How To Create A Customer Journey Map? (With Examples)

What is journey mapping?

A journey map is a visual representation of the user or customer’s entire UX user journey with the product or brand. It serves to help a company get a better sense of how users interact with their products throughout the different touchpoints, in order to better understand their user’s actions and feelings at each stage.

Why is journey mapping important?

Understanding a user’s journey goes beyond increasing metrics like revenue or retention rate, it also allows a company to develop a consistent and positive customer experience which in turn leads to brand loyalty and advocacy.

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs

Another key aspect of using journey mapping is the ability to create personalised experiences across different touchpoints and channels. By delving deeper into the user’s perspective at every stage of the journey minimises any potential issues they might face. 80% of consumers also say that they are more likely to purchase from a company that provides a personalised experience.

Other key uses of journey mapping:

• Target specific user personas
• Identify and remove ineffective touchpoints
• Discover potential roadblocks early on
• Align the organisation to user-centricity
• Better communication between teams regarding the product
• Pinpointing areas to engage users in

How to create a customer journey map?

1. Conduct Persona Research

A user persona is a fictional representation of your customer/user. The journey map will be focused on their experience as they are the target audience. Thus, conducting user research is necessary to properly elaborate on the details of the persona, such as their age, personal motivations, habits, and personality.

2. Define the Scenario

The scenario serves to describe the situation portrayed by the journey map and what the customer is experiencing. It touches on the when, why, and how the customer interacts with the brand or product.

Journey maps are perfectly suited for such scenarios as it is able to detail the different processes along the timeline. Scenarios can be based on a real situation or an anticipated one depending on the product. For example, a scenario can be a user trying to purchase a smartphone from an online e-commerce retailer.

3. Identify Customer Journey Stages

Next is to identify and list out all key touchpoints between the user and product. This would form the main journey stages that serve as a structure for the rest of the journey map.

Following our previous scenario, the journey stages can be:

• Discovering the product on the website
• Browsing through alternative product models
• Purchasing the product
• Using the product
• Seeking customer support for the product

4. Look into Customer’s Actions, Thoughts & Emotions

From here on, we can start structuring the narrative based on information defined in the earlier stages, such as the target persona, scenario, and customer journey stages. Visualising the user’s journey is important to better empathise and understand what they are going through and how they feel through the process.

The journey is then complete by placing all this information together on a stage-by-stage timeline. Each stage pinpoints the user’s experience with your company or product and delves into their actions, thoughts, and emotions behind it.

Actions are what the users do at each stage. It looks into the interaction between the user and the product.

While it is important to know what actions users take at every step, looking into their emotions and how they feel is also key in connecting with them on a closer level. This allows us to design experiences and products that are more user-focused and suit their needs.

Lastly, the user’s thoughts at each stage are also considered. This helps to provide better insight into their feelings and actions. It delves into aspects such as the types of questions that they face, their motivations behind certain actions, or their reasons for feeling a certain way.

Take a look at this example for an idea of how a journey map is structured, with each category placed into different rows and columns.

5. Refine Journey Map

Once the initial mapping is completed, a good practice would be to further refine it using information obtained from usability tests or user interviews. With the ever-changing nature of product design and customer behaviour, it is important to constantly re-evaluate and update the journey map. These practices ensure that it remains representative of the target audiences and continues to generate relevant insights.

6. Identify Key Opportunities

To make the most out of journey mapping, it should be used to derive unique insights about users and identify any opportunities that can be capitalised on or on areas that can be further improved. These insights are crucial in helping the team refine the overall experience or even come up with new and useful ideas.

Customer User Journey Examples

The following journey map portrays a scenario about a customer’s experience in trying to switch mobile plans. The journey map further talks about aspects of internal ownership pinpointing teams that should take actions according to the insights obtained.

Conclusion

Journey mapping is a useful tool used across different organisations to obtain a clear overview of their user’s perspectives and the challenges they face. It aligns the team towards a common understanding of how to better improve the user experience while zooming in on useful findings and implementing better ideas.

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