customer journey map apple

Apple’s customer journey explained

Guiding users through the five phases of the customer journey — from awareness to advocacy and back again.

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It seems as though we’re always talking about the customer journey — designing it , aligning it , checking steps off of it . But what is a customer journey, and just where are your users going?

The customer journey refers to the touchpoints customers have with your brand that make up the overall customer experience. Every interaction is a step in the customer journey, and it’s your job to move customers through their journey and delight them along the way. From initial brand awareness through post-purchase, SaaS companies have the opportunity to impact user behavior at every turn.

And the customer journey trophy goes to…

So who’s got the customer journey down to a science? Apple, of course! When you think of a great customer experience, Apple is exactly who comes to mind, with their sleek stores and Genius Bar support.

Apple has even found a way to make waiting more pleasurable. Just as the lack of windows and clocks in casinos make time seem to vanish, Apple Store employees are trained in clever techniques to alter the perception of time for waiting customers. It sounds more sinister than it is, and Forbes’ Carmine Gallo details how periodic interactions with employees reset his internal clock . The result was an 8-minute wait that felt negligible and a customer experience that lived up to Apple’s reputation.

Even lacking the resources of a tech giant, SaaS companies can put some of Apple’s strategies into play. Let’s take a look at each stage of the customer journey, from the top of the funnel down, and how Apple guides its users through.

The five stages of the customer journey

The customer journey neither begins nor ends at purchase. Just as important as the sale itself is courting the buyer beforehand and supporting them afterwards. The typical customer journey looks something like this:

1. Awareness

Before you have the opportunity to court potential customers, users need to know that your product exists. Apple has a reputation for ingenious ad campaigns , but advertising is only a small piece of the puzzle.

According to Neil Patel, Apple leans far more heavily on product placement and media reviews. In fact, the company did away with paid advertising completely for a short period in 2007 after introducing the iPhone, finding word-of-mouth to be a more powerful tool.

While your product may not (yet!) generate the same kind of organic buzz as an Apple release, consider following in their footsteps with strategic PR and outreach. Approach influencers, offer free trials, and publish case studies and customer testimonials to help spread the word.

2. Consideration

This is where users weigh all their options and size you up against the competition. Not everyone can compete on price, and that’s ok. Apple certainly doesn’t! With products that are far and away more expensive than the competition, they focus on their unique value proposition (UVP), which is sleek design.

What’s your product’s UVP? Is it superior customer service? An easy-to-use no-code interface? Determine your product’s unique selling point, and focus attention there to move users on to the next stage of the customer journey.

3. Acquisition

Now it’s time to close the deal. You could be signing on new users or upgrading free ones to paid, but — either way — the acquisition phase is when prospects become customers. Your goal is to make it as easy as possible.

Apple guides customers smoothly through acquisition by giving them a bevy of options. Buy the new iPhone online or in store. (In-store customers buy directly from employees through mobile points of sale so there are no lines to wait in after they’ve made their selection.) Pay in full, or pay monthly. Finance with your wireless carrier or with the Apple Card. Then, choose your wireless carrier so that Apple can set up your new iPhone for you.

Apple removes every impediment that could stand in the way of a sale. SaaS companies can do the same by making sure site performance is up to par, signup and checkout processes run smoothly, and multiple forms of payment are accepted.

‍ 4. Retention

A survey by Invesp found that it can cost five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. That’s why nurturing relationships after the acquisition phase is so important.

Apple has built a cult of loyalty around its products that allows it to retain an extraordinary number of users. According to a recent survey from SellCell , 92% of iPhone users plan to stick with Apple when they next upgrade.

How do they do it? First, Apple offers outstanding customer support thanks to Apple Care and the Genius Bar, ensuring that users understand the products well enough to stick with them. The Genius Bar also serves the clever purpose of getting users back into the Apple Store, turning customer support into another sales opportunity.

Next, the seamless integration of different Apple products makes it almost impossible not to buy into the entire Apple ecosystem. You can unlock your Macbook with your Apple Watch, find your iPhone with your Macbook, and copy and paste between all three devices. Not to mention that iCloud syncs all of your information everywhere.

While most brand’s will never reach Apple-level rates of customer loyalty, you can boost customer retention with onboarding and support tools that get customers to value. The sooner users reach that “Aha!” moment, the sooner they become loyal customers.

‍ 5. Advocacy

When you successfully guide users through phases one through four, customers don’t just become loyal, they become fans. Nobody knows this better than Apple and their army of fanboys who promote Apple products far and wide. They camp outside stores, they talk up the brand, and they flash the logo on devices, clothing, and even permanently on their skin. (No, we’re not kidding.)

Apple fanboys may take things to the extreme, but there’s nothing to stop a SaaS company from turning users into ambassadors. Start a referral rewards program, or simply solicit reviews through your app.

Soon enough, advocacy will lead right back to awareness for a new set of users, completing the customer journey circle.

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Examples of brand touchpoints for Apple

The following is a list of possible brand touchpoints for Apple. Brand touchpoints are a key aspect of understanding the customer journey and creating a customer journey map. In recent years, Apple has become one of the strongest brands in the world.

Understanding brand touch points and customer journey mapping a helpful techniques to understand how Apple’s brand equity grew tremendously in recent years.

Ownership brand touchpoints examples

Observation brand touchpoints examples, word-of-mouth brand touchpoints examples, retailer brand touchpoints examples, advertising/communications brand touchpoints examples, personal selling brand touchpoints examples.

• Owning an Apple product – such as an iPod or iPhone or iPad
• Using Apple iTunes
• Using an Apple product at school or at University
• Having a family member or friend owning an Apple product
• Seeing characters use Apple products on TV or in movies
• Being aware of celebrities who utilize Apple products
• Reading the book about Steve Jobs or seeing the associated movie
• Having a family member or friend discuss/recommend the Apple brand
• Reading of the Apple brand by other consumers on social media and/or on YouTube
• Visiting the Apple Store is another brand touchpoint
• Exposure to any store that sells Apple products – such as electronics stores and approved Apple resellers
• Reading any media stories – either mainstream media, or from bloggers – about Apple
• Exposure to any form of Apple advertising
• Exposure to any in-store promotional material for Apple products
• Exposure to any competitive advertising where they may compare themselves to Apple – such as Samsung advertising
• Visiting the Apple website
• Visiting any Apple social media pages
• Discussing Apple products with a retail salesperson – either in an official Apple store or at an independent retailer

About The Author

Geoff Fripp

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“You’ve got to start with the Customer Experience and work back toward the Technology, not the other way around” – Steve Jobs

Before the iPod, Apple was primarily known for their home computing devices. Even though it wasn’t the first portable music player on the market, the iPod succeeded where other competitors failed.

The iPod exemplified Apple’s customer first approach – clearly a lot of research had been done on what the average music listeners pain points were when it comes to portable music. Technology played second fiddle to better  Customer Experience .

Takeaway  – All your songs in the palm of your hand. More storage, Better battery life, easy to use – these were the primary selling points for the original iPod, and as it turned out – for most people it was more than enough, which they made clear by establishing Apple as the leader in portable music, both in terms of volume and reputation.

A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary smartphone, a breakthrough internet communications device. Steve Jobs kept repeating these 3 phrases at the iPhone reveal till the audience got the hint – they were one and the same.

As with many Apple products, the iPhone was not the first touchscreen device, nor was it the first entertainment focussed mobile device or one with internet connectivity for that matter.

Earlier smartphones were unwieldy, tough to use and were usually focussed on out and out productivity. Oh and it also incentivized developers and users to buy into the Apple ecosystem – promising the developers a stable target audience, and the consumers the ability to carry their apps, purchases, music, notes, and so much more across several devices no matter where they are. Apple not only delivered a better  customer experience , they changed the game on Mobile Customer Experience entirely, which allowed them to leapfrog veterans in the smartphone segment and create a user base that were willing to buy into the Apple ecosystem.

Takeaway  – The iPhone managed to give the best possible Customer Experience across many domains of mobile users – ensuring that EVERY user would be aiming towards owning a smartphone in the future, no matter what they used it for.

“It turns out people want keyboards . . . We look at the tablet and we think it is going to fail,”

These words were uttered by none other than Steve Jobs himself, nearly a decade before he revealed the iPad to the world. So how did a company that laughed off the very concept of a tablet turn around and make the most successful tablet of all time? Insights. By 2010, Apple had carefully surveyed and analyzed just what people do with their smartphones and their computers. There was a sizeable chunk of laptop/computer users who did not exploit much of their machine’s capability and instead were using them for emailing and consuming content. Admittedly, the iPhone could handle all of those tasks, but its smaller display definitely hampered its abilities.

Enter the iPad – Just the right amount of power to handle a bit of productivity, a vibrant display to consume content and a responsive touchscreen to ensure the typing experience was as good as it could be without a keyboard.

The iPad enabled Apple to sell large numbers and practically create a segment by itself.

Takeaway  – With the iPad, Apple defied themselves to become the leader in the Tablet segment, delivering the best  Custom er Experience  that its core user base needed.

Apple store experience

“get closer than ever to your customers. so close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves” apple’s mission stated by jobs apple store.

Apple doesn’t simply relegate its focus on Customer Experience to its products. Apple stores are designed to be the best possible Customer Experience anywhere(not just in retail). When opening the first Apple store, instead of improving on their competition’s services, Apple decided to benchmark itself against the masters of human interaction – the hospitality industry, which led to the creation of the Apple Genius Bar – knowledgeable, empathetic employees who could get virtually anyone using their devices in a jiffy.

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Takeaway  – Delivering excellence in the retail Customer Experience has allowed Apple to retain its user base and gain an entirely new customer base – those who aren’t the most congruent with technology. Read more about how you can improve your retention with our  customer retention guide .

There’s no getting around the fact that Apple has contributed to a paradigm shift in how companies value Customer Experience, especially over the last 2 decades. While other companies like  Amazon  and  Uber  have managed to craft their own brand of excellence in CX, Apple remains the leader in Customer Experience for hardware companies by a fair margin.

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How to create a customer journey map

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 8 min

How to Make a Customer Journey Map

• Conduct persona research
• Define customer touchpoints
• Map current states
• Map future states

Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple’s one-of-a-kind customer experience, said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

Nowadays, a clear vision and strategy for customer interactions is no longer an optional “nice-to-have”—it’s essential. As you refine your customer experience, a customer journey map is one of the most powerful ways to understand your current state and future state.

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the process your customers go through in interacting with your business, such as an experience on the website, a brick and mortar experience, a service, a product, or a mix of those things.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. These visuals tell a story about how a customer moves through each phase of interaction and experiences each phase. Your customer journey map should include touchpoints and moments of truth, but also potential customer feelings, such as frustration or confusion, and any actions you want the customer to take.

Customer journey maps are often based on a timeline of events, such as a customer’s first visit on your website and the way they progress towards their first in-product experience, then purchase, onboarding emails, cancellation, etc. 

Your customer journey maps may need to be tailored to your business or product, but the best way to identify and refine these phases is to actually talk to your customers. Research your target audiences to understand how they make decisions, decide to purchase, etc. Without an essential understanding of your customers and their needs, a customer map will not lead you to success. But, a well-constructed and researched customer journey map can give you the insights to drastically improve your business’s customer experience.

The benefits of customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for uncovering insights into your customer experience, driving business goals, and building resilience in a changing market. In a 2022 report, Hanover Research found that 94% of businesses said their customer journey maps help them develop new products and services to match customer needs. Another 91% said their maps drove sales. 

But understanding a customer’s journey across your entire organization does so much more than increase your revenue. It enables you to discover how to be consistent when it comes to providing a positive customer experience and retaining customer loyalty. 

This was especially evident in recent years as top of improving marketing, customer journey maps emerged as a valuable way to understand evolving buyer behavior. In fact, 1 in 3 businesses used customer journey maps to help them navigate the changing landscape during the pandemic.

When done correctly, customer journey mapping helps to:

• Increase customer engagement through channel optimization.
• Identify and optimize moments of truth in the CX.
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints.
• Shift from a company to a customer-focused perspective.
• Break down silos between departments and close interdepartmental gaps.
• Target specific customer personas with marketing campaigns relevant to their identity.
• Understand the circumstances that may have produced irregularities in existing quantitative data.
• Assign ownership of various customer touchpoints to increase employee accountability.
• Make it possible to assess the ROI of future UX/CX investments.

Following the process outlined above, customer mapping can put your organization on a new trajectory of success. Yet, according to Hanover Research, only 47% of companies currently have a process in place for mapping customer journeys. Making the investment to map your customer journey and solidify that process as part of your company’s DNA can result in significant advantages in your competitive landscape, making your solution the go-to option that customers love.

Customer journey maps can become complicated unless you keep them focused. Although you may target multiple personas, choose just one persona and one customer scenario to research and visualize at a time. If you aren’t sure what your personas or scenarios might be, gather some colleagues and try an  affinity diagram in Lucidchart to generate ideas.

1. Set goals

Without a goal, it will be difficult to determine whether your customer journey map will translate to a tangible impact on your customers and your business. You will likely need to identify existing—and future—buyers so you can set goals specifically for those audiences at each stage of their experience.

Consider gathering the key stakeholders within your company—many of whom likely touch different points of the customer experience. To set a logical and attainable goal, cross-functional teamwork is essential. Gather unique perspectives and insights about each part of the existing customer journey and where improvements are needed, and how those improvements will be measured.

Pro Tip : If you don’t already have them in place, create buyer personas to help you focus your customer journey map on the specific types of buyers you’re optimizing for.

2. Conduct persona research

Flesh out as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is based on. Depending on the maturity of your business, you may only have a handful of records, reports, or other pre-existing data about the target persona. You can compile your preliminary findings to draft what you think the customer journey may look like. However, the most insightful data you can collect is from real customers or prospective customers—those who have actually interacted with your brand. Gather meaningful customer data in any of the following ways:

• Conduct interviews.
• Talk to employees who regularly interact with customers.
• Email a survey to existing users.
• Scour customer support and complaint logs.
• Pull clips from recorded call center conversations.
• Monitor discussions about your company that occur on social media.
• Leverage web analytics.
• Gather Net Promoter Score (NPS) data.

Look for information that references:

• How customers initially found your brand
• When/if customers purchase or cancel
• How easy or difficult they found your website to use
• What problems your brand did or didn’t solve

Collecting both qualitative and quantitative information throughout your research process ensures your business makes data-driven decisions based on the voice of real customers. To assist when conducting persona research, use one of our user persona templates .

Discover more ways to understand the Voice of the Customer

3. Define customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints make up the majority of your customer journey map. They are how and where customers interact with and experience your brand. As you research and plot your touchpoints, be sure to include information addressing elements of action, emotion, and potential challenges. 

The number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map will depend on the type of business. For example, a customer’s journey with a SaaS company will be inherently different than that of a coffee shop experience. Simply choose the touchpoints which accurately reflect a customer’s journey with your brand.

After you define your touchpoints, you can then start arranging them on your customer journey map.

4. Map the current state

Create what you believe is your as-is state of the customer journey, the current customer experience. Use a visual workspace like Lucidchart, and start organizing your data and touchpoints. Prioritize the right content over aesthetics. Invite input from the stakeholders and build your customer journey map collaboratively to ensure accuracy. 

Again, there is no “correct” way to format your customer journey map, but for each phase along the journey timeline, include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned ownership of a touchpoint (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Then, customize your diagram design with images, color, and shape variation to better visualize the different actions, emotions, transitions, etc. at a glance.

Mapping your current state will also help you start to identify gaps or red flags in the experience. Collaborators can comment directly on different parts of your diagram in Lucidchart, so it’s clear exactly where there’s room for improvement.

5. Map future states

Now that you’ve visualized the current state of the customer journey, your map will probably show some gaps in your CX, information overlap, poor transitions between stages, and significant pain points or obstacles for customers.

Use hotspots and layers in Lucidchart to easily map out potential solutions and quickly compare the current state of the customer journey with the ideal future state. Present your findings company-wide to bring everyone up to speed on the areas that need to be improved, with a clear roadmap for expected change and how their roles will play a part in improving the customer journey.

Customer journey map templates

You have all the right information for a customer journey map, but it can be difficult to know exactly how to start arranging the information in a digestible, visually appealing way. These customer journey mapping examples can help you get started and gain some inspiration about what—and how much—to include and where.

Don’t let the possibility of a bad customer journey keep you up at night. Know the current state of the customer journey with you business, and make the changes you need to attract and keep customers happy.

Customer journey mapping is easy with Lucidchart.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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What is a customer journey map and how to make your own [examples included]

Written by by Kiran Shahid

Published on  November 2, 2023

Reading time  12 minutes

Do you know what your customers see and do before they purchase from you?

They see your ads, interact with you on social media and explore your website before they buy. All these interactions—from the first ad impression to every “Please help” DM customers send—define your customer journey. To keep up with it all and better inform your social media marketing strategy , create a customer journey map as a blueprint to help you understand your customers at each stage.

Let’s explore what customer journey mapping is and how it helps your brand.

Social Customer Care by Sprout Social

What is customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of each point of interaction your customers have with your company. You can style the map like a flowchart, timeline, table or even on sticky notes.

Creating the map is a great internal exercise. Along the way, you might find pain points or touchpoints you didn’t know existed. A basic customer journey map includes the buying stages (and support touchpoints) a customer goes through.

More detailed maps include:

• actions your customers take
• good and bad emotions your customers experienced
• departments involved in customer touchpoints
• content types you serve your customers
• solutions to pain points

What is a customer touchpoint?

A touchpoint on the customer journey map is the point of interaction a customer has with your brand. It doesn’t need to be a two-way interaction. Seeing a social media ad, getting a branded newsletter and asking a friend for a product recommendation are all touchpoints.

Customers may experience emotions and actions at touchpoints. When someone asks for product recommendations, people might mention your brand. You might not serve that recommendation to them directly but someone still introduces you to a potential customer.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map puts the customer first by giving you a deeper understanding of how your customers interact with your brand. This enable you to make better decisions and improve customer experiences.

When coupled with social media market research , they help brands:

• Provide an overview of the resources your customers use . This helps determine the ROI of customer-centric engagement and service. For example, if blogs are your highest traffic sources, investing more in those channels makes sense.
• Identify content gaps . Pain points without solutions are an excellent source for content ideation and development . If customers need help with a specific product issue, for example, but find limited guidance, create in-depth video tutorials to address this pain point.
• Identify inefficiencies . Maybe some processes are repetitive, or some solutions cause more friction. If your customers have trouble checking out due to a complicated form, for example, simplify it to reduce cart abandonment rates.
• Generate marketing campaign ideas . A clear understanding of customer motivations and journey stages creates targeted campaigns. You can provide them with relevant content and incentives to move them closer to a purchase.
• Guide multiple departments. Streamline content creation, social customer care strategy and messaging optimization across every touchpoint. Departments use the customer journey map as a central reference to ensure a consistent and customer-focused approach.
• Enhance customer communication . Customer journey maps reveal critical touchpoints, like social media interactions, for timely and meaningful engagement. In fact, The Sprout Social Index™ shows 51% of customers believe the most memorable brands on social respond to customers.

Every business and industry has its unique customer journey maps, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Recently, our social team talked about using social media for the customer journey in the auto industry. Watch the video below to hear their discussion on touchpoints, customer experience and how legacy brands are going beyond traditional tactics like targeted ads to tell their story.

It’s a great example of how industry-specific customer journey follows the fundamentals but also has touchpoints specific to them.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is like a detailed travel itinerary for your customer’s experience with your brand. It includes elements like:

1. The buying process

The buying process is the step-by-step path a customer follows to make a purchase decision. It tells you where customers drop off or face obstacles during making purchases.

Use prospecting tools, content management systems (CMS) and behavior analytics tools to gather data. Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop data also provide valuable insights into how customers find products and engage with content via social commerce .

Pro tip : Categorize the journey into stages like awareness, consideration and decision to map these steps horizontally on the customer journey map.

Don’t forget to integrate feedback mechanisms, such as customer surveys or user testing. These offer qualitative insights into the buying process. Understanding the “why” behind customer behavior can be as important as knowing the “what.”

2. Emotions

Emotions show how customers feel at different touchpoints in their interaction with your brand. Emotions heavily influence purchase decisions and brand loyalty which is exactly why it’s so important to include them.

Think about it: When someone has a great experience with your brand and feels happy, they’re more likely to buy from you again. On the flip side, if they feel frustrated or unhappy, they’ll knock on your competitor’s door.

Use surveys or feedback forms to ask customers how they felt during their experience. You might have come across these smileys during your own shopping experience:

These scales are a convenient way to gauge how your customers feel at any point.

Pay attention to what they say on social media and in reviews. You can tell if they’re happy or upset by their tone.

Tools like Sprout Social use AI-driven sentiment analysis to dig into social listening data to give you insights on what people think about your brand.

These insights are handy when creating emotional marketing campaigns . When you know how customers feel, take actionable steps to solve any negative experiences and encourage positive ones.

3. User actions

User actions are the steps customers take when they interact with your brand. They include steps like visiting your website, clicking on a product, adding items to their cart or signing up for your newsletter.

Actions highlight what people do at each stage. Each of these actions tells you something about what customers are interested in and how close they are to making a purchase.

Analytics tools for your website or app are your best bet for such data. These tools show you which pages customers visit, what they click on and where they drop off.

Once you have this information, tailor your marketing efforts and content to align with the actions customers take at each stage.

4. User research

User research examines what customers search for or where they turn for information during the buying process. This part of the customer journey map helps you understand how customers gather information.

For example, in the awareness stage, buyers often rely on search engines like Google to research solutions to their problems. But it’s not just about where they go—it’s about what they’re looking for. Knowing their specific research topics allows you to address their pain points.

What’s the trick? Keep an eye on what customers search for online. Tracking keywords and phrases they use on search engines, as well as social media market research are good places to start.

Also, monitor discussions and conversations to get a deeper understanding of the questions, concerns and topics that are top-of-mind for your potential customers.

The key is to use this information to provide potential customers with what they need at each stage. Targeted content delivery positions your brand as a valuable source of information.

5. Solutions

This section outlines the actions and strategies your brand implements to address customer pain points and improve their overall experience.

It documents the specific solutions or improvements applied at each stage of the customer journey. These include steps like changes to website design that resolve issues and improve the customer experience.

It visualizes how your brand responds to customer needs and challenges at different touchpoints. Besides that, it’s a good reference to ensure your team implements the solutions and refines them to increase customer satisfaction.

What are the 7 steps to map the customer journey?

A strategic approach to building a map ensures you capture every touchpoint, anticipate customer desires and address potential pain points. Here are seven steps to build a journey map unique to your customers and business needs.

1. Set your goals

What do you want to get out of this process? And why does it matter to your business? Knowing your goals sets the stage for how you assemble your map.

Some examples of goals include:

• Identify the top three customer pain points. Use these pain points to create content.
• Understand customer interests and motivations to develop better products and services.
• Total the cost of customer interactions to set a better social media budget .

2. Decide on a customer journey map type

There are several different customer journey maps and each one has its advantages. When you decide which map to work with, you know which details to focus on.

These are four of the most common types of customer journey maps: current state, future state, day in the life and service blueprint. We’ll go further into detail on each one later on.

Understanding your goals and where your brand stands in its evolution will guide you in selecting the appropriate map type.

3. Create and define your customer personas

Which customers will you focus on? It’s difficult to map a customer journey if you don’t have a customer in mind. Customer personas are fictional characters that represent each of your target customer groups. They’re detailed with everything from demographics to interests to buying behavior.

If you’ve already created social media personas to understand your audience, you’re more than halfway there. But if you haven’t, then our buyer persona template  or Xtensio’s will be useful. To really get to know someone’s purchase decisions and shopping processes, interview existing customers.

Pro tip: If you have distinctively different personas—such as, if you serve both a B2C and B2B market—set up different customer journey maps.

4. Break it down: touchpoints and stages

The customer journey map is divided into stages that usually fit within the funnel illustrated above. List out the stages to begin. Next, list out the main customer touchpoints that exist for your company. When you’re done with both lists, place the touchpoints into the different stages.

To get even more detailed, assign department owners to each touchpoint. You can identify where certain social media channels fit into the mix. And, you can assign predicted customer sentiment or emotions to different stages of the journey. It’s up to you how detailed you want the map to be.

5. Gather data and customer feedback

You need rock-solid data on how customers interact with your brand to create an accurate customer journey map. Focus on these three aspects:

Analyze existing data

Jump into the data you already have—more specifically website performance, chats with customer support and sales records. This information can tell you loads about how customers act, what they like and what frustrates them.

This quantitative data offers a foundational perspective on how customers interact with your brand, helping you identify both strengths and areas of improvement.

Conduct customer interviews

Get personal with one-on-one chats with customers. Ask them about their experiences, what bugs them and what they expect when they deal with your brand. These talks reveal qualitative insights that numbers can’t, like understanding the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer journey.

Create surveys and questionnaires

Turn to surveys and questionnaires for a more structured and broader approach to gathering feedback. Send them out to a bunch of customers and get structured feedback. Ask questions about their journey with your brand, how happy they are and where they think things could get better.

A combination of these three aspects gives you a 360-degree view of what your customers really experience with your brand.

6. Test and identify pain points

To confirm your customer touchpoints, you probably checked in on various departments and spoke to customers. This is great work but you need to take another step further: test it yourself. Go through the customer journey from the viewpoint of the customer.

While you’re testing the journey, keep an eye out for challenges, confusion or any frustrating moments. For example, if the website takes forever to load, if instructions aren’t clear or if reaching customer support is a headache, make detailed notes of these issues.

It’s also a smart move to collect feedback from both colleagues and customers who’ve gone through the journey. This way, you double-check and confirm your findings for a more complete picture.

A hands-on approach ensures your customer journey map reflects the real-world experience and equips you to take targeted actions to improve the overall customer journey.

7. Make changes and find solutions

So your map is complete. What’s next? You need to find or create solutions to the pain points you identified in the previous step.

Now’s the time to check in on the goals you established in step one and make the moves to smooth out the journey. Give yourself time and space to implement some of the solutions, whether a quarter or six months, and check back on the map to update it.

As you put these changes into action, make sure to watch your customer journey map closely. Don’t forget to keep it up to date to show the improvements and how they affect the customer experience. This keeps your customer journey map fresh and super useful for steering your brand toward delivering an exceptional customer experience.

4 types of customer journey maps and examples

Let’s take a look at the four most common customer journey maps and examples of each.

1. Current state

Current state customer journey maps are like an audit. You document how your customers experience their buying and service paths in your company’s current state. These are especially helpful to establish a baseline for your customer service experience.

Take a look at this simplified current state customer journey map from Nielsen-Norman.

The map follows the journey of “Jumping Jamie” as they navigate the process of switching to a different mobile plan. The map defines the current journey into four stages. Apart from the journey, it also highlights opportunities and metrics to track.

Current state maps are fantastic for sharing user frustrations with all departments. This helps you get everyone on board with investing in solutions and brainstorming ways to address user pain points.

2. Future state

Future state customer journey maps follow the same format as current state maps except they represent the ideal journey. You can use them alongside your current state maps to identify painpoints and areas to improve.

Here’s an example of a future state journey map:

Why does this visual work? It covers different states, feelings and even touchpoints in a cohesive format.

The map visualizes the best-case scenario to create a north star vision for your brand. It aligns your efforts toward achieving the ideal customer journey.

3. Day-in-the-life

Day-in-the-life customer journey maps outline one of your persona’s schedules as they go about their day. The interactions may or may not involve your company. Creating one of these maps helps you identify the best times and areas to interact with your customer.

Here’s a “day-in-the-life” visual from Pipedrive.

The map doesn’t just highlight when the persona does something, but it also highlights different touchpoints and the different people they interact with throughout the day. And, notice those thumbs ups and downs? Those highlight how the child feels during different activities too.

4. Service blueprint

A service blueprint customer journey map focuses solely on when you provide customer service. It ignores components like ads that might exist in other maps.

Miro, a collaborative online whiteboard for teams, created the above map with a bank in mind. You’ll notice how this map is only about a customer’s visit to the bank. This type of map helps brands look at individual service areas and interactions. It’s a macro version of the current and future state maps.

Get started with customer journey map templates

Creating a customer journey map doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are plenty of free and paid templates out there to help you create one. If you think you’ll need more guidance or many maps, some companies offer special software to design a custom map. Build your first journey map or improve your existing one with these options.

• Current state template , provided by Bright Vessel.

• Customer journey map template by Moqups, a design and collaboration tool.

• Service blueprint template by Miro

• Customer journey map template by Mural, a planning tool.

• UXPressia’s customer journey map online tool , made specifically to create presentation-ready customer journey maps.

Create a strong foundation with a well-integrated customer journey map

A customer journey map gives you the recipe for crafting personalized, impactful interactions that build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

When you know what they are and why they’re important, it’s time to make yours. Use data to create a solid customer journey map that exceeds customer expectations at every touchpoint.

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Customer journey mapping 101 (+ free templates)

When I was a kid, I remember watching my parents switch between different credit cards to get the best rewards for a particular purchase. They almost always pulled out the American Express first because (as they explained to me) the base reward rate was higher than even the sector-specific perks offered by other cards. Twenty years later, when I decided to get a high-end credit card, Amex was the first one that came to mind.

Customer journey mapping is the process of planning out people's awareness of and relationship to your brand, starting with their very first impression—even if, as in my case, that impression is made a full decade before they can actually use your product.

Table of contents: 

What is a customer journey map?

The customer journey is split into two parts: the buyer journey and the user journey. The buyer journey covers everything up to the point of purchase. After that point, the customer becomes a user, and all of their experiences are part of the user journey. 

Think back to any recent purchase of your own, and try to trace your own customer journey:

When and where was your first contact with the product or service?

How many channels of communication with the company did you have available?

How was the contact you had, if any? Was it personal or formulaic?

Were your problems, if any, solved? If so, were they solved in a timely manner?

What do you now know about the brand besides the product or service itself?

Stages of the customer journey

The customer journey map can be split into five phases: awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and brand loyalty.

Customers can't decide whether or not they want your product if they don't know that it exists. In the earliest phase of the customer journey, a business's goal is to reach the individual and, ultimately, attract them to the brand.

Consideration

Once potential customers are aware of your brand, the next phase they enter is called "consideration" or "research." This is when the customer's perspective shifts from simple awareness of your brand's existence to an understanding of the value that you have to offer them. 

Some businesses also include a mini-stage called "Intent" or "Onboarding," when the customer has decided they're interested in the product and is testing it out. The company's goal in this stage is simply to provide an exceptional user experience—they want to make sure the product works as intended and the customer's questions and requests are handled well.

A business can identify customers that are primed for conversion based on behavior in the consideration stage. Someone who signs up for a newsletter isn't a hot sales prospect quite yet, but when they start opening more emails and spending more time on the site, that's when brands know they're ready for a conversion push.

An abandoned cart email pushing a browsing shopper to complete a purchase

A physical mail offer pushing a potential customer to open an account

A seasonal campaign highlighting why a product is perfect for a particular holiday, celebration, or event

When a conversion is successful, a potential buyer becomes an actual customer. The goal in the retention stage is to demonstrate to the customer why they were right to make their purchase, and set them up to make more purchases or renew services in the future.

The retention stage is also where the user experience or user journey begins. The company's job in this phase, then, is to provide the best possible user experience. Easy installation, frictionless customer service, and—this part should be obvious—a product or service that works well and provides the user what they need are all key components to improved customer retention.

Brand loyalty

In the final customer journey phase, users go from run-of-the-mill satisfied customers to active advocates for your business. 

Keep in mind: a customer doesn't need to be a zealot for your company to be an unintentional brand advocate. One of the biggest reasons I made the decision to apply for Amex's high-end card is because my best friend has it. She didn't specifically recommend it to me, but I became interested after experiencing a lot of the card benefits vicariously through her.

Parts of a customer journey map

What is the customer doing? In this section, you'll jot down the main things the prospect, lead, or customer does during this stage. For example, if you're a personal trainer, an awareness stage key step might include something like "Prospect wants to get in shape."

What is the customer thinking? Put yourself in the customer's shoes and think about what questions they might have at each stage. In the consideration phase, questions like "Is this worth my time/money?" or "Will this help me solve my problem?" will come to the forefront. 

Where and how could the customer encounter our brand? After you've outlined what your customer is thinking at each stage, align each question with the relevant touchpoint that could address it. Each question must have at least one touchpoint that directly and specifically addresses the customer's needs and questions at that point.

What touchpoint opportunities are missing? When you have a question or milestone that doesn't have a corresponding touchpoint, you've found a gap in your customer journey. That means customers at this stage are going to be left with unmet needs and unanswered questions and may look more seriously at competitor products as a result. You'll need to develop touchpoints to fill this gap.

How to create a customer journey map

Step 1. define objectives.

The first step is to identify the goals of the journey map. Start by asking yourself these questions (or similar ones):

Do you want to sell more products to a specific customer base? 

Do you want to close more of your existing deals? 

Do you want to find out why no one is adopting the latest addition to your product or service? 

Step 2. Create personas

Some good questions for this stage in the process include:

Why are people using your system, product, or service?

What problems do people use your product to solve? 

How, when, and where do they use your product or service?

Step 3. Collect data

Here are some examples of data you'll want to collect:

Stages of the sales process

Common sales pain points

Market segmentation criteria

Customer feedback on the sales and support processes

Any other information your teams suggest including in your map

Step 4. Map stages

Once you know your objectives and the hypothetical customers you want to achieve them with, you'll get out your customer map (and all that delicious data you just collected) and list all touchpoints where customers interact with your brand. These should fit, at least loosely, into the stages of the customer journey listed above:

Depending on the complexity of your sales tactics, your brand may have additional stages to include in that list or may have substitutions, but for most products or services, these five are pretty fundamental to successful, repeatable sales processes.

Step 5. Visualize and analyze

Using your customer journey data and newfound insight into the stages of your brand's sales process, you can now build out a visual map of the customer journey. Do this using one of our templates or by using your own research as inspiration to plot a map tailored to your products or services.

Bonus: Share

Once you've filled out your map, it's a good idea to share it with relevant team members to get feedback on touchpoints from their perspectives. Your marketing team, for example, might notice that some personas are more likely to interact with your brand via social media than PPC ads, or your UX team might notice that some target personas are actually likely to be more interested in a product feature you hadn't thought to connect them to.

Customer journey map templates

We have you covered with some map templates for common customer journeys. You can customize each of these to fit the individual needs of your personas. Singing "The Road Goes Ever On" as you set out is optional but encouraged.

General customer journey map template

This customer journey map template is separated into five stages along the leftmost column, with guiding questions to help plan the customer's experience in each stage. Make a copy of the Google Sheets file, and then you can easily tweak it to match your preferred stage names and questions.

Day in the life map template

A great way to map mini-journeys within the larger customer experience lifecycle is with a "day in a life" journey map. This map plots the same things as the general customer journey map—key milestones, questions, touchpoints, and gaps—but over a particular period of time instead of over the course of the entire relationship.

Customer support journey map template

Another side of the customer journey coin is the support journey. This journey map is a bit different in that it doesn't just map touchpoints; it maps functional interactions between the customer and customer service representatives as well as the behind-the-scenes activities necessary to support the customer-facing team. It also gives you space for summary notes to help you focus on high-level staging structure.

Benefits of customer journey mapping

Here are the main benefits of the customer journey mapping process:

Touchpoint optimization: With a clear understanding of what your touchpoints are and where they occur, you can track and adjust them based on how they perform.

Enhanced customer experience insights: Through customer profiling and a better overview of all the touchpoints that make a journey, you can acquire more precise and actionable customer experience insights.

Improved product development: Thoughtful and intentional journey planning creates more opportunities for meaningful customer feedback, which gives businesses better information to improve their product.

Examples of customer journey maps

A blank page is inspiring (said no one ever), but to help you get a better sense of what the end result might look like, here are some examples of completed customer journey maps.

General customer journey mapping example

In this example, a SaaS company similar to Zapier has filled out this general customer journey map and documented the customer's journey step by step.

Awareness: The customer has identified the problem as efficiency in their processes. They're asking questions about potential solutions—and as a result, may see targeted ads or social posts based on their searches offering a solution.

Consideration: The customer is doing their research and comparing options. They're comparing features between similar products and reading case studies. 

Intent and onboarding: Here's where the rubber meets the road. The customer is taking the solution for a test drive and may even have a free full-access trial. 

Conversion: The customer is now ready to purchase. They may have a few final questions about ROI and price, but value has been established. 

Expansion and advocacy: Finally, the customer has developed such an appreciation that they're ready to advocate—or even increase the number of services they purchase from you. 

While your stages may look a little different, the key here is to understand what questions your customers ask at each stage—and how to answer them. 

Day in the life mapping example

In this example, a company that sells workout equipment has filled out a day-in-the-life customer journey map for one of their personas. This persona is dedicated to her training and always looking for a new tool, gadget, program, or supplement to increase her performance.

This journey is broken down into stages of the workout:

Pre-workout: The customer, Jane, takes her supplements and evaluates her stack. She might purchase additional supplements. 

Warm-up: Jane uses tools to help her warm up, including resistance bands. She would likely purchase additional tools to assist with this stage.

Heavy lifting: Jane goes from her warm-up to the weight rack. We can infer that she probably has a gym membership. 

Cardio: Jane is likely to explore other cardio options and might buy more equipment to support these endeavors. This could include a heart rate monitor, a jumping rope, or a new bike. 

Cooldown: This is similar to the first stage but could include additional purchases like a sweat towel or a moisture-wicking top. 

Each of these stages in the day-in-the-life journey offers a new opportunity to identify and meet a customer need. 

Customer support journey mapping example

In this example, a customer goes through the support system process, interacting with both human support representatives and the automated systems that assist them. The whole process takes less than 20 minutes—but analyzing it can offer significant insights into how to better help and retain customers. 

Submit ticket: The first stage begins when the customer experiences an issue and submits a ticket. This occurs automatically using a chat or form submission system—so it's important to make sure those systems are working correctly. 

Submit additional data: An automated system typically follows up by asking some additional questions about the issue before transferring the customer to a support representative. 

Chat with support: This is when a human steps in to resolve any remaining issues that the automated system can't solve. This transition should be as seamless as possible for the best CX. 

Confirm issue is resolved: Did you resolve the issue for which the customer submitted the ticket? Failing to confirm this can be the difference between keeping or losing a customer. 

Submit follow-up survey: Finally, the last stage is for the customer to submit their feedback on the support process so that your CX team can learn more about how to better help future customers. 

Obviously, this process looks much different than the first two since it focuses on internal responses to existing users or buyers, but optimizing your support processes for current customers is just as crucial as supporting future customers.

Customer journey mapping best practices

Everything we've covered up to this point will only get you as far as a basic customer journey map. That doesn't mean, however, that your customer journey map will be good . Once you have the basic journey mapping structure down, you'll want to take steps to continually improve your map's effectiveness.

Survey your customers and customer teams

Talk to your customer-facing employees, too. The people who work directly with customers day-to-day will have more accurate information about how to interact with them.

Automate customer data collection

Tweak for b2b, b2c, and saas industries.

The nature of the customer journey is different for SaaS, B2B, and B2C companies. A B2B company's interactions with prospects might include in-person conferences, while a SaaS company's touchpoints will be mostly digital. Companies that sell to consumers will need to think through individual people's daily experiences. A company whose products are designed for emergencies will need to think through crisis scenarios instead of day-to-day customer experiences.

Tweak your customer journey categories to fit your company, product, and industry. Using a generalized or poorly fitting customer journey map will result in vague and unhelpful interactions with your brand.

Create multiple maps for different journeys

When people refer to the customer journey, they're typically talking about the overarching journey from awareness to brand loyalty that we outlined above. But you can map any part of the customer journey and experience. 

Do you target college students? Replace the five stages with four academic quarters and map their experience over the course of a year. 

Is your product designed to be used in the car? Map the customer journey through each hour of a long road trip. 

Zooming in to create detailed maps of different aspects of the customer journey will help you create even more specifically tailored customer experiences.

Automate your customer journey mapping with Zapier

Create contacts in hubspot for new leads from google ads.

Add new Pipedrive people to Mailchimp as subscribers

Send funnel events to Facebook Conversions from Salesmate

Related reading:

This article was originally published in May 2021 by Nick Djurovic. The most recent update was in August 2024 with contributions from Abigail Sims.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• Sales & business development
• Small business

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

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

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

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

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

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

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

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

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

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

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

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

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

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

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

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

Don't forget to share this post!

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

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Blog / Journey Planning

Customer Journey Mapping: How To Map Out Touchpoints To Improve User Experience

Burkhard berger.

• June 12, 2024

Table of Contents

Do your customers drop off at key stages of the buying process? If so, use customer journey mapping to visualize their engagement and pinpoint friction points so you can streamline interactions, boost the user experience, and drive more sales.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand how to create a customer journey map for a better UX. You can then optimize customer touchpoints, and align your strategies for more personalized customer interactions.

Let’s get started.

What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping visualizes the steps and interactions a customer has with a brand from start to finish. This includes every touchpoint along the journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase interactions. Mapping customer journeys lets you make decisions based on data to improve your customer’s experience.

An excellent example is Funnelytics that lets you map and present your strategy on a drag-and-drop digital canvas. You can visualize how a visitor lands on a lead capture page, becomes a lead, moves on to the sales page, and proceeds to the checkout.

To understand the concept, these are the key components of customer journey mapping.

4 Key Elements Of Customer Journey Mapping

• Stages: The journey is divided into 5 stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Post-Purchase, and Advocacy.
• Touchpoints: Interactions customers have with the brand at each stage. It includes online ads, product pages, checkout processes, and follow-up emails.
• Metrics: This tracks each touchpoint’s performance. It includes conversion rates, bounce rates, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Visualization: Creating a customer journey map like a flowchart or diagram. This way, you will see the entire journey at a glance to identify gaps and improvement opportunities. 

Funnelytics lets you overlay all performance data to identify drop-off points. For example, if you notice a high drop-off rate at the sales page, Funnelytics will show that visitors are leaving because of slow loading time or unclear pricing details. Then, you can optimize the page, improve load speed, and clarify pricing to boost conversions.

Let’s map a customer’s journey in the awareness stage when buying a car. To do so, you will monitor these 5 factors to get a comprehensive view of their experience: 

• Customer Behavior: What actions is your customer taking?
• Customer Attitudes: What is your customer feeling? 
• On-Stage Experience: Who or what is your customer directly interacting with? 
• Off-Stage Experience: What elements support the customer journey but are not visible to them?

Customer Journey Mapping: A 5-Step Guide

As you go over the strategies, ask yourself: How can I optimize each customer touchpoint to create a seamless and engaging journey?

1. Specify Your Targets 

Before you start your customer journey mapping, establish clear objectives. Ask these questions: 

• Do I want to increase conversions and drive sales growth?
• How can I boost customer satisfaction at each touchpoint?
• Do I want to understand customer behaviors better?
• Do I want to improve customer retention and loyalty?
• How can I reduce friction throughout the customer buying journey?

Make sure your objectives align with your business strategy. For example, if you are launching a new product line, your journey mapping should focus on driving product awareness.

2. Represent Customer Groups

Customer personas are profiles that represent key segments of your target audience. They help to tailor touchpoints to specific customer needs and behaviors. These are the 5 steps you can follow to create your customer persona: 

2.1 Collect Customer Feedback

• Surveys : Gather customer feedback using targeted questions about satisfaction, ease of use, and customer experience.
• Reviews : Encourage customers to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, or product pages so you can understand their sentiments on your offers and interactions.
• Customer Support Interactions : Analyze tickets, emails, and calls to identify common pain points.
• Social Media Monitoring : Monitor channels for mentions, comments, and feedback.
• Focus Groups : Organize discussions with your target customers to learn about their customer expectations.

A real-life example is Breaking Eighty , a website that reviews golf products. They use quizzes to engage visitors and collect their emails for personalized marketing pain-free (30-second quiz). As the prospects finish a quiz, they are prompted to sign up for the newsletter through email so they can learn about their interests and keep them informed with targeted content. 

2.2 Research Your Audience

Get into your customer’s shoes to find out your target customer’s preferences. Are they more likely to interact with digital touchpoints or offline ones? Tailor your journey map to reflect these preferences. Find out: 

• Demographic Data : Age, gender, income, location, and occupation.
• Psychographic Data : Values, interests, lifestyle choices, and attitudes.
• Behavioral Data : Buying history, browsing habits, and engagement with marketing content.
• Market Trends : Industry developments and consumer behaviors relevant to your brand.
• Competitor Analysis : How your potential customer interacts with competitors and industry benchmarks.

Use the 3 methods to find out about the customer information: 

• Review purchase history data from your CRM system
• Conduct surveys through platforms like SurveyMonkey
• Use Google Analytics and see the demographic, interest, and geo reports
• Analyze interactions and trends on social media platforms like Facebook Insights

2.3 Segment Your Audience

Divide your audience into distinct segments based on shared characteristics. You might segment by demographic factors (e.g., young professionals, retirees). Or you can segment on behavioral patterns (e.g., frequent buyers, occasional shoppers).

For example, if you’re a telemedicine provider, create segments for patients that need preventative care. Then, offer specialized treatments , therapy sessions , and medical alerts to your target segments. Present these options early in the journey to ensure maximum patient interaction.

2.4 Develop Persona Profiles

For each segment, create a detailed persona profile that includes: 

• A fictional name and brief background story to humanize the persona
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Behavioral patterns
• Needs & pain points

2.5 Tailor Touchpoints

Use these personas to inform how you design touchpoints at each stage of the customer’s journey. For example, if a persona frequently engages with social media, focus on creating compelling social content.

Or if a persona frequently engages with social media like TikTok, create TikTok-specific content. Use dance trends or viral memes to make your content relatable. Showcase your products in action and use the TikTok Shop feature so your customers can directly purchase from your posts.

3. Define Your Mapping Stages & Touchpoints For A Smoother Journey

Ask yourself: Where is the person in the customer lifecycle? To map out the entire customer journey, start by defining the key stages. The stages reflect the different phases from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. Then, identify and categorize the key touchpoints for each. This will tell you where customers interact with your brand at each stage : 

We’ll go through each stage together and share real-life examples that should give you many aha moments. If you have the financial resources, remember, you can always hire an experienced marketing assistant to take some weight off your shoulders, true to the motto: “Who, not how.”

3.1 Awareness

This stage marks the first interaction customers have with your brand. They get to know about your products or services through omnichannel marketing tactics . For example, online ads, social media posts, or word of mouth. The goal here is to capture attention and spark interest.

At this stage, consider SEO for your marketing needs if your target audience frequently uses search engines. Otherwise, you should use channels like social media and email marketing to engage and attract leads. 

Let’s consider the touchpoints for the awareness stage: 

• Online Ads: Display ads, social media ads, and search engine marketing campaigns.
• Social Media: Posts, stories, and influencer marketing.
• Content Marketing: Blog articles, videos, and other educational content.

3.2 Consideration

The consideration stage is where they explore and compare your offers to competitors. The goal is to provide enough product information to influence their decision-making process. 

Let’s find out the touchpoints for the consideration stage: 

• Product Pages: Detailed descriptions, images, and product specifications.
• Reviews: Customer reviews and testimonials that provide social proof.
• Comparison Charts : Side-by-side comparisons of your products or services against competitors. They highlight unique product features.

An excellent example is Australian Business For Sale which provides comprehensive product information to help users convert: 

• They display FAQs section on the homepage to give immediate answers to common queries.
• Their listings give detailed and transparent business information for a comprehensive comparison.
• Their buying guides help customers in the business purchasing process.

3.3 Decision

In this stage, customers decide whether to buy or take another desired action. Make sure the touchpoints are user-friendly so that your customers can easily complete the purchase: 

• Checkout Process: The steps customers take to finalize their purchase like adding items to the shopping cart, selecting payment options, and confirming the order.
• Pricing Information: Clear pricing details, discounts, and special offers to incentivize customers to complete their purchases.
• Customer Support: Chatbots, helplines, or email support to answer last-minute questions.

At this stage, give your customers incentives so they will choose you over your competitors. For example, this custom dog stickers ’ website gives a 10% discount on the first order when a customer signs up. They also make it very convenient for the users by just asking 2 questions.

3.4 Post-Purchase

This stage includes interactions like follow-up emails, customer support, and satisfaction surveys. The goal is to engage customers so that they buy again from you using: 

• Follow-Up Emails: Confirmation emails, tracking information, and post-purchase surveys that maintain engagement.
• Customer Support: Help with returns, exchanges, and issues to ensure satisfaction.
• Loyalty Programs: Rewards, discounts, and points systems that encourage repeat purchases.

3.5 Retention & Advocacy

This stage focuses on retaining customers and turning them into brand advocates. At this stage, you can form long-term relationships and encourage word-of-mouth referrals.

The touchpoints for the advocacy stage include: 

• Customer Communities: Online forums, social media groups, and events that foster engagement.
• Exclusive Offers: Discounts and deals for loyal customers, incentivizing repeat purchases.
• Referral Programs: Incentives that encourage customers to refer friends and family.

One excellent example is Pinch , a med spa company that built a loyal customer base. Pinch uses social media to feature customer stories and reviews to make them feel acknowledged and celebrated. This makes their customer base more loyal and promotes the brand to new potential customers.

Another great example is Aura , an Amazon repricer tool that established a community forum. Here, customers discuss online business strategies, share experiences, and provide feedback on the tool.

Using this strategy, Aura improves customer loyalty and encourages word-of-mouth recommendations as happy users often tell others about the tool.

To streamline the process, you can map touchpoints for each stage using Funnelytics . Let’s say you’re mapping touchpoints for the post-purchase stage. You’ll add elements like order confirmation emails, onboarding guides, and support follow-ups on the Funnelytics’ whiteboard. Then you’ll overlay performance data to identify drop-offs.

For instance, if customers aren’t engaging with your onboarding guides, Funnelytics can reveal that the guides are too lengthy. You can then shorten and simplify the guides to improve customer satisfaction.

4. Chart Customer Path: Create A Visual Representation

Use Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Lucidchart to create a flowchart or diagram. Or use specialized journey mapping tools like UXPressia or Miro. Then, outline the main journey stages. Make sure to arrange them logically from left to right or top to bottom.

Then list the corresponding touchpoints for each stage. Connect these stages and touchpoints with arrows or lines, showing the flow from one to the next. This helps visualize the customer’s progression and shows the paths they might take. Use this customer persona as a blueprint to guide your customer journey mapping process.

Finally, revisit and update the visual representation as needed.

If you’re pressed for time and cannot manually create customer journey maps, use Funnelytics . Its analytics-powered whiteboard lets you create visual maps of customer interactions. Using this tool, you can see how your customer journey progresses so you can improve accordingly.

You can also use a pre-structured customer journey map template to save time and effort. These templates provide a clear layout where you simply need to fill in details like touchpoints, metrics, and key interactions.

5. Highlight Key Metrics To Track Progress

Highlight key metrics for each touchpoint to track progress effectively and pinpoint areas that need improving. The 5 steps will guide you on how to do it right: 

5.1 Assign Metrics To Touchpoints

For each stage, assign metrics that measure the corresponding touchpoints’ success. For example: 

• Awareness: Track impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and social media engagement to measure customer interest.
• Consideration: Monitor bounce rates, time spent on product pages, and content engagement to know how well your touchpoints guide customers.
• Decision: Check conversion rates, checkout abandonment rates, and customer service team interactions to evaluate how seamless the buying process is.
• Post-Purchase: Track satisfaction surveys, return rates, and support tickets to measure post-purchase experiences.
• Retention & Advocacy: Track repeat purchases, loyalty program participation, and referral rates to gauge customer loyalty and advocacy.

5.2 Visualize Metrics Clearly

Include these metrics near each touchpoint in the customer journey map. You can put them either as numbers, charts, or symbols so you get an at-a-glance view of each touchpoint’s performance.

For example, these are the key metrics you should track when a customer buys a digital product.

5.3 Analyze The Data

Review the metrics quarterly to understand how each touchpoint is performing:

• Set benchmarks based on past performance data or industry standards.
• Look at your current data in comparison to your benchmarks. 
• Then, identify touchpoints that are underperforming or exceeding expectations.
• Look for patterns or trends over time. Ask yourself: Are certain touchpoints consistently problematic? Is there a seasonal variation in performance?
• Prioritize areas that need urgent attention or have the most significant impact on customer experience.

5.4 Implement Changes & Track Progress

Based on the data, make necessary adjustments to touchpoints. For example, outline specific actions for each adjustment, like changing webpage layouts or improving call-to-action buttons.

At this stage, use tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Mixpanel to monitor the impact of these changes on key metrics (conversion rates or bounce rates).

The next step is to schedule review sessions to assess this data. Ask yourself: Are the adjustments improving your performance metrics? If not, reassess and tweak your approach.

As you apply the strategies, remember that each touchpoint is an opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales. Ask yourself: How can I make each touchpoint more engaging for my customers?

If you need help visualizing the customer journey, consider using Funnelytics . Our tool offers an analytics-powered whiteboard that simplifies mapping. It helps to create visual representations of customer interactions so you can create a seamless UX, boosting satisfaction, loyalty, and conversions. 

Start your free trial today and create a journey that benefits both your customers and your brand.

I. What are the types of customer journey maps?

The 5 common types of customer journey maps are: 

• Current State Maps: Visualize actual customer experiences to pinpoint existing pain points. Use these for immediate improvement in customer interactions.
• Future State Maps: Outline desired future experiences and set improvement goals. You can use them for strategic planning and vision setting.
• Day-in-the-Life Maps: Show a customer’s daily activities and brand interactions. Use them to determine the optimal times your product or service can add value to their day.
• Service Blueprint: Detail both front-end interactions and back-end processes. Use them to align organizational efforts or to ensure seamless customer support.
• Empathy Maps: Show customers’ thoughts and feelings at different stages. Use them to deepen your team’s empathy and to tailor emotional responses.

II. How often should I update my customer journey map?

You should update your customer journey map at least annually. Similarly, update whenever significant changes occur in your business, market, or customer behavior. Updates ensure your map stays accurate and relevant to address emerging customer needs.

III. Who should be involved in the mapping process?

Marketing, sales, customer service, and product development should be involved in the mapping process. This collaboration lets you understand the customer experience from multiple perspectives. Ultimately, it becomes easier for you to spot and bridge gaps in the customer journey.

Moreover, you will better align with your goals when different departments contribute to the mapping process.

IV. How many customer journey maps do I need?

The number of customer journey maps you need depends on your customer base diversity and product offerings. Generally, one map per key persona or customer segment is effective. This approach ensures that your strategies are tailored to meet distinct customer needs.

V. Who uses customer journey maps? 

Marketing teams, product managers, UX designers, and customer service departments use customer journey maps. They help understand and improve the customer experience by: 

• Identifying customer pain points
• Visualizing the paths customers take
• Optimizing interactions across different stages of the customer lifecycle

VI. What is the customer journey map in design thinking?

In design thinking, a customer journey map visually represents a user’s interactions with a product or service over time. It highlights their needs, emotions, pain points, and satisfaction moments. This tool lets you understand and empathize with users which is a core principle of design thinking. When used effectively, it bridges gaps between design thinking and marketing.

Related resources

Exciting Updates to Funnelytics Plans

Sales Funnel vs. Customer Journey: What are the Differences?

Cracking the Code: Funnel Reporting for Marketers

The Customer Lifecycle Journey: What it is and How to Use it to Create Repeat Customers

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Explore Digital Customer Journey Mapping: Awareness to Advocacy

June 6, 2023

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All say that digital customer journey mapping is essential.

Before we get into the mapping, let’s talk about the customer journey. And how vital it is to companies to make the journey as enjoyable as possible.

Obviously, you know about iPhone. Opening an iPhone box is highly satisfying. The box slowly reveals the phone. Creating a “whoosh” sound gives a “WOW” effect. 

It’s not a random design by the packaging department. Apple put a lot of resources into this research. With Steve Jobs himself, a team of experts designed and patented the box design .

It seems too much for a box, or is it? This box ensures the premium feel of the product.

Apple knows this because they know their customer. They have the complete map of the journey that a customer experiences. And that’s the reason we love their products.

Sounds interesting. So, let’s start from the top.

What is the customer journey?

A customer journey is a person’s journey with a brand or business, from awareness of pain points to post-purchase service.

Customer journey stages

Customers go through several stages before they purchase a service or a product. Many steps involve making a customer stay with a business longer.

These steps are more emotional than technical for a customer. We must know the steps first to maintain a positive emotion about your business.

Let us introduce the steps. Here, the block you’ll interact with below represents the emotional steps in a customer’s journey toward making a purchase decision.

1. Awareness

Visitors get to know you for the first time.

• Advertising
• By social media
• Google search

2. Engagement

Now that visitors know you. Engage with them.

3. Subscribe

At this point, start to implement lead magnets. Try to register them for something.

We have to get the email to talk with them.

Register for,

• Webinar 

Here we will convince our subscribers for a micro commitment. Something that they can do without overthinking. It could be a subscriber attending the webinar.

commitment for,

• A small amount of Money
• Very short Time

At this point, your visitor committed something for you. Now it is your job to build up excitement about your business.

• Create a good product
• Deliver your USP properly
• Make them wander (by webinar)
• Make them understand (by a demo)

You made your visitor excited about your product. Now it’s time to climb the purchasing ladder by developing gradual trust.

Purchase ladder,

• Start with offering a smaller package
• Then offer a bigger deal
• Finally, offer the retainer agreement.

7. Advocate

Here, your customer is happy about your product. And started to say nice things about your business. And you don’t have to ask for it.

• Testimonials 
• Customer stories
• Social media share

8. Promoter

Finally, your visitor becomes your free marketer. They are now actively suggesting your business to your potential customer. It helps you start the whole process from step 01 with the new customer.

• Referrals 

Now we are all on the same page. Let’s start mapping the journey. But what do I mean by the journey map?

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a diagram where you can depict a customer’s pathway while interacting with the business at a different touch point.

Benefits of digital customer journey mapping

We talked about Apple’s customer experience. They put significant effort into making the customer or user journey incredible. They were able to do this because of the mapping.

Now, let’s discuss a few more advantages of customer journey mapping.

1. Get a consistent view of their journey

Multiple departments work simultaneously to ensure a smooth path for customers. But if departments have different ideas about the customer journey. It will create confusion for the company as well as customers. But a single journey mapping will omit this confusion.

2. Pinpoint gaps in service or communications

A map will help you to figure out the gaps. Let’s say you are losing your customer from your radar after a sale. They are not getting in touch with you anymore. A map will allow you to investigate more to the right point.

3. Predict buyer behavior

A map will give you a clear visual of your customer’s nature. You can see how your customer interacts with your business and how long they take to purchase.

4. Enhance the customer journey

You can pinpoint the struggles of your customer with your business. By putting clear remarks, you can work on it quickly. Also, it will help to convince your stakeholders to invest more to improve the customer’s journey.

5. Improve Return on Investment (ROI)

You can optimize your investment because of the detailed buyer’s journey. You can set a more effective, accurate investment strategy in the right place. Moreover, you can suggest any reduction in investment.

The customer journey mapping process

So far, we understand the benefits of customer experience mapping. Now let’s dive a bit deeper to explore the process.

The digital customer journey mapping process has 5 steps.

You have to know your market. Based on your market, define the purpose of this mapping. The purpose can be anything. It could be for exploring new opportunities, or it could be for refining the customer experience .

Create personas

You may need either B2C or B2B customer journey map. You cannot create the right journey scenario without creating customer personas. Try to cover all kinds of customers or businesses who interact with you. 

Select touchpoints

Now list all kinds of touch points your customer goes through with your business. It could be social media, blogs, videos, websites, agents, and even referrals. The list must cover every single purchase, even the small ones. 

Current journey map

Then draw the map of the current journey that your customer is going through. Cover every single journey map possible. It may include sales agents, marketers, affiliates, websites, and social media. Your loyal customer may also be included in the list.

Data analysis

Finally, you can analyze data from this map. It can help you find out what the ideal journey pathway should be. It can give you new opportunities. Furthermore, it will provide a clear picture of the gaps.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

Till now, we have talked about the digital customer journey mapping steps and mapping process. Now we will create the map.

We will organize the data from different sources in tabular form.

We have discussed all of these above. So, I’m skipping the details and drawing a demo journey map.

Ways of creating a customer journey map

We have already created the map. But you might ask this question. Is there any customer journey mapping software or tool? Well, there are a lot of ways for this.

UXpressia is the platform dedicated to CX mapping. It has a persona-creating setup for creating multiple fictional and real customer personas from actual data. You do not need any design or spreadsheet tool to use this.

But you can explore a few alternatives if you are handy with other tools. Figma has a template for the mapping. And you can use a template in FigJam . Another whiteboard tool, Miro, has a mapping template for creating the journey map. 

Chart-making software is also ideal for making a map of the customer journey. The lucid chart has a template for digital customer journey mapping.

Say you are someone don’t want to be all technical. You just want a simple template where you can type your customer journey map. Then you can also try Hubsopt’s detailed journey map template .

But the best way is to use a good old-fashioned whiteboard and sticky notes or Sharpie. You can use a simple customer journey mapping template for this. Do the modification and match it with your setup for better output.

Customer Journey Mapping Template

Get your hand on to a sample customer journey mapping template for FREE. Map out your customer journey by analyzing touch points to understand your customer experience.

70% of customers say they will only shop with a business that personally understands them. Big brands understand their customer.  Because those brands put lots of effort into creating a perfect customer journey map.

Even CX experts say to build a sustainable business, you have to understand the flow of the customer. This gives new ideas and opens new opportunities.

Lastly, digital customer journey mapping is not just “good” anymore if you are growing a business. But it is a must.

Md. Ariful Basher

Hi, this is Abir, a product marketing strategist, passionate product designer, and WordPress core contributor. Creating interesting content and products that ensure a 360-degree customer experience is my daily job.

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Blog Marketing Customer Journey Map: What It Is & How to Create One

Customer Journey Map: What It Is & How to Create One

Written by: Jennifer Gaskin Dec 10, 2021

Creating a customer journey map gives a business the opportunity to visualize the path a person takes to become a loyal customer with your organization. A customer journey map is an excellent way to understand how consumers interact with your business.

Many companies use the customer journey map creation process to identify areas of improvement in their internal processes to help ensure all consumer interactions are the best they can be.

With Venngage’s Customer Journey Map Maker , you can easily create a customer journey map that aligns with your brand guidelines and helps all team members better understand your target customer.

Click to jump ahead:

What is the customer journey, what is customer journey mapping, why do businesses need to map their customer journey, steps to map a customer journey, how to create a customer journey map with venngage, customer journey map templates.

• FAQs about customer journey maps

Broadly, the customer journey describes how your customers or users interact with your organization. It is a way for companies to understand the complete customer experience and learn how to optimize it.

For a brick-and-mortar shop, that could be physical interactions like taking their trip through your store.

For companies that produce mostly digital products and services, the customer journey describes the consumer’s perspective as it relates to your company and its goods and services.

Mapping the customer journeys means understanding the path a person takes from becoming a lead or potential customer to transforming into a loyal patron of your business, so that you can visualize how a customer interacts with your organization at various points, as in the example below.

This customer journey map describes the journey the average customer of GLIDE App will experience, divided into different stages. You also see the steps the customer is expected to take, which customer touchpoints they’re going to interact with and how each touchpoint is coordinated with each business department.

As we’ve touched on, customer journey mapping means creating a visual representation of the entire customer journey: how existing and potential customers interact with your business. Some customer journey maps are map-like, while others are more linear, flowing in a straight line, and still others have unique shapes.

What all customer journey maps have in common is that they focus on the customer experience as it relates to the product you make or the services you sell.

This customer journey map is represented in a circle: customer journey begins with Discovery and ends in Conversion. You can also tell that this customer journey map illustrates the importance of continual customer engagement even after leads have turned into customers.

In this customer journey map, activities, motivations, emotions and barriers are all plotted against the stages of the buyer’s journey. At the start, customers have little to no awareness of the product and by the end, they are reliable returning customers — in an ideal world. Of course, to make this even more seamless, customer training software can be deployed as it helps understand customers’ use of products in their daily life.

This infographic takes the traditional customer journey map a step toward the customer by depicting a theoretical client, lead or consumer—or in other words, a buyer persona. This allows the organization to ensure they’re keeping the buyer top of mind at all times.

To learn more about buyer or customer personas, check out our posts:

• 10 Buyer Persona Templates, Examples & Marketing Tips
• 20+ User Persona Examples, Templates and Tips For Targeted Decision-Making

Taking into account the customer perspective, this customer journey map template plots the buyer’s activities along the top, from the moment they realize they need to purchase something until they’ve paid for it. The business can then populate the cells with the appropriate answers based on the metrics they are attempting to visualize; in this case, emotions, experiences and customer expectations.

Mapping the customer journeys can help businesses understand bottlenecks or pain points they didn’t realize existed. And it can help organizations diagnose internal issues by enabling them to visualize things from their customers’ perspective.

In short, customer journey maps give businesses a chance to develop a deep well of knowledge about their consumer beyond the metrics of sales or engagement. Putting themselves in the customer’s shoes and understanding why consumers behave as they do can empower an organization with all the tools it needs to better serve consumers. Moreover, integrating call center software helps businesses better understand and serve customers by managing inquiries efficiently and gathering valuable data.

This eCommerce customer journey map, for example, can allow a savvy sales, marketing or operations team to optimize customer satisfaction by correlating a bad customer experience with poor UI/UX design or other issues.

Customer journey maps are also useful for simplifying and visualizing only one aspect of the journey. In this case, the focus is the outreach tools a business uses to reach potential customers, but it’s easy to customize this type of design to apply to many other segments of the buyer journey or add details that can aid decision-making.

Use this type of customer journey map to visualize the content you’ll use in your marketing efforts at each stage of the buyer’s journey or sales funnel . Remember that it’s important to consistently offer leads and prospects something new to maintain their interest.

The first step to any successful journey is understanding where you want to go. In the case of mapping your customer journey, the first step is determining your end goal. Do you want to identify bottlenecks in your process, increase conversions or push new products? Think about what you want to get out of the process before you begin.

Once you’ve outlined your goals, you can begin the steps to mapping a customer journey.

Step 1 . In most cases, a customer’s journey should first be broken down into a timeline or customer stages. This typically follows the buyer’s journey (Awareness—Consideration—Decision) or a variation of that.

Here’s an example of a customer journey map that divides the common 3-stage customer’s journey into 5 stages:

Step 2 . From there, you should determine what should go down the side of your customer journey. In the case of the above example, the customer’s approach and resulting experience are listed.

Step 3 . List or visualize the customer touchpoints.

The template below does that by including a row in the graphic for physical and digital touchpoints. In some cases, you may consider listing these as pain points if all customers or this particular persona in question have to deal with a lot of hurdles to successfully move on to the next phase of the journey. This could be something like price or product availability.

Step 4 . Include solutions or opportunities for your organization to optimize the customer experience at each step. That could mean removing pain points or roadblocks, such as offering them discounts or other incentives to select your company.

Visualizing your customer’s journey can be difficult without using the right customer journey mapping tools.

Venngage makes it very easy to create a customer journey map by offering dozens of templates that you can quickly customize with your company’s information. With just a few clicks, you can list out the steps of your customer journey and detail the experiences at each point.

Check out our library of customer journey map templates you can easily customize:

Notice the Smart Templates? They are created with our Smart Diagram editor. You can easily add icons, move things around and space the design elements however you like. As you add or delete text, the editor will automatically adjust so you won’t need to resize anything.

For businesses that want to have consistent branding across their customer journey design, you can use My Brand Kit to apply brand colors or logos to your customer journey map in one click:

Here are a few more effective customer journey map examples to inspire you as you work to create your buyer’s journey to better understand your consumer.

This customer journey map lists the stages of the process across the top and the categories the organization must consider down the side. Organizing your buyer’s journey in this way allows you to visualize each issue at a glance and make correlations between segments and outcomes.

Similarly, use this customer journey map to quickly see which channels apply to what phases and what opportunities exist for reaching out to potential buyers during each segment along the way.

Buyer’s journey maps can also lean toward the simple size, as in this example, which is appropriate for companies that need to list digital and physical touchpoints along with opportunities that could help convert leads to customers.

When considering your customer journey, it’s important to think about how your customer has changed after every contact with your organization. In the beginning, they may not know exactly what they need, and then by the end, they should be more confident about what you can do for them.

Remember that not all customers are the same, and pain points for one person may not be pain points for another. So, it’s best to make customer journey maps for your major buyer types or personas.

FAQ about customer journey maps

Do you have more questions about customer journey maps? We’ve got answers.

What are the 7 steps to map the customer journey?

When creating a customer journey map, many experts recommend the following seven steps:

• Set targets
• Create buyer personas
• Identify motivations and define barriers or pain points
• Visualize buyer journey
• Maximize touchpoints
• Identify opportunities to establish trust
• Test and revise

What do you use a customer journey map for?

Customer journey maps are useful for visualizing a buyer’s interaction with your company. This can help you understand your buyer and their motivations better, as well as helping you identify reasons why they might not choose your business, thus changing strategy or decision-making to make your organization more attractive.

Ultimately, creating a customer journey map can help you learn what the customer needs and know how to provide consistently excellent service to acquire new customers as well as retaining customer loyalty.

What are touchpoints in customer journey maps?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map describes a moment in which your customer interacts with your company or brand, and a customer journey map should include all touchpoints along the way.

In summary: Optimize the customer experience by creating a customer journey map

With Venngage’s Customer Journey Map Maker , you can quickly and easily visualize your customer journey so you can eliminate pain points, resolve bottlenecks and better understand how to give your customers what they want. It’s free to get started.

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The path to gold: How customer journey mapping can help you build a better brand

• Introduction

What is a customer journey map? 

Four types of customer journey maps , experience map vs. customer journey map , customer journey mapping benefits, how to create a customer journey map .

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The customer journey is anything but simple. Before a lead even becomes a customer, they might see a social ad, receive several emails in a nurture journey, speak to a sales representative, visit your website multiple times, and read reviews on third-party websites. Each of these interactions contributes to their perception of your brand and, ultimately, whether or not they go on to become a loyal customer.

“With the number of touchpoints a customer has with a brand increasing with the proliferation of technologies and channels, the need to create a consistent experience is critically important.”

– McKinsey & Company

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer’s experience with your brand from awareness to purchase. It should include every major touchpoint throughout the sales funnel, highlighting the barriers along the way, and the channels or messages that motivate them to take the next action. 

There are four key types of customer journey maps, some of which may be more relevant to your business and goals than others. 

Current state: This is to visualize how a journey operates currently. It helps identify where leads or customers drop off, where the bulk of conversions or upgrades happen, and the opportunities you have for improvement.

Future state: This is a strategic journey that should be built when you want to nudge leads or customers to take a specific action and you need to plan what it takes to get there. It often involves taking your current state journey and adapting it to fit your goals. 

Day in the life: This provides a view of your customer’s typical day-to-day, allowing you to identify where your brand can show up with relevant messages or activations, or even where you could build new features or products to address unmet needs. 

Blueprints: In a blueprint, you will take either your current or future state journey map and overlay it with your company's people, processes, policies, and technologies to identify the tangible steps needed to reach a certain goal.

Every map is slightly different, however, they will commonly include factors like customer touchpoints, friction points or barriers faced, actions taken, and customer sentiment, all plotted in consecutive order. 

An experience map is similar to a customer journey map in that it tracks a customer’s movements from awareness through to purchase and beyond, but it takes a much wider lens. The experience map will start with the overarching query or goal a customer has before they’ve even identified your product as a potential solution. 

For example, an insurance company’s experience map might include things like search queries (and results), research, referrals and reviews, and competitor advertisements or messages. It is essentially mapping the experience of finding a solution to a problem and can reveal specific pain points or places your competitors show up more prominently.

When you dedicate time to building a comprehensive customer journey map, you will identify ways to improve your customer experience along with your conversion and retention rates. It’s the gateway to embracing a customer-centric business model, with benefits including: 

1. Prioritize marketing channels and messaging

By thinking of all the different interactions your potential or current customers have with your business you will start to see the importance each touchpoint and message has when influencing an action and how each touchpoint connects to the others. 

You might find you had previously underestimated certain customer touchpoints and overestimated the importance of others. By zooming in on the touchpoints that are business-critical, you can re-prioritize to focus on the things that actually contribute to business outcomes. 

2. Create a personalized omnichannel experience

Based on a survey conducted by Econsultancy , 88% of businesses reported that customer mapping positively impacted their ability to deliver a personalized customer experience.  Mapping out your customer journeys will give you insight into where your customers are and what actions they take at each touchpoint. This will enhance your ability to provide personalized experiences for them in two ways:

Customize the content at each touchpoint with relevant messaging that speaks to that customer on that specific channel. 

Make sure your customers have a seamless connection with their preferred channel. This includes both the customer-facing side (what the customer experiences) and at the backend (the data that underpins them).

3. Identify roadblocks and remove them

When you have a holistic view of the customer journey, it’s far easier to see the areas that need improvement. By taking the time to remove barriers to entry or speed bumps, you can create a frictionless experience that reduces the sales cycle. 

On the other end of the journey, your customer journey map can help you pinpoint how and why churn happens. Picking up on typical churn behaviors or actions can help you set up more successful retention journeys — a crucial part of marketing in the age of skyrocketing CACs. 

4. Create a customer-centric culture 

Departmental silos can be crippling to a business. The entire team needs to be working together, towards the same goals, with access to the same company data. By building a comprehensive and clear customer journey and communicating it to the wider organization, your whole team will benefit from a deep understanding of who your customers are and how their day-to-day work can positively impact the journey. 

Customer journey mapping may seem like a daunting task, but if you take it one step at a time you’ll be surprised by how quickly it comes together — and how beneficial it is to your business.

Follow these steps to map your customer’s journey: 

Step 1: Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)

If you don’t have ICPs already, you will need to identify them before you start to map. Aim to be specific without narrowing your total addressable market (TAM) down so far that your business becomes unsustainable. 

Step 2: List customer touchpoints 

This is where things get detailed. Your map needs to show all the points of contact your customer has with your brand, from awareness through to purchase (and beyond — but depending on your goals, you might wish to attack this in parts). 

Gather key team members in a room and list every touchpoint you can think of. Missed touchpoints can translate into missed opportunities, so be incredibly thorough, even if a touchpoint feels irrelevant or insubstantial. 

Here are a few examples of touchpoints that are likely to be missed:

Any 404 errors on your website

Transactional emails (e.g. receipts and invoices)

Customer reviews on third-party sites

Person-to-person interactions (e.g. customer service agent, in-store sales representative, or repair technician)  

As you map these out, add detail about the touchpoints that have higher engagement or those where performance is waning. 

Step 3: Identify customer actions

Map the actions your customers take alongside the touchpoints and you will quickly identify where roadblocks or speed bumps occur, and where new initiatives could help nudge them down the funnel more efficiently. 

Once you’ve done this, make note of the total number of actions a customer takes before they convert. Your goal should be to reduce this number by removing obstacles in their way, both to create a better experience for your customers and to improve business outcomes.

Step 4: Analyze core metrics 

Now that you have identified all your customer touchpoints and actions, it’s time to look at performance. The common metrics to find at each touchpoint include:

Conversion rate

Time to conversion

Customer acquisition cost

Return on investment

Customer retention rate

Bounce rate

Unsubscribe rate

Customer feedback data (e.g. NPS score ) 

Aligning these metrics with your map provides you with a bird’s eye view of the friction points or areas that are fundamental to that journey. 

Step 5: Collect direct feedback

Even with all the data points in the world, nothing beats hearing directly from your customers. What the quantitative data can’t show are the emotions felt at each touchpoint, where words can paint a clearer picture of what the customers loved or hated.

Interviewing customers, and asking about their experience as it occurs will be worth its weight in gold when building and validating your customer journey map. Here are a few key questions to get you started:

How easy or difficult did you find using our website/app/platform?

Are you satisfied with the (onboarding/ check out/ billing) process?

How did the product/ brand help you? Were there any problems that were not solved by our product/ brand?

Is there anything we can do to support you or better your experience with us?

Step 6: Formalize and circulate your map 

By this point, you likely have a draft map out on paper. Now you need to formalize this document in a platform like Miro or Figma and get it in front of key stakeholders across the business to generate feedback and ensure accuracy. 

Once you have a beautifully visualized customer journey map, circulate it with the wider company and set time to walk them through each step, and answer any questions.

A customer journey map will provide you with a holistic view of the path your customers take, and how you can improve upon it to fast-track their path to conversion. It will help you prioritize marketing and customer initiatives, identify areas for improvement, gain a deeper understanding of your customers, and audit how your brand shows up.

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The Customer Journey Map: Everything You Need to Know

A customer journey map is a visual representation of your customer’s lifecycle. Here’s how it works and how it can help improve the customer experience.

Nicole Kimball

Mar 21, 2023

Every day, businesses of all sizes are looking for new ways to engage customers and improve their customer experience. One powerful process they can use is customer journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping is the process of understanding your customers’ needs and experiences as they interact with your brand throughout the sales cycle. Here, we’ll explore what the customer journey is, how customer journey mapping works, and how customer journey mapping applies to both B2B and B2C contexts.

What is the Customer Journey?

The customer journey is the path a customer takes when engaging with a business. It typically starts with the customer’s discovery of the business, followed by consideration, purchase, and the use of the company’s product or service. Ultimately, the customer journey leads to after-sales support or additional purchases.

One of the key benefits of customer journey mapping is the opportunity to provide more personalization and make deeper connections with customers. By understanding what motivates customers at each stage of the journey, businesses can develop strategies that target their needs and create meaningful experiences that keep them coming back for more.

Knowing how customers engage with a business throughout their journey also provides valuable insights into which channels and tactics perform best, enabling businesses to optimize their messaging for maximum impact. Finally, understanding the customer journey is essential for creating personalized experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer experience that documents the various touchpoints a customer has with a business. It also details the customer’s associated feelings, needs, and behaviors throughout the process.

A customer journey map typically includes information about the customer's goals and objectives, as well as the actions they take to reach those goals. Here’s an example of what a typical customer journey map looks like from Forbes:

(Source:  Forbes )

By analyzing customer data, sentiment, and conversion, and by mapping out each step in the journey, businesses can gain insights into how customers interact with their products or services and make necessary changes to optimize the customer experience.

Most customer journeys involve the following phases:

• Awareness : The customer realizes they have a problem to solve.
• Research : The customer researches solutions to their problem.
• Consideration : The customer decides they will make a purchase to solve their problem.
• Purchase : The customer chooses a solution and makes a purchase.
• Support : The customer uses the product or service and engages with the company to receive support or make another purchase.

Below, we’ll explore the steps you need to take to map a customer journey as well as some customer journey map examples.

The Steps to Mapping a Customer Journey

Most companies can create a simple customer journey map using a template, but customer journey maps can be as elaborate as they need to be for your company to fully understand its customers. You can update your customer journey map as you gather additional data about your customers and what drives them to either buy or not.

You can also create customer journey maps for different types of customers or customer personas. This will enable you to tailor experiences so they are more suitable to each type of customer, and it will make it easier to use personalization in your marketing strategy.

Here are some basic steps for mapping a customer journey:

• Create buyer personas : Identify the different types of customers who make purchases with your business. Outline their personalities, lifestyles, needs, and wants. These will form the basis of your customer journey map.
• Define each stage of the customer journey : You could use the customer journey stages listed in the example above (Awareness, Research, etc.) or you can create stages that are unique to your customers and your line of business.
• Plot customer journey touchpoints : Customer touchpoints represent each time your customer interacts with your company. Each phase may include multiple touchpoints across various channels, such as email or phone calls.
• Add customer actions and sentiments : You should identify what your customer might be thinking and feeling at each touchpoint, then plot what actions they might take to move the customer journey forward.
• Identify opportunities for improvement : As you map the customer journey and analyze your data, take note of any opportunities where you could improve customer interactions. These opportunities could occur at specific touchpoints where customers are dropping off.

There are differences between B2B customer journey maps and B2C customer journey maps. Because B2C sales cycles tend to be much shorter, the customer journey maps of B2C companies tend to be much less elaborate. That said, some B2C businesses, such as subscription service providers, can have many customer touchpoints.

Here’s a more in-depth look at the differences between B2B and B2C customer journey maps.

B2B Customer Journeys

B2B customer journey maps are typically more complex because a single B2B account can include multiple decision-makers and stakeholders. This requires additional steps and touchpoints in the customer journey.

Additionally, B2B customers typically involve repeat relationships with ongoing communication and feedback loops, while B2C customers may only purchase a product or service once. As a result, the focus of B2B marketing is less on driving immediate conversions and more on building long-term loyalty.

HubSpot has had ample time to develop its B2B customer journey map. As you can see below, theirs is quite complicated, but it also provides a great deal of information to help them successfully market to their customers.

(Source: HubSpot )

HubSpot offers a free customer journey map template that can help you get started.

B2C Customer Journey

B2C customer journey maps tend to be simpler and more linear than their B2B counterparts. The emphasis is usually on driving immediate conversions and sales, not on building long-term loyalty – although this can still be incorporated into the map depending on the product or service in question.

Typically, each step in a B2C customer's journey should be focused on helping them make a purchase decision as quickly and conveniently as possible. Long-term relationships with customers may be important, however, in some instances. For example, subscription service providers will likely have longer customer journey maps, with increased emphasis on retention, than consumer goods manufacturers.

Here’s an example of a B2C subscription customer journey map from music streaming company Spotify, as demonstrated by customer journey analytics company Woompra:

(Source: Woompra )

Spotify outlines the various customer touchpoints that inhabit the customer journey, as well as their customer’s various thoughts and feelings during each stage of the journey. This journey map also specifically details how a customer might share music with another person using the Spotify app, encouraging them to download it themselves.

By contrast, HubSpot provides an example of a standard customer journey map for a sit-in restaurant:

This journey map details the entire customer experience at the restaurant, from the moment they arrive to the time they pay their bill. It also assigns roles to the various representatives of the business, including waitstaff, receptionists, and “support” roles, such as those who are preparing the food in the kitchen.

By using these customer journey maps, both company types can ensure their customers have positive experiences and engage in positive actions for the company.

Start Customer Journey Mapping Today

Customer journey maps can take a lot of different forms. Depending on your business, your customer journey map could be as extensive as HubSpot’s or as simplified as the restaurant’s example above.

To get help with your customer journey map, don’t forget to download HubSpot’s free customer journey template . You can also contact us at Aptitude 8 for additional assistance.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

7 ways to analyze a customer-journey map.

March 22, 2020 2020-03-22

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A customer-journey map is an infographic visualization of the process that a persona segment goes through in order to accomplish a goal. Journey maps are useful in communicating the general narratives and themes uncovered by longitudinal research done to understand how a customer works toward a goal over time.  

This journey map includes all the information necessary for understanding and analyzing the user experience of shopping for a new car. In this illustration, we have intentionally left out one key piece of the map —  the insights and opportunities gleaned from the map. This section is often found at the bottom of a customer-journey map and highlights how the organization can optimize and improve the customer journey.

In this article we will demonstrate how to analyze a journey map and, thus, how to identify the insights and opportunities for improvement.

In This Article:

Analyzing the journey map.

Longitudinal research and analysis is necessary to create a map like this.

Every journey map will look different because the research insights and the resulting visual depend entirely on the context of the journey, its underlying activities, and the persona completing it. That said, there are 7 common elements you can and should look for when analyzing a customer journey.

1. Look for points in the journey where expectations are not met.

Users go into an interaction with an organization with certain expectations. When the interaction does not meet their expectations, you see pain points in a customer journey. To identify these instances, first reflect on who the persona is. Ask yourself; what is important to this persona, where did she come from before this journey, what has she seen and what does she know already? Putting yourself in the user’s mind space will allow you to understand which interactions conflict with user’s prior ideas and expectations.

Of course, you should look for places where users verbalized their concerns, but also use your logic to assess interactions with no explicit complaints or negative comments.

Sometimes people bring their expectations into the journey from other experiences. For example, users expect that when they pull up to a hotel, the bellman will open the door, because that’s what always happens when you pull up to a hotel with a bellman — it’s the mental model that they have formed for that situation. Some organizations set inaccurate expectations early in the customer journey. Others don’t set expectations at all, forcing users to make assumptions and possibly be disappointed if those assumptions prove wrong.

Find the trouble spot and work backward to identify the triggering factor and how the expectations were (or were not) set. Work to resolve the conflict between expectations and reality.

In the car-buying journey map, there were two clear points where Eric’s expectations weren’t met. These instances are annotated using red numbered circles.

2. Identify any unnecessary touchpoints or interactions.

Are there any steps in the customer journey that could be eliminated in order to streamline the total experience? Look for logical ways to optimize the process to reduce total interaction cost . That may mean removing an existing step that is no longer needed or adding something to the experience that bring efficiency to the overall journey.

3. Identify the low points or points of friction.

When you step back and look at the whole journey, you should be able to see where the user experiences the most pain or friction. These points are usually represented visually as dips in the journey diagram. See where the journey reaches its lowest point and compare it to other low points in the journey. These should be on your shortlist of optimizations. That said, not all fixes are created equal: there can be dependencies and constraints involved. Work with your team to decide which low points should be addressed first and which can come later. (Because of the peak-end rule , the lowest point in a journey will have a particularly ruinous impact on the branding effect of the user experience.)

4. Pinpoint high-friction channel transitions.

Many journeys take place across devices or channels . A lot of times the journey breaks down and friction appears when users change channels. For example, a user receives a newsletter about a specific offering from a company. She’s interested in the offering and clicks the call to action in the newsletter. However, instead of being taken to a landing page detailing that particular offer, the user lands on the company’s homepage. At this point, she has to put in effort to find the offer.  Or, another user may begin filling out a form on the mobile phone, but wants to complete it on the laptop when it becomes too laborious. Doing so means losing work and starting over. These channel-transition pain points should be identified and streamlined. Think outside of the box: rather than forcing users to work hard, build a bridge for them to get to the other side easily.

5. Evaluate time spent. In your journey map, provide time durations for the major stages of the journey.

This information gives you another lens for analyzing the experience.  Assess how long it takes users to achieve the underlying substeps. Are these times appropriate? Time spent often correlates to the amount of user effort. Call out areas of the journey where time and effort are problematic.

6. Look for moments of truth.

Some points in the journey are so important that the rest of the experience might hinge on them. Think about the personas’ attitudes, needs, and priorities. Is there a make–or–break moment in the journey for that persona? This moment may be where your research shows a lot of emotion or where you see a strong divergence between the paths different users take. If this moment goes well, it can save the experience. For example, think of the first time a car-insurance customer files a claim. She’s been paying her policy responsibly, and now she needs her insurance to come through seamlessly for her. The first interaction in the claim experience might be a moment of truth for this persona. If it goes wrong, the user may move to a competitor. Be sure to look for moments of truth and to call attention to them when you find them.

7. Identify high points or points where expectations are met or exceeded.

Good UX practitioners should always balance their analysis by pointing out things that are working well in any experience. Look at the high points in the journey — the interactions that users are happy with. Where do they express positive thoughts and emotions? These insights are also valuable. You may be able to amplify them or recreate similar experiences elsewhere in the journey.

Whether you’re evaluating journey research for the creation of a map or digesting a map created by another party, it’s important to know what to look for. As the creator of the map, you’ll want to identify and call attention to these important elements through visual emphasis and storytelling. As a consumer of the visualization, apply this checklist like lenses through which to view the map in order to find the most actionable insights.

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

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

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

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

Melissa Halim, Enterprise Product Marketer— Miro

Georgiana Laudi, Co-founder— Forget The Funnel

Anastasia Schebrova, Chief Experience Officer— UXPressia

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

Shaheema Adams, CEO— The CEX Lab

David Weinberg, Co-founder and CPO— Vervoe

Cristina Apple Georgoulakis, Experience Consultant

Marcin Migas, UX/UI Designer— Senetic

Spencer Wong, Head of Digital Experience— MADE.com

Mistake 1: not defining the scope of the customer journey

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

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

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

Melissa Halim, Enterprise Product Marketer—Miro

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

Georgiana Laudi, Co-founder—Forget The Funnel

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

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

Anastasia Schebrova, Chief Experience Officer—UXPressia

Mistake 2: not using the right tools and materials

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

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

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

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

Mistake 3: not including representatives from different teams

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

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

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

Shaheema Adams, CEO—The CEX Lab

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

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

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

David Weinberg, Co-founder and CPO—Vervoe

Mistake 4: not using customer-centric language

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

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

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

Mistake 5: presenting an ugly or boring customer journey map

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

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

Mistake 6: not communicating the process widely and constantly

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

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

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

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

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

Mistake 8: trying to do it all at once

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

Mistake 9: not updating the customer journey map iteratively

Customer journeys never stop.

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

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

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

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

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

Mistake 11: assuming your team already understands the customer journey

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

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

Marcin Migas, UX/UI Designer—Senetic

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

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

Mistake 13: misalignment between the online and offline customer journey

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

Spencer Wong, Head of Digital Experience—MADE.com

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

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

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

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How ai is transforming go-to-market strategies.

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Gunjan Paliwal is Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Meta, which builds tech that helps people connect, find communities & grow businesses.

In today's hyper-competitive business landscape, selecting the right go-to-market (GTM) strategy can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving. According to a recent McKinsey article , generative AI is shifting the landscape of marketing and sales. Companies that have employed AI are experiencing revenue uplifts ranging from 3% to 15% and improvements in sales ROI from 10% to 20%.

This article examines the transformative impact of AI on GTM strategies, revolutionizing how businesses approach and execute their market entry and growth plans.

AI-Driven Transformation Of Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategies

AI is revolutionizing traditional GTM approaches by introducing real-time, data-driven and highly personalized strategies across all key GTM areas.

Market Analysis

• Traditional: Manual research and analysis of market reports.

• AI-Driven: Real-time market sentiment analysis, predictive modeling of market trends and automated competitive intelligence gathering.

Apple iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro Release Date Proposed In New Report

What time is the 2024 olympics closing ceremony in paris, ukraine is determined to flatten khalino air base, situated just 50 miles from the front line of ukraine’s surprise invasion of russia, customer segmentation.

• Traditional: Static segmentation based on demographic and psychographic data.

• AI-Driven: Dynamic micro-segmentation through AI/ML algorithms that continually reconfigure customer profiles around behavioral data.

Customer Journey Mapping

• Traditional: Manual creation based on assumptions and limited data.

• AI-Driven: Dynamic journey mapping using real-time customer interaction data and predictive analytics to anticipate next steps.

Product Positioning

• Traditional: Craft messaging based on focus group and survey responses.

• AI-Driven: Personalized value propositions based on NLP (natural language processing) models and personalized to the preferences and behaviors of individual customers.

Pricing Strategy

• Traditional: Primarily based on cost-plus or competitor-based pricing, fixed pricing models.

• AI-Driven: Dynamic pricing models that adjust in real-time based on demand, customer behavior and market conditions, scenario modeling for strategic pricing decisions.

Channel Selection

• Traditional: Industry norms and past performance dictate which channels to select.

• AI-Driven: Predictive analytics help establish an ideal channel mix, with real-time optimization using performance data.

Marketing And Sales Tactics

• Traditional: Based on historical performance, manual lead qualification processes and A/B testing.

• AI-Driven: Personalized content generation, predictive lead scoring, real-time campaign optimization, automated customer interactions and enhanced customer segmentation.

The Impact Of AI On GTM Processes

From quick market analyses to customer experience, AI is reforming the way businesses approach GTM for more efficient, data-driven, customer-centric strategies. The following examples help explain how AI can transform several elements within a GTM strategy.

• Improved Speed And Agility: AI powers faster market analysis and realignment of strategies. For example, ad tech demand-side platform The Trade Desk enhanced its AI to process up to 15 million ad impressions per second, enabling real-time bid adjustments in programmatic advertising. This kind of speed and agility allows companies to rapidly adapt their digital marketing strategies, a crucial component of modern GTM processes.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: AI algorithms can process large volumes of data to generate actionable insights for GTM strategies. They can identify market trends, customer preferences and sales patterns to inform product development and marketing. Deloitte research shows that high-performing organizations are 3.5 times more likely to leverage such data-driven insights for strategic decision-making, highlighting AI's competitive advantage in GTM processes.

• Prediction Capability: AI models can predict market trends and customer behavior. The Under Armour app , MapMyRun, with millions of users worldwide, utilizes AI to analyze running data, provide personalized training plans and offer insights aimed at reducing injury risks for users.

• Enhanced Personalization: Netflix's AI-driven recommendation system significantly improves user engagement and content discovery. By analyzing viewing habits, ratings, searches and time spent on the platform, Netflix's AI curates personalized content recommendations for each viewer.

• Automation Of Routine Tasks: AI automates time-consuming aspects of GTM execution. For instance, Salesforce's Einstein Copilot's ability to provide instant insights on leads, create custom deal-closing plans, generate tailored marketing messages and offer intelligent product recommendations based on customer segment data could revolutionize go-to-market strategies by enabling more personalized, data-driven and agile approaches across the entire customer journey.

Considerations And Challenges While the benefits are significant, business leaders must be aware of the challenges involved.

• Internal Hurdles And Organizational Readiness: It's not uncommon for employees—at least some of them—to resist AI adoption for fear of job displacement. Leaders can alleviate these fears by transparently communicating AI's role as a tool to enhance, not replace, human capabilities and by involving employees in the AI implementation process.

• ROI Evaluation: When assessing the effectiveness of AI in your GTM strategy, you'll want to benchmark against industry standards to set realistic expectations. Conduct pilot projects to measure impact before full-scale deployment and develop custom KPIs aligned with your specific business goals.

• Cost Considerations: When adopting any new technology, consider costs around initial investment, ongoing maintenance and training. AI's significant upfront costs come from technology infrastructure and talent acquisition. Regular model updates and system maintenance may also be required. And you'll want to budget for ongoing employee training and adoption initiatives.

• Integration With Existing Systems: Ensure the technology you're bringing in is compatible with your existing systems such as CRM, ERP and marketing automation systems. Implement robust data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, security and compliance with regulations, which are crucial for effective AI implementation.

• Scalability And Flexibility: Choose AI solutions that can scale with business growth, and consider the long-term implications of vendor partnerships. When choosing AI solutions, consider their ability to grow with your business needs. Evaluate potential vendors not just on current capabilities but also on their product roadmap and commitment to innovation. This ensures your AI investment remains valuable as your business evolves.

Key Takeaways For Business Leaders

To leverage AI effectively in GTM strategies, business leaders should:

• Invest in robust data infrastructure to fuel AI algorithms.

• Develop cross-functional teams, combining domain expertise with AI capabilities.

• Implement continuous learning processes to refine AI models based on real-world performance.

• Balance AI-driven insights with human judgment, integrating AI insights with creativity and intuition.

• Stay informed about emerging AI technologies and their applications in GTM processes.

Integrating AI in GTM strategies offers unprecedented opportunities for efficiency and personalization, marking a significant shift from traditional methods. By balancing AI technologies with human expertise, businesses can develop more effective and agile GTM strategies. However, successful implementation requires careful planning, cross-functional collaboration and ongoing evaluation to maximize benefits while managing risks.

Disclaimer: The opinions and viewpoints presented in this article are solely those of the author, Gunjan Paliwal, and do not reflect the positions or perspectives of her employer or any affiliated organizations.

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Organize Your Next Trip Using Apple Maps

With the entire world in your pocket, Apple Maps on your iPhone makes planning an excursion and finding new destinations easier than ever.

It's the height of summer travel season, when millions of people are roaming to experience new places and cultures. And by and large they're doing it without cumbersome paper maps. If you own an iPhone, Apple Maps is your pocketable personal guide and reference, from planning the itinerary to finding great local restaurants that the masses might miss.

And as you look toward travel in the fall, keep in mind that Apple has some big changes in store for  Maps in iOS 18 , which you can currently try in the  iOS 18 betas .

Speaking of travel, don't forget to  pack the essential items  and  avoid airline baggage fees  if you're flying.

Create a new Guide for your trip

The benefit of tracking your destinations in the Maps app versus Notes or a spreadsheet is being able to see where they are in relation to each other. You can plan a morning or full day in one section of town and pick the destinations that are nearby.

Apple Maps organizes spots in Guides -- essentially lists or bookmarks of locations. In the Maps app, drag the handle above the Search Maps field until you see the  My Guides  section, and then tap  New Guide . Type a name for the Guide and then tap  Create .

You can also create a Guide by first opening a location, tapping the  More  button and then tapping  Add to Guides . At the bottom of the list of Guides, tap  New Guide .

Add locations to your Guide

You may already have some destinations in mind, such as museums, landmarks and restaurants. Use the Search Maps field to find a choice spot, and then tap the  More  button. Choose  Add to Guides  from the menu and then tap the Guide you created to add the location.

Quickly find locations near you

Planning is great, but traveling is often all about adapting to unexpected circumstances or sudden serendipity. You may find yourself in an unexpected section of a crowded city or lazing about in a country bed and breakfast, looking for food or entertainment options nearby.

This is when an interactive guide like Maps is so useful. Tap the  Search Maps  field and look below for the  Find Nearby  options. Or, type a query such as "espresso" or "museums" and tap the first result. You can also filter the results to view, for instance, places open now or top-rated spots.

And if you're viewing a Guide, I particularly like the ability to tap the  Sort by  option and choose  Distance  to see which locations are closest.

Get driving, walking or transit directions

Getting from here to there could be as easy as hailing a taxi or taking a leisurely walk – as long as you know where you're going. I learned this lesson in Venice, Italy, where turn-by-turn directions are essential for navigating the narrow maze of streets and bridges (and you have to dodge all the other tourists navigating using their phones).

Once you've found a destination, tap the  Directions  button (which displays the type of transportation currently selected, such as the icon of a car or a person walking). The Maps app plots one or more routes. Pick one by tapping the  Go  button, which begins the first leg of the journey.

Share a Guide with your traveling companions

Traveling with friends and family? Everyone can be privy to the hotspots and suggestions you've put together by sharing your Guide with them.

Open the Guide and then swipe up until you see the controls appear at the bottom of the screen. (Yes, it's annoying for Apple to hide those controls.) Tap the  Share  button and choose a method, such as sending via Messages, AirDrop or Mail. Then send the Guide using that method.

However, sharing Guides comes with a big, frustrating limitation: A shared Guide doesn't get automatically updated the way shared notes in the Notes app do. Once you share the Guide, your friends get all the information, but anything they or you add to it is not updated for everyone.

Locate your friends using Find My in Maps

Traveling doesn't have to be a pack activity. If you've split up to explore separate areas of a city, the Maps app includes a shortcut for getting directions to others' locations.

First, make sure you and your companions are following each other in the Find My app (a good idea whenever you're traveling together). You'll need to set the sharing duration to  Indefinitely  (versus one hour or one day), but when your trip is over it's easy to stop following people.

You can always switch to the dedicated Find My app to locate them, but if you're already in Maps, just type their name in the Search field. Below their name, which usually shows a home or work address, you'll see "Location 3 minutes ago" (or whenever they were last pinpointed by the sprawling Find My network). Tap the name to see their current or last location, and then tap the Directions icon to see how to get to them.

The Maps app doesn't track people in real time the way the Find My app does. If you want that level of way-finding, tap the  Find My  button.

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