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Customer journey mapping in 2 and 1/2 days

How to create a customer journey map that improves customer success.

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There’s a common saying that you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes—and that’s exactly what customer journey maps do: they help you put yourself in different customers’ shoes and understand your business from their point of view.

Why should you do it? How should you do it? Find the answers in this guide, which we wrote after interviewing 10+ customer journey experts who shared methodologies, dos and don’ts, and pro tips with us. 

On this page:

What is a customer journey map?

How to create a customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days

4 benefits of customer journey mapping for your business

In later chapters, we dive deeper into customer journey analytics, workshops, and real-life examples.

Start mapping your customer journey

Hotjar lets you experience the customer journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of how customers interact with and experience your website, products, or business across multiple touchpoints.

By visualizing the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers experience, a customer journey map helps you better understand them and identify the pain points they encounter. This is essential if you want to implement informed, customer-focused optimizations on your site.

Mapping the customer journey: narrow vs. wide focus

A customer journey map can have a very narrow focus and only look at a few, specific steps of the customer experience or buyer’s journey (for example, a product-to-purchase flow on a website), or it can take into account all the touchpoints, online and offline, someone goes through before and after doing business with you. 

Each type of customer journey map has its advantages:

A CJM with a narrow focus allows you to zero in on an issue and effectively problem-solve 

A CJM with a wide focus gives you a broader, holistic understanding of how customers experience your business

Regardless of their focus, the best customer journey maps have one thing in common: they are created with real customer data that you collect and analyze . The insights are usually organized into a map (hence the name), diagram, or flowchart during a group workshop, which is later shared across the entire business so everyone gets a clear and comprehensive overview of a customer’s journey.

How to create your first customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days

The process of creating a customer journey map can be as long or short as you need. Depending on how many people and stakeholders you involve, how much data you collect and analyze, and how many touchpoints there are across the business, you could be looking at days or even weeks and months of work.

If you’re new to customer journey mapping, start from a narrower scope before moving on to mapping every single customer touchpoint . 

Here’s our beginner customer journey mapping framework to help you create your first complete map in 2 and ½ working days:

Day 1: preliminary customer journey mapping work

Day 2: prep and run your customer journey mapping workshop.

Final ½ day: wrap up and share your results

Download your free customer journey map checklist  (as seen below), to mark off your tasks as you complete them.

On your first day, you have three essential tasks:

Define the goal and scope of your CJM

Collect customer data and insights

Invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop

Step 1: define the goal and scope of your CJM

Clarifying what part(s) of the journey you're looking at, and why, helps you stay focused throughout the mapping process.

If this is your first map,  start from a known issue or problematic area of your website. Keep the scope small, and focus on anything you can break down into four or five steps. For example:

If you have a high drop-off on a pricing page with five calls-to-action, each of which takes users to a different page, that’s enough for a mappable journey

If your purchase flow is made of five self-contained pages, each of which loses you potential customers, that’s a good candidate for mapping

✅ The output: a one- or two-sentence description of what your map will cover, and why, you can use whenever you need to explain what the process is about. For example: this map looks at the purchase flow on our website, and helps us understand how customers go through each step and the issues or obstacles they encounter. The map starts after users click ‘proceed to checkout’ and ends when they reach the 'Thank You' page .

Step 2: collect customer data and insights

Once you identify your goal and scope, the bulk of your first day should be spent collecting data and insights you’ll analyze as part of your mapping process. Because your map is narrow in focus, don’t get distracted by wide-scale demographics or data points that are interesting and nice to know, but ultimately irrelevant. 

Get your hands on as much of the following information as you can:

Metrics from traditional analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) that give you insight into what’s happening, across the pages and stages your customer journey map covers

Data from analyzing your conversion ‘funnels’ , which record how many visitors end up at each stage of the user journey, so you can optimize those steps for potential customers and increase conversions

Behavior analytics data (from platforms like Hotjar) that show you how people interact with your site. For example, heatmaps give you an aggregate view of how users click, move and scroll on specific pages, and session recordings capture a user’s entire journey as they navigate your site

Quantitative and qualitative answers to on-site surveys relevant to the pages you’re going to investigate, as customer feedback will ultimately guide your roadmap of changes to make to improve the journey

Any demographic information about existing user and customer personas that helps you map the journey from the perspective of a real type of customer, rather than that of any hypothetical visitor, ensuring the journey makes sense for your target audience

Any relevant data from customer service chat logs, emails, or even anecdotal information from support, success, and sales teams about the issues customers usually experience

✅ The output: quantitative and qualitative data about your customers' interactions and their experiences across various touchpoints. For example, you’ll know how many people drop off at each individual stage, which page elements they interact with or ignore, and what stops them from converting.

💡Pro tip: as you read this guide, you may not yet have most of this data, particularly when it comes to heatmaps, recordings, and survey results. That’s ok. 

Unless you’re running your CJM workshop in the next 12 hours, you have enough time to set up Hotjar on your website and start collecting insights right now. The platform helps you:

Learn where and why users drop off with Funnels

Visualize interactions on key pages with Heatmaps

Capture visitor sessions across your website with Recordings

Run on-site polls with Surveys

When the time comes for you to start your customer journey mapping process, this data will be invaluable.

Step 3: invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop

In our experience, the most effective way to get buy-in is not to try and convince people after things are done—include them in the process from the start. So while you can easily create a customer journey map on your own, it won’t be nearly as powerful as one you create with team members from different areas of expertise .

For example, if you’re looking at the purchase flow, you need to work with:

Someone from the UX team, who knows about the usability of the flow and can advocate for design changes

Someone from dev or engineering, who knows how things work in the back end, and will be able to push forward any changes that result from the map

Someone from success or support, who has first-hand experience talking to customers and resolving any issues they experience

✅ The output: you’ve set a date, booked a meeting space, and invited a group of four to six participants to your customer journey mapping workshop.

💡Pro tip: for your first map, stay small. Keep it limited to four to six people, and no main stakeholders . This may be unpopular advice, especially since many guides out there mention the importance of having stakeholders present from the start.

However, when you’re not yet very familiar with the process, including too many people early on can discourage them from re-investing their time into future CJM tasks. At this stage, it’s more helpful to brainstorm with a small team, get feedback on how to improve, and iterate a few times. Once you have a firm handle on the process, then start looping in your stakeholders.

On workshop day, you’ll spend half your time prepping and the other half running the actual session.

Step 1: prepare all your materials 

To run a smooth workshop, ensure you do the following:

Bring stationery: for an interactive workshop, you’ll need basic materials such as pens, different colored Post-its, masking tape, and large sheets of paper to hang on the wall

Collect and print out the data: use the data you collected on Day 1. It’s good to have digital copies on a laptop or tablet for everybody to access, but print-outs could be the better alternative as people can take notes and scribble on them.

Print out an empathy map canvas for each participant: start the workshop with an empathy mapping exercise (more on this in Step 2). For this, hand each participant an empty empathy map canvas you can recreate from the template below.

Set up a customer journey map template on the wall: use a large sheet of paper to create a grid you'll stick to the wall and fill in as part of the workshop. On the horizontal axis, write the customer journey steps you identified during your Day 1 prep work; on the vertical axis, list the themes you want to analyze for each step. For example:

Actions your customers take

Questions they might have

Happy moments they experience

Pain points they experience

Tech limits they might encounter

Opportunities that arise

Step 2: run the workshop

This is the most interactive (and fun) part of the process. Follow the framework below to go from zero to a completed draft of a map in just under 2 hours .

Introduction [🕒 5–10 min]

Introduce yourself and your participants to one another

Using the one-two sentence description you defined on Day 1, explain the goal and scope of the workshop and the activities it will involve

Offer a quick summary of the customer persona you’ll be referring to throughout the session

Empathy mapping exercise [🕒 30 min]

Using the personas and data available, have each team member map their observations onto sticky notes and paste them on the relevant section of the empathy mapping canvas

Have all participants take turns presenting their empathy map

Facilitate group discussions where interesting points of agreement or disagreement appear

Customer journey mapping [🕒 60 min]

Using Post-its, ask each participant to fill in parts of the map grid with available information. Start by filling in the first row together, so everybody understands the process, then do each row individually (15–20 min). At the end of the process, you should have something like this:

Looking at the completed map, encourage your team to discuss and align on core observations (and take notes: they’ll come in handy on your final half day). At this point, customer pain points and opportunities should become evident for everybody involved. Having a cross-functional team means people will naturally start discussing what can, or cannot, immediately be done to address them (35–40 min).

Wrap up [🕒 5 min]

Congratulations! Your first customer journey map is complete. Finish the session by thanking your participants and letting them know the next steps.

Final half-day: wrap up and share

Once you’ve gone through the entire customer journey mapping workshop, the number one thing you want to avoid is for all this effort to go to waste. Instead of leaving the map hanging on the wall (or worse: taking it down, folding it, and forgetting about it), the final step is to wrap the process up and communicate the results to the larger team.

Digitize the map so you can easily update and share it with team members: it may be tempting to use dedicated software or invest time into a beautiful design, but for the first few iterations, it’s enough to add the map to your team’s existing workflows (for example, our team digitized our map and added it straight into Jira, where it’s easily accessible)

Offer a quick write-up or a 5-minute video introduction of the activity: re-use the description you came up with on Day 1, including who was involved and the top three outcomes

Clearly state the follow-up actions: if you’ve found obvious issues that need fixing, that’s a likely next step. If you’ve identified opportunities for change and improvement, you may want to validate these findings via customer interviews and usability testing.

4 benefits of customer journey mapping

In 2023, it’s almost a given that great customer experience (CX) provides any business or ecommerce site with a competitive advantage. But just how you’re supposed to deliver on the concept and create wow-worthy experiences is often left unsaid, implied, or glossed over.

Customer journey maps help you find answers to this ‘How?’ question, enabling you to:

Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers

Create cross-team alignment around the business

Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership

Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers

We’ve done a lot of customer journey work here at Hotjar, so we know that the above is true—but don’t just take our word for it: all the people we interviewed for this guide confirmed the benefits of journey mapping. Let’s take a look at what they shared.

1. Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers

It’s one thing to present your entire team with charts, graphs, and trends about your customers, and quite another to put the same team in front of ONE map that highlights what customers think, want, and do at each step of their journey.

I did my first customer journey map at MADE.COM within the first three months of joining the company. I was trying to map the journey to understand where the pain points were.

For example, people who want to buy a sofa from us will be coming back to the site 8+ times over several weeks before making a purchase. In that time, they may also visit a showroom. So now I look at that journey, at a customer’s motivation for going to the website versus a physical store, and I need to make sure that the experience in the showroom complements what they're doing on-site, and vice-versa, and that it all kind of comes together.

The map helps in seeing that journey progress right up to the time someone becomes a customer. And it also continues after: we see the next touchpoints and how we're looking to retain them as a customer, so that they come back and purchase again.

A customer journey map is particularly powerful when you incorporate empathy into it, bringing to light specific emotions that customers experience throughout the journey.

2. Create cross-team alignment around the business

The best, most effective customer journey maps are not the solo project of the user experience (UX) or marketing team (though they may originate there).

Customer journey maps are a quick, easy, and powerful way to help everybody in your business get a clearer understanding of how things work from a customers’ perspective and what the customers’ needs are—which is the first step in your quest towards creating a better experience for them.

Our first goal for preparing a customer journey map was to improve understanding customers across the company, so that every employee could understand the entire process our clients go through.

For example, people from the shipping department didn't know how the process works online; people from marketing didn't know how customers behave after filing a complaint. Everything seems obvious, but when we shared these details, we saw that a lot of people didn't know how the company itself works—this map made us realize that there were still gaps we needed to fill.

If we discover that customers have a pain point in a specific section of the map, different teams can look at the same section from several angles; customer support can communicate why something is not possible, and engineering can explain why it’s going to take X amount of effort to get it done. Especially in cross-functional teams where we all come from really different disciplines, I find these maps to be an incredible way for us all to speak the same language.

3. Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership

As a company grows in size and complexity, the lines of ownership occasionally become blurry. Without clarity, a customer might get bounced like a ping pong ball across Sales, Success, and Support departments—not great for the seamless and frictionless customer experience we all want to offer.

A central source of ‘truth’ in the form of a customer journey map that everybody can refer to helps clarify areas of ownership and handover points.

We were growing as a team, and we realized we needed to operationalize a lot of the processes that, before then, had just been manually communicated. We did it through a customer journey map. Our goal was to better understand where these hand-off points were and how to create a more seamless experience for our customers, because they were kind of being punted from team to team, from person to person—and often, it was really hard to keep tabs on exactly where the customer was in that entire journey.

4. Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers

A customer journey map will take your team from 'It appears that 30% of people leave the website at this stage' to 'Wow, people are leaving because the info is incomplete and the links are broken.' Once everyone is aligned on the roadblocks that need to be addressed, changes that have a positive impact on the customer experience and customer satisfaction will happen faster.

The customer journey map brings it all together: it doesn't matter who you've got in the room. If you’re doing a proper journey map, they always get enlightened in terms of ‘Oh, my word. I did not know the customer's actually experiencing this.’ And when I walk out of the session, we have often solved issues in the business. Accountability and responsibilities have been assigned, and I find that it just works well.

Shaheema (right) working on a customer journey map

Collect the right data to create an effective customer journey map

The secret of getting value from customer journey mapping is not just building the map itself: it's taking action on your findings. Having a list of changes to prioritize means you can also measure their effect once implemented, and keep improving your customers' experience. 

This all starts with collecting customer-centric data—the sooner you begin, the more information you’ll have when the time comes to make a decision.

Start mapping your customer journey today

Hotjar lets you experience your customer’s journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.

FAQs about customer journey mapping

How do i create a customer journey map.

To create a useful customer journey map, you first need to define your objectives, buyer personas, and the goals of your customers (direct customer feedback and  market research will help you here). Then, identify all the distinct touchpoints the customer has with your product or service in chronological order, and visualize the completion of these steps in a map format.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping provides different teams in your company with a simple, easily understandable visualization that captures your customers’ perspective and needs, and the steps they’ll  take to successfully use your  product or service. 

Consider customer journey mapping if you want to accomplish a specific objective (like testing a new product’s purchase flow) or work towards a much broader goal (like increasing overall customer retention or customer loyalty).

What is the difference between a customer journey map and an experience map?

The main difference between an experience map and a customer journey map is that customer journey maps are geared specifically toward business goals and the successful use of a product or service, while experience maps visualize an individual’s journey and experience through the completion of any task or goal that may not be related to business.

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.

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!

Get a free Heyday demo

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:

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 state.

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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How to Create a Customer Journey Map

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

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

What is a customer journey map?

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

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

Why is it important to map the customer journey?

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

Benefits and challenges of customer journey mapping

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

Benefits of customer journey mapping

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

Challenges of customer journey mapping

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

How to create a customer journey map

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

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: 2-10 people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Identify areas of friction and opportunities for improvement.

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

Things to do:

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

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

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

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

6. Test and refine the customer journey map.

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

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

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

Customer journey mapping templates

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

Customer journey map template

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

Experience diagramming template

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

Rose, thorn, bud and affinity clusters template

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

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

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

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

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

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About the authors

Bryan Kitch

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Our latest releases: June, 2024

Customer Journey Map Template

Free Resource

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

This download includes 7 free customer journey map templates:.

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

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Salespeople, marketers, and customer support professionals all benefit from better understanding their customers and buyer personas. One of the most effective ways to do that is with customer journey maps. 

Customer journey maps are an outline of a customer's experience and how your product incorporates into their lives. 

Given this new understanding, you can figure out where to make improvements to your product , marketing, and support process for a better customer experience.

Download the templates today to start mapping out your customer's experience with your product or service. 

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map, or journey map, is a visual representation of interactions people have with your brand. A good journey maps highlight moments of delight or pain customers of a brand experience pre and post sales. Using a templated customer journey map helps standardize how businesses can measure how different customer journeys can be improved.

How do I create a customer journey map template?

How to create a comprehensive customer journey map.

Start with your buyer persona. HubSpot provides a free "Make My Persona" tool if you don't have one. Map out buyer touchpoints with your business. This starts from how they found your business to how they left reviews. Analyze customer pain points. This could be through customer interviews or online negative reviews. Assign priorities to addressing customer pain points. Measure the impact of solving the customers' problems.

What are the elements of a customer journey?

Key elements of customer journey maps.

We created free templates that address personas, timelines, touchpoints, and other elements of great customer journey maps:

Why do I need to fill out the information requested?

We will always keep your personal information safe. We ask for your information in exchange for a valuable resource in order to (a) improve your browsing experience by personalizing the HubSpot site to your needs; (b) send information to you that we think may be of interest to you by email or other means; (c) send you marketing communications that we think may be of value to you. You can read more about our privacy policy  here .

Is this really free?

Absolutely . Just sharing some free knowledge that we hope you’ll find useful. Keep us in mind next time you have marketing questions!

Click the button to gain access to the templates.

Download the free journey map templates.

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Experience Mapping Template

Plan your product according to your customer’s needs and desires with the Experience Map Template. Bring a customer-centric approach to product development and branding.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Experience Map Template

Josh Zak , a product strategist and Turtle Design co-founder, created this Experience Map Template to show clients how their customers interact with their brands. When prototyping or planning a product, this template helps you to uncover customer’s actions, feelings, and ways of thinking throughout their journey.

What’s the Experience Map Template?

The Experience Map Template describes how your customer feels when in touch with your brand. The experience map comprises one frame detailing the customer journey, containing their key actions, feelings, and emotions. It also defines the customer journey stages, touchpoints, and opportunities when interacting with a brand or product.

Benefits of the Experience Map Template

Product managers, designers, and marketers can profit significantly from the experience map. When building a brand strategy , the customer experience map helps you to validate assumptions and guides your design and the strategy behind it.

Here are a few of the benefits of having an experience map:

Set stakeholder expectations

When building a product, design needs to be validated and assumptions tested. The Experience Map Template helps uncover your customer needs and pain points.

Find opportunities

The customer journey reveals the weaknesses and strengths of your product. Uncover opportunities to gain customers or to improve their existing experience when in touch with your brand.

Set the metrics for success

What does success look like? With the experience map, you can define success metrics bringing together business needs and customer satisfaction.

Discover critical points in your customer journey

Find the flaws in your strategy and prioritize what needs to be worked on.

How to use Experience Map Template?

Select the ready-made Experience Map Template and add it to your board. The experience map will guide your design and product decisions. Here are the main sections of the template:

User purpose: add a quote describing your ideal user and demographics.

Stages: Define the stages of your customer journey.

Key Actions: What do you want them to do at each customer journey stage?

Doing: Describe exactly what actions your ideal user performs at each stage.

Touchpoints: What are the customer touchpoints? Define each touchpoint according to customer journey stages.

Questions: Add any questions your user might have at each stage.

Emotions: How does your ideal user feel? Track their emotions at every stage.

Opportunities: Analyze their feelings and see the patterns. Identify what could be improved.

System: Which systems are used for every touchpoint? Describe in detail.

What is the difference between an experience map and a journey map?

The experience map is not tied to any product or service and often shows the generic user experience when in contact with a given brand or service. On the other hand, the customer journey is more specific, mapping out their journey when in touch with a particular feature, service, or product.

Get started with this template right now.

Empathy Mapping With AI Assistance

Works best for:.

Research & Design, Market Research

Empathy Mapping AI Assistance template combines traditional empathy mapping with AI insights. This innovative approach helps you understand user needs by integrating data-driven insights with human empathy. Use this template to enhance your product development process and create more personalized user experiences.

UX Project Canvas Template

User Experience, UX Design, Market Research

Inspired by Alexander Osterwalder's 2005 business model canvas, the project canvas will help your team visualize the big picture of your UX and design projects, providing a convenient structure that holds all of your important data. This innovative tool enables you to transform an idea into a project plan, stimulating collaboration and communication between collaborators. Unlike alternative models, the project canvas is a simple interface. There are few startup costs, and employees can easily be brought up to speed to start using the canvas quickly.

Customer Journey Map Template

Ideation, Mapping, Product Management

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of your customer’s experience. It allows you to capture the path that a customer follows when they buy a product, sign up for a service, or otherwise interact with your site. Most maps include a specific persona, outlines their customer experience from beginning to end, and captures the potential emotional highs and lows of interacting with the product or service. Use this template to easily create customer journey maps for projects of all kinds.

Niching Down: Online Course Persona Empathy Map

Market Research, Research & Design

Niching Down Online Course Persona Empathy Map helps you tailor online courses to specific personas. By understanding their needs and motivations, you can design more effective and engaging course content. Perfect for course developers and educators.

Discovery Interviews Template

The Discovery Interviews Template is a powerful tool that allows you to delve into a topic from different angles and gain a deeper understanding of different perspectives. By conducting interviews using this template, you can uncover valuable insights and uncover new information that can help you make informed decisions. Whether you are a researcher, product manager, or simply curious about a specific topic, the Discovery Interviews Template is an essential resource for anyone looking to explore a subject in depth.

Diary Template

The Diary Template is an effective research tool to gain insights into individuals' internal processes as they document their encounters with a specific product, service, or matter. Unlike real-time interactions, journaling is usually conducted asynchronously over an extended period of time, enabling deliberate reflection that other methods may not facilitate. This asynchronous nature encourages individuals to express more elaborate accounts of their emotions and viewpoints, resulting in profound and stimulating responses.

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11 Free Effective Customer Journey Map Templates

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

Creating an effective customer journey is essential to the success of any business.

It takes careful planning and consideration, as well as a deep understanding of your customer’s needs and preferences. But it doesn’t have to be daunting. With the right tools and templates, you can craft an exceptional customer experience that will keep them coming back for more.

One such tool is customer journey templates, which provide businesses with a structured approach to creating their buyer journeys.

In this article, we’ll explore what customer journey templates are and what makes a good template. Then, we’ll look at 11 examples of great customer journey templates so that you can see first-hand how tools help create great experiences for customers throughout their entire lifecycle.

What is a Customer Journey Map Template?

What makes a good customer journey mapping template, 1. clickup customer journey map template, 2. clickup agency client health tracker by zenpilot, 3. clickup user story mapping template, 4. clickup empathy map whiteboard template, 5. clickup customer success plan template, 6. clickup voice of the customer template, 7. clickup customer problem statement template, 8. clickup customer onboarding template, 9. clickup customer service escalation template, 10. slidesgo powerpoint customer journey mapping template, 11. sidesgo google slides customer journey map template, how to create a customer journey map.

A customer journey map visually represents the customer experience from start to finish. It’s similar to a project management tool , except that it helps businesses understand how different parts of their customer journey contribute to buyers’ satisfaction and loyalty. A customer journey map templates are pre-designed versions of these timelines that give users a solid place to start from.

Typically, a customer journey map template will include key steps in the customer lifecycle, such as onboarding and follow-up . It will also include key metrics such as customer satisfaction and net promoter score, which can help inform decision-making when it comes to refining the customer experience.

By using a template as part of your standard operating procedures to plan out your customer journey, you can quickly gain insight into how different touchpoints are performing and identify areas where improvement is needed. This can then be used to shape your company’s work habits around delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Additionally, templates provide a starting point for businesses that do not have the resources or in-house skills to design their own customer journey map from scratch.

Bonus: SOP software !

If you’re looking to create a fantastic customer journey, having a good template is the key. A stellar customer journey should be both enjoyable and informative, allowing your customers to feel knowledgeable and empowered throughout the entire process.

Likewise, a good customer journey template should be easy to follow and utilize, offering a structure that makes sense for both you and your customers.

• Has clearly defined stages: A good customer journey template should have clear and distinct stages that represent the various touch points or interactions the customer has with your business.
• Shows the customer perspective : The template should be designed from the customer’s perspective, highlighting their needs, expectations, and pain points at each stage of the journey.
• Represents graphically: The template should be visually appealing and easy to understand. A visual representation of the journey can help to identify areas where the customer experience could be improved.
• Is flexible and customizable: A good customer journey template should be flexible and customizable to accommodate different types of customer journeys across different industries or businesses.
• Includes metrics and feedback: The template should include business metrics that measure the success of each stage of the journey, as well as feedback mechanisms that capture customer feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Facilitates collaboration: The template should facilitate collaboration between different departments within your organization to ensure a consistent and seamless experience across all customer touchpoints.

With a solid template and a customer journey mapping tool , you can create a customer journey that not only meets but exceeds your customers’ expectations. And having that set roadmap to follow will make the process easier and more efficient than ever before.

11 Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Customer journey templates are a powerful tool for mapping out the customer journey, as they provide a concise visual representation of the touchpoints a customer has with your business. These templates can help businesses better understand their customer’s experience, and make data-driven decisions to improve it.

Because every business’s customer journey will look a bit different, we’ve rounded up 11 of our favorite journey templates for various use cases.

If you’re trying to decide where to start on your customer journey mapping, why not keep it simple with ClickUp’s Customer Journey Map Template ?

This whiteboard-style template lays out the customer’s lifecycle from start to finish. It offers question prompts on customer actions, touchpoints, experience, and solutions, and breaks the journey into three main stages:

• Awareness: Stage 1 of the customer journey, where customers become aware of the business and its products or services.
• Consideration: The second stage of the customer journey, where customers begin to consider the business as a potential solution to their needs. At this stage, customers may begin to research the business and its products or services, compare it to other options, and evaluate its features and benefits.
• Conversion: The final stage of the customer journey, where customers make a purchase decision and become paying customers.

Each stage has 6 preloaded sticky notes underneath it, but the whiteboard workspace also allows you to add additional sticky notes, draw freehand, add shapes, arrows, and text, and include links to documents, websites, Figma files, and Google Workspace apps.

Overall, this template provides a comprehensive roadmap of the customer’s journey and helps businesses to brainstorm opportunities for improvement.

Stay ahead of your client’s needs and drive customer satisfaction with the ClickUp Agency Client Health Tracker from ZenPilot . This customizable template allows you to track the health of your customer relationships, manage account details, and more – all in one convenient location.

This template allows you to easily visualize your customer journey from beginning to end. Its customizable fields, user-friendly interface, and powerful tracking capabilities make it easy to manage your customer relationships and stay ahead of their needs.

The ClickUp Agency Client Health Tracker by Zenpilot includes:

• 8 pre-configured views
• 14 Custom Fields
• Built in activity tracking features

Customer journey mapping breaks down a user’s journey from awareness, consideration, and conversion into smaller pieces and stages, and then represents them on a visual map. This process enables businesses to gain a better understanding of the customer’s perspective and identify areas of improvement in the user experience.

If that’s something your company needs, ClickUp’s User Story Mapping Template is for you!

During the process of user story mapping, cross-functional teams work together to identify the different stages of the user journey. This can include identifying buyer personas, user activities, user steps, and more.

Our template utilizes the same whiteboard features as our Customer Journey Mapping Template , just with a different layout and pre-populated fields specific to story mapping.

• Functionality: All the flexibility of our regular whiteboard workspace. The ability to add or remove sticky notes, link out to documents and websites, add photos, shapes, arrows, and text, and even freehand draw.
• User guide: The steps on the left-hand side show you how to use the template, and there are premade sections for user activity, user steps, releases, and customer personas.

By creating a shared understanding of the user’s journey, businesses can develop more effective solutions and products that better meet their customer’s needs.

Empathy mapping enables teams to gain a more profound understanding of their buyers. Like a user persona , empathy maps represent a specific customer segment or profile. It is designed to help teams develop empathy and identify with their customers’ needs, feelings, thoughts, and motivations.

ClickUp’s Empathy Map Whiteboard Template allows team members to share insights and observations on their customers’ behaviors, experiences, and challenges. By using a user persona template and creating a visual representation of their customers’ perspectives, teams can develop a better understanding of their customers’ emotional and psychological states, ultimately leading to more customer-centered solutions.

The template features 6 sections designed to guide your understanding of your customer journeys:

• Think and feel: The customer’s worry and aspirations, what makes a difference to them, and what their mindset and character reveal about them
• See: The customer’s environment, market, and cultural preferences
• Hear: What influencers, friends/family, and boss/peers/co-workers are saying to the customer
• Say and Do: The customer’s behavior towards others, public attitude, and appearance
• Pain: The customer’s fears and frustrations
• Gain: The customer’s wants, needs, and measures of success

The Empathy Map Whiteboard Template is an essential tool for any team looking to understand their customers better. But it can also be used in-house for HR teams wanting to understand their employees better. Consider implementing empathy mapping into your HR software , or make mapping employees one of your HR goals .

Customer success is an essential aspect of maintaining and growing a loyal customer base for any business. A customer success plan is a critical tool that can help you provide an exceptional customer experience, leading to long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty.

ClickUp’s Customer Success Plan Template is an easy way to visualize critical customer information in a single place for streamlined efficiency and quicker customer support.

• Filter by status: Quickly view all customer information depending on where customers are at in your pipeline – either “onboarding,” “ongoing,” “retention,” “on hold,” “complete,” or “inactive”
• Quick view important customer information : Client name, phone number, email, location, service type, agreed upon pricing, progress percentage bar, and attachment to the contract
• Add subtasks: Add custom subtasks to the customer’s card, and visually check how many tasks have been completed just below the client’s name.

Using this template gives you a bird’s eye view of where each customer is at in your lifecycle, and which tasks still need to be completed for them to move along to the next stage. It provides accountability and oversight in a single view.

In today’s competitive business landscape, providing top-notch customer service is important for the success of any organization. To achieve this, you need to gain a deep understanding of your customer’s needs, expectations, and preferences. That’s where ClickUp’s Voice of the Customer Template comes in.

This template helps you gain insights into your customers’ experiences and improve your overall customer satisfaction. It captures customer feedback through various channels like surveys, case studies, social media, customer service interactions, and online reviews, then helps guide you toward finding a solution.

• Voice of the customer: This lets you put a soundbite of a customer’s review or feedback (ie, “This product is too difficult to use”)
• Customer need: Space to interpret what the customer is looking for that they aren’t getting based on the complaint (ie, “Customer needs instructions that are easier to understand”)
• Solution: Space to determine how you’ll meet the customer’s need (ie, “provide alternative instructions via video walkthrough and online recordings)

This “problem–need–solution” format can help you improve customer satisfaction and increase customer loyalty. When customers feel heard and see that their feedback is being acted upon, they’re more likely to become loyal to your brand and recommend your business to others.

There are numerous reasons why a product or service may fail to meet customer expectations. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to understand your customer’s challenges and problems. One way to do this is by using ClickUp’s Customer Problem Statement Template to capture customer issues and create strategies to solve them.

The customer problem statement template includes 5 sections:

• Customer profile: Where you’ll include a customer description and personal information to help identify the segments this customer fits into.
• Customer objectives: Where you’ll write what your customer hopes to accomplish with your product or service.
• Customer roadblocks : Where you’ll list any barriers standing between your customer and their objectives.
• Barrier root cause : Where you’ll identify what deeper issue is causing the roadblocks.
• Emotional impact: Where you’ll write your plan to target the pain points and help them reach their goals.

This template will help you clarify your customers’ frustrations and pain points to understand them better, improve business operations and products to meet customer needs, and educate your team so they can become more empathetic customer advocates.

An organized customer onboarding experience is essential for the success of both new clients and the company.

Good customer onboarding can lead to improved customer satisfaction, retention, upselling and cross-selling opportunities, and long-term brand loyalty. On the flip side, a negative experience can lead to customer frustration and churn. Use ClickUp’s Customer Onboarding Template to ensure your business reaps the benefits – and avoids the pitfalls.

The template offers 4 preset stages of onboarding (though, they can be edited to suit your needs):

• Welcome gift: The first stage includes sending a welcome email, present, and additional information to a new customer.
• Team assignment: The second stage includes assigning a person or team to manage and support the new customer.
• Onboarding Questionnaire: The third stage includes sending out a series of questions to the new customer, getting it back, and reviewing the responses.
• Onboarding Call: The fourth stage includes scheduling and running an onboarding meeting with the new customer.

Each stage offers fields for the new customer name, assignee, priority level, customer contact information, onboarding call date , services, and customer type, plus subtasks within each stage. Note that this template is specific to customer onboarding – but we have plenty of great resources on employee onboarding and welcoming new hires , too!

Providing excellent customer service can set a company apart from its competitors and create a loyal customer base. However, even the best customer service teams can face difficult situations that require escalation to higher levels of management. This is where ClickUp’s Customer Service Escalation Template comes in.

This template lets you see all customer service tickets in a single view, as well as additional views for tier support and team capacity. Tickets are organized by new tickets, Tier 1, Tier 2, and beyond, depending on the customer’s need.

Each support section has the following field to give your support team all the context they need to resolve customer issues.

• Task name: The subject of the issue or request in question (ie, “Product demo inquiry” or “refund status”).
• Custom task ID: To easily categorize, identify, and track support tickets.
• Assignee: To assign a particular support staff member to the request. Assignee data can be pulled later to assist in supporting staff performance reviews .
• Customer information: Including name, phone number, email, address, order ID, and support request message.
• Issue category: To help you identify the type of support the customer is requesting (ie, a refund, follow-up message, replacement, etc.).
• Attachment spots: Optional fields to capture images or files the customer provides, and to attach a copy of their receipt.
• Impact level: To determine how critical or urgent resolving this task is.

Handling customer service escalation requests in a quick and organized fashion can improve customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn, increase efficiency, improve communication, and provide valuable data for continuous improvement .

While we believe ClickUp provides the best customer journey templates possible, we know that sometimes, you don’t get to choose the software you use to conduct your business. For those who have to stick with Microsoft solutions, SlidesGo provides a Customer Journey Map Template to help you track your customer’s lifecycle.

This slide pack includes high-level, mostly visual templates to use in presentations, as well as a few more detailed journey maps that take you through the awareness, acquisition, service, and loyalty customer stages. This download includes:

• Wide variety of options: 30 different 100% editable infographics and customer journey maps
• Most common format size: Widescreen 16:9 format for all screen types
• User guide: Additional information and instructions on customizing the graphics

These templates are not quite as detailed or varied as the ClickUp options, but if you’re creating a quick slide deck for a presentation, they’re a perfect solution.

If your company uses Google Workspace and you’re required to keep your customer journey templates within the Google family, these SlidesGo Google Slides Customer Journey Map Templates are for you.

It’s important to have a complete understanding of your customer’s needs, opinions, motivations, doubts, and interactions with your product. This thorough analysis of the customer’s experience is a critical aspect of product development. This set of infographics was creed to help with these studies.

This download includes:

• Wide variety of options: 32 different 100% editable infographics and customer journey maps

These infographics are easy to use and can help elevate any presentation on customer experience studies. While they’re designed with Google Slides in mind, they can also be downloaded for use with Microsoft PowerPoint.

Related Customer Journey Resources:

• Client Management Software
• CRM Software Examples
• CRM Templates
• CRM Workflow

Now that you have a variety of templates to choose from, you may be wondering how to actually create a customer journey map. Here are some simple steps you can follow:

• Identify your target audience: The first step in creating a successful customer journey map is knowing who your customers are. Identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your existing and potential customers. This will help you understand their needs and motivations.
• Map the stages of your customer journey: Next, map out the different stages that a customer goes through when interacting with your brand. These typically include awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy.
• Gather data: To create an accurate customer journey map, gather data from various sources such as surveys, interviews, and feedback. This will give you a better understanding of your customers’ experiences.
• Create personas: Develop fictional characters that represent the different types of customers you have. These personas should be based on real data and help you empathize with your customers for a deeper understanding of their journey.
• Analyze emotions: Customers’ emotions play a crucial role in their journey map. Identify how they may feel at each stage of the journey and make note of any pain points or moments of delight. This can help you improve their overall experience.
• Plot the map: Finally, plot all the stages, touch points, and emotions on a visual map to get a clear understanding of your customer journey. This will help you identify areas for improvement and align your strategies with your customers’ needs.

Optimize Your Workflow with Customer Journey Templates

Customer journey templates are a valuable tool for businesses looking to efficiently map and track their customers’ lifecycles. By utilizing these templates, businesses can identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and stay competitive in today’s market.

We may be biased, but we think the easiest way to get started with customer journey mapping is by using ClickUp. ClickUp’s workspace lets you easily visualize your customer lifecycle, and our templates help you to quickly and intuitively organize it, whether you’re working solo or as part of a larger team. And when you do need to collaborate with other contributors, ClickUp makes getting feedback simple.

It’s free to get started with ClickUp, so give us a try today to see how a bit of planning upfront can maximize your production in the long run.

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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20+ User Journey Map Examples and Templates

13 min read

Looking at user journey map examples can help you come up with a visual representation of your customer’s journey.

Customer journey mapping research also allows you to identify areas of opportunity in your processes and plan to reduce those friction points. For instance, you might discover that you need user onboarding software to retain users after the first three months.

So, we’ve compiled 20+ examples and templates of customer journey maps to help you get inspired.

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• A user journey map is a document that shares the steps a user must follow to accomplish a goal. It can also include sentiments, thoughts, and friction points.
• The terms user journey maps and customer journey maps are usually interchangeable. These are similar because they both tell the story of a customer’s journey . However, they vary in scope, definitions, and goals.
• For instance, a user journey map is usually reduced to a specific product or service; while a customer journey map shows the end-to-end of a customer’s activities involving your product or service, e.g., advertising.
• The touchpoints in a user journey map refer to in-app experiences, and customer touchpoints in a journey map refer to every interaction the customer has with your app.
• Usually, the user journey map influences product design, while the customer journey map informs business strategies.
• There are four types of customer journey maps:
• Current-state maps. To illustrate the customer journey in the present.
• Future-state maps. To speculate on potential user journeys in the future.
• Day-in-the-life maps. To show what a user does in relation or without any link to your product/service.
• Service-blueprint maps. To define everything that needs to happen internally to properly serve users.
• Examples of user and customer journey maps include companies like Hubspot, Zoom, Mailchimp, Dropbox, and Userpilot.
• Templates of user journey maps include service blueprints, customer empathy maps, user touchpoints, and effective journey maps.
• Did you identify friction points in your user onboarding? Try Userpilot , the all-in-one product adoption platform that’ll help you improve your onboarding experience and boost retention rates. Get a demo .

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What is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a document that shows the steps a user follows to reach a goal with your product or service. It’s usually used for UX visualization as it tells the story of a person navigating your product and their interaction with different touchpoints.

This document also helps you gather information about the user and the functionality they find most relevant.

In your first version of a user journey map, you may only add the user’s actions. But as you expand it, you should also add their emotions and thoughts.

User journey maps vs customer journey maps

User journey maps and customer journey maps are almost interchangeable terms. They both show the road a person takes to achieve goals and help improve the user experience .

However, these vary in scope, definitions, and goals:

• Scope. User journey maps usually showcase the way a user experiences and interacts with a specific product or service. On the other hand, customer journey maps visualize the end-to-end experience of a customer across various brand touchpoints.
• Definitions. The word ‘touchpoints’ has different meanings in each case. A touchpoint in a user journey map refers to interface interactions and in-app experiences. However, a touchpoint in a customer journey map means every moment a customer interacts with or becomes aware of your brand — e.g., advertisements, customer support, or at checkout.
• Goals. User journey maps are useful to influence product design improvements. The insights of a customer journey map , usually inform broader business strategies and customer engagement efforts.

Types of user and customer journey maps

Using customer or user journey maps for different purposes allows you to influence different aspects of your business. For instance, a day-in-the-life journey map lets you spot areas of your customer’s routine where you can participate.

Here are different types of user and customer journey visualization to implement in your business:

• Current-state map. Illustrates the critical user journey as it is now. It helps you visualize the current state of the user experience based on facts. This type of journey map allows you to identify the strengths and opportunities of your current process.
• Future-state map. Design how you wish the customers’ journey could look in the future. This type is aspirational and it’s useful when speculating potential customer paths. It’s mostly based on data from the current state map and creativity.
• Day-in-the-life map. Lists everything a customer does throughout the day despite those actions being related to your brand. A day-in-the-life map gives you an overall understanding of who your customer is, how they spend their time, and where your company falls. This map is based on user research data.
• Service-blueprint map. This is an internal document that states all the actions, policies, and processes that go behind customer-facing services. The service blueprint is usually for employees to know what they need to do to meet the customer across the journey.

User and customer journey map examples

Take a look at examples of user and customer journey maps from successful businesses and get inspired to draft your own.

1. Userpilot’s current user state journey map

To examine the user’s current state, you can use Userpilot to perform a path analysis .

With path analysis, you can identify and understand how users navigate through your product, pinpointing the key interactions and touchpoints they encounter.

For example, to optimize conversion , you can look into how enterprise users navigate toward the conversion point. Then you can use the discovered insights to replicate the experience for new users.

2. Spotify’s music-sharing user journey map

Spotify is a music streaming platform with various features. This example shows a detailed view of a Spotify user’s journey when sharing music with friends and family.

The image shows the steps the user takes to find and share music as well as their thoughts, emotions, touchpoints, and actors. It starts with a user opening Spotify to listen to music at work. They look up the different playlists and feel excited to see the suggestions.

Once they find a song that makes them feel happy, they share it with a friend by sending the link through WhatsApp. They follow up and wait for an answer.

This example is particularly interesting since it includes the actions, thoughts, and sentiments of two different personas.

3. Uber’s first experience user journey map

Uber is a popular transportation company for booking rides. This current-stage customer journey map shows all the steps a user takes from the moment they choose to use Uber as a new user, up to when they arrive at their destination.

It includes screenshots that show exactly what the user sees when they go through each of the customer journey stages.

This example includes goals from the persona on the side. It also includes verbatim thoughts and emotion tags that give you deeper insights into the target persona.

The bottom part of the map shares critical insights that help marketing and sales teams understand the user on a deeper level and improve their experience.

4. Dropbox’s customer journey map

This journey map includes the user persona’s jobs-to-be-done (JBTD) and the path they follow from the problem-awareness stage.

Since Dropbox is a cloud storage platform, using it for business affects the day-to-day of all workers. Hence, this map includes a clever section named “cast” which includes the profiles of everyone who’ll be affected by the decision to use Dropbox.

As you can see, Sophia starts her journey when she discovers Dropbox. She researches alternatives, books a demo, and signs up for the application.

This looks like a future state journey map as it seems quite simplified for a current state map.

5. Mailchimp’s day-in-the-life customer journey map

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform. The customer journey map captures everything a marketing worker named Dani does every two weeks.

This customer journey map compiles all the little tasks she does before, during, and after she sends a marketing email.

It’s considered a day-in-the-life map rather than a current-state one because it includes more detail than simply outlining the steps Dani takes to send an email. Instead, it includes the digressions she takes before actually completing the task, as well as emotions and areas of opportunity.

6. Hubspot’s customer journey map

This platform offers multiple services for managing a business. This is the current state of Hubspot’s customer journey . It shows everything a user does from the moment they become dissatisfied with previous tools.

This map explains in detail how customers interact with Hubspot until they become paying users. It also includes all the other actors involved, the factors that lead to a positive or negative experience, and the decision points.

This map also includes thoughts and sentiments, friction points, customer touchpoints, and internal actors involved.

7. Netflix’s customer journey map

Similar to the Mailchimp example, this customer journey map explains the macro steps a user like Jen takes to watch a movie on Netflix.

As a media streaming platform, Netflix’s algorithm comes up with movies and TV show recommendations. This map shows how Jen disregards those recommendations and searches for a different movie instead, making it an area of opportunity for the Netflix team.

As part of the analysis, this map also includes Jen’s pain points, motivators, and emotions. This is an example of how breaking the journey down into smaller goals can simplify spotting friction points by showing an end-to-end process on a single screen.

8. Canva’s user journey map

Canva is an online graphic design platform, mostly suited for non-designers. This user map tells the story of Laura, a woman who isn’t a designer but wants to build beautiful flyers to promote her hobby.

As you see, the map walks us through the process of building a new design. It starts with Laura creating a board and ends when she exports the design. Similarly to the Netflix example, this journey map is also restricted to one scenario.

This user journey also includes actions, pain points, goals, expectations, and thoughts across the phases.

9. Zoom’s user journey map

This popular online meeting platform serves different purposes. This example is about Zoom for teachers and it’s broken down into three main categories: Action, emotions, and thinking.

This user journey map explains what a teacher does to give online lectures. It’s separated into five main action buckets with a breakdown of the tasks that go into each bucket. For example, for a teacher to “Start teaching” they need to open Zoom and roll the call.

You can also see how the teachers’ emotions and thoughts vary throughout the session. Plus, the design of this map lets us quickly identify opportunities just by looking at the emojis.

10. HeartiCraft’s user journey map

HeartiCraft is an online store for people who want to buy handcrafted products. The experience begins when the user researches and finds the website and ends when they decide to buy again.

It’s an interesting view of a user journey map as it exposes where HeartiCraft shines but also where it fails to delight users.

This map highlights four different stages and includes all the actions, thoughts and feelings, pain points, and delights under each of them.

11. Say Yeah!’s customer journey map

This company helps businesses deliver products and services that better serve neurodiverse users. To analyze this customer journey , you need to place your eyes on the left side of the screen and skim through the stages.

As you can see, this is the journey of an adult child looking for health support for their parents. It starts at the moment they discover a problem and ends after they’ve made a purchase.

This map includes the tasks, actors, emotions, media, tactics, and the thinking process of the user across the stages. It also shows how relevant each of those moments is for serving the customer properly.

12. Gartner’s B2B customer buying journey map

As a consulting firm, Gartner has a deep understanding of the B2B sales process. You can see that in this example because it paints the B2B buyer’s journey as a non-linear path.

This is likely informed by historic customer behavior, journey analytics , and user research. In the map, you’ll see four main actions across the user’s journey that allow them to buy a product.

However, there are internal discrepancies that Gartner manages to capture in this map. For example, showing that the person meeting with the company isn’t necessarily the decision maker and needs to go back and get the CEO’s approval before agreeing to make a purchase.

13. Service blueprint map for technical support

As mentioned above, a service journey map helps employees know what needs to happen internally to power customer-facing tasks. In this example, we can see how systems are interconnected and linked to company policies.

This map also shows the actions employees take to provide service, including the invisible back-end tasks and the evidence that supports each action.

Templates for user and customer journey mapping process

Explore the different templates included on this list, and edit them to fit your customer journeys:

1. User journey map template in Figma

You can leverage this template on Figma for your customer journey mapping exercise and uncover user activities and emotions across different stages – from realizing their needs to becoming a paid customer.

It allows you to add what you expect the user’s emotions, experience, and expectations to be at each of the stages.

You can include as many ideas as you wish on this canvas or even invite your teams to work on this together.

2. User empathy mapping template in Notion

An empathy map compiles your target user’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

This Notion template follows the classical approach by including the four main categories:

• Says. Direct quotes or statements that provide insight into the user’s thoughts and opinions.
• Thinks. Reflects the user’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
• Does . Includes what the user does in real life or during their interaction with a product or service.
• Feels . Fears, frustrations, joys, and other emotional responses.

3. Future state customer journey map template from Xtensio

Use your creativity and your current state journey map to fill out this template. Explore alternative customer paths to offer a better customer experience.

This template includes space to add:

• Stages of the journey.
• User’s thoughts and feelings.
• Actions and touchpoints.
• How this map is different from the current journey.

4. Service blueprint customer journey map template from Miro

This is a typical service blueprint template. Miro lets you edit it to your liking by following these steps:

• Define the customer service scenario to investigate.
• Plot customer actions in chronological order.
• Lay out processes, actors, and support systems.
• Add roles and responsibilities by specifying interactions, visibility, and internal actions.
• Illustrate cross-functional relationships.

5. Customer journey map template from Mural

Use Mural’s customer journey map template to have a better understanding of your target audience’s touchpoints, needs, motivations, and barriers.

Here you can:

• Establish a customer scenario, e.g., buying a shirt online.
• Define the customer steps, including big and small actions.
• List all customer interactions with your brand, either in physical or digital touchpoints.
• Determine your customer’s goals and motivations.
• Highlight the positive moments at each stage.
• Define the negative or frustrating moments across the journey.

6. Customer journey map template from Canva

Find many different customer journey map templates on Canva. These all let you edit the customer actions across stages, and depending on the option that you choose, you’ll also be able to add the user’s:

• Emotions and feelings.
• Thinking process.
• Physical or digital touchpoints.
• Barriers or pain points.
• Solutions to barriers.

7. Customer touchpoint map template from InVision

Map out the customer touchpoints on this InVision template. Here, you’ll be able to list all the different interactions between the user and your business, as well as mention all the involved actors. You can break down the actions by stages and teams.

8. Customer journey mapping template from Slidesgo

Slidesgo provides you with 29 customer journey mapping examples. You can choose the design that piques your interest the most and add the different stages, touchpoints, actions, and sentiments. These designs are mostly suited for journeys of up to five steps.

9. B2B customer journey map template from UXPressia

UXPressia developed a set of B2B/B2C customer journey map templates for you to use. This mix also includes persona templates to guide you when creating personas for your journey maps.

You can use these templates as-is to guide your thinking or adapt them to fit your specific project needs.

10. Customer journey map template from Conceptboard

This customer journey map template is a classical one. Open the file with a clear understanding of your user persona.

There, you’ll be able to add customer data concerning each stage, more specifically regarding their:

• Touchpoints and channels.
• Overall experience.
• Pain points.
• Areas of improvement.

Exploring user journey map examples can inspire you to enhance your customers’ experience by pinpointing critical areas, such as better onboarding processes.

To create an effective customer journey map, you need a deep understanding of your user and a clear mapping path, i.e., via conducting user interviews and contextual research.

Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform that can equip you with actionable customer journey insights. Get a demo to explore our powerful analytics capabilities!

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How to create a customer journey map.

11 min read Read our step-by-step guide to creating a customer journey map, complete with helpful examples and resources.

How to start your customer journey map design process

1. gather data and build a story.

Without data, a  customer journey  is just a story – but without a story, data is just data. Building a cohesive journey for customers means using your data to create a story for your audience to follow.

A customer journey map details the sequence of events that happen when a customer experiences your brand – but knowing exactly what is happening through data analysis is vital to create a story that has weight. Make sure you’re not just gathering information, but turning data into insights that can be used to tell a story to your customers. A customer journey map is a visual representation of your data and knowledge about your customer and the processes they undergo, but it’s also the brand story your customers will remember.

2. Select a customer persona to target and a customer journey to map out

Your route to designing a customer journey map starts with  customer personas , complete with characteristics such as name, age, job role, and more.

3. Appoint a diverse mapping team

Your customer journey mapping team members should cover all areas of your company. With frontline staff, management members, and other individuals at various levels of your business, you can create a customer journey map that covers every aspect.

Free Course: Customer Journey Management & Improvement

Customer journey mapping process steps

To help make the customer journey mapping process clear, we’ll use our  Customer Journey Template  and an example customer journey.

The customer journey map template

Our tried-and-tested customer journey map template will help you to clarify  what your customer is aiming to do , how they feel about their interactions with you and how you need to set up their experience. This will help you to create an effective customer journey map.

This template helps you narrow down, for each step of the customer journey map:

• Customer behaviour:  What is your customer’s desired outcome or goal for this step?
• Customer attitudes:  What are your customers feeling? What are they telling you?
• The on-stage experience:  What interaction is your customer experiencing during this step, and with whom?
• The off-stage experience:  What is going on in the background of this step from your side of the business? Who needs to be present for this step to proceed?

Customer journey mapping example

Let’s use the following customer persona, goal, and journey to help us map out the steps we’ll need to take.

Customer persona

Name:  Joan Age:  43 Job role:  Hospital director Family status:  Married with children Professional goals:  Creating a sympathetic and efficient healthcare environment for patients, helping staff to grow professionally Personal goals: Wants to be able to make purchases quickly as she is time-poor, prefers in-person interactions when making big decisions

Customer goal

Joan wants to purchase a new vacuuming device from an e-commerce organisation to replace one that is broken.

Customer journey

A new buyer journey for your e-commerce business’ product or service

You might also want to consider your customer’s pain points based on their persona to help tailor your journey. For example, Joan’s pain point might be that she needs something quickly but feels unable to make a choice without speaking to a person before making a purchase.

Find out how we can help you to improve your customer journey mapping capabilities

Mapping the first step in the customer journey

As Joan is a new customer, it’s likely that her initial step might be to search for a new vacuum online.

We can use our template to build out this first step.

• Joan’s  customer behaviour : Going to an online search engine and looking for a new vacuum cleaner
• Her  customer attitude : Looking for a good price or a deal
• The  on-stage experience : Search engine, your e-commerce website, search engine advertising
• The  off-stage experience : Your marketing agency (Advertising and SEO), internal marketing team, device manufacturer

The above covers this step on a basic level. However, for an effective customer journey map, each stage needs to be built out further.

We also need to consider:

Processes/things

Moments that matter.

Though it might seem that Joan is the only person involved in this step, there are many individuals on your side of the interaction that need to have their input to make it a reality.

For example, your product managers will likely have decided which products to offer to your customers, based on data for what will sell. Your marketing team and senior management may have worked with a web design agency and an SEO agency to create a website that appears top of search engine results, perhaps using advertising to help catch the eye of potential customers above your competitors.

Making sure that you understand who is behind the off-stage experience of this step will help you to understand who to consult about this customer journey section. If there are representatives for your business who will directly interact with the customer during a step, those people need to be noted and considered for their input on the on-stage experience.

As mentioned, Joan might potentially be interacting with several aspects of your brand, for example:

• An online search engine
• Your company’s e-commerce website
• An advert your company has created

Ideally, her interaction with parts of your brand and processes you have control over – such as advertising, or your website – should lead her to the next step of the customer journey.

Considering the data behind these processes can help you to make this step more effective. For example, if you find that your advertising isn’t leading potential customers to your products or your website isn’t helping customers complete their desired tasks, adjusting your marketing approach or website processes might help you to create a more effective customer journey.

Customer attitudes

Your customer’s attitude might start out being basic – in this case, Joan seeking a good price on an item that she needs – but to create a truly successful customer experience , your customer should feel emotions such as satisfaction , or elation.

In this example, Joan could feel excitement at a great offer on a vacuum that you’ve advertised on a search engine. She could also feel relief at finding something quickly, or satisfaction that she’s able to source a new vacuum easily.

Creating moments that matter is vital for  retaining customers throughout their journey with your brand. Each time a customer takes a step on their customer journey with your brand, you should be aiming to identify the  greatest moment of emotional load . Their attitude should be transformed from the banal – completing their journey – to having a memorable experience.

In this example, creating that emotional sense of relief, excitement, or satisfaction for Joan in this step will encourage her to choose your brand over competitors.

Customer needs

Understanding and anticipating Joan’s needs will help you to create a customer journey map that fulfils her goals. This is where drafting a persona from user research helps you to develop a journey that meets expectations and exceeds them .

In this customer journey map step, knowing what Joan might be searching for and offering her an advert or website product description that matches that search will fulfil her need. Offering her a deal takes that fulfilment to the next step by providing an additional emotional component such as elation or satisfaction.

Creating each step of the customer journey is the first process that you need to complete, but the work doesn’t end there. Once you’ve traced out your journey map stages, you’ll need to track progress and analyse the data you collect to make sure your steps are accurate and are optimised for the best user experience .

Measuring your customer experience  using metrics and insights is the best way to make sure that customers like Joan are having the best experience possible, and improving the areas where they’re not.

Subsequent steps in the customer journey map

Planning the next steps.

Using data on how your customer currently moves through the purchasing journey can help you to pinpoint how to optimise the customer journey, and make it as easy as possible for the customer. Each step should be considered using the template and the further aspects outlined above.

An important factor to remember is that  customer behaviour and attitudes  might not reflect the internal stages you think are part of the customer journey. Remembering to design the customer journey based on data you’ve collected from the real world and the emotional journey you want to provide is key for success.

Subsequent steps

Subsequent steps for Joan’s customer journey could be:

• Step 2:  Visiting your e-commerce website via your search engine advert
• Step 3:  Browsing your online product directory for other options and comparing products
• Step 4:  Purchasing a vacuum and going through your payment process
• Step 5:  Receiving the vacuum and setting it up

Additional steps might be:

• Using a  self-service help center on your website to understand your delivery process
• Speaking to a frontline employee via chat to ask a question about the vacuum
• Calling your  customer service center once the device has been delivered to get set-up assistance
• Leaving customer reviews on your social media or third-party review platforms

These might become subsequent customer journeys in themselves. These could be:

• Issue resolution through customer support (such as an issue with the device)
• Renewal of services (such as a warranty on the vacuum)

How to improve your customer journey maps

Choose the appropriate touchpoint.

Understanding how to tailor the customer journey is key for a successful customer-focused approach. How every customer interacts will be different – so make sure you take customer feedback into account when deciding how best to interact with your customers. Each touchpoint needs to address user pain points and meet their needs – this is how you improve the customer experience.

Read our guide to customer touchpoints  to learn how to craft a memorable experience for your customers.

Use an effective customer experience platform

We’ve provided a very simple example of customer journey maps, with only one journey outlined. Often, customer journey maps can become incredibly complex, with multiple trajectories, touchpoints, personas, and personnel to consider.

Watch our free webinar on the five competencies of customer journey mapping

Related resources

Customer Journey

Customer Journey Mapping Workshop 3 min read

Customer journey mapping tools 14 min read, customer journey mapping 14 min read, the complete guide to customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer’s journey 16 min read, customer journey analytics 13 min read, request demo.

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When and how to create customer journey maps.

July 31, 2016 2016-07-31

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In This Article:

What is a customer journey map, deconstruction of a customer journey map, why do you need a journey map and when should you have one, key elements of customer journey maps, rules for creating successful journey maps.

In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton. Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. Finally, that narrative is condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform design processes.

Storytelling and visualization are essential facets of journey mapping because they are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise and that creates a shared vision. Fragmented understanding is chronic in organizations where KPIs are assigned and measured per individual department or group because many organizations do not ever piece together the entire experience from the user’s standpoint. This shared vision is a critical aim of journey mapping, because without it, agreement on how to improve customer experience would never take place.

Journey mapping creates a holistic view of customer experience, and it’s this process of bringing together and visualizing disparate data points that can engage otherwise disinterested stakeholders from across groups and spur collaborative conversation and change.

Zone A: The lens provides constraints for the map by assigning (1) a persona (“who”) and (2) the scenario to be examined (“what”).

Zone B: The heart of the map is the visualized experience, usually aligned across (3) chunkable phases of the journey. The (4) actions, (5) thoughts, and (6) emotional experience of the user has throughout the journey can be supplemented with quotes or videos from research.

Zone C: The output should vary based on the business goal the map supports, but it could describe the insights and pain points discovered, and the (7) opportunities to focus on going forward, as well as (8) internal ownership.

Journey maps should always be created to support a known business goal. Maps that do not align to a business goal will not result in applicable insight. The goal could be an external issue, such as learning about a specific persona’s purchasing behaviors, or an internal issue, such as addressing lack of ownership over certain parts of the customer experience. Some potential business goals that journey mapping could be applied toward are listed below.

Shift a company’s perspective from inside-out to outside-in. If an organization lets internal processes and systems drive decisions that affect customer experience, a journey map could help turn the culture of that organization by refocusing on the thoughts, actions and emotions of customers. Journey mapping sheds light on real human experiences that often organizations know very little about.

Break down silos to create one shared, organization-wide vision. Because journey maps create a vision of the entire customer journey, they become a tool for creating cross-department conversation and collaboration. Journey mapping could be the first step in building an organization-wide plan of action to invest in customer experience, as it helps answer the question, “Where do we start?” by highlighting areas of friction.

Assign ownership of key touchpoints to internal departments. Often, areas of inconsistencies and glitches in customer journeys exist simply because no internal team has been tasked with ownership of that element. Journey maps can create clarity around alignment of departments or groups with different stages or key touchpoints in the journey that need addressing.

Target specific customers. Journey maps can help teams focus in on specific personas or customers, whether that means understanding differences or similarities across the journeys of multiple personas, prioritizing a high-value persona or exploring ways to target a new type of customer.

Understand quantitative data. If you are aware through analytics or other quantitative data that something specific is happening—maybe online sales are plateauing or an online tool is being underutilized—journey mapping can help you find out why.

While journey maps can (and should) take a wide variety of forms, certain elements are generally included:

Point of view. First and foremost, choose the “actor” of the story. Who is this journey map about? For example, a university might choose either students or faculty members, both of which would result in very different journeys. “Actors” usually aligns with personas, if they exist. As a guideline, when creating a basic journey map, use one point of view per map in order to provide a strong, clear narrative.

Scenario. Next, determine the specific experience to map. This could be an existing journey, where mapping will uncover positive and negative moments within that current experience, or a “to-be” experience, where the mapper is designing a journey for a product or service that doesn’t exist yet. Make sure to clarify the user’s goal during this experience. Journey maps are best for scenarios that describe a sequence of events, such as purchasing behavior or taking a trip.

Actions, mindsets, and emotions. At the heart of a journey map’s narrative is what the user is doing, thinking, and feeling during the journey. These data points should be based on qualitative research, such as field studies, contextual inquiry, and diary studies . The granularity of representation can vary based on the purpose of the map. Is the purpose to evaluate or design an entire, broad purchasing cycle or a contained system?

Touchpoints and channels. The map should align touchpoints (times when the actor in the map actually interacts with the company) and channels (methods of communication or service delivery, such as the website or physical store) with user goals and actions. These elements deserve a special emphasis because they are often where brand inconsistencies and disconnected experiences are uncovered.

Insights and ownership. The entire point of the journey-mapping process is to uncover gaps in the user experience (which are particularly common in omnichannel journeys), and then take action to optimize the experience. Insights and ownership are critical elements that are often overlooked. Any insights that emerge from journey mapping should be explicitly listed. If politically possible, also assign ownership for different parts of the journey map, so that it’s clear who’s in charge of what aspect of the customer journey. Without ownership, no one has responsibility or empowerment to change anything.

Even with all the above critical elements included, two journey maps could look completely different, yet both be perfectly suitable for the context in which they were designed.Tradeoffs in scope, focus, and breadth vs. depth are required when deciding on what elements to include. To make informed decisions on those tradeoffs, consider the following:

• What level of detail is needed in order to tell the complete story?
• What elements (such as device, channel, encountered content) are also necessary in order to provide the most truthful narrative?
• Is the purpose of this journey map to diagnose issues with a current experience or to design a new experience?
• What’s the balance between external actions (on the customer side) and internal actions (on the organization side)?
• Who will be using this journey map?

Successful journey maps require more than just the inclusion of the “right” elements. Journey mapping should be a collaborative process informed by well-defined goals, and built from research. It requires hard work to keep the process on the right track and to build the buy-in needed to evangelize the insights it provides. Below are some tips for making sure that the process starts and stays in the right direction:

Establish the “why" and the “what.”  First, identify the business goal that the journey map will support. Make sure there are clear answers to these basic key questions before you begin the process:

• What business goal does this journey map support?
• Who will use it?
• Who is it about and what experience does it address?
• How will it be shared?

Base it on truth. Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Start with gathering any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative-research process. While quantitative data can help support or validate (or aid in convincing stakeholders who may view qualitative data as “fuzzy”), quantitative data alone cannot build a story .

Collaborate with others. The activity of journey mapping (not the output itself) is often the most valuable part of the process, so involve others. Pull back the curtain and invite stakeholders from various groups to be a part of compiling the data and building the map.

Don’t jump to visualization. The temptation to create an aesthetic graphic or jump to design can lead to beautiful yet flawed journey maps. Make sure the synthesis of your data is complete and well-understood before moving to creating the visual.

Engage others with the end product. Don’t expect to get “buy-in” and foster interest in your journey map by simply sending a lovely graphic as an email attachment. Make it a living interactive document that people can be a part of. Bring up your story in meetings and conversations to promote a narrative that others believe in and begin to reference. One idea is to create a journey-mapping showroom where anyone not on the direct team can come experience the process and resulting artifacts.

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Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Create customer journey maps to analyze the purchase path of your customers with the templates and examples of the online editor edit.org.

Create a map to analyze, understand and communicate your customer's customer journey with editable online templates from Edit.org

What is a Customer Journey Map?

It is a visual scheme that serves to visualize the steps that your clients follow from when they discover your product or service until they are regular clients and even recommend it to other people.

It is very useful to see what contact points there are and therefore take them into account for possible analysis and improvement.

A Customer Journey Map consists of 3 very important initial phases (plus 2 other phases after the acquisition of your products or contracting your services):

• Awareness (discovery). It is the moment when the potential customers discovers the existence of your product or service, which solves their problem or responds to their need.
• Consideration. It is the phase in which the person evaluates and compares your proposal.
• Acquisition (decides to purchase or not). It is the stage where he buys your product or hire your service (or decides not to and you lose this sales opportunity).
• Service (experience) or consumption. The customer makes use or consumes what is purchased.
• Loyalty or Advocady (retention and recommendation). The consumer repeats his experience, he is a satisfied customer and also prescribes your products and services to others like him.

Create a Customer Journey to analyze the contact points with your customers

Would you like to improve the shopping experience of your customers? Creating a Customer Journey Map will help you to be more aware of how many points of interaction with your company there are in each phase, with the aim of optimizing, modifying, eliminating or taking the appropriate action, with the objective to improve sales or the customer or user experience (UX).

The visualization of this map is a representation of the touchpoints with your company, and can be positive or generate friction.

To register the customers feedback for each touchpoint of the map is very practical to detect areas for improvement.

Do you want to create your own Customer Journey? Use the templates of our graphic editor to create how many versions you need for your startup or business. We explain as below.

How to design an editable journey map

In a few minutes you can have your own personalized Customer Journey downloaded to your device.

Follow these steps:

• Click on any image in this article to enter the editor
• Select the Customer Journey Map template you want to edit
• Customize the touchpoints and its text fields
• Save changes online
• Download your free custom graphic in JPG, PNG or PDF

Use editable Customer Journey templates to improve your marketing

What is a Customer Journey Map for? The key to this diagram is that you can activate it, it is to decide, it is a reflection of reality and therefore you can do tests by modifying the contact points.

We recommend that you make a new version every time you make a change in your company. Measuring the results will let you know which version works best. For example, you can create satisfaction surveys, or measure the results of sales conversion or even the evaluation of the consumer experience and thus know if it is improving or not.

Enter now the online editor and create your personalized Customer Journey Map for your business.

See the designs

3 Steps of a successful Customer Journey Map – free template included

This post is also available in: German

If you’re in the 50% of the organizations planning to invest more in customer experience innovations, the first step is identifying the key touchpoints on your customer’s journey. Once you’ve identified those touchpoints, you can analyze each of them, identifying room for improvement to ultimately boost your customer retention.

Understanding the customer journey becomes much easier when laid out visually . This is where a customer journey map template comes into play. Use our free template and read on for a simple guide on how to complete it online.

What is the Customer Journey? [2023 updated]

A customer journey is a roadmap that highlights all the experiences a customer has when interacting with your company. This journey documents the full experience of being a customer. It starts with initial awareness all the way through to post-purchase retention and every side-step, backtrack and hurdle in between.

Generating a positive customer experience boils down to ensuring that they have an equally positive experience at every moment. Just one negative experience can undo other positive experiences throughout the journey.

What is a customer journey map?

The customer journey map is a visual story-telling aid that maps the experience of customers. Gain a better understanding of the buying experience by visualizing it through the eyes of your customers.

Use the map to illustrate the customer’s attitudes and feelings at each touchpoint. This information can be sourced from customer satisfaction surveys, customer support tickets and emails, product or feature requests, group discussions, or from staff who deal with customers regularly.

How to create a customer journey map using a template

There are a few important steps you need to take before you start filling in the template, to ensure your map is as accurate as possible.

Use template

Step 1: Information Gathering

Gather information you’ve already gathered through user research or feedback surveys. If you find that your data is lacking, delay your mapping until you have collected some more relevant, complete data through surveys or staff feedback.

This data is used to:

• Identify the main touchpoints at each of the five stages
• Gain preliminary insights and feedback
• Create a list of actions performed by your customer at each stage

Step 2: Create a user persona

A user persona is a fictional character that represents the goals and behaviors of your average user. If you haven’t created one yet, t his article will guide you through the process. You should include basic demographic information, as well as a description of their needs and goals, uses of your products, and pain points.

Step 3: Begin mapping

Now it’s time to open the customer journey map template and begin filling it in.

Sections of the customer journey map template

We’ve created a simple, easy-to-use collaborative template that you can use to create your own customer journey map.

The template is broken down into the five key stages on the customer journey:

• Awareness: advertising, social media, blogs, and emails.
• Consideration: website, FAQs, sales
• Acquisition: homepage layout, customer service, product range, photography quality, 
• Service: personalization, chat-bot interactions, load speed, payment options, packaging, postage, product quality and price.
• Retention: product quality, follow-up offers, loyalty memberships, returns process, reviews.

Pro tip: Run a quick Google search of your business to see all the pages that mention you. Then check your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from.

Within each of these stages, you should consider the following questions in order to fully understand your customers.

Customer goals

What do users want to accomplish in this stage?

Customer actions

Describe which actions users need to do to reach the goals.

Touchpoints and channels

How do users get information to make a decision or reach goals?

Customer thoughts

What are users thinking or expecting during these actions?

Overall customer experience

What are the users’ feelings in this stage? (e.g.: happy, frustrated)

Pain points

What are the problems or negative experiences that users are facing in this stage?

Opportunities to improve

How can we help users to reach the goal? Identify opportunities that could be improved or insights.

Understanding the typical customer journey and being able to communicate it visually will greatly improve not only the experience of the customer but also your products and services.

Example of a customer journey map

Using the customer journey map template, we’ve created an example of the typical customer journey in an e-commerce store. Check it out below and use it to inspire your customer journey.

Now you’ve created your customer journey map in Conceptboard, share it with your marketing and sales departments, customer service staff, managers and key stakeholders. Anyone who is involved with customers has the ability to act on this information to improve your customers experience .

Keep learning

If you’re interested in learning more about customer experience, read about the Customer Persona ,  Customer Empathy Map and the Value Proposition canvas .

Conceptboard is the perfect canvas for your team to collaborate together on, wherever you are in the world. Give it a try for free today.

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5 Comments . Leave new

Thank you. Customer Journey map is great tool. How can I get this map as template in Conceptboard?

Hi there, I am glad you found this article very useful! Unfortunately, I cannot make this board public, so you cannot use this as a template. Definitely a good idea to keep in mind for future articles. Thanks!

I just wanted to let you know that this board can now be found as a template. Check out the Mapping out a Customer Journey: Part 2 + Template blog post and find the template! Try it out and let me know what you think!

Thanks a lot for posting this. I found this very informative. Excellent job.

Very insightful as well as reflective. Well said and very helpful tips.! Thank you so much!

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