customer journey map editable template

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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

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

What is a Customer Journey Map?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to design an editable journey map

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

Follow these steps:

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

Use editable Customer Journey templates to improve your marketing

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

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

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

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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.

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

Service Hub provides everything you need to delight and retain customers while supporting the success of your whole front office

Customer Journey Map Template

Map your customer journey and help your customers successfully get from A to B. Understand the reasoning behind their choices and design the best product experience and meet your customer's needs.

About the Customer Journey Map Template

A customer journey map, also known as a user journey map, is a visual representation of how customers experience your brand and company across all its touchpoints. In a customer journey map template, interactions are placed in a pre-made timeline to map out the user flow.

Since customers are the backbone of your business, it is important to understand their pain points, desires and needs so that you can create a customer-centric experience for them.

Many teams use customer journey mapping tools to visually represent customers' thought processes and emotions from their initial interaction until the end goal. This practice enables businesses to assess whether they are meeting their objectives. Doing so can improve their conversion rates and enhance the overall customer experience.

How to use Miro’s customer journey map template

Here are 6 steps to create a successful CJM using the customer journey mapping template. In each section, we will dive a little deeper, but remember, every customer journey map is different, so you may spend more time on one step compared to another.

1. Set clear objectives for the map

Identify your goal for the map. Identifying your ideal outcome will help set the foundations for a successful project.

Ask yourself some of these questions:

Why are you making a customer journey map?

Who is it specifically about?

What experience is it based upon?

Based on this, you may want to create a buyer persona. This is a fictitious customer with all their demographics and psychographics representing your average customer. Having a clear persona is helpful in reminding you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward them.

2. Identify your user personas and define their goals

Use the Game-Changer container on the template to identify your persona.

Answer these three questions:

What are their key goals and needs?

What do they struggle with most?

What tasks do they have?

Conduct user research to help you in this process. Survey customers to understand their buying journey, or ask the sales team or customer service representatives for feedback or the most frequently asked questions. You would want to hear the experience of people who are interested in your product and who have interacted with it to understand their pain points and what can be done to improve.

3. Highlight target customer personas

Once you’ve discovered all the different buyer personas that interact with your business, you will need to narrow the list down and select one or two to focus on.

A customer journey map is a specific journey one customer takes, so having too many personas on one map will not be a precise indication of their journey and not a reflection of their true experience.

4. Identify all possible customer touchpoints

Based on your research, you can now use this information to map out all the possible customer touchpoints your customer will face. Use the User Journey Map Template to add the outcomes you want your customer to achieve, and then map all the steps they need to take in order to achieve these outcomes.

List out all of the touchpoints your customer currently has, and then make another list of where you would like your customers to have additional touchpoints. Then check if there are any overlaps.

This step is vital as it can show you whether you have too few or too many touchpoints and gives you a rough idea of your current customer journey experience.

Touch points are not limited to just your website. Look at other areas such as:

Social media channels

Email marketing

3rd party reviews or mentions

Pro Tip:  Run a quick Google search of your business and identify all the pages that mention your brand. Verify this using Google Analytics to see what brings in the most traffic.

This step is very important as it can help you understand things like, are the lack of touchpoints the reason why my customers are turning away? If there are more than expected, are they getting too overwhelmed?

5. Build the customer journey map and try it yourself!

Once you have gathered all the necessary information and identified all the touchpoints your customer will experience, it will finally be time to start building your own customer journey map.

Ensure that you note down every point your customer will touch your business. Remember to add their actions, needs, pains, and feelings to your customer journey map.

Creating the map alone isn’t the end of the process. You will need to go through the journey yourself and analyze the results. By going through the journey first-hand, you will see the areas where expectations might not have been met.

For each persona, go through every journey from beginning to end and take notes.

6. Adjust as needed

Once you have gone through each persona map, you will get a clearer understanding of what your customers are experiencing.

Ensure that all the needs are met and pain points are addressed. No matter how big or small the changes are, every single change has an impact. And this small impact could be the deciding factor for purchase, signup, or download.

Add all the opportunities and improvements you could introduce to your User Journey Map Template . Brainstorm with your team ideas to implement changes, and make sure you assign the right team members to each process.

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What should be included in a customer journey map template?

Every customer journey map will be different. No map is linear, so it is okay not to have a direct A to B Journey. Below we have compiled a number of points that may be included in a customer journey map template:

1. Significant milestones

In order to begin with a successful customer journey map, it is important to draft a path your customer will be journeying through to reach your business’s goal. This step is also useful as you can preemptively identify potential hiccups that might ensue here.

2. User engagement

This element is where you map out the details of how your customer will interact with your site or product. Think of how you would like this to be in order for you to achieve your goal.

3. Emotions

As we seek positive experiences, it is also important to ensure our customers feel relief, excitement, and happiness. Therefore, to mitigate any negative emotions, ensure you have a clear and concise process with appropriate branding to avoid creating negative opinions.

4. Pain Points

When your customers are experiencing a negative emotion, there is a reason why. Adding pain points to your customer journey map will help you identify the reasons behind them and come up with a solution to fix them.

5. Solutions

And finally, add solutions. Once you and your team have identified the pain points, brainstorm and implement solutions to improve your user experience.

How do I use a customer journey map template?

You can create your CJM with Miro’s free Customer Journey Map Template and customize it according to your brand or product needs. When using your own CJM template, remember to define the scope, what touchpoints you want to analyze, and who inside your organization has ownership of which step.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

Using a user journey map template can be key to better understanding your customers. Customer journey mapping puts you and your team in the mind of the customer and helps you to visualize what they are experiencing at each stage and touchpoint with your business or product. Outlining the stages of interaction, while keeping the customer front and center, allows you to identify any pain points that could be improved. This will better not only the customer experience but will help with customer retention in the long run.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. Touchpoints can be found in places where your business comes in direct contact with potential or existing customers. A display ad, an interaction with an employee, a 404 error, and even a Google review can be considered a customer touchpoint. Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so it’s important that the different types of touch points are considered in your customer journey map because they can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

How often should you update your customer journey map?

Your map should be a constant work-in-progress. Reviewing it on a monthly or quarterly basis will help you to identify gaps and opportunities for streamlining your customer journey further. Use your data analytics along with customer feedback to check for any roadblocks. It would also be helpful to schedule regular meetings to analyze any changes that might affect the customer journey.

Do all businesses need a customer journey map?

Customer journey mapping is important for businesses of all sizes. From SMBs to Enterprise. It is also important for all functions. From sales and marketing to customer service. There is no one size fits all for customer journey maps. Therefore, it is important to take time to personalise your own customer journey map to fully understand your own process and identify your own pain points.

Get started with this template right now.

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Customer journey map template

Think critically about your users' needs and motivations

Use the customer journey map template to better understand customer touchpoints, needs, motivations, and obstacles by illustrating the customer journey from start to finish. When possible, use this map to document and summarize interviews and observations with real people rather than relying on your hunches or assumptions.

Customer journey maps are a visual representation of a customer’s experience with a brand, product, or service. Journey maps often include key steps a customer takes, their interactions, goals, positive moments, negative moments, and more.

Journey maps are crucial for understanding the customer experience, allowing teams to understand what pain points users or customer experience, create better solutions for the end-user, reduce frustrations, and make areas of opportunity clear from the onset.

Customer journey maps help teams:

• Step into a customer’s shoes and understand their perspective
• Gain empathy to understand customer needs, perceptions, and overall experience
• Identify problems and roadblocks that a customer may experience
• Align with other team members and stakeholders to solve cross-functional problems

How to use the customer journey map template

Follow these step-by-step instructions to build a robust customer journey map from the template.

1. Establish your customer scenario

Choose a customer persona or segment that you want to understand, and decide on a specific scenario that your customer would find themselves in (i.e.: browsing, booking, attending, and rating a local city tour).

If possible, choose a user persona informed by customer data and user research. This prevents teams from making incorrect assumptions and ensures that your target audience benefit from any changes in the customer journey.

2. Define the steps your customer or buyer persona takes

What steps does the customer persona take during the scenario you defined? List out each step and describe any smaller steps that are involved. Think about what someone may experience during this step and what the desired future-state of that experience would be. 

Dig Deep: For each of the following sections, ask the following questions:

• Entice : How does somebody initially become aware of this process? Where is the starting point?
• Enter : What do potential customers experience as they begin the step or process?
• Engage : In the core moments in the process, what happens?
• Exit : What do people typically experience as the process ends?
• Extend : What happens after the experience is over?

3. List the different interactions customers might have

Mention what interactions users face during each step of the process. This includes the people they see or talk to, where they are, and the digital touchpoints or physical influences used to move them into the funnel.

This could be anything from learning about a new product from a promoted social media post, to contacting customer support for an issue the user faces. Keep in mind that interactions and touchpoints can and should be different depending on where someone found you, or how they got to your website. 

4. Think about the customer’s goals and motivations

Step into the customer's shoes. For each step, what is the customer's primary goal or motivation? What can you do to fulfill their needs? For an emphasis on how your customer or user is feeling during the journey, an empathy map can help you tap into their thoughts and emotions.

5. Highlight the customer’s positive moments

List the steps users found enjoyable, productive, or motivating. Take inspiration from positive moments to improve weak areas. Positive moments can help you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers and how to communicate with them on other channels.

6. Consider a customer’s negative moments

List which steps the user found frustrating, angering, or time-consuming. Identifying pain points, in particular, helps to make changes and improve the user experience.

For more instructions, check out our guide to creating customer journey maps .

Tips for creating better customer journey maps

• Use market research to guide your assumptions : Conduct surveys or interviews that ask customers how they came to learn about your company and how they interact with your brand. You may be surprised. Real customer interactions will make your journey map more accurate and successful.
• Revisit and optimize the customer journey map : Your customer journey map will likely need to be updated and adjusted over time. Just as customers' wants, needs, and expectations change, so must your strategy.
• Share the customer journey map with involved stakeholders : The user journey will likely span multiple efforts in your organization, so be sure to let stakeholders know if they can help make the buyer journey more customer-focused. ‍
• Get real customer feedback : While you should be creating your customer journey map based on interviews and real-world data, try validating your assumptions by getting feedback from a customer on how accurate the user experience matches the different stages in your finished map.

How to create a Customer journey map template

Features to help you seamlessly map out your customer touchpoints.

Sticky notes & text

Add ideas, action items, and more as a sticky note or text box — then change the colors and cluster to identify patterns and new solutions.

Infinite & resizable canvas options

Choose the right canvas for your collaboration goals — flexibility without limits.

Flexible permissions

Control access to collaboration features with view-only, edit, and facilitator settings.

Mapping and diagramming

Build quick and easy visualizations of flows, maps, processes, hierarchies, journeys, and more.

Real-time collaboration

Add more productivity and engagement to meetings and calls with features to guide collaboration.

Summon collaborators

Easily direct everyone’s attention to a specific part of the mural — no screen sharing required.

Customer journey map template frequently asked questions

What is a customer journey map, what are some benefits of customer journey mapping, when would you want to create a customer journey map.

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11 Free Effective Customer Journey Map Templates

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

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

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

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

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

What is a Customer Journey Map Template?

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

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

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

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

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

Bonus: SOP software !

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

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

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

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

11 Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ClickUp Agency Client Health Tracker by Zenpilot includes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The customer problem statement template includes 5 sections:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This download includes:

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

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

Related Customer Journey Resources:

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

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

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

Optimize Your Workflow with Customer Journey Templates

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

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

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

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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Customer journey map

Visualize how your customers experience your product, from first discovery to loyal customer.

What is customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map is a powerful tool that helps visualize the key interactions of a customer's product experience, from initial product discovery to product purchase and customer retention.

Why create a customer journey map?

Customer journey maps are designed to create a shared understanding of your user's motivations. By visualizing the emotions and goals of a user you can identify gaps and discover meaningful customer insights.

How to create customer journey maps

With Figma, you can edit our pre-built template to customize customer journey maps for every situation. Simply double-click various elements to change colors, edit text, or add new content.

Free journey map template

If you’ve never created a customer journey map before, a template is a great tool to help you start understanding the various ways a customer may interact with your brand.

Why customer journey maps work

Customer journey maps are effective because they place you in the shoes of your customer. Set a simple, clear objective: for instance, if your end goal is for a customer to make a purchase, you need to go through all the steps until that point. How do they hear about the product? Do they click an ad? Do they go to your website and browse? Do they read reviews? Do they make a purchase? Are they happy with their purchase? As you answer these questions, your journey map will unfold.

Definition of a customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram or series of diagrams that delineate the steps people take when interacting with a company in different ways.

Journey mapping in real life

When you have a business, it’s necessary to have policies and procedures in place to ensure customer satisfaction in various spheres. Whether a customer is purchasing products, reaching out to customer service, or posting about bad experiences on their personal social media, you need to have standards in place on how to react. A customer journey map helps you anticipate any issues.

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Customer journey map

This basic customer journey map template can help you:

• Visualize the journey a customer takes with a product or service.
• Map out different customer touchpoints.
• Collaborate with colleagues.

Open this template to view a detailed example of a basic customer journey map that you can customize to your use case.

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

This post is also available in: German

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

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

What is the Customer Journey? [2023 updated]

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

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

What is a customer journey map?

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

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

How to create a customer journey map using a template

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

Use template

Step 1: Information Gathering

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

This data is used to:

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

Step 2: Create a user persona

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

Step 3: Begin mapping

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

Sections of the customer journey map template

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

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

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

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

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

Customer goals

What do users want to accomplish in this stage?

Customer actions

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

Touchpoints and channels

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

Customer thoughts

What are users thinking or expecting during these actions?

Overall customer experience

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

Pain points

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

Opportunities to improve

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

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

Example of a customer journey map

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

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

Keep learning

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

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

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5 Comments . Leave new

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

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

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

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

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

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Customer Journey Map Templates

Stunning customer journey map templates that can attract audiences

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Customer journey map illustrates the relationship of a customer with a business over a period of time using storytelling technique and visual cues. Story are being told from the perspective of customer, which provides insights of the total experience from the customers, helping your get a better understanding and addresses customers' needs and pain points as they experience your product or service.

Visual Paradigm Online helps you design professional journey maps. All you need to do is to select a suitable certificate template and enter your own content! Worry about journey maps being borded and not modern enough? Don't worry! Visual Paradigm Online's Customer Journey Map maker provides a wealth of journey map templates and easy-to-use drag-and-drop design tools. You can quickly create journey maps you want even without any experience!

Visual Paradigm Online allows you to customize your own journey map template, too. The Visual Paradigm Online asset library contains millions photos, icons, shapes, clipart and other graphical assets that are in high quality yet free! There are also hundreds of fonts to choose from.

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Customer Journey Map Template

Use the customer journey map template to build customer journey maps for websites & apps. Increase sales and boost customer satisfaction with this template.

Discover our customer journey map template, the one template you need to use when building customer journeys for websites or apps.

What is the customer journey map template?

The customer journey map template is a vital tool for crafting the path of your website visitors. Its primary purpose is to showcase the steps needed for these visitors to convert into loyal customers. However, this template can also be used to map user journeys for those who leave the website without converting.

The customer journey map template helps teams to visualize user journeys and provides a solid ground for further analysis on how to best improve customer experience in the future.

Benefits of using the customer journey template

• Understand customers' emotions. Outlining each step in the customer journey helps teams understand how a user might feel about it. As a result, companies can improve or eliminate any practices that cause frustration or confusion for the user.
• Identify gaps in the product or service. Deficits may be related to how the product is presented or how the communication with the user is done. The customer journey map template will highlight such issues.
• Reduce costs and increase sales. Focusing on a customer's needs will reduce additional costs in the future and increase sales.
• Improve customer satisfaction. When a product or service is tailored to fit the needs of the customers, customer satisfaction skyrockets.

Customer Journey Mapping with Moqups

Building a customer journey map has never been easier. Integrate this template into your work to see how easy it can be to craft a new customer journey map. All you need to do is to follow the next steps:

• Define your persona. You can add a photo and a brief description of this person. What are they trying to achieve?
• Define each customer journey phase. These are all the steps a user should take through the conversion funnel. You can also add any highs or lows encountered along the way.
• Link touchpoints. Touchpoints show that users are interacting with your product or service.
• Add expectations, opportunities, or personal metrics. Envision all the expectations, opportunities, or individual metrics that this user might set up for themselves.
• Share your customer journey map template. Add other team members to your project to exchange new and exciting ideas. Multiple contributors can add valuable suggestions and make it easier to formulate an action plan.

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Customer Journey Map Template

Free Resource

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

This download includes 7 free customer journey map templates:.

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

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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

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

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

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

What is a customer journey map?

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

How do I create a customer journey map template?

How to create a comprehensive customer journey map.

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

What are the elements of a customer journey?

Key elements of customer journey maps.

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

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

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

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Free Printable Customer Journey Map Templates [Excel, Word]

Understanding the full customer experience across touchpoints is crucial for businesses looking to improve. Customer journey mapping provides a visualization of each step in the customer lifecycle. However, creating a journey map from scratch is a major undertaking.

Using a customer journey map template simplifies the process for teams looking to gain insight. In this article, we’ll discuss how customer journey mapping reveals opportunities and gaps in the customer experience. We’ll also provide downloadable customer journey map templates in PDF and Word formats to be customized for any business. With these templates, companies can quickly map the critical steps customers go through and pinpoint areas needing enhancement. Visualizing the journey from the customer’s perspective is the first step to delivering better experiences. 

Table of Contents

What Is a Customer Journey Map?  

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the overall customer experience across all touchpoints when engaging with a product/service. It outlines the major steps customers go through from initial awareness to post-purchase in a linear, flowchart-style diagram. A journey map depicts the different stages customers experience and their emotions/questions during each interaction.

Creating a journey map enables companies to identify pain points and opportunities from an outside-in perspective. It highlights areas working well versus steps that need improvement to provide a seamless, positive customer experience. A comprehensive customer journey map is a critical tool for understanding current experiences and defining an optimal path forward. 

Customer Journey Map Templates

Tracking your customer’s journey is crucial for providing an exceptional experience. Our free customer journey map template makes it easy to visualize each touchpoint from start to finish.

This customizable graphic outlines the full path a customer takes when engaging with your business. Map out key interactions across marketing, sales, and service. Pinpoint pain points to address and opportunities to optimize.

With our free template, you can illustrate the customer experience step-by-step . Add notes to capture insights. Share findings across teams to align on improvements. Drive growth by enhancing satisfaction at every stage. Download now to create a clear roadmap focused on customer needs.

Importance Of Customer Journey Map  

Customer journey mapping has become an invaluable practice for companies seeking to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall experience. But why are customer journey maps so important for businesses to create? There are several key reasons mapping out the customer journey in detail provides immense value: 

Reveals Pain Points  

One of the most important benefits of customer journey mapping is it exposes pain points and friction a customer experiences when engaging with a company. The visualization clearly shows areas where customers struggle, have confusion, or are dissatisfied across different touchpoints. This provides tangible insights business can use to directly address obstacles and make interactions easier. Knowing the pain points allows companies to enhance support, improve messaging clarity, update policies, and more. A journey map enables you to feel customers’ frustrations so you can relieve them. 

Highlights Emotions  

A well-developed customer journey map calls out the various emotion’s customers feel during their experience. Positive emotions like happiness, confidence, and trust should be highlighted so they can be reinforced. Likewise, any negative emotions like anxiety, uncertainty, anger, or disappointment must be flagged so they can be mitigated. Understanding the emotional responses at different steps allows companies to double down on what is working while improving areas that may cause bad feelings. This emotional layer of the map is key. 

Identifies Gaps  

Studying the visualized journey often reveals gaps between different touchpoints or steps in the process. A journey map makes it easy to spot disconnects, whether it’s a lack of communication between departments, an absence of educational resources, or underutilized channels. Identifying these gaps enables companies to shore up and strengthen the experience by improving continuity. The mapping may also point to unused touchpoints, such as online chat or text alerts, that can be implemented to engage customers. 

Enables Empathy  

Customer journey mapping by its very nature requires taking the customer’s perspective when charting out each step of their experience. This builds immense empathy and insight into customer needs and desires. Walking in the customer’s shoes highlights what matters most to them, where their expectations are not met, and what an ideal experience looks like from their worldview. The map encapsulates this understanding, so it spreads through the organization. 

Guides Improvements  

The true value of a customer journey map comes from using it to guide meaningful improvements to the customer experience. The insights gained from the visualization allow companies to redesign processes, improve policies, increase transparency, refine touchpoints, and implement changes focused specifically on identified weak spots and pain points. The map provides a clear roadmap for enhancing the journey. 

Establishes Objectives  

In addition to the current state, an ideal future journey map is often created showing the optimal customer experience a company aims to provide. This future map establishes strategic objectives focused on the customer. Having a defined perfect customer journey that all teams are aligned on ensures consistency in delivering excellence. 

Measures Progress  

Ongoing iterations of customer journey maps allow companies to measure improvements over time as changes are implemented. Comparing updated maps side-by-side with older versions illustrates if and how the customer experience is evolving based on actions taken. The map becomes a marker of progress. 

What’s Included in a Customer Journey Map?  

Creating a customer journey map requires bringing together different elements that represent the complete end-to-end experience. But what are the key components that comprise an effective customer journey man? The visualization combines multiple layers of information into one cohesive diagram. In this article, we’ll outline the core elements that should be included in any robust customer journey map. From outlining distinct stages to calling out emotions , each component provides important insights. By considering these key inclusions, you can develop comprehensive maps that capture the customer’s perspective. Here are the main elements your customer journey map should contain: 

1. Customer Persona:  

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. It usually includes demographic information, behavioral traits, needs, and motivations. The journey map should be tailored to fit this persona. 

2. Timeline:  

The timeline is an essential component, capturing key phases a customer goes through. This can range from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Consideration’, ‘Purchase’, ‘Retention’, and possibly ‘Advocacy’. The timeline can be linear, cyclical, or even more complex depending on the customer’s experience. 

3. Touchpoints:  

These are the points of interaction that customers have with the brand. Touchpoints could be various channels like websites, mobile apps, customer service, physical stores, social media, etc. 

4. Channels:  

This refers to the medium through which the touchpoint is experienced. For instance, customer service could be experienced via email, phone, or a chatbot. 

5. Customer Actions:  

What actions is the customer taking at each stage? Are they researching online, comparing prices, talking to a salesperson, or reviewing the product? 

6. Emotional Experience:  

What is the customer feeling at each touchpoint? Are they confused, delighted, frustrated? Mapping emotions can help you understand the highs and lows in the customer journey. 

7. Pain Points:  

These are the problems or issues that customers might face at different stages of the journey. Identifying these can help in offering solutions and improving the user experience. 

8. Moments of Truth:  

These are critical touchpoints that can make or break the customer’s relationship with the brand. For example, how easily can a customer return an unwanted item? Moments of truth can be either positive or negative. 

9. Opportunities:  

These are areas where the brand can exceed customer expectations or address identified pain points to create a better customer experience. 

10. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):  

Metrics that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of various touchpoints or stages in the customer journey. These could include metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), or Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). 

11. Stakeholders:  

Who within the organization is responsible for each touchpoint? Is it the marketing team, sales, customer service, or maybe even third-party vendors? 

12. Supporting Documentation:  

Any qualitative or quantitative data that supports the mapping can be included, such as customer testimonials, analytics, or feedback surveys. 

13. Goals and Objectives:  

What does the organization aim to achieve with this Customer Journey Map? Is it increased sales, better customer satisfaction, or perhaps more effective problem resolution? 

14. Recommendations:  

Based on the insights gathered, what steps should the organization take to improve the customer journey? 

15. Version and Updates:  

Journey maps are not static; they should be updated periodically. Hence, the version and last update date can be useful to track changes over time. 

Types of Customer Journey Maps  

Customer Journey Maps can vary widely depending on the objectives, industry, customer types, and complexity of the interactions involved. However, there are some common types of Customer Journey Maps that are used across sectors to visualize different aspects of the customer experience. Here’s a detailed look at various types of Customer Journey Maps: 

Current State Journey Maps  

Description:  

This type of map depicts the existing customer journey, from awareness to advocacy, and identifies customer touchpoints, emotions, pain points, and opportunities. 

Use Case :  

When you need a comprehensive understanding of what your customers are experiencing right now. 

Key Features:  

• Actual touchpoints 
• Current metrics/KPIs 
• Existing pain points 
• Real customer feedback and data 

Future State Journey Maps  

These are aspirational maps that show what the customer journey should look like in the future, following planned improvements. 

Use Case:  

When you’re planning a new product launch or considering significant changes in business processes. 

• Hypothetical touchpoints 
• Projected metrics/KPIs 
• Anticipated emotional states 
• Organizational goals and objectives 

Day-in-the-Life Journey Maps  

This map follows a customer throughout their day, not just during their interactions with the brand. 

When you want to understand your customer’s overall lifestyle, needs, and pain points beyond their interaction with your brand. 

• Non-brand-specific touchpoints 
• Emotional highs and lows throughout the day 
• Wider range of customer actions and contexts 

Service Blueprint  

This is a more operational map that includes both the customer journey and the behind-the-scenes activities that enable the journey. 

When the business needs to understand how backend operations and customer-facing activities intersect. 

• Customer touchpoints 
• Backstage processes 
• Employee roles and responsibilities 
• Dependencies and interactions between departments 

Experience Map  

An experience map is broader in scope, focusing on the general experiences a customer has, which may include multiple products or services from various organizations. 

When you aim to understand the customer’s experience in a broader context or industry. 

• Multiple brands or touchpoints 
• General customer goals and needs 
• Overarching customer sentiments 

Tactical Journey Maps  

Tactical maps focus on specific customer interactions or a particular phase of the customer lifecycle. 

When you want to dive deep into a specific part of the customer journey like onboarding, product usage, or post-sale support. 

• Narrow focus 
• Detailed description of specific actions 
• Metrics and KPIs for that particular stage 

Lifecycle Maps  

These are high-level maps that show the various stages a customer goes through in their lifecycle with a brand. 

When you want a macro view of the customer’s relationship with the brand from initial awareness to potential advocacy. 

• Broad phases like awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy 
• General touchpoints and channels 

Persona-Based Maps  

These maps are tailored for specific customer personas to reflect different journeys for different customer segments. 

When your business has multiple target customer profiles with significantly different needs and behaviors. 

• Specific to a customer persona 
• Unique touchpoints, emotions, and pain points for that persona 

How To Create a Customer Journey Map  

Creating a Customer Journey Map is a structured process that involves several key steps. Below is a detailed, step-by-step guide to help you build an effective map. 

Step 1: Define Objectives and Scope  

The first step in creating a Customer Journey Map is to define its objectives and scope. What do you aim to achieve with this map? Is it for improving customer service, optimizing user experience, or perhaps increasing sales? Your objective will guide the subsequent steps, informing what data to collect and how to interpret it. 

For example, if you’re an e-commerce business looking to improve website conversion rates, your objectives may include identifying pain points in the checkout process or understanding why visitors abandon their carts. 

Step 2: Identify Your Customer Personas  

Before you can map out a journey, you need to know whose journey you’re mapping. Create customer personas to represent different customer segments. These personas should be based on market research, customer interviews, and data analytics. Each person should have specific demographic information, behavioral traits, and needs. 

For instance, for a health and wellness app, you may have two primary personas: “Healthy Hannah,” who is a fitness enthusiast, and “Beginner Ben,” who is new to the health and wellness space. The journey for each may be different, warranting separate maps. 

Step 3: Conduct Research and Gather Data  

Customer Journey Mapping should be data driven. Collect quantitative and qualitative data through customer surveys, interviews, web analytics, and customer feedback. Data should cover the customer experience across various touchpoints and channels. Make sure the data aligns with the personas you’re focusing on. 

Example: If you’re a streaming service, you might analyze user behavior data to see at which points users are most likely to cancel their subscriptions. You could also run customer surveys to gather opinions on content diversity and user interface. 

Step 4: List Customer Touchpoints  

Identify all the touchpoints where customers interact with your brand. Touchpoints can be digital like websites, mobile apps, and social media, or physical like a retail store. It can also include customer service interactions through phone, chat, or email. Lay these out in a chronological order, from initial contact to long-term relationship stages. 

Example: For an airline company, touchpoints could include booking a ticket online, receiving a confirmation email, checking in at the airport, boarding the plane, in-flight service, and post-flight surveys. 

Step 5: Develop the Timeline  

Build a timeline to represent the chronological journey that customers go through when interacting with your brand. This timeline will serve as the backbone of your Customer Journey Map, and it should align with the lifecycle stages relevant to your business, such as awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty. 

Example: For a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, the timeline might start with the “Awareness” phase, move through “Free Trial Signup,” “Onboarding,” “Subscription,” and finally to “Renewal” or “Churn.” 

Step 6: Map Customer Emotions and Pain Points  

Document how customers are feeling at each touchpoint. Are they confused, delighted, or frustrated? Alongside, mark down any pain points or hurdles that customers might face at different stages. This emotional mapping can help you identify areas that need improvement. 

Example: At the checkout stage of an online retail website, customers might feel frustrated due to a complicated checkout process, leading to cart abandonment. 

Step 7: Identify Opportunities and Moments of Truth  

Moments of Truth are critical points where customers make significant decisions about continuing or ceasing their relationship with a brand. Identify these, along with opportunities for exceeding customer expectations. 

Example: A hotel chain might identify the check-in process as a Moment of Truth and realize that offering a quick and personalized check-in can significantly improve customer satisfaction. 

Step 8: Add KPIs and Metrics  

Attach relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to different stages or touchpoints of the customer journey. This will allow you to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of your strategies. 

Example: For a mobile app, KPIs might include download rates, in-app purchase volumes, and customer retention rates over specific periods. 

Step 9: Validate and Refine  

Before finalizing your Customer Journey Map, validate it through additional customer interviews, A/B testing, or by sharing it with stakeholders for feedback. Refine the map based on these insights. 

Example: After sharing the map with the customer service team, you might discover that you’ve overlooked some minor yet significant touchpoints related to customer support. 

Step 10: Implement, Monitor, and Update  

Once validated, start implementing the changes and strategies you’ve identified. Monitor the impact using the KPIs you’ve set. Customer Journeys are dynamic; they change over time as customer behavior, preferences, and technology evolve. Make sure to regularly update the map to reflect these changes. 

Example: After implementing a simplified checkout process based on your map, closely monitor cart abandonment rates to gauge if the changes are positively affecting customer behavior. 

Best practices for Customer Journey Mapping  

Customer journey mapping provides invaluable insights into the end-to-end experience customers have with your company. But to maximize its value, it’s important to follow key best practices when developing your customer journey maps. Here are some best practices to ensure that your Customer Journey Mapping efforts yield insightful and actionable results. 

1. Involve Cross-Functional Teams  

Importance:  

The customer journey touches multiple departments—sales, marketing, customer service, product development, and more. Involving a cross-functional team provides a 360-degree view of the customer experience, making the map more comprehensive and accurate. 

Example:  

During the mapping process, representatives from customer service provide insights on common complaints, someone from marketing to talk about customer acquisition channels, and team members from the product department to discuss usability. 

2. Base It on Data, Not Assumptions  

Your map should be grounded in real-world data to be truly representative of your customers’ experiences. Rely on customer surveys, interviews, behavioral analytics, and other data sources for an accurate depiction. 

If you assume that customers find your website intuitive, but analytics show high bounce rates on key pages, your assumptions could lead to misguided strategies. Use data to pinpoint issues and validate your findings. 

3. Make It Customer-Centric  

The main focus of the map should be the customer, not the business. Ensure that customer needs, emotions, pain points, and behaviors are at the forefront. 

Instead of focusing on how you can upsell or cross-sell at various touchpoints, consider how the customer derives value at each stage and tailor your strategies accordingly. 

4. Segment Customer Personas  

Not all customers are the same. Segmenting customer personas can help you create more targeted and relevant journey maps. 

If you’re a travel agency, the journey of a solo budget traveler will differ from that of a luxury family vacation planner. Separate maps for each person would provide more accurate insights. 

5. Utilize Storytelling Techniques  

A Customer Journey Map should not just be a collection of data points; it should tell a story from the customer’s perspective. Storytelling can make the map more relatable and easier to understand. 

Use quotes from customer interviews, photographs, or even customer-created content to enrich the narrative of the journey. 

6. Identify Emotional Highs and Lows  

Emotions drive behavior. Understanding the emotional journey of the customer can provide deep insights into what makes or breaks their experience. 

If customers feel anxious while waiting for a service, consider strategies like providing real-time updates to alleviate their stress. 

7. Highlight Moments of Truth  

These are key instances in the customer journey where customers form strong impressions about the brand, positively or negatively. Identifying these can help you know where to concentrate your efforts. 

In an e-commerce journey, the ease of the returns process could be a Moment of Truth affecting future engagement. 

8. Keep It Up to Date  

Customer preferences, technologies, and market conditions change. Your map should be a living document that is updated regularly to remain relevant. 

If a new social media platform becomes popular among your target audience, it should be incorporated into your existing customer journey map. 

9. Use Visual Elements Wisely  

Visual aids like icons, color codes, and graphs can make the map easier to interpret, but don’t overcomplicate it. The map needs to be readily understandable at a glance. 

Use color gradients to signify emotional states—green for positive, red for negative—so that viewers can instantly grasp the emotional flow. 

10. Make It Actionable  

The ultimate aim of the Customer Journey Map is to drive change. Each identified pain point or opportunity should be tied to specific actions and KPIs for tracking effectiveness. 

If the map shows that customers drop off at the payment stage, a recommended action could be to simplify the payment process, with a KPI of reduced cart abandonment rates. 

Conclusion  

Mapping the end-to-end customer journey is a valuable exercise that can uncover key insights about your customers’ motivations, pain points, and emotional states throughout their experience with your company. By detailing each step of the customer’s journey and walking in their shoes, you can identify opportunities to improve processes, troubleshoot issues, and design a top-notch customer experience.

The free printable customer journey map template included above provides a framework to help you get started documenting your customers’ journeys . Customize the template to suit the journey you want to map for your business. Focus on capturing detailed actions, thoughts, emotions, pain points and ideas. Refer back to your map anytime you need inspiration for improving your customer experience. Journey mapping is an impactful exercise that builds game-changing empathy. With the tools provided, you’re ready to dive in and map out your customer journey! 

Who Should be Involved in Creating a Customer Journey Map?  

Ideally, cross-functional teams including marketing, sales, customer service, and even product development should be involved. The more perspectives included, the more comprehensive and useful the map will be. 

How Often Should a Customer Journey Map be Updated?  

The frequency of updates depends on various factors like changes in customer behavior, introduction of new touchpoints, or changes in business strategy. It’s generally good to review the map at least annually. 

Are there Tools for Creating Customer Journey Maps?  

Yes, there are various software tools available for creating Customer Journey Maps. These tools often include templates, analytics, and collaboration features. However, a basic map can also be created using common applications like PowerPoint or Excel. 

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Service Design Show

Make Business Human

8 Free Customer Journey Mapping Templates and Examples

Published in: Journey Mapping / Last update: July 2020

So you want to create a customer journey map and are looking for a template to get you started. Well, you've come to the right place!

In this article, you'll find an overview of the best templates out there . Next to giving you a comprehensive overview, the goal of this article is also to help you get the most value out of these templates.

That’s because— no matter how good a template is —if you don't know how and when to use it, you might as well pick any random one.

You can either use the table of contents below to jump straight to the templates or continue reading to build a deeper understanding of how to get the most value out out these templates .

As you'll see, the overview in this article also contains service blueprint templates. As a customer journey is always embedded in service blueprint , it makes sense to include them.

Just a quick note that there might be affiliate links in this article, which means I get a small commission when you sign up for one of the journey mapping tools mentioned here.

Why and when to use customer journey map templates?

There are many good reasons and smart moments to use a journey map template. You just have to know what they are and be able to recognize their value.

This is also a word of warning , since reaching for a template at the wrong time, as tempting as it might be, will eventually do more harm than good.

So, let's go over some common scenarios in which you could benefit from using a customer journey map template.

DO make more informed decisions and build a solid foundation.

When you're starting out with customer journey maps, you're going to have a lot of questions around how to structure your map.

Which kinds of lanes should you add? How many should there be? What is the right order?

This is a stage in which templates and examples can be extremely helpful.

Seeing how other organizations have structured their journey maps will open up your eyes to what's possible and expand your "vocabulary."

The more informed you are, the better you'll be able to judge which information is relevant in your journey map and what's totally fine to ignore. 

Remember that you should strive to map as little as possible and not more.

You wouldn't want to spend a lot of time mapping the journey just to realize that your map is full of information you don't need anyway.

DO get a head start with plenty of time.

Starting with a blank piece of paper is one of the hardest things in any situation.

What is the first word you write? Where do you draw the first line? What should you say to start the conversation with a stranger?

The nice thing is that, when you've gone over the process a few times, you'll start to recognize patterns.

If you’re a budding artist, once you’ve drawn a few stick figures, you'll have figured out the basic structure of a face.

The same applies to customer journey maps. At some point, you'll know what the generic structure is of your customer journey.

From that moment on, it makes sense to create a template from this journey so you don't have to recreate that over and over again.

A template allows you to focus on the content of your journey map rather than how to structure the information.

DON'T copy and paste the perfect recipe.

Imagine this: You meticulously follow the perfect recipe to prepare the most amazing pasta Bolognese...only to find out that your guest has a tomato allergy. :-/

As unlikely as this might sound, this is the most common pitfall regarding customer journey map templates.

You find the perfect customer journey map template online and start filling it in with your full dedication. And of course, you manage to create an impressive journey map.

When you finally share the map within the organization , you come to the realization that it doesn't give the answers to the challenges that need to be solved.

Always be critical about the elements in your journey map template. Do you really need all of them? Is there something important missing? Could a little tweak to the template give you much better results?

DON'T get distracted by the visual aspects.

Until now, journey maps have been produced using tools ranging from PowerPoint to InDesign. The effect is that:

• There are a lot of different journey maps out there that all have a unique look and feel.
• You feel that every journey map has to be nothing less than a work of art to have any value.

So, when you're looking at templates and examples, the plethora of options can easily be overwhelming.

The truth is that most of these templates contain at their core the same key elements described in our Practical Guide to Customer Journey Mapping . They are just visualized in a different way.

It's easy to get distracted and lose yourself in trying to make your journey map look good. Just try to keep the visuals consistent and clear . Once again, less is more!

DON'T map just for the sake of it.

What's the fastest way to create a customer journey map? Not making a map when you don't need one. 

A bit cheesy, I know. But it holds a lot of truth.

Don't be the person who creates a customer journey map just because you can. We've got enough of them already.

Be a true professional and make sure that you're mapping for the right reason . Your efforts need to add real value to the organization.

Using a journey map template without first understanding what questions it needs to answer is a guarantee that you'll waste your time. Unless, of course, you aspire to become an artist who creates nice visuals in the form of a journey map.

Down below, you'll find an overview of customer journey map (and service blueprint) templates. The overview is divided into templates offered by online journey mapping tools and templates you'll find in books, articles, etc.

I've included a pros and cons list for each template, which should help you decide if the template fits your needs.

A Quick Word on Online Journey Mapping Tools

There is a difference between professional journey mapping tools (like Custellence and Smaply) and generic tools that also allow you to create journey maps (like Miro, Mural and Google Slides).

When you decide to pick one of these tools, it's good to understand the long-term implications.

If you want to learn more about how these different journey mapping tools compare, check this playlist on the Service Design Show YouTube channel.

Templates in Online Tools

Miro is a very user-friendly and flexible online whiteboarding tool. I did a full review of how to create journey maps in Miro .

In Miro, you'll find a lot of useful templates. And the good news is that there is a customer journey map and a service blueprint among them.

Customer Journey Map Template ( link )

This is probably the most bare-bones journey map template you'll find, which is good when you purely need to focus on the customer experience aspect of the journey.

(click the image to the template open in Miro)

• Super simple format, meaning no distractions and quite easy for anyone to participate in the journey mapping process
• You don't get distracted by thinking about other information lanes.
• Step-by-step instruction video on how to use this template and a quite comprehensive blog article worth reading
• The template presents touchpoints as the main storyline, while it should be customer activities & situations ( don't map touchpoints ). By basing your journey on touchpoints, you're visualizing the organizational perspective and will miss important moments for the customer’s perspective. Be careful with this!
• It's tempting to fill this template based on assumptions without further questioning the data. It would help if there were a place to add supporting insights from user and field research.
• You'll only be able to come up with meaningful pain and gain points if you know the needs of your customers. You should do that first in something like an empathy map .

When would I use this template

I would use this Customer Journey Map template from Miro as an initial conversation starter in a workshop where you have limited time.

Service Blueprint Template ( link )

We've discussed the difference between customer journey maps and service blueprints before. This template by Miro does a decent job in breaking up the service experience in the frontstage and backstage.

• The five lanes in this template provide quite a good starting point for the most basic service blueprint in a lot of situations.
• It doesn't make sense to place physical evidence as the top lane. It should almost always be customer activities & situations .
• This service blueprint template is missing the human aspect. It's not inviting you to enrich it with thick data like photos or quotes. Thereby, you run the risk of creating a process map and miss out on the customer-centric approach.
• The template contains nonlinear sequences (the arrows), which breaks the one of the most important rules of a clear journey map: a journey always moves from left to right.
• For a service blueprint to be useful, you'll quickly need to add more detailed and specific information, which this template does not cater to.
• Adding more detailed information to this template will get messy and complex. Once you get to the stage where you need a service blueprint, it's better to consider using a professional journey mapping tool .

I'd maybe consider using this Miro template to explain the basic structure of a service blueprint.

Mural is, just like Miro, another popular online whiteboarding tool. I do a walkthrough on how to create customer journey maps using Mural in this video .

You'll find many helpful templates in Mural. For our needs, they offer one service blueprint template .

The template is based on the work done by the Practical Service Design community.

(click the image to the template open in Mural)

• There are 3 versions: a blank template, one that's filled in as an example, and one that provides a guide on how to use this template. There's also a video that walks you t hrough the process .
• The template containing the real-life example provides some really helpful questions and good inspiration.
• The template gets into the processes and systems of a service quite fast. It would be good if there were more emphasis on the customer journey and experience.
• Color-coding information lanes creates an interesting visual, but it can easily get quite chaotic.
• The chosen information lanes are meaningful but don't follow general conventions around how to structure a service blueprint. This might cause some confusion.

to be honest it’s hard for me to find a useful application for this journey map template. On one hand, I feel it's too detailed to be filled in during a workshop. On the other hand, the structure and color-coding method wouldn't be my preferred way of doing this with a team outside a workshop.

If you're into journey mapping, Smaply is probably a tool that has been on your radar. It's one of the few dedicated online journey mapping tools that I'd say is specifically designed for customer experience professionals.

I've published a Smaply walkthrough video on how to create a journey map using Smaply as well as a more in-depth review of the tool.

Smaply offers 4 different journey mapping templates :

• Service Blueprint
• Communication Journey Map
• Empathy Journey Map
• Comparison Journey Map

You can also find a brief explanation of the purpose of each template .

Smaply also offers 10+ example journey maps directly on their website. So if you’re looking for even more inspiration definitely take a look at these examples.

For this review, we're going to look at the empathy journey map template inside Smaply. It focuses on understanding your customer and brings the outside-in perspective so many organizations are looking for.

(click image to enlarge the template)

• The main focus in this template is on your customers and their needs. Having a deep understanding of this helps to create all the other journey maps.
• The lanes mimic the questions of an empathy map . If you're familiar with how that works, you'll have a head start here. And if you're not familiar with empathy maps, they are well documented.
• Depending on your service, the experience throughout the journey might eventually have more similarities than differences. So, you might end up duplicating the information in a lot of fields. If you recognize that this is happening, try to identify the moments where the experience is significantly different and map those first.
• In situations where you need to get stakeholders out of their inside-out mindset and into your customers’ shoes, especially when you're dealing with stakeholders from supporting departments that don't directly interact with customers on a daily basis.
• To create a foundation for all future journey mapping and service blueprinting initiatives

4. Custellence

Currently, Custellence is my preferred online journey mapping tool . And it's the one I recommend to anyone who is serious about using journey maps as a way to drive sustainable customer-centric change within their organization.

At the time of writing there are seven journey map templates in Custellence, divided into general and tailored template categories:

• Customer Journey Map template for Ideation ( PDF )
• Service Blueprint Template ( PDF )
• The Practical Service Design Blueprint Template ( PDF )
• Retail Online/Offline Customer Journey and Service Blueprint Template ( PDF )
• Restaurant Food Ordering and Delivery Customer Journey Map Template ( PDF )
• Elderly Need for Care Customer Journey Map Template ( PDF )
• Vacation Travel Customer Journey Map Template ( PDF )

Just like with the different templates in Smaply, you have to choose wisely.

What I like about the templates in Custellence (compared to the ones offered by Mural and Miro ) is that the tailored versions much better reflect the type of information your journey map might eventually contain in real life.

Generic templates are a good starting point. But often, you'll need to tweak them to get any practical value out of them. The tailored templates in Custellence give you an impression of what that might look like.

For this review, I've looked at the travel journey map template.

(click the image to open the template in Custellence)

• It's nice that the customer activities in the template are pre-filled. This helps to express your own journey on the right level and in the right language.
• The template invites you to elaborate on the experience of your customer and to provide "insight evidence." You're challenged to have a conversation on how much you know about your customers based on research versus your own assumptions.
• The separation of touchpoints into channels shows how you can reflect your internal organization in the journey map and assign internal stakeholders per lane in the map.
• Depending on your goal , this template might be too elaborate and too detailed.

This template is a great example of what a journey map used to drive sustainable customer-centric change could look like, rather than a one-off visualization. I would use this template when my goal is to create a central journey map that helps to make smarter decisions about the projects and initiatives we should invest in.

5. UXPressia

The collection of journey mapping templates and examples you'll find in UXPressia is quite astonishing. At the moment of writing, there are about 40 templates that are sorted based on industry.

Each template is based on a "real" customer journey map that the UXPressia team found on the internet. In the accompanying articles, they added a link to the original source so you can compare how that journey map looked.

For this review, I've looked at the template for food and retail .

(click the image to open the template in UXPressia)

• There's a strong emphasis on the customer perspective in this template.
• The template is pre-filled with a story, which helps to understand what kind of information and on what level should be in the map.
• The storyboard lane invites you to visualize the customer journey—a very important aspect that is overlooked in most templates.
• The process and channels lane is a bit complex. The information in this lane overlaps with the touchpoint lane.
• Introducing nonlinear elements (in the process and channels lane) is a potential source of confusion.
• This looks like a pretty good template to kick off a high-level journey mapping workshop . The number and choice of lanes strike a nice balance between depth and breadth of information.
• The template also provides a very natural flow of questions from top to bottom, from what the customer does and expects to the problems they face in the service, and ideas for solutions.

Templates in Books, Blogs and Presentations

6. This Is Service Design Thinking

When you look at this journey map template, you'll immediately notice that it has a different structure than all the other ones. This template was part of This Is Service Design Thinking when it was published back in 2010. A lot has happened since, but it's still good to take this template into consideration, as it was one of the first out there.

You could question if this is a real journey mapping template. The title already gives a clue that it's not, as it's called The Customer Journey Canvas .

So, it more resembles a canvas (in the spirit of the business model canvas ) rather than a template. That might seem like a subtle difference, but in practice, it has some implications.

• The questions in the template are very high level. You can use this template even when you know little about journey mapping.
• It's not visually organized into lanes, which can cause some confusion if you're expecting to see a journey map.
• The template doesn't invite or guide you to really step into the shoes of your customer.
• The information manipulation-credibility axis probably isn't the best source of insights. It would make more sense to just have a channels lane and use icons to illustrate the type of information.

I haven't been in a situation where this canvas seemed to be the right way to go. The canvas structure might be familiar to people who have seen other canvases and allow for an easier transition into journey thinking. But I think in the long run, it's smarter to go with the classic lane structure of a journey map.

7. Design a Better Business

The journey mapping template offered by Design a Better Business positions itself as a canvas, just like the template from This Is Service Design Thinking, which we looked at above. This journey mapping template is part of a larger collection of templates related to different stages in the design process.

When you look at the journey mapping template, you'll immediately see that it's very basic and high level. The template consists of just three information lanes. The structure looks a lot like the journey map template we saw in Miro .

• The simple structure and step-by-step guide that comes along with the template make this a very user-friendly template to start with.
• There's room for just five "key moments" in the journey. This forces you to focus the conversation on what's really important to your customer.
• The template invites you to visualize the journey rather than just describe it with words . Seeing the experience through the eyes of your customer is as important as understanding it.
• The instructions regarding the customer persona are a bit misleading. You should focus on the needs (as stated in the canvas but not the step-by-step instructions), desires, pain, etc.
• The key moments shouldn't be about touchpoints (as stated in the instructions) but rather about customer activities and situations. Otherwise, you run the risk of turning this into a process map.

The guide for this template states that you should be able to fill it out in about 45 minutes. So, this makes the template ideal for a short workshop . I imagine that template would be a very good follow-up exercise after a presentation on what customer journey mapping is. You could, for instance, have multiple groups in the workshop fill in the same journey and then compare the differences.

Another useful application for this template would be when you have a group of people with different backgrounds and need to get them to create a shared understanding of the customer journey. For example, this could be stakeholders from different internal departments. Using a service example like the coffee shop journey described in the instructions would be a good start to get people in the right mindset.

Finally, I think this template could be useful as a tool that helps raise questions rather than find answers. So, you quickly map a journey based on assumptions and then ask, “What would we like to learn about this customer and their experience?”

8. Nielsen Norman

The first thing I want to say about the journey mapping template shared by Nielsen Norman is that it's surrounded by a wealth of knowledge on the topic. You can easily spend a few hours reading all the free articles, which is great if you want to dig deeper into what it takes to create useful customer journey maps. And if that's what you're into, you might also consider joining our Customer Journey Mapping Essentials masterclass .

What sets this journey map template from Nielsen Norman apart is the way it's divided into three zones. Each zone represents a perspective through which you should look at the customer journey. This is a smart way to help you look at the journey holistically. There are other templates that do this as well, but this one is very clear and explicit.

Another strong point of this template is that it connects the experience of your customer to the impact on business and follows that up with the question about internal ownership. This is great, as talking about ownership shifts the focus of the conversation toward action rather than just insights.

• The three zones and how they are described make a lot of sense. The business and internal perspectives are really valuable.
• The template strikes the right balance between the width and depth of information.
• The accompanying guide helps you understand which questions you should be asking per information lane.
• There isn't a downloadable version of the template.
• It would be nice if there were a pre filled example.

This is a template I'd consider for a kick-off journey mapping workshop with an internal team, especially when the goal is to help stakeholders understand that the customer experience has implications on business.

The template could also be a good starting point to create a more elaborate journey map in a tool like Custellence .

How do I pick the right template?

Well, that's a really good question, maybe even the best one in this entire article! 🙂

Picking the right template is all about understanding which bits and pieces of information you need to get the insights you're looking for. And in order to know which insights you need, we must go back to the most fundamental question: Why do you need a customer journey map in the first place ( here are 5 good reasons )?

What goals do you want to achieve? What is the next step after you've created the map?

Are you hosting a workshop to build a shared understanding about the journey? Then, a template with just the customer activities and pain points might do the job.

Do you need to map your internal process onto the customer journey ? In that case, a template that contains backstage lanes will be more useful.

Is your goal to align branding efforts across multiple touchpoints in the journey? A template that splits the touchpoints into their respective communication channels might be a good fit.

What if I don't know what the goal of my journey map is yet?

From my experience, this usually means that you're creating a map to build an overview, to facilitate a conversation and to get to some form of shared understanding, which are all very valid reasons to build a journey map.

Quick Guide to Picking the right Journey Map Template

• Start with the simplest template that has the least number of elements but still suits your needs. Expand as you go along and learn what you need to add.
• Pick a template that has elements that invite everyone who's contributing to add their knowledge. If you're working with IT, for example, make sure there's a lane for internal processes.
• Don't worry about how polished and fancy a template looks. More visuals usually means more distractions, unless your end goal is to create an art piece.

If you follow the steps in this guide, you might not pick the perfect template, but you'll definitely have a customer journey map template that’s practical and gets you to the next stage .

When should I create my own template?

A good moment to start thinking about creating your own journey map template is when you start to recognize patterns .

After you've mapped a few customer journeys, you'll start to see that every map has repeating elements. These elements could be specific to your organization, your department, or the industry you're in.

When you get to this stage, creating your own custom journey map template is a very valuable exercise. That’s because, once you have your custom template, you'll be able to dive much quicker into specific parts of the journey rather than wasting time thinking about the structure of your map.

There's one other reason why you might consider creating a custom template: to make it match your brand .

Depending on your environment, people can critique your journey mapping efforts just because of the colors and style. Silly, I know. But it happens. On those occasions, it might be a good investment to make your template visually match your brand identity.

By creating your own custom template, you're getting into the position of teacher or mentor for others . And the nice benefit of that is, you yourself will learn a lot about journey mapping in the process.

What's next

Hopefully this guide helps you pick the right journey mapping template for your next project, so you can invest your energy in delivering a great customer experience, instead of thinking about journey mapping templates.

If your favorite journey mapping template is missing in the list, leave a comment down below. I’ll try to add it to the overview.

Now that you've made it all the way here it's probably a good moment to join the Customer Journey Mapping Essentials masterclass 👇

Great article on what tools are available and when to use them. Saved us some time having to just figure it out on our own.

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Customer Journey Map Guide: Your Mapping is Missing One Key Element

August 26, 2024

John Abbasi

Customer journey mapping is an essential process for marketers to deliver a great experience that converts. But the modern customer journey map needs to consider what happens when visitors go off the rails of the curated path and beyond.

Redefining How to Build an Effective Customer Journey Map

Customer journey maps give organizations a chance to understand and improve the key touchpoints, channels and digital pathways their customers take to conversion. Learning how to map the customer journey is a great first step, but going beyond the basic mapping process is essential to staying agile and on top of your customers’ needs.

Consider a typical customer. No matter how well your brand is established, and no matter how you present your website content, will the customer take your ideal path to conversion every time?

Almost never.

Most often, they’ll jump right to your search bar to find exactly what they need.

The solution is to build a customer journey that fits their needs and is optimized to deliver an exceptional website experience even when visitors stray from the planned path to your search bar. We want to help you see your journey differently and give your mapping an edge over the competition.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey is the series of steps and engagements a person experiences before, during and after becoming a customer of a service, brand or product. The customer journey encompasses the entirety of a customer’s interactions with an organization, be it through a digital ad, exposure on social media, reading a guest blog or otherwise. The variations of touchpoints are virtually endless.

A customer journey map is a complete overview of all the interactions the customer experiences in their journey. The journey map provides important insight into the efficacy of a company’s marketing touchpoints and highlights moments when a visitor moved closer or further from becoming a customer.

Why is Customer Journey Mapping so Important?

Creating a customer journey map, when done correctly, can completely change the way you interact with customers. Here are some of the most common benefits that come from mapping:

• Provides organizational insight about customer lifecycles. Mapping offers connectivity within a company/organization, bringing interdepartmental adherence as each team understands the steps of their typical customer journey – including pain points, areas for improvement and more.
• Results in higher quality leads. It’s crucial to target the right types of people with your marketing campaigns, those more likely to become leads and then customers. Because mapping shows customer behaviors, it gives marketers a way to address the needs of their customers at specific points in the funnel, producing more qualified leads.
• Reduces churn rate. The best mapping process illuminates patterns of current and previous customers, including the patterns that occur right before or at the moment of the customer switching to a different company’s product/service. This informs strategy to reduce churn.

Understanding the Customer Journey

The traditional customer journey isn’t a mystery at this point; it has well-defined key stages and necessary elements for success that marketers should consider when mapping their journey.

At this point, you’re likely familiar with the 5 stages of the journey : Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention and Advocacy. Rather than focusing on those well-defined stages, we want to zoom in on the tactical elements for how to build the base of your customer journey map and then discuss the layers that can elevate the experience.

Key Elements of a Customer Journey Map

Before we consider the optimal way to build a customer journey map, let’s look at some of the most important elements that make it up:

• Touchpoints. Touchpoints are interactions between customers and your organization. These can range from communications on social media, offline event interactions, website visits and more.
• Customer emotions. Though not the most concrete element, there are methods to gain insight into a customer’s emotions that arise as a result of their experiences with your brand. For example, a questionnaire could help reveal the ways customers are enjoying the overall experience.
• Pain points. Pain points drive customers toward or away from a company; your customer journey map should identify and correct them as soon as possible.
• Access considerations. Part of any good mapping will consider the types of access customers have, including things like the devices on which they access your company websites, products or services. There may be drastic differences between customers who exclusively use mobile devices, for example, compared to those who don’t.
• Customer personalities and demographics. Customer journey maps should highlight the different customer types your organization will encounter, giving a better understanding of how to connect with customers.

Creating a Customer Journey Map

The best process for creating a customer journey map includes 5 steps:

• Gathering materials
• Defining goals
• Highlighting touchpoints
• Including pain points
• Testing and iterating

1. Gather all Prerequisite Materials

Before starting the mapping process, you’ll want to gather all necessary information and materials and put them in order.

Gather customer data/analytics

First, take account of your current customer data situation: what types of data would be important, what information do you already have and what data would be helpful to collect? Make sure you have a process or tool in place to easily analyze and segment your customer data.

Identify customer personas

Part of a successful map is the ability to narrow customers down into different categories. That way, you’re able to see the paths they take and what works best for them on a more personalized level. To kick off this process, you’ll want a clear understanding of the many different customer personas and demographics in your customer base.

Take into account their specific goals in using your product or service. What are they trying to achieve or solve? 

2. Define Detailed Mapping Goals

The mapping process can be a nebulous process without clearly defined goals. Before starting one, record the most important reasons a customer journey map would be beneficial for your company.

What would a highly successful map look like and what types of decisions would it ultimately open up to you? How would the customer experience improve as a result of your new mapping?

3. Highlight Touchpoints and Channels

Your customers are each unique, so identifying the different touchpoints they encountered along their journey is crucial to map and learn from. It’s also important to know the channels and devices your customers use to connect with your brand. The more this is recorded, the better you’ll be able to improve customer experience.

4. Include Pain Points

It’s not always easy finding pain points without direct communication between customer and organization. But there are other ways to go about pinpointing patterns where customers may struggle within your systems. During your planning stage, you can ask team members to test out the proposed follow to see where they experience friction.

Once you’ve implemented your customer journey, look for places where customers experience bottlenecks or roadblocks in achieving the goals you identified above. The pain points you hypothesize will often not be what your customers experience when moving through the funnel; it’s important to stay agile and to keep up with your customers’ pain points.

5. Test and Analyze Results for Iteration

Your customer journey map isn’t finished once you complete the first iteration. If you don’t test and analyze it, you’ll leave a lot of potential improvement on the table. Be sure to periodically evaluate your customer journey maps to ensure they’re up to date with your current data and strategy in mind.

Also remember that a map usually applies to a specific customer type. There will be different maps for different customer profiles.

Map-Building Best Practices

Though you’ll have different customer journey mapping processes based on your ideal customer, there are some universal best practices to follow.

Leverage Internal Collaboration

This is something that often goes overlooked in a mapping process, as it can be easy to get caught up in your own team’s construction and application of a customer journey map.

It’s important to:

• Request and implement insights from cross-functional teams.
• Ensure extensive collaboration with customer-facing teams.

Conduct Data Analysis

A customer journey map without comprehensive data analysis is bound to fall flat. Incorporate high-quality customer data into each mapping process to ensure your map points to the right issues to correct. When including data, remember to use both qualitative and quantitative data, as well as incorporate customer feedback and analytics.

Build Mapping Visuals

A strong visual representation helps teams get a better feel for the overall structure of the map, which helps them better address any issues it uncovers.

Here are a couple examples of visuals that helped simplify complex customer journeys.

As you can see in this example journey map, a higher education institution would want to carefully map out the most important touchpoints and phases of a prospective student’s journey to attending their school.

The map is easy to follow and helps with planning thoughtful follow ups and personalized communication at each stage of the journey.

It’s great to start with a flow of the main touchpoints and moments for a customer (or student in this example).

Additional mapping layers could include:

• Pain points that prospective students may encounter
• Types of devices they may be accessing information on for each stage
• Forms of communication between the institution and the student along the way

Next we have a journey map for a typical patient who is on the road from content discovery to becoming an ongoing patient with a healthcare provider. This maps out all critical touch points and moments in the journey when the healthcare provider would need to optimize to deliver an exceptional experience.

Some of those moments may seem like smaller, expected processes but have a major impact on the patient’s experience and perception of the healthcare company.

For example, receiving and filling prescriptions in a digital format needs to be optimized for the smoothest process possible. Not only is it essential for people’s healthcare needs, but it’s also critical to optimize the digital experience so that people know they can rely on the company’s website or app. It’s a worthy touchpoint to note on a customer journey map like the example above.

Update Journey Maps Regularly

Lastly, no customer journey map will be relevant forever. Ensure your mapping is a dynamic process that adapts to changes in product, service, website and customers.

The Missing Link for Customer Journey Maps: Site Search

Customer journey mapping involves planning and curating for the ideal pathways to content and pages people need to navigate in order to convert to customers. But that’s just it; it’s an ideal scenario that you optimize for, but can’t guarantee your visitors will follow.

One of the most common ways visitors break the expected customer journey path is by searching exactly what they need to find on the organization’s website.

When a customer uses your website’s search bar, you want to be confident that they won’t exit the site out of frustration with the search results. Additionally, site search should be an asset to your customer journey, bringing them a better experience, even when they deviate from your original curated path.

Prioritizing site search means equipping your marketing team with the ability to understand common search queries, the means to identify content gaps and the agility to make changes to search outcomes to best fit your visitors’ behaviors.

From a mapping perspective, site search gives companies the power to analyze detailed data and optimize for this commonly overlooked aspect of the customer journey. Many visitors will inevitably use your search bar; it’s up to you to connect them with the content they need through a great search experience.

If you’re looking for a site search solution to improve search outcomes and performance on your site, check out our Site Search solution .

How Well Do You Know Your Customers?

If you’ve taken the time to build extensive customer journey maps, your team will get to know your customers on a deeper level and be able to personalize the journey. You’ll be able to better identify pain points and bottlenecks in the journey and fine-tune the experience.

It’s almost like a superpower for organizations, and it starts with understanding stages of the customer journey, building out a map, including analysis from site search and putting it all together to deliver an elevated experience.

By John Abbasi

Editorial and content manager, "if you’ve taken the time to build extensive customer journey maps, your team will get to know your customers on a deeper level and be able to personalize the journey.", you might also like:, what is site search a marketer’s guide to better website search, site search data unveiled: 7 key insights into your website visitors’ behavior, how to improve your website click-through rate, get the latest content first.

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