise the map will be too long and overwhelming for readers). Remember that participants will also have more difficulty recalling high levels of detail from activities they engaged in one week vs. one month ago.

Journeys are easier to map in chronological order . As you ask questions and observe users, consider the order in which they perform activities/tasks.

Anatomy of a Journey Map

Let’s break down the components of a strong customer journey. While each journey map and project is different, there are certain pillars we typically include:

Personas –– Whose journey are you mapping out ?

Phases –– Are there any distinct phases in the customer journey, or a collection of tasks that mark a transition? For example, for a first-time home buyer, phases may include “Researching Mortgages”, “House Search”, “Financing” “Offer and Purchase”, and “After Purchase”.

Motivations –– What are the users’ motivations as they go through each phase? For a house purchaser, a motivation may be “Find the best financing deal”.

Tasks and activities –– What are all of the tasks users need to complete in order to accomplish their goal?

Thoughts and Feelings –– How do users feel as they go about their tasks and proceed through each phase? Stressed, anxious, excited? You can include verbatim quotes from your research here.

Touchpoints –– What are the users’ points of interaction with the organization? (E.g. website, in-person meeting, phone call with an agent, and so on).

Tools and technology –– What apps are customers using for a particular task?

Pain points –– What challenges are users experiencing as they accomplish certain tasks?

Key Moments –– What are pivotal moments in the user’s journey that make or break their experience? Similarly, what are the happy and memorable moments?

Opportunities –– Ideas, solutions, and improvements to the pain points.

Note: Adding “Opportunities” to your journey map is important. Each pain point in theory could be turned into an opportunity. Yet, to be truly useful, we recommend running a co-design workshop or brainstorming session with stakeholders and/or users to come up with valuable solutions to the pain points and real opportunities for innovation.

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Click through to explore a detailed customer journey map…

Building your Journey Map

Now that you’ve completed the research, there are FOUR key steps to building your customer journey map.

1. Sketch out individual journey maps for your users, based on the research. Ideally, you’ll do this as a debrief after each interview and/or observation session 
. No two journeys are exactly alike, and as you perform more research and talk to more customers, their journeys will certainly begin to blur. By sketching and mapping out individual journeys after each interview or observation session, you can more easily compare and contrast individual journeys and locate patterns (see Step #2 below) to create your final customer journey map, which will be a representation of all customer journeys combined.

2. Pull out the tasks/pain points/etc. users went through to accomplish their goal
. As you read through interview transcripts or research notes, identify commonalities in the journeys. What were the common tasks, pain points, thoughts, and feelings users experienced? Then, determine in chronological order all of the tasks and activities that your final journey will include IN DETAIL.

3. Start building your journey map! We recommend using a spreadsheet for this step in the process. In your spreadsheet:

The first column should include the following headers: Phases, Motivations, Main Tasks, Sub-Tasks, Touchpoints, Tools & Tech, Pain Points, and Opportunities (plus any other pieces of information you want to include).

Start filling out the “Main Tasks” row in chronological order for the entire journey. Each task should take up one cell (you can place Sub-Tasks in the row below a main task).

Once your tasks are filled in, go back to the beginning and add in other details, like which pain points users experienced for a particular task, which touchpoints they interacted with for that task, and so on.

Determine your high-level phases and list them out across the top of your spreadsheet (each phase will include multiple tasks).

Complete your spreadsheet by filling out as much detail as you can in each of the rows.

4. Visualize the journey map and bring it to life. Now that you have a skeleton of your journey map (in the form of a spreadsheet), you’re ready to visualize it. Use a program like Adobe Illustrator, or have a graphic designer help.  To ensure your journey map is not overly text heavy, make sure readers can look at the journey and understand its overall meaning “at-a-glance”, with added details for readers who look more closely.

Use icons where possible to represent things like tools and technology, touchpoints, and pain points––or even smiley/sad faces next to the thoughts and feelings. This will make your map more readable at a glance. Ensure to include a legend that explains each icon.

Use colours for each phase or row/section . For large journey maps, you’ll want readers to be able to easily identify different sections: colour is a good way of segmenting the map.

Connect the dots. Use lines or arrows to indicate the order of steps, and to tie tasks together so that it is clear which tasks are completed first, second, third, and so on.

Highlight key moments or critical pain points. Make pivotal moments in the journey, both good and bad, stand out from the rest of the map. When a reader is quickly scanning, they will immediately notice these key moments and stop to read more.

Tip: Print out a large version of your customer journey map. We can confirm that there are few documents more impressive and show-stopping in an office than a 10 ft. customer journey map banner. Everyone will stop as they walk by, and this will build interest. Printed journey maps can also serve as an “anchor” for teams when they need inspiration, or when they have trouble remembering the research insights. 

In the third and final segment of our Customer Journey Mapping blog series , we explore how to make your journey map highly actionable and how to evolve your map as your organization or team moves forward.

Resources we like…

Typeform and SurveyMonkey are tools we like for digital surveys

Capital One Design’s Guide to Experience Mapping and Baseline Journeys

Mapping Experience: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams by Jim Kalbach. Outwitly CEO/founder Sara Fortier’s work is featured on page 97!

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan M. Brown

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How to Create a Customer Journey Map? Template, Examples

Appinio Research · 01.11.2023 · 32min read

How to Create a Customer Journey Map Template Examples

Are your customers truly at the heart of your business strategy? Understanding their experiences and interactions is key to success. In this guide, we'll navigate the intricate landscape of customer journey mapping, equipping you with the tools and insights needed to create exceptional customer experiences. From deciphering customer touchpoints to harnessing the power of emotions, we'll dive deep into every aspect of crafting an effective customer journey map. Let's explore how to transform your customer relationships and elevate your brand.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a powerful tool used by businesses to gain a holistic understanding of their customers' experiences throughout their interactions with the brand. It is a visual representation that illustrates the entire journey, from the initial awareness stage to post-purchase engagement.

Components of a Customer Journey Map

  • Stages:  A typical customer journey is divided into stages, including awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase phases. These stages represent the key milestones in a customer's interaction with your brand.
  • Customer Actions:  Within each stage, customer actions are documented. These actions can include visiting your website, researching products, making a purchase, seeking customer support, and providing feedback.
  • Touchpoints:  Customer touchpoints are the points of contact where interactions occur. These can be digital, such as website visits and social media interactions, or physical, like in-store visits and phone calls.
  • Emotions and Pain Points:  Effective journey maps also incorporate the emotional aspects of the customer experience. They highlight where customers may feel frustration, delight, confusion, or satisfaction.
  • Moments of Truth:  These are pivotal moments in the journey that significantly influence a customer's perception of your brand. Moments of truth can be positive, such as exceptional customer service, or negative, like unresolved issues.

Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is more than just a visual representation; it is a strategic tool with significant business implications. Here's why it's essential:

  • Enhanced Customer Experience:  By understanding the customer journey, businesses can identify pain points and areas for improvement, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable experience for customers.
  • Improved Customer Retention:  Identifying moments of truth and addressing pain points can foster customer loyalty and increase retention rates.
  • Higher Conversion Rates:  A well-optimized customer journey can boost conversion rates at critical stages, such as during the consideration and purchase phases.
  • Data-Driven Insights:  Customer journey maps are grounded in data and feedback, providing actionable insights that guide decision-making and strategic planning.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration:  The process of creating a customer journey map encourages collaboration among different departments within a company, ensuring a unified focus on the customer.
  • Competitive Advantage:  A thorough understanding of the customer journey can differentiate your brand from competitors by delivering a superior and personalized experience.

In summary, customer journey mapping is a vital tool for businesses looking to deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance brand loyalty, and remain competitive in today's market. It provides valuable insights that drive strategic decision-making and continuous improvement efforts.

How to Prepare for Customer Journey Mapping?

Once you've recognized the importance of customer journey mapping, it's time to prepare for the process ahead. Proper preparation lays the foundation for a successful journey mapping endeavor.

1. Define Your Goals and Objectives

Before diving into customer journey mapping, you must be clear about what you aim to achieve. Your goals and objectives should drive the entire process. Consider these questions:

  • What specific insights do you hope to gain from the journey mapping process?
  • Are you looking to improve specific touchpoints, reduce customer churn, or enhance the overall customer experience?
  • How will you measure the success of your journey mapping efforts?

By defining your goals upfront, you can focus your efforts and ensure that the resulting map aligns with your business objectives.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Understanding your audience is at the core of effective customer journey mapping. Your customers are unique, and their experiences may vary widely. To create a customer journey map that resonates, you must define your target audience . Consider factors such as:

  • Demographics :  Who are your typical customers in terms of age, gender, location, and income?
  • Behavior:  What actions do they take when interacting with your brand?
  • Preferences:  What are their communication preferences and channels of choice?

The more detailed your understanding of your audience, the more accurate and actionable your customer journey map will be.

3. Gather Relevant Data and Information

Data is the lifeblood of customer journey mapping. To create a comprehensive map, you need to gather as much relevant data as possible. Sources of data may include:

  • Customer Surveys:   Collect customer feedback to understand their pain points, preferences, and expectations.
  • Customer Support Tickets:  Analyze support tickets to identify common issues and areas for improvement.
  • Website Analytics:  Dive into website data to see how customers navigate and interact with your online presence.
  • Sales Data:  Examine sales data to gain insights into the customer buying process.

Effective data collection is essential for a successful customer journey mapping initiative, and Appinio can be your trusted ally in this endeavor. Appinio empowers you to gather valuable customer insights swiftly and efficiently. With access to a diverse pool of respondents, you can tailor your surveys to target specific audience segments, ensuring that you capture a comprehensive range of perspectives.

Harness the power of data-driven decision-making with Appinio, and transform your customer journey mapping into a dynamic and responsive strategy. Dive into the world of insights – book a demo today!

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The depth and quality of your data collection will significantly impact the accuracy of your customer journey map. Remember to maintain data privacy and security throughout this process.

4. Assemble Your Team

Customer journey mapping is not a solo venture. It requires a cross-functional team with diverse perspectives and expertise. Assemble a team that may include members from:

  • Marketing:  Marketers can provide insights into customer segmentation and messaging strategies.
  • Sales:  Sales teams can shed light on the buying process and customer interactions.
  • Customer Support:  Customer support representatives can share knowledge about common customer issues and pain points.
  • Product Development :  Product teams can contribute insights into product-related touchpoints and improvements.

Collaboration across these functions ensures a holistic view of the customer journey. Remember that each team member brings a unique perspective that can lead to valuable insights.

With your preparations complete, you're now ready to embark on the journey mapping process.

What is the Customer Journey?

Now that you've laid the groundwork for your customer journey mapping project, it's time to delve into the core concepts that will enable you to create a comprehensive and effective customer journey map.

Customer Touchpoints

Customer touchpoints are the various interactions and moments of contact that customers have with your brand throughout their journey. These touchpoints can occur across multiple channels, both online and offline.

To effectively map the customer journey, it's essential to identify and analyze these touchpoints:

  • Website Visits:  Consider how customers navigate your website, which pages they visit, and where they drop off.
  • Social Media Engagement:  Examine how customers interact with your brand on social media platforms and the sentiment of their interactions.
  • Email Communication:  Evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaigns and the responses they generate.
  • In-Person Interactions:  If you have physical locations or provide face-to-face services, assess the customer experience during in-person interactions.

By mapping customer touchpoints, you gain insights into the various channels customers use to engage with your brand. This insight is invaluable for improving the overall customer experience.

Customer Emotions and Pain Points

Understanding customer emotions and identifying pain points are central to creating a customer journey map that resonates with your audience. Emotions play a significant role in shaping the customer experience, so consider the following:

  • Emotional Highs and Lows:  At which touchpoints do customers experience high levels of satisfaction, delight, or frustration?
  • Moments of Confusion:  Identify areas where customers might feel lost or encounter difficulties.
  • Customer Feedback:  Analyze customer feedback, reviews, and surveys to uncover recurring emotional themes.

By acknowledging and addressing these emotional aspects of the journey, you can take steps to enhance the overall experience and create more positive interactions.

Customer Needs and Expectations

To create a customer journey map that genuinely aligns with your audience, you must pinpoint your customers' specific needs and expectations at each stage of their journey.

Consider the following questions:

  • Desired Outcomes:  What are customers trying to achieve at each stage of their journey?
  • Expectations:  What do customers expect from your brand at different touchpoints?
  • Information Needs:  What kind of information are customers seeking, and where do they expect to find it?

Understanding customer needs and expectations allows you to tailor your map to meet those requirements effectively. It also helps you identify opportunities for proactive engagement and value delivery.

As you move forward with customer journey mapping, keep these three fundamental elements in mind. They will serve as the building blocks for creating a detailed and actionable map that will help you enhance the overall customer experience.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map?

Now that you've gained a solid understanding of the customer journey and its key components, it's time to roll up your sleeves and start crafting your customer journey map. We will guide you through the critical steps involved in the creation process.

1. Select the Right Template or Format

Choosing the appropriate template or format for your customer journey map is the first crucial step. The choice depends on factors such as the complexity of your customer journey and the level of detail you wish to include. Common formats include:

  • Visual Diagrams:  These are graphical representations of the journey, often resembling flowcharts. They provide a visual overview of the customer's path.
  • Spreadsheets:  Spreadsheets can be used to create detailed, data-driven customer journey maps. They allow you to input specific metrics, timelines, and customer actions.
  • Specialized Software:  Various software tools are available specifically designed for customer journey mapping. These tools often come with pre-built templates and features for collaboration.

Consider your team's familiarity with the chosen format and ensure it aligns with your objectives. The chosen format should facilitate the clear communication of insights.

2. Map the Customer Stages

To create an effective customer journey map, you need to identify and define the stages your customers go through when interacting with your brand. These stages typically include:

  • Awareness:  The initial stage where customers become aware of your brand or product.
  • Consideration:  Customers evaluate your offerings, comparing them with alternatives.
  • Purchase:  The stage where customers make a buying decision and complete a transaction.
  • Post-Purchase Experience:  After the purchase, customers assess their experience with your product or service.

Understanding these stages helps you structure your map and align it with the customer's journey from discovery to satisfaction.

3. Document Customer Actions

At each stage of the customer journey, document the specific actions customers take.

  • Visiting your website:  Track the pages they view and interactions they make.
  • Engaging on social media:  Note the types of engagement, such as likes, comments, or shares.
  • Making a purchase:  Record the product or service bought and the transaction details.
  • Providing feedback:  Document instances where customers offer feedback, whether positive or negative.

By documenting these actions, you create a roadmap illustrating how customers engage with your brand throughout their journey.

4. Identify Key Touchpoints

Key touchpoints are the critical moments of interaction between your brand and the customer. These touchpoints significantly influence the customer's perception of your brand. Examples of critical touchpoints might include:

  • Homepage visit:  The first impression customers have of your website.
  • Customer support interaction:  How effectively and empathetically your support team handles inquiries.
  • Checkout process:  The ease and efficiency of the purchasing process.
  • Product delivery or service fulfillment:  The customer's experience after making a purchase.

Identifying these touchpoints allows you to prioritize them when making improvements to the customer journey.

5. Incorporate Customer Emotions and Pain Points

As mentioned earlier, emotions and pain points are integral to understanding the customer journey fully. When creating your map, consider:

  • Emotional Impact:  Include icons or indicators that represent the emotional highs and lows experienced by customers at different stages and touchpoints.
  • Pain Points:  Highlight areas where customers might feel frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction.

By visualizing these emotional aspects, your map becomes more empathetic and actionable.

6. Highlight Key Moments of Truth

Moments of truth are pivotal points in the customer journey that significantly impact the overall experience. These moments can be both positive and negative. Examples of moments of truth include:

  • Resolution of a customer issue:  How effectively a problem is resolved can create a lasting impression.
  • Personalized recommendations:  Providing tailored suggestions can enhance the buying experience.
  • Timely communication:  Prompt responses to inquiries or order updates can boost customer satisfaction.

Identifying and emphasizing these key moments on your map helps ensure they are addressed and optimized.

With these steps, you're well on your way to creating a detailed and insightful customer journey map that will serve as a valuable tool for enhancing the customer experience.

Customer Journey Map Template

Creating a customer journey map begins with a well-structured template that serves as the foundation for your visualization. While every map should be customized to fit your specific business and industry , here's a basic template to get you started. You can adapt and expand upon it as needed.

1. Customer Persona

  • Name:  Give your customer persona a fictional name to humanize the journey.
  • Demographics:  Include details such as age, gender, location, and occupation.
  • Goals:  Outline the main objectives and needs of this persona in their interactions with your brand.

2. Stages of the Journey

  • Awareness:  Describe how the customer becomes aware of your brand or product.
  • Consideration:  Detail the process of the customer evaluating your offerings.
  • Purchase:  Explain the steps leading to a successful transaction.
  • Post-Purchase:  Highlight the experiences and interactions that occur after the purchase is made.

3. Customer Actions

  • List the actions:  Within each stage, enumerate the specific actions the customer takes. This could include visiting your website, subscribing to your newsletter, or contacting customer support.
  • Timeline:  Create a timeline for each action to show the sequence of interactions.

4. Touchpoints

  • Identify touchpoints:  For each action, identify where the interaction takes place. It could be your website, social media, email, phone, or in-person.
  • Channels:  Specify the channels used, such as website, mobile app, social platforms, or physical locations.

5. Emotions and Pain Points

  • Emotions:  Capture the emotional state of the customer at each touchpoint, whether it's frustration, delight, or satisfaction.
  • Pain Points:  Document areas where the customer might encounter difficulties or experience frustration.

6. Moments of Truth

  • Highlight moments:  Identify the pivotal moments that significantly impact the customer's perception of your brand, both positive and negative.
  • Importance:  Indicate the level of significance or influence each moment holds.

7. Opportunities for Improvement

  • Actionable insights:  Based on the journey map, list potential improvements and opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
  • Responsible Parties:  Assign responsibility for each improvement to relevant departments or team members.

8. Monitoring and Measurement

  • Key Metrics:  Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure the success of your journey map.
  • Frequency:  Specify how often you will revisit the map and update it based on new data and insights.

Remember that this template is a starting point. You can customize it to align with your specific industry, customer segments, and objectives. As you gather data, engage with customers, and analyze feedback, your customer journey map will evolve and become a dynamic tool for improving the overall customer experience.

How to Interpret the Customer Journey Map?

With your customer journey map in hand, it's time to roll up your sleeves and extract valuable insights. Let's explore how you can analyze and interpret your map effectively.

1. Identify Opportunities for Improvement

Your customer journey map is a treasure trove of insights waiting to be uncovered. Start by closely examining the map and identifying areas where improvements can be made. These opportunities might include:

  • Pain Points:  Pinpoint where customers encounter frustration, delays, or roadblocks. These are prime areas for improvement.
  • Communication Gaps:  Identify instances where customers may not receive clear or timely information.
  • Missing Touchpoints:  Check for stages in the journey where there might be gaps in engagement or opportunities to connect with customers.

By identifying these opportunities, you set the stage for enhancing the overall customer experience and increasing customer satisfaction.

2. Address Pain Points and Friction

Once you've identified pain points in the customer journey, it's essential to take action to address them. Consider implementing the following strategies:

  • Streamlining Processes:  Simplify and optimize processes to reduce friction and make interactions smoother.
  • Improving Communication:  Enhance communication channels to ensure customers receive timely and relevant information.
  • Offering Solutions:  Develop solutions that directly address the specific pain points identified in the map.

Addressing pain points and friction not only improves the customer experience but also contributes to customer loyalty and retention.

3. Leverage Positive Touchpoints

Your customer journey map is not just about identifying issues—it's also about recognizing what's working well. Leverage the positive touchpoints to your advantage by:

  • Replicating Success:  Identify elements of these positive interactions that can be applied to other stages or touchpoints in the journey.
  • Enhancing Personalization:  Use insights from positive touchpoints to tailor your messaging and offerings to individual customer preferences.
  • Fostering Engagement:  Encourage more frequent and positive interactions by amplifying the aspects customers enjoy.

By amplifying positive touchpoints, you can create a consistently delightful customer journey that strengthens brand loyalty.

4. Align with Customer Needs and Expectations

Your customer journey map should be a reflection of your customer's needs and expectations. To ensure alignment, take the following steps:

  • Regularly Review and Update:  Keep your map current by revisiting it periodically to account for changes in customer behavior and market trends.
  • Customer Feedback Integration:  Continuously gather and incorporate customer feedback to adjust your map as necessary.
  • Measure Performance:  Use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Conversion Rates to evaluate how well your map aligns with customer needs and expectations.

Alignment with customer needs and expectations is the cornerstone of a successful customer journey map. It ensures that your efforts are customer-centric and result in a more satisfying experience.

With your insights gained and improvements identified, it's time to move on to the next step: implementing changes based on the customer journey map.

How to Implement Changes Based on the Customer Journey Map?

After thoroughly analyzing and interpreting your customer journey map, it's time to put your insights into action. Implementing changes based on your map is critical to enhancing the customer experience and achieving your goals.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration:  Collaborate across departments, including marketing, sales, customer support, and product development. Effective communication and teamwork are essential for successful implementation.
  • Prioritize Actionable Insights:  Not all insights from your map may be equally actionable or impactful. Prioritize changes that align with your objectives and have the potential to make the most significant difference in the customer journey.
  • Develop an Action Plan:  Create a detailed action plan that outlines the specific changes, responsibilities, timelines, and resources needed for implementation. This plan will serve as your roadmap for executing improvements.
  • Test and Iterate:  Before making broad changes, consider conducting pilot tests or small-scale implementations to assess their effectiveness. Continuously gather feedback and refine your approach based on results.
  • Monitor and Measure Impact:  Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of your changes. Monitor metrics such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score ( NPS ), and Conversion Rates to gauge success.
  • Feedback Loop:  Maintain an open feedback loop with customers to gather their thoughts and reactions to the implemented changes. Customer feedback is invaluable for fine-tuning your efforts.
  • Documentation:  Keep detailed records of all changes made based on your customer journey map. This documentation helps track progress and serves as a reference for future initiatives.

Examples of Effective Customer Journey Maps

To gain a deeper understanding of how customer journey mapping can be applied in real-world scenarios, let's explore some examples of companies that have successfully leveraged this strategy to enhance their customer experiences.

Example 1: Airbnb

Airbnb, the global vacation rental platform, excels at using customer journey mapping to create a seamless user experience. Their journey map spans from the moment a traveler starts searching for accommodation to the post-stay phase. Airbnb identified vital touchpoints, including website navigation, host communication, the booking process, and the stay itself.

How Airbnb Uses Journey Mapping:

  • Personalization:  Airbnb tailors its website content based on user preferences and search history, ensuring a personalized experience.
  • Clear Communication:  Hosts and guests can communicate through the platform, streamlining interactions and reducing friction.
  • Post-Stay Engagement:  After a stay, Airbnb encourages guests to leave reviews, fostering trust and transparency.

By mapping the entire journey and optimizing each touchpoint, Airbnb has become a customer-centric platform known for its user-friendly experience.

Example 2: Disney

Disney, a pioneer in the realm of customer experience, utilizes customer journey mapping extensively to create magical moments for visitors at their theme parks and resorts. Their journey map covers everything from planning a trip to the actual park experience and beyond.

How Disney Uses Journey Mapping:

  • Pre-Visit Engagement:  Disney engages customers even before they arrive by providing tools like the "My Disney Experience" app for planning and reservations.
  • In-Park Experience:  The company uses RFID technology for seamless entry, mobile food ordering, and interactive experiences within the park.
  • Post-Visit Connection:  Disney continues to engage with customers through personalized emails, offers, and surveys to gather feedback.

Disney's commitment to understanding and optimizing every stage of the customer journey contributes to its reputation as a world-class destination for families.

Example 3: Amazon

Amazon, the e-commerce giant , relies on customer journey mapping to enhance the online shopping experience. Their journey map encompasses the entire shopping process, from product discovery to delivery and customer support.

How Amazon Uses Journey Mapping:

  • User-Friendly Interface:  Amazon's website and mobile app are designed for ease of use, allowing customers to browse and purchase products effortlessly.
  • Recommendation Engine:  The company employs advanced algorithms to suggest products based on a customer's browsing and purchasing history.
  • Efficient Fulfillment:  Amazon's streamlined logistics and delivery services ensure prompt and reliable product deliveries.

Amazon's commitment to creating a frictionless shopping journey has made it a trusted and customer-centric e-commerce leader.

These examples showcase how diverse industries, from hospitality to entertainment and e-commerce, utilize customer journey mapping to create exceptional experiences. By examining their approaches, you can draw inspiration and adapt similar strategies to cater to your unique customer base and industry demands.

Remember, successful customer journey mapping is an ongoing process, so continue to refine and optimize based on customer feedback and evolving trends.

Continuous Customer Journey Optimization

Creating a customer journey map is not a one-and-done task; it's an ongoing process. To ensure your map remains relevant and effective in improving the customer experience, consider the following practices for continuous optimization:

  • Regularly Update the Customer Journey Map:  As your business evolves and customer preferences change, revisit and update your customer journey map accordingly. New touchpoints may emerge, and existing ones may evolve.
  • Gather Customer Feedback and Data:  Continue to collect feedback from your customers through surveys, reviews, and other channels. Use this data to refine your map and stay aligned with customer needs and expectations.
  • Adapting to Changing Customer Behaviors and Trends:  Keep a close eye on emerging trends, technologies, and shifts in customer behaviors. Be agile and ready to adjust your customer journey map to stay competitive and customer-focused.
  • Benchmark Against Competitors:  Analyze the customer journeys of your competitors to identify areas where you can differentiate and excel. Learn from both their successes and their mistakes.
  • Employee Training and Awareness:  Ensure your team members across various departments are well-trained and aware of the customer journey map. Encourage a customer-centric culture within your organization.
  • Regularly Review and Revise Metrics:  Assess the KPIs you use to measure the effectiveness of your customer journey map. Make sure they remain relevant and align with your evolving goals.
  • Experiment and Innovate:  Don't be afraid to experiment with new strategies, technologies, or approaches to enhance the customer journey. Innovation can lead to breakthrough improvements.

By continuously optimizing your customer journey map and staying attuned to your customers' evolving needs, you'll be better equipped to provide exceptional experiences that drive loyalty and business growth. Remember that customer journey optimization is an ongoing journey in itself.

Conclusion for Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping is your compass to providing remarkable experiences for your customers. Following the steps outlined in this guide, you can now create effective maps, identify opportunities, and continuously optimize the journey. Remember, it's all about putting your customers first and making their interaction with your brand a journey they'll cherish. As you embark on your journey mapping endeavors, remember that the customer experience is ever-evolving. Stay agile, gather feedback, and adapt to changing customer behaviors and expectations. By doing so, you'll not only meet but exceed your customers' needs, fostering loyalty and driving your business toward long-term success.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map in Minutes?

Unlock the full potential of customer journey mapping with Appinio , the real-time market research platform that empowers businesses to harness real-time consumer insights for smarter, data-driven decisions. In just minutes, you can conduct your market research effortlessly, making it an integral part of your daily decision-making process.

  • Instant Insights:  Move from questions to actionable insights in a matter of minutes, ensuring you have the most up-to-date information to shape your customer journey map.
  • User-Friendly:  No need for a PhD in research – our intuitive platform is designed for anyone to use, making it accessible to every member of your team.
  • Global Reach:  With access to over 90 countries and the ability to define the right target group from 1200+ characteristics, Appinio enables you to reach your desired audience wherever they are.

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The Definitive Guide To Forrester’s Journey Mapping Research

A guide to our 25 leading journey mapping reports.

Angelina Gennis, Senior Analyst

Journey maps are tools that support all six CX competencies. Beginners can use them to jump-start their CX efforts, while advanced practitioners never outgrow them. This guide offers the rationale for using journey maps to guide strategy, approaches for creating journey maps, guidance on implementing journey analytics, and what software is available for journey management. Whether you are familiarizing yourself with the concept for the first time or looking to expand your customer journey mapping practice, this guide will point you to the top 25 reports to read on how to create, socialize, operationalize, and manage journey maps.

Want to read the full report?

This report is available for individual purchase ($1495). Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.

What is a Customer Journey Map? [Free Templates]

Learn what the customer journey mapping process is and download a free template that you can use to create your own customer journey map.

A woman smiles at her mobile device while sitting on a curb.

Table of Contents

Mapping the customer journey can give you a way to better understand your customers and their needs. As a tool, it allows you to visualize the different stages that a customer goes through when interacting with your business; their thoughts, feelings, and pain points.

And, it’s shown that the friction from those pain points costs big: in 2019, ecommerce friction totaled an estimated 213 billion in lost US revenue .

Customer journey maps can help you to identify any problems or areas where you could improve your customer experience . In this article, we’ll explain what the customer journey mapping process is and provide a free template that you can use to create your own map. Let’s get started!

Bonus: Get our free, fully customizable Customer Experience Strategy Template that will help you understand your customers and reach your business goals.

What is a customer journey map?

So, what is customer journey mapping? Essentially, customer journey maps are a tool that you can use to understand the customer experience. Customer journey maps are often visual representations showing you the customer’s journey from beginning to end. They include all the touchpoints along the way.

There are often four main stages in your sales funnel, and knowing these can help you create your customer journey maps:

  • Inquiry or awareness
  • Interest, comparison, or decision-making
  • Purchase or preparation
  • Installation, activation, or feedback

Customer journey maps are used to track customer behavior and pinpoint areas where the customer experiences pain points. With this information uncovered, you can improve the customer experience, giving your customers a positive experience with your company.

You can use customer journey mapping software like Excel or Google sheets, Google Decks, infographics, illustrations, or diagrams to create your maps. But you don’t actually need customer journey mapping tools. You can create these maps with a blank wall and a pack of sticky notes.

Though they can be scribbled on a sticky note, it’s often easier to create these journeys digitally. That way, you have a record of your journey map, and you can share it with colleagues. We’ve provided free customer journey mapping templates at the end of this article to make your life a little easier.

The benefits of using customer journey maps

The main benefit of customer journey mapping is a better understanding of how your customers feel and interact with your business touchpoints. With this knowledge, you can create strategies that better serve your customer at each touchpoint.

Give them what they want and make it easy to use, and they’ll keep coming back. But, there are a couple of other great knock-on benefits too.

Improved customer support

Your customer journey map will highlight moments where you can add some fun to a customer’s day. And it will also highlight the pain points of your customer’s experience. Knowing where these moments are will let you address them before your customer gets there. Then, watch your customer service metrics spike!

Effective marketing tactics

A greater understanding of who your customers are and what motivates them will help you to advertise to them.

Let’s say you sell a sleep aid product or service. A potential target market for your customer base is young, working mothers who are strapped for time.

The tone of your marketing material can empathize with their struggles, saying, “The last thing you need is someone asking if you’re tired. But we know that over half of working moms get less than 6 hours of sleep at night. While we can’t give you more time, we know how you can make the most of those 6 hours. Try our Sleep Aid today and sleep better tonight.”

Building out customer personas will show potential target audiences and their motivation, like working moms who want to make the most of their hours asleep.

Product advancements or service improvements

By mapping your customer’s journey, you’ll gain insights into what motivates them to make a purchase or prevents them from doing so. You’ll have clarity on when or why they return items and which items they buy next. With this information and more, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products.

A more enjoyable and efficient user experience

Customer journey mapping will show you where customers get stuck and bounce off your site. You can work your way through the map, fixing any friction points as you go. The end result will be a smoothly-running, logical website or app.

A customer-focused mindset

Instead of operating with the motivation of business success, a customer journey map can shift your focus to the customer. Instead of asking yourself, “how can I increase profits?” ask yourself, “what would better serve my customer?” The profits will come when you put your customer first.

At the end of the day, customer journey maps help you to improve your customer experience and boost sales. They’re a useful tool in your customer experience strategy .

How to create a customer journey map

There are many different ways to create a customer journey map. But, there are a few steps you’ll want to take regardless of how you go about mapping your customer’s journey.

Step 1. Set your focus

Are you looking to drive the adoption of a new product? Or perhaps you’ve noticed issues with your customer experience. Maybe you’re looking for new areas of opportunity for your business. Whatever it is, be sure to set your goals before you begin mapping the customer journey.

Step 2. Choose your buyer personas

To create a customer journey map, you’ll first need to identify your customers and understand their needs. To do this, you will want to access your buyer personas.

Buyer personas are caricatures or representations of someone who represents your target audience. These personas are created from real-world data and strategic goals.

If you don’t already have them, create your own buyer personas with our easy step-by-step guide and free template.

Choose one or two of your personas to be the focus of your customer journey map. You can always go back and create maps for your remaining personas.

Step 3. Perform user research

Interview prospective or past customers in your target market. You do not want to gamble your entire customer journey on assumptions you’ve made. Find out directly from the source what their pathways are like, where their pain points are, and what they love about your brand.

You can do this by sending out surveys, setting up interviews, and examining data from your business chatbot . Be sure to look at what the most frequently asked questions are. If you don’t have a FAQ chatbot like Heyday , that automates customer service and pulls data for you, you’re missing out!

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You will also want to speak with your sales team, your customer service team, and any other team member who may have insight into interacting with your customers.

Step 4. List customer touchpoints

Your next step is to track and list the customer’s interactions with the company, both online and offline.

A customer touchpoint means anywhere your customer interacts with your brand. This could be your social media posts , anywhere they might find themselves on your website, your brick-and-mortar store, ratings and reviews, or out-of-home advertising.

Write as many as you can down, then put on your customer shoes and go through the process yourself. Track the touchpoints, of course, but also write down how you felt at each juncture and why. This data will eventually serve as a guide for your map.

Step 5. Build your customer journey map

You’ve done your research and gathered as much information as possible, now it’s time for the fun stuff. Compile all of the information you’ve collected into one place. Then, start mapping out your customer journey! You can use the templates we’ve created below for an easy plug-and-play execution.

Step 6. Analyze your customer journey map

Once the customer journey has been mapped out, you will want to go through it yourself. You need to experience first-hand what your customers do to fully understand their experience.

As you journey through your sales funnel, look for ways to improve your customer experience. By analyzing your customer’s needs and pain points, you can see areas where they might bounce off your site or get frustrated with your app. Then, you can take action to improve it. List these out in your customer journey map as “Opportunities” and “Action plan items”.

Types of customer journey maps

There are many different types of customer journey maps. We’ll take you through four to get started: current state, future state, a day in the life, and empathy maps. We’ll break down each of them and explain what they can do for your business.

Current state

This customer journey map focuses on your business as it is today. With it, you will visualize the experience a customer has when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product. A current state customer journey uncovers and offers solutions for pain points.

Future state

This customer journey map focuses on how you want your business to be. This is an ideal future state. With it, you will visualize a customer’s best-case experience when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product.

Once you have your future state customer journey mapped out, you’ll be able to see where you want to go and how to get there.

Day-in-the-life

A day-in-the-life customer journey is a lot like the current state customer journey, but it aims to highlight aspects of a customer’s daily life outside of how they interact with your brand.

Day-in-the-life mapping looks at everything that the consumer does during their day. It shows what they think and feel within an area of focus with or without your company.

When you know how a consumer spends their day, you can more accurately strategize where your brand communication can meet them. Are they checking Instagram on their lunch break, feeling open and optimistic about finding new products? If so, you’ll want to target ads on that platform to them at that time.

Day-in-the-life customer journey examples can look vastly different depending on your target demographic.

Empathy maps

Empathy maps don’t follow a particular sequence of events along the user journey. Instead, these are divided into four sections and track what someone says about their experience with your product when it’s in use.

You should create empathy maps after user research and testing. You can think of them as an account of all that was observed during research or testing when you asked questions directly regarding how people feel while using products. Empathy maps can give you unexpected insights into your users’ needs and wants.

Customer journey map templates

Use these templates to inspire your own customer journey map creation.

Customer journey map template for the current state:

customer journey map template

The future state customer journey mapping template:

future state customer journey mapping template

A day-in-the-life customer journey map template:

day-in-the-life customer journey map

An empathy map template:

empathy map template

A customer journey map example

It can be helpful to see customer journey mapping examples. To give you some perspective on what these look like executed, we’ve created a customer journey mapping example of the current state.

customer journey map example for "Curious Colleen Persona"

Buyer Persona:

Curious Colleen, a 32-year-old female, is in a double-income no-kids marriage. Colleen and her partner work for themselves; while they have research skills, they lack time. She is motivated by quality products and frustrated by having to sift through content to get the information she needs.

What are their key goals and needs? Colleen needs a new vacuum. Her key goal is to find one that will not break again.

What are their struggles?

She is frustrated that her old vacuum broke and that she has to spend time finding a new one. Colleen feels as though this problem occurred because the vacuum she bought previously was of poor quality.

What tasks do they have?

Colleen must research vacuums to find one that will not break. She must then purchase a vacuum and have it delivered to her house.

Opportunities:

Colleen wants to understand quickly and immediately the benefits our product offers; how can we make this easier? Colleen upholds social proof as a decision-making factor. How can we better show our happy customers? There is an opportunity here to restructure our website information hierarchy or implement customer service tools to give Colleen the information she needs faster. We can create comparison charts with competitors, have benefits immediately and clearly stated, and create social campaigns.

Action Plan:

  • Implement a chatbot so customers like Colleen can get the answers they want quickly and easily.
  • Create a comparison tool for competitors and us, showing benefits and costs.
  • Implement benefit-forward statements on all landing pages.
  • Create a social campaign dedicated to UGC to foster social proof.
  • Send out surveys dedicated to gathering customer feedback. Pull out testimonial quotes from here when possible.

Now that you know what the customer journey mapping process is, you can take these tactics and apply them to your own business strategy. By tracking customer behavior and pinpointing areas where your customers experience pain points, you’ll be able to alleviate stress for customers and your team in no time.

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Colleen Christison is a freelance copywriter, copy editor, and brand communications specialist. She spent the first six years of her career in award-winning agencies like Major Tom, writing for social media and websites and developing branding campaigns. Following her agency career, Colleen built her own writing practice, working with brands like Mission Hill Winery, The Prevail Project, and AntiSocial Media.

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Customer Journey Maps

What are customer journey maps.

Customer journey maps are visual representations of customer experiences with an organization. They provide a 360-degree view of how customers engage with a brand over time and across all channels. Product teams use these maps to uncover customer needs and their routes to reach a product or service. Using this information, you can identify pain points and opportunities to enhance customer experience and boost customer retention.

“ Data often fails to communicate the frustrations and experiences of customers. A story can do that, and one of the best storytelling tools in business is the customer journey map.” — Paul Boag, UX designer, service design consultant & digital transformation expert

In this video, Frank Spillers, CEO of Experience Dynamics, explains how you can include journey maps in your design process.

  • Transcript loading…

Customer Journey Maps – Tell Customer Stories Over Time

Customer journey maps are research-based tools. They show common customer experiences over time To help brands learn more about their target audience. 

Maps are incredibly effective communication tools. See how maps simplify complex spaces and create shared understanding.

Unlike navigation maps, customer journey maps have an extra dimension—time. Design teams examine tasks and questions (e.g., what-ifs) regarding how a design meets or fails to meet customers’ needs over time when encountering a product or service. 

Customer journey maps should have comprehensive timelines that show the most essential sub-tasks and events. Over this timeline framework, you add insights into customers' thoughts and feelings when proceeding along the timeline. The map should include: 

A timescale - A defined journey period (e.g., one week). This timeframe should include the entire journey, from awareness to conversion to retention.

Scenarios - The context and sequence of events where a user/customer must achieve a goal. An example could be a user who wants to buy a ticket on the phone. Scenarios are events from the first actions (recognizing a problem) to the last activities (e.g., subscription renewal).

Channels – Where do they perform actions (e.g., Facebook)?

Touchpoints – How does the customer interact with the product or service? What actions do they perform?

Thoughts and feelings – The customer's thoughts and feelings at each touchpoint.

A customer journey map helps you understand how customer experience evolves over time. It allows you to identify possible problems and improve the design. This enables you to design products that are more likely to exceed customers’ expectations in the future state. 

Customer Journey Map

How to Create a Customer Journey Map for Exceptional Experiences?

An infographic showcasing seven steps to create customer journey maps.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Define Your Map’s Business Goal

Before creating a customer journey map, you must ask yourself why you're making one in the first place. Clarify who will use it and what user experience it will address.

Conduct Research

Use customer research to determine customer experiences at all touchpoints. Get analytical/statistical data and anecdotal evidence. Leverage customer interviews, surveys, social media listening, and competitive intelligence.

Watch user researcher Ditte Hvas Mortensen talk about how user research fits your design process and when you should do different studies. 

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Review Touchpoints and Channels

List customer touchpoints (e.g., paying a bill) and channels (e.g., online). Look for more touchpoints or channels to include.

Make an Empathy Map

Pinpoint what the customer does, thinks, feels, says, hears, etc., in a given situation. Then, determine their needs and how they feel throughout the experience. Focus on barriers and sources of annoyance.

Sketch the Journey

Piece everything—touchpoints, timescale, empathy map output, new ideas, etc.). Show a customer’s course of motion through touchpoints and channels across the timescale, including their feelings at every touchpoint.

Iterate and Refine

Revise and transform your sketch into the best-looking version of the ideal customer journey.

Share with Stakeholders

Ensure all stakeholders understand your map and appreciate how its use will benefit customers and the organization.

Buyer Journey vs User Journey vs Customer Journey: What's the Difference?

You must know the differences between buyer, user, and customer journeys to optimize customer experiences. A customer journey map is often synonymous with a user flow diagram or buyer journey map. However, each journey gives unique insights and needs different plans.

Customer Journey

The customer journey, or lifecycle, outlines the stages a customer goes through with a business. This journey can vary across organizations but includes five key steps:

1. Awareness : This is the first stage of the customer journey, where the customers realize they have a problem. The customer becomes aware of your brand or product at this stage, usually due to marketing efforts.

2. Consideration : Once customers know about your product or service, they start their research and compare brands.

3. Purchase : This is the stage where the customer has chosen a solution and is ready to buy your product or service.

4. Retention : After the purchase, it's about retaining that customer and nurturing a relationship. This is where good customer service comes in.

5. Advocacy : Also called the loyalty stage, this is when the customer not only continues to buy your product but also recommends it to others.

The journey doesn't end when the customer buys and recommends your solution to others. Customer journey strategies are cyclical and repetitive. After the advocacy stage, ideally, you continue to attract and retain the customers, keeping them in the cycle. 

There is no standard format for a customer journey map. The key is to create one that works best for your team and product or service. Get started with customer journey mapping with our template:

This customer journey map template features three zones:

Top – persona and scenario. 

Middle – thoughts, actions, and feelings. 

Bottom – insights and progress barriers.

Buyer Journey

The buyer's journey involves the buyer's path towards purchasing. This includes some of the steps we saw in the customer journey but is specific to purchasing :

1. Awareness Stage : This is when a prospective buyer realizes they have a problem. However, they aren't yet fully aware of the solutions available to them.

2. Consideration Stage : After identifying their problem, the buyer researches and investigates different solutions with more intent. They compare different products, services, brands, or strategies here.

3. Decision Stage : The buyer then decides which solution will solve their problem at the right price. This is where the actual purchasing action takes place.  

4. Post-Purchase Evaluation : Although not always included, this stage is critical. It's where the buyer assesses their satisfaction with the purchase. It includes customer service interactions, quality assessment, and attitudinal loyalty to the brand.

All these stages can involve many touchpoints, including online research, social media interactions, and even direct, in-person interactions. Different buyers may move through these stages at different speeds and through various channels, depending on a wide range of factors.

User Journey

The user journey focuses on people's experience with digital platforms like websites or software. Key stages include:

1. Discovery : In this stage, users become aware of your product, site, or service, often due to marketing efforts, word-of-mouth, or organic search. It also includes their initial reactions or first impressions.

2. Research/Consideration : Here, users dig deeper, exploring features, comparing with alternatives, and evaluating if your offering suits their needs and preferences.

3. Interaction/Use : Users actively engage with your product or service. They first-hand experience your solution's functionality, usability, and usefulness to achieve their goal.

4. Problem-solving : If they encounter any issues, how they seek help and resolve their issues fall into this stage. It covers user support, troubleshooting, and other assistance.

5. Retention/Loyalty : This stage involves how users stay engaged over time. Do they continue using your product, reduce usage, or stop altogether? It includes their repeated interactions, purchases, and long-term engagement over time.

6. Advocacy/Referral : This is when users are so satisfied they begin to advocate for your product, leaving positive reviews and referring others to your service.

Download this user journey map template featuring an example of a user’s routine. 

User Journey Example

Understanding these stages can help optimize the user experience, providing value at each stage and making the journey seamless and enjoyable. 

Always remember the journey is as important as the destination. Customer relationships start from the first website visit or interaction with marketing materials. These initial touchpoints can influence the ongoing relationship with your customers.

A gist of differences between customer, buyer, and user journeys.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

Drawbacks of Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping is valuable yet has limitations and potential drawbacks. Recognize these challenges and create more practical and realistic journey maps.

Over-simplification of Customer Experiences

Customer journey maps often risk simplifying complex customer experiences . They may depict varied and unpredictable customer behaviors as straightforward and linear. This simplification can lead to misunderstandings about your customers' needs and wants. As a result, you might overlook customers' diverse and unique paths. 

Always remember that real customer experiences are more complex than any map. When you recognize this, you steer clear of decisions based on simple models.

Resource Intensity

Creating detailed customer journey maps requires a lot of resources and time. You must gather extensive data and update the maps to keep them relevant. This process can strain small businesses or those with limited resources. 

You need to balance the need for comprehensive mapping with available resources. Efficient resource management and prioritization are crucial to maintaining effective journey maps.

Risk of Bias

Creating customer journey maps carries the inherent risk of biases . These biases can arise from various sources. They can impact the accuracy and effectiveness of the maps. 

Alan Dix, an expert in HCI, discusses bias in more detail in this video.  

Common biases in customer journey mapping include:

Assumption Bias: When teams make decisions based on preconceived notions rather than customer data.

Selection Bias: When the data doesn’t represent the entire customer base..

Confirmation Bias : When you focus on information that supports existing beliefs and preferences. Simultaneously, you tend to ignore or dismiss data that contradicts those beliefs.

Anchoring Bias : Relying on the first information encountered (anchor) when making decisions.

Overconfidence Bias : Placing too much trust in the accuracy of the journey map. You may overlook its potential flaws.

These biases may misguide the team, and design decisions based on these maps might not be effective.

To address these biases, review and update journey maps with real user research data. Engage with different customer segments and gather a wide range of feedback to help create a more accurate and representative map. This approach ensures the journey map aligns with actual customer experiences and behaviors.

Evolving Customer Behaviors

Customer behaviors and preferences change with time. A journey map relevant today can become outdated. You need to update and adapt your maps to reflect these changes. This requires you to perform market research and stay updated with trends and customer feedback. 

Getting fresh data ensures your journey map stays relevant and effective. You must adapt to evolving customer behaviors to maintain accurate and valuable customer journey maps.

Challenges in Capturing Emotions

Capturing emotions accurately in customer journey maps poses a significant challenge. Emotions influence customer decisions, yet you may find it difficult to quantify and represent them in maps. Most journey maps emphasize actions and touchpoints, often neglecting the emotional journey. 

You must integrate emotional insights into these maps to understand customer experiences. This integration enhances the effectiveness of customer engagement strategies. You can include user quotes, symbols such as emojis, or even graphs to capture the ups and downs of the users’ emotions..

Misalignment with Customer Needs

Misalignments in customer journey maps can manifest in various ways. It can impact the effectiveness of your strategies. Common misalignments include:

Putting business aims first, not what customers need.

Not seeing or serving the varied needs of different customer types.

Not using customer feedback in the journey map.

Thinking every customer follows a simple, straight path.

Engage with your customers to understand their needs and preferences if you want to address these misalignments. Incorporate their direct feedback into the journey map. This approach leads to more effective customer engagement and satisfaction.

Over-Reliance on the Map

Relying too much on customer journey maps can lead to problems. These maps should serve as tools rather than definitive guides. Viewing them as perfect can restrict your responsiveness to customer feedback and market changes. Treat journey maps as evolving documents that complement direct customer interactions and feedback. 

Make sure you get regular updates and maintain flexibility in your approach. Balance the insights from the map with ongoing customer engagement. This approach keeps your business agile and responsive to evolving customer needs.

Data Privacy Concerns

Collecting customer data for journey mapping poses significant privacy concerns. Thus, you need to create a balance. You must adhere to data protection laws and gather enough information for mapping. 

You need a careful strategy to ensure customer data security. Stay vigilant to adapt to evolving privacy regulations and customer expectations. This vigilance helps maintain trust and compliance.

Learn More about Customer Journey Maps

Take our Journey Mapping course to gain insights into the how and why of journey mapping. Learn practical methods to create experience maps , customer journey maps, and service blueprints for immediate application.

Explore this eBook to discover customer journey mapping .

Find some additional insights in the Customer Journey Maps article.

Questions related to Customer Journey Maps

Creating a customer journey map requires visually representing the customer's experience with your product or company. Harness the strength of visual reasoning to understand and present this journey succinctly. Instead of detailing a lengthy narrative, like a book, a well-crafted map allows stakeholders, whether designers or not, to grasp the journey quickly. It's a democratized tool that disseminates information, unifies teams, and aids decision-making by illuminating previously unnoticed or misunderstood aspects of the customer's journey.

The customer journey encompasses five distinct stages that guide a customer's interaction with a brand or product:

Awareness: The customer becomes aware of a need or problem.

Consideration: They research potential solutions or products.

Purchase: The customer decides on a solution and makes a purchase.

Retention: Post-purchase, the customer uses the product and forms an opinion.

Advocacy: Satisfied customers become brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences.

For a comprehensive understanding of these stages and how they intertwine with customer touchpoints, refer to Interaction-Design.org's in-depth article .

A perspective grid workshop is a activity that brings together stakeholders from various departments, such as product design, marketing, growth, and customer support, to align on a shared understanding of the customer's journey. These stakeholders contribute unique insights about customer needs and how they interact with a product or service. The workshop entails:

Creating a matrix to identify customers' jobs and requirements, not initially linked to specific features.

Identifying the gaps, barriers, pains, and risks associated with unmet needs, and constructing a narrative for the journey.

Highlighting the resulting value when these needs are met.

Discuss the implied technical and non-technical capabilities required to deliver this value.

Brainstorming possible solutions and eventually narrowing down to specific features.

The ultimate aim is to foster alignment within the organization and produce a user journey map based on shared knowledge. 

Learn more from this insightful video:

Customer journey mapping is vital as it harnesses our visual reasoning capabilities to articulate a customer's broad, intricate journey with a brand. Such a depiction would otherwise require extensive documentation, like a book. This tool offers a cost-effective method to convey information succinctly, ensuring understanding of whether one is a designer or lacks the time for extensive reading. It also helps the team to develop a shared vision and to encourage collaboration.  Businesses can better comprehend and address interaction points by using a journey map, facilitating informed decision-making and revealing insights that might otherwise remain obscured. Learn more about the power of visualizing the customer journey in this video.

Pain points in a customer journey map represent customers' challenges or frustrations while interacting with a product or service. They can arise from unmet needs, gaps in service, or barriers faced during the user experience. Identifying these pain points is crucial as they highlight areas for improvement, allowing businesses to enhance the customer experience and meet their needs more effectively. Pain points can relate to various aspects, including product usability, communication gaps, or post-purchase concerns. Explore the detailed article on customer journey maps at Interaction Design Foundation for a deeper understanding and real-world examples.

Customer journey mapping offers several key benefits:

It provides a holistic view of the customer experience, highlighting areas for improvement. This ensures that products or services meet users' needs effectively.

The process fosters team alignment, ensuring everyone understands and prioritizes the customer's perspective.

It helps identify pain points, revealing opportunities to enhance user satisfaction and loyalty.

This visualization allows businesses to make informed decisions, ensuring resources target the most impactful areas.

To delve deeper into the advantages and insights on journey mapping, refer to Interaction Design Foundation's article on key takeaways from the IXDF journey mapping course .

In design thinking, a customer journey map visually represents a user's interactions with a product or service over time. It provides a detailed look at a user's experience, from initial contact to long-term engagement. Focusing on the user's perspective highlights their needs, emotions, pain points, and moments of delight. This tool aids in understanding and empathizing with users, a core principle of design thinking. When used effectively, it bridges gaps between design thinking and marketing, ensuring user-centric solutions align with business goals. For a comprehensive understanding of how it fits within design thinking and its relation to marketing, refer to Interaction Design Foundation's article on resolving conflicts between design thinking and marketing .

A customer journey map and a user journey map are tools to understand the experience of users or customers with a product or service.

A customer journey map is a broader view of the entire customer experience across multiple touchpoints and stages. It considers physical and digital channels, multiple user personas, and emotional and qualitative aspects.

A user journey map is a detailed view of the steps to complete a specific task or goal within a product or service. It only considers digital channels, one user persona, and functional and quantitative aspects.

Both are useful to understand and improve the experience of the users or customers with a product or service. However, they have different scopes, perspectives, and purposes. A customer journey map provides a holistic view of the entire customer experience across multiple channels and stages. A user journey map provides a detailed view of the steps to complete a specific task or goal within a product or service.

While user journeys might emphasize specific tasks or pain points, customer journeys encapsulate the entire experience, from research and comparison to purchasing and retention. 

Customer journey maps and service blueprints are tools to understand and improve the experience of the users or customers with a product or service. A customer journey map shows the entire customer experience across multiple touchpoints and stages. It focuses on the front stage of the service, which is what the customers see and experience. It considers different user personas and emotional aspects.

A service blueprint shows how a service is delivered and operated by an organization. It focuses on the back stage of the service, which is what the customers do not see or experience. It considers one user persona and functional aspects. What are the steps that the customer takes to complete a specific task or goal within the service? What are the channels and devices that the customer interacts with at each step?

For an immersive dive into customer journey mapping, consider enrolling in the Interaction Design Foundation's specialized course . This course offers hands-on lessons, expert guidance, and actionable tools. Furthermore, to grasp the course's essence, the article “4 Takeaways from the IXDF Journey Mapping Course” sheds light on the core learnings, offering a snapshot of what to expect. These resources are tailored by industry leaders, ensuring you're equipped with the best knowledge to craft impactful customer journey maps.

Literature on Customer Journey Maps

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Journey Maps by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Journey Maps

Take a deep dive into Customer Journey Maps with our course Journey Mapping .

This course will show you how to use journey mapping to turn your own complex design challenges into simple, delightful user experiences . If you want to design a great shopping experience, an efficient signup flow or an app that brings users delight over time, journey mapping is a critical addition to your toolbox. 

We will begin with a short introduction to mapping — why it is so powerful, and why it is so useful in UX. Then we will get familiar with the three most common types of journey map — experience maps, customer journey maps and service blueprints — and how to recognize, read and use each one. Then you will learn how to collect and analyze data as a part of a journey mapping process. Next you will learn how to create each type of journey map , and in the final lesson you will learn how to run a journey mapping workshop that will help to turn your journey mapping insights into actual products and services. 

This course will provide you with practical methods that you can start using immediately in your own design projects, as well as downloadable templates that can give you a head start in your own journey mapping projects. 

The “Build Your Portfolio: Journey Mapping Project” includes three practical exercises where you can practice the methods you learn, solidify your knowledge and if you choose, create a journey mapping case study that you can add to your portfolio to demonstrate your journey mapping skills to future employers, freelance customers and your peers. 

Throughout the course you will learn from four industry experts. 

Indi Young will provide wisdom on how to gather the right data as part of your journey mapping process. She has written two books,  Practical Empathy  and  Mental Models . Currently she conducts live online advanced courses about the importance of pushing the boundaries of your perspective. She was a founder of Adaptive Path, the pioneering UX agency that was an early innovator in journey mapping. 

Kai Wang will walk us through his very practical process for creating a service blueprint, and share how he makes journey mapping a critical part of an organization’s success. Kai is a talented UX pro who has designed complex experiences for companies such as CarMax and CapitalOne. 

Matt Snyder will help us think about journey mapping as a powerful and cost-effective tool for building successful products. He will also teach you how to use a tool called a perspective grid that can help a data-rich journey mapping process go more smoothly. In 2020 Matt left his role as the Sr. Director of Product Design at Lucid Software to become Head of Product & Design at Hivewire. 

Christian Briggs will be your tour guide for this course. He is a Senior Product Designer and Design Educator at the Interaction Design Foundation. He has been designing digital products for many years, and has been using methods like journey mapping for most of those years.  

All open-source articles on Customer Journey Maps

14 ux deliverables: what will i be making as a ux designer.

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What are Customer Touchpoints & Why Do They Matter?

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Consumer journeys: developing consumer-based strategy

  • Published: 09 February 2019
  • Volume 47 , pages 187–191, ( 2019 )

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  • Rebecca Hamilton 1 &
  • Linda L. Price 2  

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Consumers undertake many journeys in pursuit of large and small life goals and in response to various opportunities, obstacles, and challenges. Consumer journeys may anticipate consumption experiences, such as when consumers take steps to choose products, brands, or technologies, engage in online or offline retail experiences, and use products and services. However, consumers take other journeys that don’t have consumption as their goal but nonetheless implicate brands, technologies, products, and services. For example, a cancer patient and family members undertake a traumatic emotional journey that involves a complex network of heath care brands, technologies, and services as patients and their families move from diagnosis, through treatment, to recovery, remission, or end-of-life care (Berry et al. 2015 ). An Uber driver may use his Toyota not only to take his own journeys but also to earn money by taking other people where they need to go. During some parts of these journeys, the consumer role may not be as prominent as other roles such as patient or producer or person.

The broad topic for this special issue, consumer journeys, is contoured by a focus on consumers rather than customers or firm touchpoints, and on journeys rather than goals, tasks, or jobs. Both of these aspects frame the topic in particular and significant ways.

Focus on consumers

The focus on consumers rather than customers is deliberate and important (Hamilton 2016 ). An essential impetus for this issue is to highlight the value of consumer-based strategy for generating customer insights. “Consumer-based strategy is organizational strategy that is developed based on insights about consumers” (Hamilton 2016 , p. 281). More holistic than a traditional strategic focus on customers, consumer-based strategy recognizes the need to understand consumers as they select, create, integrate, use, adapt, and discard products and services in order to meet needs and accomplish goals. “Consumers” is a more general term than “customers” that emphasizes that people draw on and integrate a wide variety of market and non-market resources to pursue their life paths (Epp and Price 2011 ). As Fournier famously wrote, consumers don’t choose brands, they choose lives (Fournier 1998 ).

Consumers act as resource integrators in their role as customers of multiple entities, trying to accomplish, for example, the goal of moving to a new home or going on a family vacation. These common examples highlight the importance of understanding the context of the consumer’s overall journey (Rawson et al. 2013 ). Understanding what consumers are trying to accomplish both before and after interacting with a provider can help providers increase the value they provide to their consumers (Seybold 2001 ). Such a perspective recognizes that “markets, customers, resources and contexts are constantly changing,” (Bettencourt et al. 2014 , p. 60). Without this broader perspective, firms can become so consumed with improving a specific touchpoint or maximizing choice of an option that they lose sight of the consumer’s overall goal. When consumers move to a new home, they may need to navigate a complex array of separate and layered service encounters, including the home transaction(s), inspections, insurance, the physical move, and furnishing the new home. Even planning a family vacation is a complex problem, involving integrating various collective and individual goals (Epp and Price 2011 ). Firms may mismatch solutions to consumers because they don’t appreciate the array of networked goals, goal management approaches, and constraints that families face. By looking at consumer networks more holistically, firms can improve solution design, identify new network partners, and create new offerings (Epp and Price 2011 ).

Focus on journeys

As importantly, the framing of consumption processes as journeys is consequential. “Journey” is one of the primary deep metaphors that consumers use to describe and understand their lives, and especially to make meaning of the past, present, and future (Zaltman and Zaltman 2008 ). Deep metaphors “provide a window into people’s underlying conceptions of the social world,” and help them interpret and evaluate information related to abstract constructs (Landau et al. 2010 , p. 1046; Lakoff and Johnson 2008 ). The journey metaphor is evoked in numerous naturally occurring consumer settings and associated with a variety of experiences. Journeys can be arduous, as in a hero’s journey, be of short or long duration, have unexpected events and turns, go toward or away from something, be repeated multiple times, and include obstacles, detours, and alternative routes. The journey includes the events or “touchpoints” along the way, but it is also a narrative of a progression in which overcoming fear and failure may be important parts (Arnould and Price 1993 ). The journey metaphor has been usefully applied to love, relationships, disease, adventure, addiction, education, growth, creativity, grief, death, and numerous other concrete and abstract human experiences.

Recent research has underscored the importance of examining the customer journey in order to understand customer experience. The customer journey is defined as the process the customer goes through, across all stages and touchpoints with an organization, comprising the customer experience (Lemon and Verhoef 2016 ). Mapping customer journeys from a firm perspective has long been a valuable tool for improving customer experiences (Bitner et al. 2008 ; Dhebar 2013 ; Edelman and Singer 2015 ; Rawson et al. 2013 ), and is likely to remain so. Yet, as Lemon and Verhoef ( 2016 ) explain, only some of these touchpoints are controlled by the firm, and firms need to deepen their understanding of both the ones they control and the ones they don’t. Increasingly, theory and research call for advances in customer journey mapping, moving toward more adaptive and customized mapping, done less from a strictly firm perspective, and incorporating more of the pre- and post- components of the customer journey with the firm (Lemon and Verhoef 2016 ; Voorhees et al. 2017 ; Rosenbaum et al. 2017 ). New technologies and platforms have altered customer journeys in myriad ways (Kannan and Li 2017 ; Court et al. 2009 ; Edelman and Singer 2015 ). New technology has introduced many different channels through which consumers can interact with product and service providers (Barwitz and Maas 2018 ; Chheda et al. 2019 ; Leeflang et al. 2014 ), giving consumers considerable control in how they interact with providers (Harmeling et al. 2017 ; Lemon and Verhoef 2016 ). It is important to examine touchpoints across multiple channels because analyzing channels individually can lead researchers to incorrect conclusions (Li and Kannan 2014 ).

Consumer journeys

A consumer journey often subsumes customer journeys, in that a consumer journey is broader and may involve multiple activities (e.g., engaging with a social media platform and then visiting a retailer, or deciding to see a doctor and then visiting a pharmacy) and multiple service providers (e.g., comparison shopping). Beyond understanding provider–consumer touchpoints, we contend it is vital to understand the complex emotional and experiential journeys that consumers engage in with the help of brands, technologies, products, and services. We can think of customer journeys as being motivated by more concrete goals, such as getting medications, while consumer journeys may be motivated by more abstract goals, such as getting healthy and feeling good again. For example, a customer journey with a pharmacy might flow from naming it as the preferred pharmacy during a visit to the doctor, stopping at its retail location on the way home to pick up the medication, and taking the medication each day until the prescription is gone. In contrast, a consumer journey might begin with the consumer feeling a bit off, modifying exercise and diet to no avail, searching online for a diagnosis of the symptoms being experienced, deciding to see a doctor and making an appointment, and then following a customer journey with the pharmacy. Following this broader conceptualization, we consider how a person’s role as a consumer relates to this person’s other roles, whether these roles are as a patient, a parent, or a producer.

Increasingly, service providers are taking these other roles into consideration. For example, the CEO of CVS Health, Larry Merlo, recently noted that their customers are also patients, and understanding them more holistically—in both roles—is important. Supporting this idea, CVS Health has developed a “Health Engagement Engine” that integrates their own pharmacy data with data from other sources such as health plans, providers, and health systems. Similarly, platforms such as AirBnB will be more successful if they understand that the same people sometimes play the role of guests (consumers) and other times the role of hosts (producers). In addition, by understanding AirBnB’s role in the consumer journey, there is an opportunity to enlarge the platform to build on and complement other aspects of that journey. For example, AirBnB has expanded their service to include letting users book experiences on their app and make restaurant reservations in select U.S. cities (Forbes 2017 ). In their advertising, Deloitte Digital declares, “the customer experience is dead. It’s time to see the customer journey as what it really is, a human journey” (Advertising Age Cover Advertisement, December 17, 2018). This overstates the case, but highlights increasing recognition of the need to understand holistically how people move into and out of consumer roles and customer journeys.

Overview of the articles in this issue

This special issue brings together a set of 13 conceptual and empirical articles around the broad topic of consumer journeys. Due to the high level of interest (over 60 submissions) and space constraints, nine papers appear in this issue (vol. 47, issue 2) and four papers will appear in a special sub-section of the next issue (vol. 47, issue 3). We are grateful to the many authors, reviewers, and conference participants who helped bring this issue to fruition, along with the vision, energy and resolve of editors Robert Palmatier and John Hulland. By design, the articles in this issue represent broad and diverse perspectives on consumers’ journeys.

Illustrating a wide view of the roles of consumers within journeys, work by Nakata and colleagues (Nakata et al. 2019 , issue 2) suggests that focusing on a consumer’s interactions with firms produces limited models of the journey that miss the nuance of consumers’ usage experiences over extended periods in everyday settings. Their paper reports a qualitative study of the situated experiences of disadvantaged consumers who are struggling to treat chronic hypertension, which incorporates consumers’ interactions with firms but spends more time with them as they follow their daily routines. Complementing this work, a paper by Trujillo Torres and DeBerry-Spence ( 2019 , issue 3) examines consumers’ responses to traumatic, extraordinary experiences such as receiving a cancer diagnosis. A qualitative analysis identifies strategies consumers use to construct an enduring life story, claim authority and preserve meanings as they live through traumatic experiences.

Work by Novak and Hoffman ( 2019 , issue 2) also considers consumers’ usage experiences over an extended time period, in this case, focusing on technology products. They propose a framework for considering consumers’ complex relationships with smart objects. Sometimes, consumer have relationships with smart objects that are similar to “master–servant” relationships, but sometimes the consumer and the smart object behave more like partners. For example, Amazon’s Alexa might remind a consumer of an upcoming appointment or communicate with other devices to turn off or turn on lights.

New technology platforms push firms to think about engaging consumers in multiple roles. Just as CVS Health is moving towards considering people in both their roles as both customers and patients, platforms like AirBnB and Uber are being pushed to consider their customers in other roles such as producers. Daellert’s paper ( 2019 , issue 2) suggests that consumer co-production activities require firms to rethink their role in the marketing value creation process. He encourages marketers in the sharing economy to not only think about how to support consumers in fulfilling their own consumption needs but also to help them create value for other consumers.

Consumers’ use of products and brands to fulfill their goals is often shaped by experiences that far predate the typical span of a customer journey. Mende and colleagues (Mende et al. 2019 , issue 2) show that the early life experiences of consumers with their caregivers shape their relationships with romantic partners and their consumer journeys with regard to romantic consumption even in adulthood. Similarly, the paper by Hamilton and colleagues (Hamilton et al. 2019 , issue 3) examines consumer decision journeys that are constrained by a scarcity of products and/or a scarcity of resources. Research on customer journeys often implicitly assumes that consumers have access to products and services and that they have sufficient resources to buy them. However, many consumers experience either temporary restrictions on the availability of products or resources or chronic scarcity. In particular, there is growing evidence that scarcity of resources during childhood can have a lasting effect on how consumers navigate their decision journeys.

Another case in which consumer journeys are influenced by experiences that far predate the customer journey is in inspiring brand experiences during foreign exchange trips. Vredeveld and Coulter ( 2019 , issue 2) study the consumer journeys of international students from nine countries temporarily living in the U.S. They find that the cultural experiential goals of these students influence their use of brands during their stay in the U.S. In some cases, their brand usage is motivated and interpreted based on expectations developed when they were exposed to the brands before they came to the U.S., such as in American movies.

Some of the papers in the special issue expand the scope of previous work on customer journeys by considering multiple service providers and spillovers across them. For example, Hildebrand and Schlager ( 2019 , issue 2) examine how pre-shopping activity on social media affects consumers’ subsequent shopping behavior. Their field study and experiments show that using Facebook before engaging in a product configuration task makes consumers more likely to choose conventional product features. Using Facebook seems to encourage consumers to focus more on how others will evaluate them, making them less willing to choose unconventional features.

The stage in the journey in which consumers encounter features can also influence their receptivity to the features. Schamp et al. ( 2019 , issue 2) show that ethical attributes (such as environmentally friendly ingredients) have more influence at some stages of the consumer decision journey (choice; when consumers are considering small assortments) than at other stages (consideration; when consumers are considering large assortments). Thus, a consumer’s interest in ethical attributes is not static, but depends on the stage of the journey.

Work by Kranzbuehler and colleagues (Kranzbühler et al. 2019 , issue 2) considers how to structure a consumer’s interactions with multiple service providers across a consumer journey. Specifically, they consider cases in which firms may want to dissociate themselves from a consumer touchpoint, such as when that touchpoint is inherently dissatisfying for customers. Using both a field study and experiments, these authors identify conditions under which firms may want to use branded outsourcing as a strategic tool to reduce their own brand’s associations with a negative touchpoint. Notably, the extent to which consumers perceive multiple brand-owned touchpoints as being designed in a thematically cohesive and consistent manner, which Kuehnl and colleagues (Kuehnl et al. 2019 , issue 3) call “effective customer journey design,” tends to affect consumers’ evaluation of utilitarian brand attributes more than their evaluation of hedonic brand attributes. In contrast, evaluation of hedonic brand attributes is influenced more by the brand experience.

Knowing how to engage consumers effectively may depend on the length of the consumer’s journey with the brand. Akaka and Schau ( 2019 , issue 3) show that as consumers’ identities evolve, their consumption practices also evolve. Focusing on the practice of surfing, they show that identity alignment (and misalignment) over time encourages consumers to change the way they interact with products and brands. Turning to firms’ efforts to engage consumers, Hanson et al. ( 2019 , issue 2) examine the effects of different kinds of incentives for engagement, such as points and badges, for consumers to engage in an online brand community. They show that for novices, who are new to the community, signals that communicate a specific social role drive more engagement (such as creating discussions, posting comments, and future engagement intentions) than signals that do not provide role clarity. However, for consumers with longer tenure, the degree to which incentives communicate a social role is less influential. Notably, consumers develop and change along their journeys, and firms need to take this evolution into consideration.

Conclusion and research directions

To summarize, we propose that important strategic insights can be uncovered by moving from a focus on a customer’s journey with a single firm to a broader scope, in which the consumer may shift between roles as a patient and consumer or between roles as a producer and consumer. These consumer journeys may include interactions with other consumers, as in the case of brand communities or when buying for others, and interactions with smart objects. Consumer journeys may encompass interactions with multiple firms, either by the design of the focal firm, as in the case of outsourcing, or in spite of its efforts, as in the case of comparison shopping. These journeys are often extended in time and initiated in distant places, with lagged effects on consumers’ decision making with respect to specific products and brands. We hope that as you finish reading this issue you will allow this broadened perspective on consumers’ journeys to spark your own ideas and future research.

A treasure trove of future research directions is embedded in each of the papers that encompass this issue. Here we underscore a few possible future directions. First, future theory and research should investigate the temporality and duration of consumer journeys. This issue has uncovered challenges in neatly defining a pre-core-post customer journey process, suggesting the value of more adaptive and customized time frames depending on the consumer journey context. Moreover, the pre- and post- components of a consumer’s journey may themselves be quite prolonged, as consumers develop histories with brands, navigate networked relationships with smart objects in their homes, or replicate relational journeys from their past.

Second, future theory and research should interrogate when and how consumption processes are experienced as journeys and how that metaphor shapes consumers’ experiences. For example, thinking of a consumption process as a journey versus, for example a job to be done, may change how consumers think about control, unanticipated events, obstacles, failures, emotions, progress, and outcomes. Journeys may not always be motivated by explicit goals, and goals may change over time. This may, in turn, have additional implications for when and how we think about customer journeys and customer experience. Importantly, when is it useful and when does it create value to frame a process as a consumer journey, and when not?

Third, future research should deepen our understanding of people’s movements between their roles as customers and other roles, and the role of companions in consumers’ journeys. As a whole, the articles in this issue suggest that a contextualized view of these movements between roles, sometimes with companions, can shed important insight on customer touchpoints even when these touchpoints comprise only a small portion of the overall consumer journey. This broadened perspective emphasizes the way in which consumer journeys collide, interplay, and change directions.

Finally, not new to our issue, there are widening opportunities to investigate how new platforms and technologies are interfacing with elements of both consumer and customer journeys as enablers, rewards, obstacles, and companions. Again, we contend it is useful to consider these platforms and technologies as part of a consumer journey, and not just as funnels through which consumers come to engage with the firm.

We are confident that readers will identify many additional exciting contexts and opportunities for investigating consumer’s journeys, and we look forward to watching how the journey continues.

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Hamilton, R., Price, L.L. Consumer journeys: developing consumer-based strategy. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 47 , 187–191 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00636-y

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A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Customer Journey Mapping Is at the Heart of Digital Transformation

November 4, 2015 • 12 min read.

Companies that carefully map out customer buying “journeys” are better prepared to transform their businesses, say experts from Wharton and NTT DATA.

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Digital technologies such as analytics, mobility, social networks, cloud computing and the Internet of Things are making old ways of working redundant and forcing companies to transform. According to Raman Sapra, senior vice president and global head of NTT DATA’s digital business services, the best way to leverage digital is to take a comprehensive rather than a piecemeal approach. And a key tool to achieve this is customer journey mapping, where powerful new data collection and analytics tools are helping to provide deeper insights to fuel performance. In this paper, experts from Wharton and NTT DATA examine how this mapping is at the heart of digital transformation.

Companies such as Uber, Spotify and Airbnb are disrupting their industries. Take Uber. The popular taxi-hailing app does not own any vehicles and yet provides transportation to some 8 million users. Music-streaming service Spotify lets music lovers listen to a wide range of artists, yet it does not own a radio station. And Airbnb, a provider of accommodations with more than a million listings across the globe, does not own any lodgings.

These startups are leveraging new technologies to disrupt their industries while making life easier for users. But digital transformation goes deeper than simply improving the customer experience. It is also increasingly used to transform business processes and interactions within a company to keep it relevant in the digital age.

“Typically, digital is associated only with providing a superior customer experience. But digital can also help create new business models, drive operational excellence and enhance employee engagement,” says Raman Sapra, senior vice president and global head of NTT DATA’s digital business services.

“Typically, digital is associated only with providing a superior customer experience. But digital can also help create new business models, drive operational excellence and enhance employee engagement.” –Raman Sapra

New digital tools are extending information collection and then helping to turn an otherwise overwhelming flood of information into actionable knowledge. For instance, telecom providers can use data analytics to help predict data loss or network deterioration, as well as prevent service disruptions. More generally, companies can use social media to connect better with their employees. Or, they can tap data analytics to make decisions faster and bring operational efficiencies.

But before embarking on a digital transformation, organizations need to first identify their business imperatives and priorities, Sapra says. They need to understand what their customers, employees, partners and other stakeholders desire. They also must identify the digital possibilities in their industry. Using these benchmarks as a foundation, organizations can tailor a digital strategy and roadmap, and then proceed to build their digital initiatives.

There is one critical tool for successful digital transformation — smart customer journey mapping. “It is at the heart of digital transformation,” says Sapra. Adds Mahesh Kolar, director of mobility applications at NTT DATA: “There are many different ways, like focus groups and surveys, to understand the customer journey. But we believe that customer journey mapping is vital for giving organizations the ‘Aha’ moment when it comes to understanding their digital possibilities.” And new digital tools are now making it possible to create a much deeper understanding of the journey.

Identifying Digital Touchpoints

What exactly is customer journey mapping? “It is the definitive first step in the process of converting a current ‘as-is’ state to a future state that promises an enhanced customer experience,” says Siddharth Gaikwad, practice head of digital experience at NTT DATA. The term “customers,” he adds, does not only refer to end-users; it could be any stakeholder — such as employees or partners.

“A journey map is an illustrated representation of a customer’s expectations, experiences and reflections as it unfolds over time across multiple stages and touchpoints while using a product or consuming a service.”

“A journey map is an illustrated representation of a customer’s expectations, experiences and reflections as it unfolds over time across multiple stages and touchpoints while using a product or consuming a service.” –Siddharth Gaikwad

Take the booking of an airline ticket. Here, the journey mapping starts from the time the customer realizes the need to travel. It captures the customer’s various expectations at that stage. It then maps their actual experience of buying the ticket and even the emotions felt after the purchase. Expectations are thus benchmarked against actual experience.

By capturing the current “as is” state of a customer’s journey — in this case, the booking of an airline ticket — the map amplifies various pain points along the purchase path. For experience designers, questions that arise around the journey include the following: Do we know the customer’s context? Is the information about the various options adequate or even relevant? Are there too many details to be filled out multiple times? Is the whole exercise too time-consuming? Capturing the “as is” state can also predict likely future behavior.

Thereafter, in collaboration with domain experts across different parts of the organization and its extended eco-system, and using design methods like storytelling and card sorting, the map findings are converted into insights. Storytelling, the art of overlaying context, perspective and imagery around a user’s journey, combined with card sorting, the technique of identifying mental models or patterns, become important tools in rendering the “to-be” future-state. In creating the map, the organization can use the rapidly evolving elements of digital — analytics, mobile, social, the cloud and Internet of Things — to enhance the customer experience.

“By overlaying the digital possibilities upon customer journey maps, organizations are able to better visualize which aspects of their business they should focus on, which of the new technologies they should embrace and what new business models they can create,” says Gaikwad. “It helps them to realign their investments, technologies and business models so they can engage more effectively with customers, employees and partners.”

Patti Williams, a Wharton professor of marketing, points out that journeys help companies understand consumer decision-making. It reveals the types of information, sources, emotions and other factors that can influence them and their choices, she says.

Williams agrees that customer journey mapping is an important tool for transforming a business. “Journey mappings are deep, embedded consumer insights.” Developing a multilayered understanding of consumers and how they make choices in a contextual setting “offers companies the opportunity to change practices in a way that reflects the reality of consumer decision making.” Consumer journey mapping, she adds, “is at the center of all consumer-focused organizations and can transform many businesses.”

“Consumer journey mapping is at the center of all consumer-focused organizations and can transform many businesses.” –Patti Williams

And as Gaikwad points out, “very few non-consumer-focused organizations remain out there, and they will change very soon. Consumerization of the enterprise is driving that change.”

Overly simple customer journey models, however, will likely fall short, says Jerry (Yoram) Wind, a Wharton professor of marketing. It is crucial that mapping be dynamic. “Mapping is very difficult given the heterogeneity of all markets and [also because] the same consumer may have a totally different journey at different times because of different contexts.” In the airline case, for instance, consumers could be traveling for various reasons, such as a vacation, business trip or family emergency. “Thus, most maps, unless they are dynamic and include context, can be quite misleading.”

Customer journey mapping requires design, domain and facilitation skills. Typically, a customer journey map is created by using data from primary research, such as personal interviews, focus group sessions, brainstorming and shadowing, as well as secondary research such as gathering and collaborating over information from databases within the organization, websites, social media and so on. Many digital tools are growing rapidly in sophistication and usefulness, and enhancing the value of gleaned insights.

The first step is to define the exact area — for instance, product, service and task — where the organization wants improvement, and identify the “consumer.” For example, a hotel may want to improve its front desk service. Here, the “consumer” would be the customer-relations employees manning the front desk. But, if the hotel wants to enhance the self-check-in experience, the “consumer” would be the guests.

With the consumer defined, the user experience team then creates a “persona” based on the customer’s demographic and psychographic profile. This would include age, socioeconomic background, value systems, opinions, attitudes, lifestyle, likes and dislikes, and so on. Thereafter, this persona’s journey — comprising expectations, experience and reflections — is mapped across a specific task. These insights are then converted into touchpoints –where the organization literally makes a connection to the customer, whether via desktop or mobile, or through a web site or social media.

“The curious case of the touchpoint is that it does not work without context of the consumer,” says Gaikwad. This is where the new digital tools add a new dimension of value. “What better time than this digital age to mine that context — it’s available on the cloud, in the devices and all over social media,” he says.

In the case of guest check-in, some touchpoints suggested through journey mapping could be self-check-in hotel lobby kiosks. Based on the guests’ persona and their context, the kiosk could dispense personalized, magnetic access cards with QR codes (the quick response bar code), which, when scanned, could offer personalized suggestions.

“Mapping is very difficult given the heterogeneity of all markets and [also because] the same consumer may have a totally different journey at different times because of different contexts.” –Jerry (Yoram) Wind

Value Proposition For instance, if the guest is a child, the access card could recommend relevant kid-friendly activities. For business travelers, it could offer details about convention centers and other business-related information. Kolar notes: “The key is to see how much personalization you can provide and how much of it you can contextualize around a given customer in a way that delights them, but at the same time is not intrusive.”

Thus, a series of connected maps covering each phase in the customer lifecycle can give an organization complete control over their capability to deliver a product or a service, Gaikwad says. In the hotel example, there could be different maps for check-in, housekeeping, concierge service, food and beverage service, and checkout. Typically, an accurate map takes up to a couple of weeks to create based on the persona, and “if done properly, it can have a shelf life of a couple of years, even in the current market where paradigm shifts are happening so regularly,” he adds.

The Way Forward

Williams believes customer journey maps should be updated frequently and often can involve an ongoing investment. Creating a journey map is an intensive process influenced by time and materials, so “budgets influence how frequently they can realistically be done. But as changes occur, they should be updated.” Williams adds that “different customer segments will have different journeys, so journeys should be understood at a segment level” as well.

One of the biggest challenges, as with so many initiatives, is getting senior management’s commitment. Successful customer journey mapping takes time and close collaboration. The effectiveness of a map depends in part on how well managers engage in the map creation process and how far into the future they can project as they analyze customer insights.

While converting journey map findings into actionable insights about digital touchpoints requires senior members across functions to brainstorm together, this is often easier planned than executed. Busy executives typically are preoccupied with operations, and many organizations work in silos — so the all-important coordination can be challenging. Storytelling and card sorting come handy to motivate, incentivize and create stickiness among diverse groups to help keep on track.

While the value of traditional journey maps is widely accepted, there remains the issue of setting metrics for the return on investment (ROI) for the latest, digital approaches. At present, “I don’t know if there is a sure way of defining a clear return on investment for customer journey mapping,” says Kolar. “We think it is a powerful tool to understand the context of the users and to take them from their current state to a heightened state of customer delight.” The new digital tools are helping. “With advanced analytics, the value, effectiveness and cost of an investment can be understood early on and course corrections can be made to minimize impact.”

Kolar believes digital customer journey mapping is here to stay. Because of the tremendous reach of social media, a single vocal customer or employee can have a big business impact. This makes it all the more important for organizations to be on top of their game.

“My sense is customer journey mapping will become a mandatory tool for digital transformation. Enterprises will begin to do customer journey mapping as the first part of their planning activities.”

Adds Sapra: “Most customer journeys of today are rendered as static maps. As digital tools advance even further, “I think they will become a lot more dynamic. They will become a current document that will get updated in real time in this connected world. That’s when the map will become even more valuable.”

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Customer Journey Research and Optimization

Mapping the moments of truth throughout the buyer journey.

Customer journey research uses customer journey mapping or buyer journey mapping to identify, structure and improve the complex interactions that customers experience across their relationship with your company. In essence, our customer journey optimization process helps your brand to become more customer-centric.

Improving the overall experience of your customers from average to exceptional can lead to a 30 to 50 per cent increase in KPIs such as the likelihood of renewing a service or purchasing another product.

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At the beginning of the journey, potential customers will build an awareness of the company, sometimes by recommendation, sometimes by seeing a promotion.

Thereafter, their interest will hopefully be piqued, and a buying relationship will be developed. This could carry on for many years, influenced by different experiences, conveyed by the product and supporting services.

B2B customer journey optimization through mapping can take several forms, depending on the needs of the business and the extent to which business processes are incorporated into the map:

  • A typical customer journey map – providing a strategic overview of the stages and touchpoints of the journey
  • A tactical customer journey map – focusing on a particular touchpoint or cluster of touchpoints
  • A performance and improvement customer journey map – similar to a tactical map but going into much more detail around the performance at each step, and also providing key recommendations at each stage

Case study: Understanding the buyer journey and building personas and value propositions for Sodexo

Sodexo, a world-leader in food service and facilities management, places insight at the core of their marketing strategy. The company recognizes the importance of leveraging primary research to ensure that service offers meet the needs of the target market, with all their business decisions born out of research insights.

While regularly monitoring market and consumer trends, Sodexo partnered with B2B International to carry out customer journey research to help them understand typical buyer journeys and personas across four different business units.

Find out how these insights were used to inform top of the funnel marketing strategies, sales engagement strategies during the purchase process, and ensuring that the ongoing relationship throughout the contract period is nurtured in order to encourage customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Case study: Using buyer journey research to provide deep insights into commercial bank decision-makers for Visa

Visa is at the forefront of driving a myriad of new payment solutions including Visa Direct and Visa B2B Connect. Visa Direct helps enable money movement to eligible debit cards domestically, and to eligible debit cards and accounts cross border. Visa B2B Connect enables B2B, cross-border, higher value payments to accounts on the same or next day through a single connection.

Visa required research to understand how to connect to and engage with new audiences within commercial banks and how to position Visa Direct and Visa B2B connect to help commercial banks adopt the solutions successfully.

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Customer Journey Charting a customer’s path from awareness to conversion

Home > Corporate Solutions > Customer Experience Analysis > Customer Journey

Map out your customer’s journey

When you know how a customer will convert, you can influence their journey.  Where did they come from and how did they get to that point? What milestones should you use to track progress? You can better understand the path your customer takes to the buying decision with the Customer Journey solution from Hanover Research.

Using quantitative and qualitative data sources, Hanover Research gathers insights and shapes them into a map that charts the entire customer journey and shows where your brand or product can best intersect with that journey.

Nearly 90% of professionals using customer journey mapping report increases in customer satisfaction, lower churn rates, and fewer customer complaints.

Customer journey mapping targets the touchpoints that matter most

Uncover initial purchasing motivations and triggers.

Optimize utilization of resources used for product discovery.

Increase a customer’s product satisfaction and likelihood to recommend it.

How it works: Customer Journey Mapping

Segment customers.

Separate your customers into groups with customer segmentation and buyer personas.

Map the Lifecycle

Determine key customer lifecycle stages with Attitude, Awareness, and Usage (AA&U) surveys, ethnographic research, path-to-purchase studies, or customer lifetime value analysis.

Identify Touchpoints

Reveal customer touchpoints with customer surveys or interviews or customer usage data.

Target Improvements

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Manitou Group Innovates Its Compact Earthmoving Equipment Based on Customer Preferences

“In our mission to center our products around the customer, we strive to regularly incorporate customer feedback into product and service design. We needed to not only understand how customers feel about this equipment, but how they view Manitou and our competing brands as a whole. Hanover’s analysis provided detailed insights into customer preferences for this equipment and the competitive landscape, helping us stand out further in the market and meet our customers’ biggest needs.”

–  Jeff Weido, Senior Director, Product Management & Marketing

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Journey-mapping impact: research findings.

Portrait of Alita Joyce

December 19, 2021 2021-12-19

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Journey maps visualize a user’s journey towards a goal, usually over time and across channels . Journey maps are a powerful tool for evaluating an experience and establishing a shared understanding among team members.

To learn how journey maps are used in industry, we surveyed more than 300 user experience professionals . In this article we share our findings on how practitioners create journey maps and their perceived success of these initiatives.

In This Article:

Approaches to journey mapping, impact and success ratings.

We asked participants to select which of the following options described how they created their last journey map:

  • An individual created the initial map using a digital tool (e.g., Mural, Miro, Google Sheets, Adobe Illustrator)
  • An individual created the initial map in a physical setting with tangible tools (e.g., wall-mounted paper, sticky notes, stickers)
  • A collaborative team created the initial map in a physical setting with tangible tools (e.g., wall-mounted paper, sticky notes, stickers)
  • A collaborative team created the initial map using a digital tool (e.g., Mural, Miro, Google Sheets)

Our findings indicate most journey maps are created collaboratively with a team of individuals . Out of 259 responses, 64% (95% confidence interval: 58% to 70%) said they created their last journey map collaboratively with a team. In contrast, 36% (95% confidence interval: 30% to 42%) created the map independently. Whether the respondent worked in house at a company or at an agency seemed to have no effect on this finding. In either context, cocreating a journey map with a team is more popular than creating it individually.

Bar chart. Title: Creating journey maps: independently vs collaboratively. Independently = 36%. Collaboratively = 64%

Percentage of respondents who reported creating their last journey map independently vs. in collaboration with a team (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

We also found that the majority of our respondents created their last journey map with digital tools rather than tangible tools . Out of 259 responses, 56% (95% confidence interval: 50% to 62%) used digital tools like Miro or Google Sheets to create their map, whereas 44% (95% confidence interval 38% to 50%) used tangible tools like sticky notes to create their maps in a physical environment.

(Note that, because this data was collected in November of 2020 during the pandemic, it is possible that more people than normal used digital tools rather than tangible ones.)

Again, whether participants worked in an agency or in house seemed to have no effect on the data.

Bar chart title: creating journey maps: digital vs. tangible tools. Digital = 56%. Tangible = 44%

Percentage of participants who used digital vs. tangible tools (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

In the next section, we discuss respondents’ perceived success of their journey mapping initiatives and how these approaches (independent vs. collaborative; digital vs. tangible tools) impacted their responses.

What is the organizational impact of creating journey maps? We asked practitioners to rate how successful their last journey-mapping initiative was in 7 areas. The scale was from 1=not successful at all to 5=extremely successful.

7 journey mapping success factors: •	Educating internal parties about user pain points or unmet needs 4.06 (95% confidence interval: 4.18 to 3.95) •	Creating alignment among internal teams 3.97 (95% confidence interval: 4.10 to 3.85) •	Persuading management or other stakeholders to invest efforts in fixing existing problems 3.59 (95% confidence interval: 3.72 to 3.46) •	Improving the UX of single products or services 3.56 (95% confidence interval: 3.68 to 3.45) •	Improving the overall user or customer experience at a holistic level 3.54 (95% confidence level 3.64 to 3.43) •	Persuading management or other stakeholders to invest efforts in creating new features or content 3.51 (95% confidence interval: 3.65 to 3.37) •	Persuading management or other stakeholders to make internal optimizations (e.g., new internal processes or roles) 3.11 (95% confidence level: 3.26 to 2.97)

Respondent’s average success ratings for seven outcomes of customer-journey maps (The grey vertical line at 3.5 indicates our success barrier; error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

Across the board, practitioners rated their last journey-mapping initiative as moderately successful in 6 out 7 areas. We deemed ratings with an average of 3.5/5 or higher (70% or more) as successful. There were two areas that had significantly higher success scores than the rest: educating internal parties about painpoints or unmet needs and creating alignment among teams. One factor had a significantly lower success rating: persuading management to make internal optimizations. These findings are consistent with our knowledge about the benefits of journey mapping.

In our experience, there are many techniques to achieve these factors of success — journey maps aren’t the only way. For example, persuading management to invest efforts in creating new features can be done through communicating user sentiment as indicated by data from a survey or usability testing. This persuasion can be aided by creating journey maps that identify needs which could be targeted by future features, but that is an added benefit not necessarily the primary reason for creating the map.

Differences Between Collaborative and Independent Journey Mapping

How do respondents’ success rating differ when the map was created with a collaborative team or an individual? In most cases, we observed similar success ratings between those that created their journey maps in collaborative teams compared to those that created them independently . However, for one factor, creating alignment among internal teams, we observed a marginally significant difference (p value = .1): those who created their maps collaboratively with a team reported higher success rates for creating internal alignment . This is logical because, when a team cocreates the map (rather than being presented with it later), it is more likely to trust the insights.

Bar chart comparing success rates between collaborative and independent approaches

Respondent’s average success ratings for seven outcomes of customer-journey maps, segmented based on whether the map was created collaboratively or independently (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

Differences Between Journey Mapping with Digital and Tangible Tools

What impact does tool selection (tangible vs digital) impact respondent’s success ratings? We did not observe a significant difference between the success ratings in those that created their journey maps with a digital tool versus tangible tools. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you start with a digital tool or later convert your physical map into a digital copy.

bar chart comparing journey mapping success between digital and tangible tools

Respondent’s average success ratings for seven outcomes of customer-journey maps, segmented based on whether the initial map was created with tangible or digital tools (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

Improve the Success of Your Journey Mapping Initiative

There are many factors that will affect the success of your journey mapping initiative. For example, identifying the right scope and goals , recruiting representative participants , and identifying and prioritizing pain points will all play a role in the success of your initiative. As our research shows, neither creating your map independently nor collaboratively, or with digital or tangible tools, will guarantee you absolute success.

We asked participants (n=234) to rank 8 factors in how critical they are to successful journey mapping initiatives . The following table documents respondent’s average rank scores (high rank scores signify high importance; rank scores range from 1 to 8):

Interestingly, the top 4 factors that received highest rank scores make up the first step in the process we recommend for creating these artifacts . Note also that the visual design of the artifact had the lowest rank score –- though it does matter to communicating your journey, many other factors are more important.

When it comes to journey mapping in your organization, prioritize involving customers and a crossfunctional team, as well as defining the right scope (persona and journey). In a related article, we share 27 tips from practitioners on how to get started with journey mapping. The first map won’t be perfect, but use this information to help you prioritize your efforts. Equally important, after your work is complete, reflect on your practice and document what you would do differently next time. Use this insight to evolve your craft over time.

Whether you craft these artifacts individually or in a team, digitally or tangibly, journey maps can have a positive impact on your organization. Our research shows that journey-mapping initiatives tend to be successful at creating internal alignment and educating the team about user pain points. As practitioners, understanding the potential impact of these initiatives can help you sell and set expectations for the work.

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  1. How to Conduct Research for Customer Journey Mapping

    Sample Customer-Journey Research Plan. 1. User Interviews. 1a. Conduct in-person user interviews to uncover first-hand stories specific to all relevant phases of the customer journey; use sticky notes to allow participants to map their steps as they talk. 1b.

  2. Customer Journey Mapping 101: Definition, Template & Tips

    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.

  3. 7 Ways to Conduct Customer Journey Mapping Research

    7 effective customer journey mapping research methods. A customer journey map is a visual representation of how your users engage with your brand, from initial discovery—like searching online for a solution to their problem—to browsing your site, trying out your product, making a purchase—and beyond.

  4. Customer Journey Map: Everything You Need To Know

    A customer journey map is a chart that displays the stages your customers experience when interfacing with your business. ... They research solutions to determine whether to make a purchase and ...

  5. PDF THE ULTIMATE GUIDE Customer journey mapping

    A customer journey map is 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. Customer journey mapping helps you look for the ...

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

    Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success. Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping. 1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

  7. How to Research and Build a Customer Journey Map: 201

    Customer Journey Mapping 301: Designing for the future, evolving your map, and making it actionable. In this post, we'll really get into the "nuts and bolts" of customer journey research and map building. We will explore: The best mixed method research to collect data for your journey map. Goal-setting and research questions to ask to get ...

  8. How to Create a Customer Journey Map? Template, Examples

    Unlock the full potential of customer journey mapping with Appinio, the real-time market research platform that empowers businesses to harness real-time consumer insights for smarter, data-driven decisions. In just minutes, you can conduct your market research effortlessly, making it an integral part of your daily decision-making process.

  9. The Definitive Guide To Forrester's Journey Mapping Research

    This report is available for individual purchase ($1495). Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it ...

  10. What is a Customer Journey Map? [Free Templates]

    The future state customer journey mapping template: A day-in-the-life customer journey map template: An empathy map template: A customer journey map example. It can be helpful to see customer journey mapping examples. To give you some perspective on what these look like executed, we've created a customer journey mapping example of the current ...

  11. (PDF) Customer Journey: From Practice to Theory

    Customer journey mapping, in contrast, starts with the customer and puts their . actions center stage. ... B ehavior', Journal of Customer Research, 31(1), pp.87-101.

  12. Customer Journey Map: Definition & Process

    Customer journey maps are research-based tools. They show common customer experiences over time To help brands learn more about their target audience. Maps are incredibly effective communication tools. See how maps simplify complex spaces and create shared understanding.

  13. Consumer journeys: developing consumer-based strategy

    Increasingly, theory and research call for advances in customer journey mapping, moving toward more adaptive and customized mapping, done less from a strictly firm perspective, and incorporating more of the pre- and post- components of the customer journey with the firm (Lemon and Verhoef 2016; Voorhees et al. 2017; Rosenbaum et al. 2017).

  14. Going on a journey: A review of the customer journey literature

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  16. How to Research and Build a Customer Journey Map

    Customer Journey Mapping 301: Designing for the future, evolving your map, and making it actionable; In this post, we'll really get into the "nuts and bolts" of customer journey research and map building. We will explore: The best mixed method research to collect data for your journey map; Goal-setting and research questions to ask to get ...

  17. The Power of Customer Journey Mapping

    Customer journey maps. By providing a roadmap of how customers interact with your brand — from initial research and discovery to purchase and retention — customer journey maps demystify the customer experience. Companies use these journey maps to keep ahead of customers' changing needs, guide marketing investments, and inform product and ...

  18. Customer Journey Research and Optimization

    Mapping the moments of truth throughout the buyer journey. Customer journey research uses customer journey mapping or buyer journey mapping to identify, structure and improve the complex interactions that customers experience across their relationship with your company. In essence, our customer journey optimization process helps your brand to become more customer-centric.

  19. Customer Journey Analysis

    Using quantitative and qualitative data sources, Hanover Research gathers insights and shapes them into a map that charts the entire customer journey and shows where your brand or product can best intersect with that journey. Nearly 90% of professionals using customer journey mapping report increases in customer satisfaction, lower churn rates ...

  20. Journey-Mapping Impact: Research Findings

    Journey-Mapping Impact: Research Findings. Summary: Our research suggests that customer-journey maps 1) tend to be created collaboratively with a team, 2) produced with digital tools, and 3) are moderately successful at making organizational impact. Journey maps visualize a user's journey towards a goal, usually over time and across channels.