Customer journey mapping is the secret to understanding how your customers interact with your brand at every touchpoint. By visualizing their experiences, emotions, and needs, you gain the clarity to identify pain points, uncover opportunities, and create seamless experiences that drive loyalty.
Whether you’re new to customer journey mapping or looking to refine your process, this guide is your roadmap. We’ll walk you through the essentials—from defining key stages to leveraging insights for improvement—so you can connect with your customers more meaningfully and outpace the competition. Let’s dive in!
What is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer journey mapping is the process of visually outlining the steps a customer takes when interacting with a business, from the first moment they learn about it to becoming a loyal advocate. It helps businesses understand how customers feel and what they experience at every stage, such as browsing a website, making a purchase, or reaching out for support.
Using customer journey mapping software, businesses can identify problems, improve touchpoints, and create smoother, more enjoyable experiences for their customers.
Why should you use customer journey maps?
Customer journey maps are essential tools for understanding and improving how customers interact with your business. Here are 5 reasons why you should use them:
- See your business through your customers’ eyes, gaining a deeper understanding of their experiences.
- Identify gaps and problems in the customer experience to address and improve.
- Align teams around a shared view of the customer journey for consistent service delivery.
- Highlight opportunities to enhance digital customer satisfaction and build loyalty.
- Strengthen customer relationships by delivering seamless, well-thought-out experiences.
How can customer journey maps improve customer experiences?
By identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement, customer journey maps allow businesses to create better experiences for their customers. Here’s how:
- Pinpoint areas where customers feel frustrated or encounter roadblocks, allowing for targeted improvements.
- Uncover opportunities to create moments of delight, such as personalized interactions or faster service.
- Optimize touchpoints to make every step of the journey easier and more enjoyable.
- Help businesses understand and respond to customers’ emotions and needs more effectively.
- Build stronger connections with customers by showing them they are valued and supported.

How to Build a Customer Journey Map: Complete Walkthrough
Now that you understand some of the many benefits of customer journey mapping, it’s time to turn your attention to the process itself. Here’s a basic overview of the steps you can take to create a customer journey map:
STEP 1: Prepare
I. Pick Your Tools
Creating a customer journey map starts with choosing the right tools to make the process efficient and insightful. Here’s how to get started:
- Customer Journey Map Template: Begin with a pre-built template that outlines the basic structure of a journey map. Look for templates that include key elements like customer personas, touchpoints, emotions, and actions. Tools like Miro, Lucidchart, or even basic spreadsheet software can provide customizable templates tailored to your needs.
- Tools to Help You with Journey Mapping Analytics: Analytics tools help you collect and analyze data to better understand customer behavior. Platforms like Google Analytics, Qualtrics, or Hotjar can track customer interactions, identify trends, and reveal pain points in the journey. These tools provide actionable insights that ensure your map is based on real customer data, not assumptions.
II. Pick Your Data
Accurate data is the backbone of an effective journey map. Gather data inputs for your customer journey map, like:
- Customer Feedback: Surveys, reviews, and support tickets to understand customer sentiments.
- Behavioral Data: Metrics such as website clicks, time spent on pages, or cart abandonment rates to track customer actions.
- Demographic and Persona Details: Information like age, location, or preferences to create detailed customer personas.
- Operational Data: Internal metrics like response times or resolution rates to evaluate operational efficiency.
III. Get the Right People to Help
Maybe you’re the only person in your company who needs to have their hands on the customer journey map. Or perhaps you need representation from multiple departments.
If other departments will be relying on the customer journey map example or have insights to share, it’s critical to bring them into the conversation. The last thing you want to do is make a mistake that could have been easily avoided by consulting with another team member.
STEP 2: Envision
I. Look at it From the Customer’s Perspective
The biggest error you can make is creating a customer journey map based on how you want your audience to engage. You need to take the opposite approach. You need to look at it from the customer’s perspective, as that will give you a better understanding of the current user experience and where it can be improved.
Your customers’ needs are more important than anything else, so every step in the process should be looked at from their angle. You'll need to understand:
Customer Persona
Developing a detailed customer persona is key to seeing things from the customer’s perspective. A persona should include demographics, preferences, goals, challenges, and typical behaviors. For example, if your audience includes busy professionals, highlight their need for quick and simple solutions. Personas help you empathize with your customers and tailor the journey to their unique needs.
Customer Behavior
Understand what actions customers are taking at each stage of their journey. Are they browsing your website, reading reviews, or contacting support? By mapping these behaviors, you can identify gaps, such as points where customers drop off or encounter obstacles, and determine how to improve their experience.
Customer Attitudes
Gauge how customers feel during each step of their journey. Are they excited, frustrated, or confused? Use surveys, reviews, or support interactions to track their emotions and motivations. Understanding customer attitudes helps you align touchpoints with their expectations and ensure a more positive experience.
Touchpoints and Stages
Break the journey into clear stages—like awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase—and list all the touchpoints customers interact with in each phase. This includes your website, social media, emails, or in-store visits. Organizing touchpoints helps you see the full picture of their experience and pinpoint areas for optimization.
On-Stage Experience
The on-stage experience includes all visible interactions customers have with your brand, such as using your app, navigating your website, or speaking with a support agent. Ensure these interactions are smooth, intuitive, and satisfying to minimize frustration and build trust.
Off-Stage Experience
Off-stage experiences happen behind the scenes but impact customers indirectly. Examples include shipping times, internal processing, or how quickly your support team responds. While customers may not see these processes, inefficiencies can still affect their satisfaction. Ensure your operations run seamlessly to support the on-stage experience.
II. Speak With Real Customers
It’s one thing to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. It’s another thing entirely to connect with real customers to ensure that you know exactly how they approach the buying experience.
Ask questions such as:
- What is your overall level of customer satisfaction?
- Can you explain the actions you took during your buying experience?
- How did you feel during different parts of the journey?
- Were there any pain points that bogged you down?
- How would you best describe your buyer persona?
STEP 3: Drafting
I. Define the Map’s Scope
Start by determining the specific scope of your journey map. Decide which customer persona you want to focus on and which part of their journey you’re mapping. For example, you might choose to map the onboarding experience for new customers. Narrowing the scope ensures your map is focused, actionable, and relevant to a particular goal.
II. Organize Touchpoints and Stages
List all the touchpoints where customers interact with your brand, such as your website, social media, emails, or in-store visits. Break the journey into stages—like awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase—and align the touchpoints with each stage. This structure helps you see how customers navigate through their journey and highlights opportunities for improvement.
III. Map Out the Entire Customer Journey
Use your organized touchpoints and stages to build a detailed visual representation of the customer journey. Include key elements like customer actions, emotions, and challenges at each step. For example, in the decision stage, note whether customers feel overwhelmed by too many options or reassured by clear pricing. A well-mapped journey provides a comprehensive view of the experience from start to finish.
IV. Discuss and Document Highs and Lows
Engage your team in identifying the moments where customers experience frustration or delight. For instance, a lengthy checkout process might be a low point, while fast delivery could be a high point. Documenting these moments helps you prioritize changes that will have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction.
V. Encourage Open Discussion During Mapping Sessions
Collaboration is key to creating an accurate and insightful journey map. Encourage open discussion among team members, ensuring diverse perspectives are heard. Use brainstorming sessions to surface ideas, challenges, and opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. This inclusive approach leads to a more thorough and impactful journey map.
STEP 4: Finalize
I. Analyze Customer Journey vs. Process Flow
Examine how the customer journey aligns—or conflicts—with your internal processes. A process flow focuses on the steps your business takes to deliver a product or service, while a customer journey centers on the customer’s perspective. Look for gaps where internal processes may be causing friction in the customer experience. For instance, if customers experience delays in order fulfillment, investigate whether internal workflows, like inventory management or shipping, are contributing to the problem.
II. Share Your Journey Map with Stakeholders
Once your map is complete, share it with key stakeholders across teams such as marketing, sales, customer support, and operations. Present the map in a clear and engaging format, using visual aids like flowcharts or storyboards to make it easy to understand. Explain how each stage impacts the customer and how improving specific touchpoints could benefit the business. Gaining buy-in from stakeholders ensures alignment and collaboration in implementing changes.
III. Summarize Key Insights and Assign Action Items
Identify the most important takeaways from your journey map, such as major pain points, customer expectations, or opportunities for delight. Translate these insights into concrete action items by assigning ownership to specific team members or departments. For example, if customers struggle with navigating your website, assign the UX team to redesign the navigation. Set deadlines and measurable goals to ensure accountability and track progress over time.
Finalizing your customer journey map isn’t just about completing the document—it’s about turning insights into actions that enhance the customer experience and deliver tangible business results.
STEP 5: Revisit & Revise
Don't forget to revisit and revise as necessary! Things can and will change when it comes to your customer journey map. And for that reason, you must revisit your plan and make adjustments to optimize your customer journey map as necessary.
Here are just a few times when you’ll want to review your map for potential changes:
- If your business goals change
- If new customer pain points come to light
- If you discover a new mapping process that better suits your company
- As you gain a better understanding of your customer
- As you receive customer feedback (both positive and negative)
In an ideal world, the map you create today would work for your business until the end of time. However, in the real world, this isn’t likely to happen. There’s a good chance you’ll find yourself making regular changes to keep up with internal needs, as well as those of your customer base.
10 Pro Tips for Crafting a Great Customer Journey Map
By following these pro tips, you’ll create a customer journey map that’s both actionable and aligned with real customer needs while also avoiding common journey mapping pitfalls.
- Start with Real Data, Not Assumptions: Use customer feedback, analytics, and support logs to build your map. For example, pull website heatmaps or survey responses to understand customer actions and frustrations rather than guessing their experience.
- Develop a Detailed Customer Persona: Go beyond demographics—include goals, pain points, and emotional drivers. For instance, a persona for a busy professional might highlight their need for quick resolutions and mobile-friendly touchpoints.
- Break Down Silos to Gather Input from All Teams: Engage cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, customer support, and IT in the mapping process. Each team has unique insights; for example, support may know recurring customer complaints, while marketing understands conversion roadblocks.
- Prioritize Key Customer Segments and Journeys: Don’t try to map every customer journey at once. Focus on high-impact segments, such as first-time buyers or repeat customers with high lifetime value, and map their most critical interactions.
- Include Customer Emotions at Each Touchpoint: Track how customers feel at every step—frustrated, satisfied, or confused. For instance, mark a "frustration point" if customers abandon carts due to unclear shipping costs, and aim to address it.
- Incorporate Both On-Stage and Off-Stage Activities: Map not only visible interactions (e.g., using a chatbot) but also behind-the-scenes processes like order fulfillment or software updates that affect customer satisfaction. Highlight inefficiencies to improve the off-stage experience.
- Use Visual Elements to Tell a Story: Create a journey map that’s easy to follow with icons, color coding, and flowcharts. For example, use smiley faces for positive touchpoints and warning icons for problem areas to make insights visually clear.
- Document Highs, Lows, and Transition Points: Identify peak moments (like completing a purchase) and low points (like a delayed response from customer support). Also, pay attention to transitions between stages, such as moving from consideration to decision, and ensure they’re seamless.
- Assign Ownership for Pain Points and Improvements: Don’t just identify issues—assign specific team members to resolve them. For instance, task the UX team with improving a confusing signup form or the customer support team with reducing wait times.
- Test and Iterate Regularly: Customer journeys evolve, so revisit your map quarterly or after major changes (like launching a new feature). For example, run user testing to confirm if recent updates have resolved identified pain points or created new ones.
What Next?
Building a customer journey map helps you understand your customers, identify pain points, and find improvement opportunities. By defining the scope, organizing touchpoints, and collaborating across teams, you can create a tool that reflects the customer’s perspective and drives action. Keep it updated to deliver exceptional experiences.
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