customer journey mapping case study

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What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey map template, the customer journey mapping process, data inputs for your customer journey map, why should you use customer journey maps, the uses of customer journey mapping, how to improve a customer journey, tools to help you with your journey mapping, see how xm for customer frontlines works, customer journey mapping 101: definition, template & tips.

22 min read Find out about how to start customer journey mapping, and how to improve it for the benefit of your customers and the business.

If you want to improve your customer experience you need to be able to understand and adapt the customer journey you offer when someone interacts with your organization. Whether their journey is entirely online , offline, or a blend of both, there are multiple journeys a customer might undergo.

Understanding the customer journey in depth helps you identify and take action on customer pain points and repeat what’s working. By doing this, you will improve the overall experience that your customers have, which will have better outcomes for your business.

Outlining the potential customer journeys your audience might go through requires a process called customer journey mapping.

Free Course: Customer journey management & improvement

Creating a customer journey map is the process of forming a visual representation of customers’ processes, needs , and perceptions throughout their interactions and relationship with an organization. It helps you understand the steps customers take – the ones you see, and don’t – when they interact with your business.

It enables you to assess:

• Insights – from your existing customer journey, how to understand it better
• Impact – how to optimize budgets and effort for changes we want to make to the customer experiences
• Issues/opportunities – Diagnose the existing customer journey
• Innovation – where you might want to completely change the existing customer experience

A customer journey map gives you deeper insight into the customer, so you can go beyond what you already know. Many brands see the customer journey as something that is visible – where the customer interacts with the brand. But in reality, this is not true, and only accounts for a percentage of the entire customer journey. Creating a customer journey map gets you thinking about the aspects of the journey you don’t see, but have equal weight and importance to the entire experience.

When mapping out the customer journey, you are looking for the moments that matter – where there is the greatest emotional load.

If you’re buying a car, then the greatest moment of emotional load is when you go to pick the car up because it’s yours , after picking the color, choosing the model, and waiting for it to be ready.

Ensuring these moments match your customers’ expectations of your product, brand and service teams are key to helping you reach your business goals. But you can only do that by understanding the journey your customers go on in order to get there, what they’re thinking and needing from you at that time. Developing a customer journey map puts you in their shoes so you can understand them better than ever before.

Getting started when creating a customer journey map template doesn’t have to be difficult. However, your customer journey map template will need to cover several elements in order to be effective.

There are several ingredients that make up the anatomy of a customer journey, all of which should be looked at carefully so that you can find out where the customer journey runs smoothly and meets customer needs at that moment in time – and where the experience does not, and needs some improvement.

Understanding their behaviors and attitudes also means you can fix bad experiences more effectively too because you know why you haven’t met your customers’ expectations and what you need to do to make amends. There may be times when things go wrong, but it’s how you adapt and what you do to fix these experiences that separates the best. Knowing how the customer will be feeling makes taking that decisive action much easier.

When exploring and visualizing the customer journey we are assessing:

• Customer behavior What is your customer trying to do?
• Customer attitudes What is your customer feeling/saying?
• The on-stage experience Who/what is your customer directly interacting with? (This includes various channels, such as TV ads or social media)
• The off-stage experience Who/what needs to be in place but which your customer is NOT directly aware of?

So what could the customer journey map examples look like when starting the process of buying a car?

Customer journey vs process flow

Understanding customer perspective, behavior, attitudes, and the on-stage and off-stage is essential to successfully create a customer journey map – otherwise, all you have is a process flow. If you just write down the touchpoints where the customer is interacting with your brand, you’re typically missing up to 40% of the entire customer journey.

There is no single customer journey. In fact, there are multiple. The best experiences combine multiple journeys in a seamless way to create a continuous customer lifecycle as outlined below.

Getting started with customer journey map templates

To begin, start by choosing a journey that you would like to create a customer journey map for and outline the first step that customers will take.

You can use this customer journey map template below to work out the customer behaviors, attitudes, the on-stage and off-stage processes – and the KPIs attached to measuring the success of this experience.

Download our free journey mapping template here

The step-by-step process of mapping the customer journey begins with the buyer persona .

Step 1 – Create a customer persona to test

In order to effectively understand the customer journey, you need to understand the customer – and this is where creating a persona really helps. You may base this around the most common or regular customers, big spend, or new customers you haven’t worked with before. This persona is beyond a marketing segment , but that can be a great place to begin if you’re just starting out on the mapping process for your organization.

What do you include? Start with these characteristics.

• Family status
• Professional goals
• Personal goals

These personas help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers and can be derived from insights and demographic data , or even customer interviews . This works for both B2B and B2C business models, but in B2B especially you’ll have multiple customers for each opportunity so it’s recommended you build out multiple personas.

To begin, start with no more than three personas to keep things simple.

Create a diverse team

When creating a customer journey map, you also need to build out a diverse mapping team to represent the whole business. Include frontline staff , day-to-day management, corporate teams, HR, and business support functions. They will give you vital feedback, advice, and perspectives you hadn’t thought of.

Step 2 – Choose a customer journey for mapping

Select a customer journey map to construct, then build a behavior line. This might be a new customer journey, renewal, or fixing a product issue. You might also choose this based on the most frequent customer journeys taken, or the most profitable.

Step 3 – Work through the mapping process

Ask yourself the following:

• Who are the people involved in this journey? E.g. if you’re in a car dealership, that might be the customer, the sales rep, and front-of-house staff.
• What are the processes or the things that happen during this journey?
• What are the customer attitudes ? What are they feeling at this time? Go beyond excitement or frustration. Bring these feelings to life. This car is my dream come true!
• What is the moment that matters? Identify the greatest moment of emotional load. The make or break where everything could be good up until that point, but if you get that moment of maximum impact wrong, then all that’s good is forgotten. The best experience brands get this moment right and identifying it is an important first step to achieving that. In that moment, ask yourself what are the things/people/processes involved? Think about this for the whole business – across your product , brand , and service teams.
• But beyond identifying this moment, you need to establish what your customers’ needs are. What are they getting out of this moment? How do their needs change if this experience goes badly? Knowing the answer to these questions can help you deliver experiences that will resonate , and respond quickly to unforeseen circumstances or issues.
• And finally, how do you measure how effectively you are meeting customer needs throughout the journey? Set KPIs to put benchmarks in place for your customer journey map and customer experience and track your progress.

Step 4 – Innovate

When you are mapping out your customer journey, brainstorm ideas for how to improve that moment that really matters . These ideas don’t need to be practical, but by putting together a diverse mapping team from around the business you can begin to filter through these ideas.

Then, test it.

Ask yourself: Is it feasible? Is it viable? Is it desirable? Don’t ask can we do it, ask should we do it? Then you can start to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Step 5 – Measure

Use the customer journey map to decide on your measurement framework.

Who are you measuring? What are you measuring? When on the journey are you measuring it? And why? And finally, what metrics and KPI’s are in place to measure this?

Your customer journey map process will require you to use several different data inputs to get an accurate picture of how your customers behave and where you can improve their experience.

A customer journey map is often developed using data gleaned from customer feedback you’ve requested . While this type of market research is useful, your research process needs to be deeper to gain a richer, more accurate understanding of your customer’s behavior.

To create a customer journey map that accurately reflects the truth of customer actions and intentions, you need to take into account both solicited and unsolicited data.

Use solicited data to understand the voice of the customer

Solicited data includes the customer feedback you gain when you conduct research through surveys such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or ask customers for feedback on social media. This approach can be very useful for understanding your customer’s point of view , rather than just making assumptions about how they think and behave.

However, your target audiences won’t tell you everything about what they plan to do when undergoing their customer journey. Though they might tell you that they’ve had a great experience in a particular part of their customer journey, this type of feedback presents a few issues:

• You have to know when to ask for feedback : You might already have a customer journey in mind when asking for feedback – but do you know all the routes a customer might take in your customer journey map?
• It’s a snapshot: When you survey customers, you’ll likely only get insights into their experience at that particular moment about a specific touchpoint
• It’s what customers say they think/will do, not what they actually think/will do: You’re relying on your customers to accurately reflect their sentiment and intentions in their responses, which isn’t always the case. For your customer journey map to be effective, you need to find the truth
• Your sample size might be too small : If you’re trying to understand how a relatively niche customer journey is doing, you might find that the number of customers who have not only taken the customer journey but are willing to respond with feedback is very limited. You can’t risk survey fatigue by polling the same audience several times, so your insights are limited
• You’re only getting part of the picture : You will likely have several types of useful customer data on file, but these are often not considered as part of the process when creating a customer journey design because solicited data takes precedence

You’ll need to infer how customers feel to be able to accurately predict the actions a customer takes. To do so, you’ll need to look at unsolicited data.

Unsolicited data

Unsolicited data covers everything your customers aren’t telling you directly when you ask them and contextual data that you likely already collect on them, such as purchase history. It can be taken from various sources, such as your website and social channels, third-party sites, customer calls, chat transcripts, frontline employee feedback , operational sources, and more.

This type of data is nuanced, but it allows you to establish the truth of your customers’ experience. The ability to gather unsolicited customer feedback from every channel enables you to see more than just what a customer tells you directly. Using real-time feedback gathering and natural language understanding (NLU) models that can detect emotion, intent, and effort, you’ll be able to understand your customers’ actions in a more profound way. Unsolicited data offers you a 100% response rate that better indicates what your customers actually think of each step in their customer journey.

Rather than be limited to a small sample size of customers who respond to surveys, you’ll be able to build an accurate picture of the average customer on each step of the customer journey map by using this richer insight data with your own operational data.

Why using solicited and unsolicited data is important data

With solicited data, you don’t always see why a customer behaves or thinks as they do. For example, a customer might tell you that they would recommend you to a friend or family – but they don’t renew their subscription with you. A customer might be an ideal candidate for a particular journey, but they abandon their basket when prompted to give their personal details. Understanding the why behind customer actions is key for designing a great customer journey, and that’s why both solicited and unsolicited data collection and evaluation are necessary for creating great customer journey maps.

Of course, knowing how customers will actually respond to your customer touchpoints is only part of the process. You may need to develop more than one customer journey map and create sub-audiences for your customer personas to accurately see where you can rectify pain points and improve outcomes. You will need to collect and analyze contextual data across all customer journey touchpoints and develop a highly detailed journey map that can unveil routes your customers might be taking without your knowledge.

Qualtrics’ Experience ID platform can overlay solicited and unsolicited data to provide an all-encompassing picture of your customer journey map, no matter how complex. Creating an effective customer journey map is easier with all your data collated and analyzed together, with actionable insights created automatically.

A customer journey map creates a common understanding for the organization of how a customer interacts during different stages of the customer lifecycle, and the roles and responsibilities of the different teams in charge of fulfilling that experience.

It will also bring an organization together, and foster empathy and collaboration between teams because people will know what is required from everyone in the business to deliver the experiences that customers expect. This will help you to develop a shared sense of ownership of the customer relationship, which ultimately drives a customer-centric culture . With everyone working towards a common goal, communication of what you learn about the customer and the journey they go through is vital in order to drive best practices throughout the organization.

Creating an accurate customer journey map will help your customer service team to focus on more specific issues, rather than handling problems generated by a less-tailored customer journey. Your customer experience will be improved with a customer journey that’s personalized to the specific personas you have generated. You’ll have put yourself in your customer’s shoes and adapted your strategy to reflect your customer’s perspective – which in turn will create more memorable experiences.

Creating a customer journey map will influence your journey analytics across the business. So for example, it will determine what you ask, who you ask, when you ask, why you ask it and how you ask questions in your Voice of the Customer Program .

So when should you use customer journey mapping?

There are four main uses:

• Assess the current state of your customer journey Understand and diagnose the specific issues in current experiences
• Understand what the future state of your customer journey should look like Design, redesign and create new experiences
• Blueprints For implementing change
• Communication Bringing teams together to train and scale up best practices.

Take stock and take action

To improve the customer journey you need a clear vision of what you want to achieve and you need to make a distinction between the present and the future.

• What is your customer journey right now?
• What does the future state of your customer journey look like?

This is why organizations blueprint their customer journey because they can see what works and act accordingly. By understanding your customers’ attitudes and needs at critical times in the journey, you can make amends to better meet them – and develop contingencies to cope when these needs aren’t or can’t be met. For example, during a sudden, unexpected surge in demand.

Orchestrate your customer journey

To offer your customers truly optimized experiences, you’ll need to go further than just creating a customer journey map. You’ll also need to orchestrate journeys using real-time customer behavior to adapt your strategy as your customers make choices. Orchestrating a journey means taking dynamic action towards optimizing your customer’s experience, using real-time customer behavior as informative data.

Improve your employee experience

Use your diverse mapping team to come up with ideas that incorporate experience from all aspects of the business to improve the customer journey – and remember that this has a significant payoff for your employees too. Improving the employee journey – by giving teams the tools to make a difference – can have a positive knock-on effect for the customer and improve their experience in those key moments. This is because employees have the autonomy and motivation in their roles to help their customers, and realize their own potential.

Your customer journey map isn’t just designed to improve the customer experience. Creating an accurate customer journey map can help you to improve your business outcomes.

Being able to link operational data to key touchpoints in a customer journey is transformative for organizations. This is because improving segments of the customer journey will see a direct impact on your business. The Qualtrics Journey Optimizer helps you do just that. By analyzing areas for improvement as outlined by your customer journey map, organizations can take actions that will have maximum benefit for their customers, and the business too.

With Qualtrics CustomerXM , you’ll:

• Create a common understanding throughout your workforce of how a customer interacts with your organization, and you’ll know the roles and responsibilities of your different teams
• Develop empathy and collaboration between teams, working together to achieve the same outcome
• Develop a shared sense of ownership of the customer relationship which ultimately drives a customer-centric culture

Free course: Customer journey management & improvement

Related resources

Customer Journey

B2B Customer Journey 13 min read

Customer interactions 11 min read, consumer decision journey 14 min read, customer journey orchestration 12 min read, customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer's journey 16 min read, request demo.

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Customer Journey Mapping Both Online and Offline: an IKEA Case Study

But IKEA is known for way more than their friendly priced food. Most people seem to absolutely love the store, but it’s almost paradoxical in how they also lovingly mention their frustration at how much time and money they end up spending on their “IKEA runs”. 

This got us thinking about the customer experience in these stores. In a world where we’re told to simplify our digital customer journeys from point A to point B so that everyone can get what they want as quickly as possible, how has IKEA found so much success in their meandering store layouts?

If you haven’t yet seen one of their layouts, take a look at this map.

Source: https://m.ikea.com/au/en/stores/tempe/storemap/

Not your typical point A to point B trip, right? There’s a good reason for that.

A lay of the land

In case you haven’t yet had the pleasure to pay IKEA a visit, let’s try to paint a picture of what the experience looks like, using our imaginary friend (customer persona) named Sally.

Upon entering the store, Sally is greeted by the store staff and provided with a signature blue shopping bag. Then off she goes on her journey. 

We’re pretty sure that Sally has one or two things in mind that she needs to buy. However, before actually getting to buy anything, she has to go through multiple showrooms. These showrooms serve as a physical catalog of furniture that can later be picked up. After finding her way through the maze of showrooms, possibly a quick cafe stop (yum, meatballs), and endless buckets of “on-sale” stuff, Sally can finally get to the warehouse section to pick up the furniture she wanted. “Finally!” she thinks…with a big bag full of things she maybe doesn’t actually need in hand. An hour ago she had just wanted a desk. 

What happened to Sally is an extremely typical situation for anyone who has ever shopped in IKEA. The store has been intentionally laid out in a way to have Sally see the store in its entirety before she’s able to leave. It exposes Sally to more goods and subsequently more temptations. Just like a kid in a candy store.

So what can we, digital product lovers and founders, learn from IKEA? – Customer journeys matter. Let’s break down why that is.

Customer Journeys 101

Unlike the sales funnel analysis (which we’ve written about in our last walkthrough), customer journey mapping is not linear. Let’s imagine a scenario to illustrate what we mean. 

Sally is a well-informed customer. She did a lot of research before going to IKEA, even asking her friends and family for advice. She may have even chosen a specific desk she wanted. But Pete (another hypothetical buyer), on the other hand, is not like that. He just went to IKEA to get a desk and grabbed the first one he saw. 

In terms of funnel analysis, Pete and Sally arrive at the IKEA store at a similar point in their readiness to buy something. However, customer journey mapping digs deeper into the intricacies of the buyers’ behavior within the funnel, including the context, emotions, goals, and other aspects of their behaviors and surroundings. That’s the key reason why customer journey maps (CJMs) are valuable to lay out.

What is a customer journey map?

Here's a customer journey map we created for one of our clients. The purpose of it was to help them redesign their website. We used a tool called UXpressia to create this journey.

A customer journey map is a visualization of the series of steps a customer must take to interact with a product in relation to things like their thoughts, emotions, goals, and motives. So, for Sally with IKEA, these steps could look something like this:

• sees a big billboard advertising furniture at IKEA;
• realizes she needs a new desk;
• drives to the closest IKEA store;
• walks into the store and picks ups the shopping bag;
• leaves the store;
• uses this piece of furniture every day

These bullet points are called touchpoints, i.e. every interaction between Sally and anything that's related to IKEA's brand.

Despite the usefulness of the customer journey mapping, it is by definition a generalization. As with any generalization, there is a certain degree of inaccuracy, but this does not outweigh the value that customer journey maps bring to the table.

Why bother creating a customer journey map?

Shortlisting the touchpoints is helpful whether or not you have a digital or physical product already created, or are planning to develop one.

If you wonder what we mean by “how people actually use your product” take a look at this picture.

Source: Fred Steube’s twitter (@Steube)

See? Make sure you know your customers’ shortcuts 🙂

Before we dive into how customer journeys can be mapped, let’s take a look at what a bad customer journey might look like.

An equally poor blunder is to create a customer journey and then leave it forgotten and abandoned on your Google Drive or network folder. Just like all your business activities,  this map has a purpose . Depending on that purpose, you  should customize your CJM and then put it into action.

How do I create a customer journey?

The tools .

Literally, grab a piece of paper and a pen. If you prefer digital tools, open an Excel or Miro board. You can go as far as using designer tools like Sketch, Figma, or UXPressia. Whatever works best for you!

As you begin to create your first customer journey, it’ll be helpful to think about your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP). Having an ICP is crucial to every business for many different reasons, but when it comes to creating a customer journey map, this knowledge will help you understand a ton of things. 

A good persona profile will tell you how busy your customers are, what their goals and priorities are, what they look for in the products they use, and many other demographics and psychographics. When in doubt, the ICP should always be your guide.

Don’t have an ICP yet? Check out this article  to create one, or contact us . We’d be happy to help.

1. Write down the touchpoints

It’s usually advisable to split the touchpoints into logical sections. We can borrow the terminology from funnel analysis; feel free to modify the jargon if necessary, since some customer journeys do not entail buying something. 

Let’s write the sections horizontally.

Great! Now let’s start filling in some touchpoints for Sally and IKEA. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll minimize the number of them.

If you want to see the bigger picture here’s the link to the whole journey.

Touchpoints

Sally moves into a new appartment. She naturally needs furniture. Alongside with the new apartment Sally got an IKEA discount code.

Interest & Consideration

Sally goes online to research the options IKEA can provide her with. She also scrolls through different review sites to see what other people have to say about IKEA, and compares the prices for other furniture retailers too.

Sally drives to the closest IKEA store, enters the supermarket, gets the shopping bag, and enters the showroom.

Having gone through multiple showrooms, Sally has chosen a piece of furniture she wants. She also noticed a couple of buckets with products on sale, so she picked out a few other things she might need.

While heading to the warehouse, Sally also goes through the market hall. Again, Sally sees a lot of things she’ll probably need like lamps or curtains, so she picks up more stuff.

Having arrived at the warehouse Sally wants to collect the piece of furniture she’s chosen. But then she realizes it might be too big to fit in her car.

Sally asks a consultant whether it would be possible to have the furniture delivered to her house. Yes, it is possible. For an extra fee, the IKEA employees can even assemble it. Sally agrees.

Sally’s going home. A bit later that day she has her furniture delivered and assembled. She’s happy about the purchase.

Brand Evangelism

Wanting to share her great experience at IKEA, Sally boasts to her friends that she’s got new furniture. Then, she recommends IKEA to her other acquaintances.

2. Customer’s goals

Understanding the customer’s goals is the easiest way to tell whether your product’s functionality satisfies them. When thinking of goals, try to dig deep into the actual desires your customers have and the optimal ways to satisfy them.

Sally needs a piece of furniture. She’s looking for a store to get one. She’s looking for a balance between quality and cost.

Sally wants to compare the prices to make sure she’s getting a good deal. She also needs to make sure that the product she’s going to buy has good quality.

Sally drives to the closest IKEA store, enters the supermarket, gets the shopping bag and enters the showroom.

Having gone through multiple showrooms, Sally has chosen a piece of furniture she wants. She also noticed a couple buckets with products on sale, so she picked out a few other things she might need.

Sally asks a consultant whether it would be possible to have the furniture delivered to her house. Yes, it is possible. For an extra fee the IKEA employees can even assemble it. Sally agrees.

3. Emotions

Emotions are very often illustrated throughout the process as a squiggly line like the one below. Lines that go up symbolize people’s growing happiness, and lines that go down reflect increasing disappointment and negativity.

Understanding whether your customers are annoyed or enthusiastic is insightful when it comes to analyzing threats and opportunities in the customer journey. For example, when a customer is naturally annoyed, having an upselling pop-up might not the best idea. Conversely, if a customer is cheerful, then it would be great to capitalize on those positive emotions and attempt an upsell.

A little nervous. Sally has already moved in but hasn’t yet fully furnished her apartment. It does not feel like home yet.

Sally feels somewhat enthusiastic, feels like the solution to her problem is right in front of her. She’s still not %100 certain though.

Sally is almost sure that she’s gonna get what she needs here. She’s hopeful.

Sally’s a little overwhelmed. Her check is getting bigger and bigger.

Relieved. Sally wasn’t sure if she can load all her stuff into her car but it turns our IKEA can help her with that.

Sally wants her acquaintances to think that she’s good at giving advice and be useful to others.

4. Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are especially important if you’re looking to improve your business metrics, but methodically tracking them can be difficult. Tracking these indicators is much easier for digital products due to all the analytics software out there, and the reason is simple: you’re able to know exactly how many people clicked on your ad but there’s no way to know how many people have seen your big board. 

KPIs are great for setting internal goals related to customer engagement and sales.

Number of discount codes.

Number of google searches related to IKEA.

Number of visitors / the amount of money an average customer spends on auxilary products.

Number / percentage of customers who pay for the furniture delivery / assembling.

Customer retention.

5. Problems

View your product as a solution to your potential customers’ problems. In other words, what other problems do your customers tend to have? How can you help them solve it? Is there enough information on the web or other places about the services you provide or the goods you sell? Do your customers have concerns about the quality of your products? Having a good idea of these types of problems will help you answer these questions and drive your revenue up. 

Sally’s apartment is pretty much plain. She wants to make it feel like home. She doesn’t know where she can get good furniture.

There is a lot of information about IKEA and its competitors. It’s quite challenging to digest everything she needs to know.

IKEA store is huge. Sally’s overwhelmed with the options she has. She’s not sure whether she knows enough to make a good decision.

Sally’s getting more and more conscious about her budget. Getting a few things on discount is ok but spending too much on things she doesn’t really need is not.

Sally doesn’t know how to get the piece of furniture delivered to her house.

Sally doesn’t know if it’s worth recommending IKEA to other people cause she’s not sure if she’ll get rewarded.

6. Use your imagination

You can add as many rows as needed to make this customer journey map useful to your business, taking into account as many additional factors as needed. One could consider different demographics and psychographics of your customers, how they find out about your company, if they previously engaging with you online or offline, and what digital devices they use. It’s also worth taking a look at your own processes within the customer journey map, identifying stages that are ripe for optimization? The specifics depend on the kind of business you have, though, and you are the ultimate judge of what’s most relevant.

Your Business Idea 1

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Your Business Idea 2

Your business idea 3, your business idea 4, your business idea 5, your business idea 6, want to understand your customers better .

Bringing the physical world online, and vice versa

All the principles we discuss in this article can and should be applied to software. We used IKEA as an example since their physical journey provides much fodder for discussion. However, we can also explore some digital-first companies and see how their customer journeys also translate into roundabout ways to tempt customers with additional purchases that might satisfy their myriad needs (and whims).

Let’s take Amazon as an example. Unlike IKEA, Amazon provides its customers with an easy and intuitive way to quickly find the main thing they’re looking for, either through the search bar or the product catalog. Customers simply need to type in what they want in the search bar and pick a product. However, in order to expose the shoppers to more “temptations”, there are additional areas of the website, like “compare to similar items”, “customers also search for”, “recommended by Amazon”, and other attention grabbers. 

It’s important to note that customer journey maps don’t only apply to eCommerce or brick-and-mortar stores. They’re useful for any kind of physical or digital product or service. 

Here are a few more examples. 

If you don’t have a paid subscription, Spotify allows up to six skips while you’re listening to music playlists. If you try to skip a song for the seventh time, a “you’ve discovered a premium feature” pop-up appears, subsequently recommending the paid subscription. Allowing six skips helps you see the value in this particular feature, while the pop-up requests you to subscribe in order to have unlimited skips.

Grammarly, a proofreading and spellchecking internet browser extension, also provides a great example of utilizing the right time to upsell. Under the free plan, Grammarly only tells you if you’ve spelled everything correctly. If you also make a stylistic, word-choice, or other types of mistake, it simply alerts you and then suggests subscribing to see the details about what’s wrong. 

As you can see, customer journey maps are very helpful in laying out your customers’ overall experiences in engaging with your company. Positive experiences yield positive results and growth. Negative experiences often yield negative returns. 

Following the steps we outlined should give you a solid template for creating your own customer journey map. Since you’re the person who knows the ins and outs of your product or services and the customers you like working with, you’re the best person to map everything out. However, if you feel like you could use help from a professional, feel free to drop us a line or subscribe to our newsletter for more tips! 

PS. As a reward for you, our beloved reader, who’s made it to the end, here’s a link to our customer journey template. Feel free to copy and modify for your needs.

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Customer journey mapping: case study

Table of Contents (Click to show/hide)

Monthly Active User Rate

Daily Campaign Budget

Increase Click-through Rate

Growth Return on Investment

Customer Segmentation

Prioritisation of Limited Resources

Competitive Responses

Consumer Change

Developing Business and Social Innovation through Creativity and Foresight Methods

CustomerJourney Mapping (CJM) is designed to create a deeper understanding ofcustomer’s behaviour by seeking impactful solutions to enhance the customerexperience. Although CJM requires the analysis of both online and offlineinteractions, digital technology plays a primary tracking role in customerjourney mapping. This innovative approachis widely used to serve marketing purposes thus providing valid insights forelevating touchpoints by innovation and creativity (Rosenbaum,Otalora & Ramírez 2017). This essay argues thate-commerce CJM benefits further optimisation in e-commerce by serviceinnovation. This essay also narrates the background and history of CJM will be revealedand provide a compelling example of how CJM innovatesand elevates the customer’s journey in e-commerce. As such, the essay focuseson the e-commerce customer shopping journey and the provisionof critical insights.

The Background of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a visual approach for gaininga profound customer experience insight while an expected action gets performed(Marquez, Downey & Clement 2015). According to Kalbach (2020), JanCarlzon’s concept of ‘moments of truth’ firstly reveals the fundamentalidea of touchpoints – an advocate of ecological view on customer experience(Westley & Mintzberg 1989). In 1994, the concept ofexperience blueprint was explained as “a graphic illustration of experiencetrace to be customised, along with the attachment of personal characters” (Carbone & Haeckel 1994). With that in mind, theconcept of “moment mapping” was introduced in 2002 to form the phases of thecustomer experience (Kalbach 2020; Bernard & Andritsos 2017). The customerjourney mapping has further evolved and made an influential impact from 2012 –businesses now combine with design thinking with customer journey mapping tobring the experience to life (Bernard & Andritsos 2017) (Refer to Figure 1). ‍

A customer journey map illustrates the sequence ofevents which customers may interact with or have conducted during the purchaseprocess (Rosenbaum, Otalora & Ramírez 2017). It uses arrows, text and graphicelements to map the steps of the journey (Kalbach 2020). Every customerinteraction is considered as a touchpoint  that represents an opportunity for theorganisation to take the initiative to optimise the interaction (Marquez,Downey & Clement 2015). The sequence of touchpoints horizontally connectstogether with a process timeline. Thus, the formation of a customer journey mapis accomplished (Refer to Figure 2).

Customer satisfaction and experience are vital tobusiness growth, as 80% of business decisions are based on customer needs(Temkin, McInnes & Zinser 2010). With the development of digitaltechnology, a customer is able to express their thoughts, wants and needs withthe without restriction in time, devices and location (Anderl et al. 2020). Assuch, the utilisation of CJM benefits the business in the following ways:

·            The visualisation of thecustomer journey highlights the various stages and touchpoints on a given task togain a better understanding (Marquez, Downey & Clement 2015).  

·            The understanding isproven to be beneficial for process innovations to better match userexpectations (Willott 2020).

·            User engagement can be improved by identifyingthe “moment of truth” to increase user engagement (Lucidchart 2017).

·            Save cost by eliminatingineffective touchpoints and enhance the future return of investment (Lucidchart2017).

Although CJM enables businesses to access and address any misalignment with delivery,there are some drawbacks in relying on journey maps that may result in thefailure to understand and analyse the quality of customer expectations (Anderl etal. 2020):

·            Despite the benefit of a comprehensiveunderstanding of customer journey, value is always assumedly attributed to thelast action before the conversion. Nevertheless, the credit attributionreceived increased concerns in terms of the importance of channel and thecomplexity of the user journey (Berman 2015).

·            The fixed journey map is unable to cope with thecomplexity of the user journey. It is also not giving any weightage to externalcriteria such as implementation, time-to-market, cost and context (Klaidman 2016; Regalix2019).

·            Journey biases and the inconsistency between “themoment of truth” and the pain points (Klaidman 2016) (Refer to Appendix A).

Customer journey mapping follows the AIDA model（awareness, interests, desires and action）(Willot 2020) (Refer to Figure 3) and provides a useful starting pointto understand the cognitive, affective,and physical responsesof customers (Følstad & Kvale 2018). Therefore, businessescan identify each step and apply analysis to evaluate touchpoints (Figure 4). Digitaltracking tools such as AppsFlyer, Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics arethe primary means to pixel-tracking customer movement from the beginning to theend (Temkin, McInnes & Zinser 2010) (Refer to Appendix B).

Using<<Customer Journey Mapping>> for Innovation

(Note: theCJM example listed below is an e-commerce workshop in the author’s companywhich will be referred to in this essay as “CompB”)

Personalisation is proven to be themost popular trend in user experience optimisation (Berridge 2019). Subjectivespeculation does not truly reflect the authentic experience. Customer journeyrequires advanced analytics technology to conclude an effective result (Google 2020). An innovativeoptimisation process is demonstrated by CompB- an e-commerce retail business’s CJMworkshop that the author supervised (Refer to Figure 5). By analysing thebehaviour funnels, CompB is able to differentiate valuable traffic sources andidentify the funnel that has the highest abandon rate. Furthermore,the HotJar andGoogle Analytic enable the company to investigate the user browsing behaviourindividually. Analysis of company “B”’s success story revealed two key behaviours:

1.      Missing-click area was foundon the category page’s landing strip banner

2.      A “call-to-action” mightincrease click to more in-depth pages

As such, CompB ran two rounds of A/B testing to counter themissing clicks (Refer to Figure 5 and 6):

1.      Remove the landing stripbanner on major categories

2.      Add “call-to-action” tohomepage banner

The company was able todetect a climb in clicks in homepage banners. However, no significant userexperience changes were detected after removing the category landing stripbanner (Refer to Appendix C).

Conclusions

Customerjourney mapping offers opportunities to understand and optimise user experienceamong interactions. The map enables CompB to learn about its traffic status andidentify the pain points in “homepage– category page – product page” funnel touchpoints. The optimisation applieddid not entirely improve the website experience; however, the certainimprovement in user clicks and bounce rate metrics can be traced. As such, thewebsite navigation function is enhanced. In this example, two key insights arerevealed:

A comprehensive, integrated journey map is difficult to make

Each user has a unique journey (Rosenbaum, Otalora & Ramírez 2017). They can interact indifferent channels in different time frames. It is therefore impossible to map allcustomer journeys but measuring the major traffic sources will help theorganisation to become more effective in focusing on optimisation of primary channels.

Optimisation requires designthinking and testing

Utilisingdesign thinking to handle optimisation challenges is proven to be useful inmatching user expectations (Liedtka 2014). CompB did this by creating auser-oriented strategic journey map and utilised different designs to enhancethe website navigation, communication and engagement. Customers were then ableto experience a smooth purchase process in a more aligned and story-tellingway.

In conclusion, customer journey mapping is a comprehensiveand detail-oriented marketing tool that connects the organisation and its usersin terms of interaction. Despite its disadvantage in credit attribution,organisations and businesses will be greatly benefited by creating aclient-focused journey study. With that in mind, user experience should be theultimate principle in strategic business development.

Anderl, E, Becker, I, von Wangenheim, F & Schumann, J 2020,"Mapping the customer journey: Lessons learned from graph-based onlineattribution modeling".

Bernard, G & Andritsos, P 2017, "A Process Mining Based Modelfor Customer Journey Mapping",  Forum and Doctoral ConsortiumPapers Presented at the 29th International Conference on Advanced InformationSystems Engineering (CAiSE 2017) , vol. 1848, pp. 49-56.

Berridge, R 2019, "eStar Chief Client Officer Gets Personal: TheRise of Product Personalisation - Power Retail",  Power Retail ,viewed February 1 2020,<https://powerretail.com.au/editorial-2/estar-chief-client-officer-gets-personal-the-rise-of-product-personalisation/>.

Carbone, L & Haeckel, S 1994, "Engineering CustomerExperiences",  Marketing Management , vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 8-19.

CompB 2019, Customer Journey Mapping Project, (October-December), Sydney:CompB

De Graaf, J 2020, "Ask a researcher:How do needs drive intent?",  Think with Google , viewed January19 2020, <https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-needs-research>.

Følstad, A & Kvale, K 2018, "Customer journeys: a systematicliterature review",  Journal of Service Theory and Practice ,vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 196-227.

Google 2020, "User Explorer - Analytics Help",  Support.google.com ,viewed February 1 2020,<https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6339208?hl=en>.

Kalbach, J 2020, "Mapping Experiences",  O’ReillyOnline Learning , viewed January 26 2020,<https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mapping-experiences/9781491923528/maex_ch10.xhtml>.

Klaidman, S 2016, "The Trouble With Customer Journey Maps -Middlesex Consulting",  Middlesex Consulting , viewed January 292020,<https://middlesexconsulting.com/the-trouble-with-customer-journey-maps/>.

Liedtka, J 2014, "Innovative ways companies are using designthinking",  Strategy & Leadership , vol. 42, no. 2, pp.40-45.

Lucidchart 2017, "How to Create a Customer Journey Map |Lucidchart",  Lucidchart.com , viewed January 29 2020,<https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/how-to-build-customer-journey-maps>.

Marquez, J, Downey, A & Clement, R 2015, "Walking a Mile in theUser's Shoes: Customer Journey Mapping as a Method to Understanding the UserExperience",  Internet Reference Services Quarterly , vol. 20,no. 3-4, pp. 135-150.

Regalix 2019, "Customer journey maps: the good, the bad and theugly – Regalix",  Regalix.com , viewed January 29 2020,<https://www.regalix.com/insights/customer-journey-maps-good-bad-ugly>.

Rosenbaum, M, Otalora, M & Ramírez, G 2017, "How to create arealistic customer journey map",  Business Horizons , vol. 60,no. 1, pp. 143-150.

Temkin, B, McInnes, A & Zinser, R 2010,  Mapping The CustomerJourney , Forrester Research, viewed January 26 2020,<http://crowdsynergy.wdfiles.com/local--files/customer-journey-mapping/mapping_customer_journey.pdf>.

Westley, F & Mintzberg, H 1989, "Visionary leadership andstrategic management",  Strategic Management Journal , vol. 10,no. S1, pp. 17-32.

Willott, L 2020, "How to Create Your Customer Journey Map -Customer Thermometer",  Customer Thermometer , viewed January 292020,<https://www.customerthermometer.com/customer-feedback/how-to-create-your-customer-journey-map/>.

<<Appendix A: “A moment oftruth” and pain point>>

A moment oftruth occurs any time a customer interacts with the organisation (Klaidman2016). Examples can be like performing a search looking for an answer, orderinga takeaway in the menulog app, or even switching on the home appliance. However,the said actions only represent a list of events that customers perform. Theydo not explain the pain point that triggers the bounce. The inconsistencybehind is varied and complicated; it might due to the page layout brings anunpleasant feeling to customers, or the graphic is not navigational and makescustomers feel confused. The customer journey mapping is capable of drawing asequence of  “moments of truth”, but itis challenging to identify the pain point that is resulting in an exit. It isrecommended to use design thinking and A/B testing to develop the keycapability for revolutionary innovators and a potential source of sustainablecompetitive advantage (Bernard & Andritsos 2017).

<<Appendix B: How to create acustomer journey map>>

Productionof a customer journey map requires the following step (Bernard & Andritsos2017):

1)         Collect internal insights;

2)         develop initial hypotheses;

3)         research customer processes, needs, andperceptions;

4)         analyse customer research; and

5)         map the customer journey.

Identifying customer journey stages and defining the customerpersonas are the essential starting point in the mapping setting. It requiresthe organisation to gather the insights and build up profile blocks based ondemographics, background, responses and behaviours. With integratedinformation, the organisation will be able to understand and define customer goals.Once the journey channels are set, the initial journey map can be created fortesting and experiment(Willott 2020).                            

<<Appendix C: CompB’s user journey mapping and optimisation>>

(Note: CompB in the example is a disguise for the businessthat the author works for, which is reffered to in this essay as “CompB”)

Funnel mapis one of the common userjourney maps that demonstrates the user journey by showing traffic amount. By using Google Analytics and HotJar (Figure 7 and Figure8), CompB (2019) found that there is a significantdrop from two funnels: a) Homepage to any deeper pages. b) Category page toproduct page. The lost traffic resulted in low “add-to-cart” action. In orderto understand the real scenario, CompB pulled out the recording and examed theuser experience cases by cases(Refer to Figure 8 and Figure 9).

After analysing the recordings and heatmap, CompB (2019)found that people tend to use the search bar on the homepage instead ofclicking banners. Furthermore, some missing clicks are gathering in the landingstrip banner area. The findings lead to a conclusion that the user might findthe banners confusing, and they are potential pain points. Therefore, an A/Btesting was held to validate the theory.

Dean Long is a Sydney-based performance marketing and communication professional with expertise in paid search, paid social, affiliate, and digital advertising. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Information Systems and Management and is also a distinguished MBA graduate from Western Sydney University.

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Are Customer Journey Maps Really Necessary?

My client had just returned from a presentation to her executive committee. She was defeated, and realized she made a misstep in trying to get resources for a journey mapping initiative. The C-Suite had heard her desire to understand customers better, but they couldn’t see WHY that exercise would benefit the company, exactly.

They wanted to know why they needed a customer journey map, when they already had:

• Process maps
• Product roadmaps
• Customer feedback dashboards
• A corporate vision to “provide a world-class experience for customers”
• And, perhaps most importantly, they just “got” their customers.

You’ve probably already identified the issue here, right?

The C-Suite leaders thought they had a handle on the experience their customers were having. They believed those process maps were representative of the customer’s journey. They were proud of themselves for reviewing customer feedback dashboards and leaning into the idea of providing a world-class experience for customers.

And they thought – hey, we know our customers! They love us. No worries here. Our product roadmaps are based on what our customers want and they’ll get it…in six to eighteen months maybe.

Those tools and dashboards are helpful. They have many uses and are important to keep a business focused on how to most efficiently make progress. But none of those things – even the customer dashboard – really tells the customer’s story.

• Process maps are internally focused. They tell the story the company believes is most important – how to move products or data or distribution – from one part of the organization to the next.
• Product roadmaps are often based on what priorities have been identified as most important to customers. But they are also all about what’s next for the product, not the customer.
• And those dashboards provide insights, for sure, but often lack connections between the customers who represent those numbers or the actions required to make real changes.

So my client and I came up with a plan. We wanted to showcase just how journey mapping could help the company move forward in powerful ways. Journey mapping has many uses, but these could inspire you to create a meaningful goal to gain traction with your own.

Real-World Examples Of Journey Mapping Use Cases  (& the Wins They Deliver):

Find Out What’s Happening TODAY with Current State Mapping

Your customers don’t follow your process maps. They follow their own journeys, and often those don’t align with what you think is happening. By walking in your customer’s shoes, you discover what obstacles, challenges and opportunities there are for them along the way.

This type of journey mapping, often called Current State Mapping , is a way to take a snapshot of what customers are experiencing. Taking this approach requires a certain amount of humility and open-mindedness. It’s important to truly understand what customers are finding great and not-so-great about their journey.

Real-life wins:

• One client discovered customers were receiving duplicate emails, calls, and texts because of a system glitch nobody had identified for a segment of their customer base. It was easy to fix and those customers immediately engaged more with the communications they did receive.
• A non-profit realized they had completely neglected donors if they donated more than once per year. They treated each contribution as the same, and these generous donors began drifting away when feeling ignored. The non-profit leadership quickly created an outreach program to these highly-engaged donors, leading to more contributions and engagement.
• A financial services company found their customers were receiving communications with different acronyms for the same process! They improved their communications to all customers and decreased the number of calls into their service center.

Create What You Want Tomorrow with Ideal State Mapping

Customer journey maps can also be used to design an ideal customer journey. This type of mapping, often called Ideal State Mapping , is essential for start-up organizations or when brands want to make big changes.

These future-looking journey maps can also be used to design for specific groups of customers, a specific persona, or for a new product or service.

• A fast-food restaurant chain re-imagined their entire drive-through experience , based on customer feedback and shifting demands.
• A historic library focused on creating a more accessible experience for patrons with disabilities. They designed a better journey first, then worked with architects to make it happen.
• Journey mapping in this way has assisted countless businesses like restaurants and storefronts navigate new journeys within pandemic restrictions.

Stay Ahead of the Competition with Competitive Journey Information

One of my favorite ways to leverage journey mapping is to include competitive journey information . This benchmarking helps you identify what expectations your customers might have, based on experiences with other brands. It also provides an opportunity to identify gaps in all the journeys – so you have an opportunity to fill those!

Competitive information is not just about what your competitors are doing. It’s about understanding what your customers are using as they comparison shop, evaluate value, and determine who will earn their loyalty.

• Thanks to including competitive benchmarking highlights on a current state journey map, one client discovered a new feature a competitor was announcing as upcoming for customers. The client actually already offered this feature, but called it something different, and customers weren’t aware it was available to them currently. More communication and improved branding led to many customers renewing instead of defecting to the competitor who was announcing the “new” feature.
• A technology company discovered a competitor was offering a lot more support for big rollouts , and while they originally thought they offered this on a comparable level, the journey map highlighted the actual touchpoints where customers were supported. The verdict: Company 1 delivered support along 5 touchpoints. The Competitor delivered support along 12 distinct touchpoints. Increasing support at key milestones proactively made a positive difference in both user ratings and renewal rates.
• Including customer-provided photos and videos of visits to various retailers provided evidence that customers couldn’t easily find what they needed in the client stores . Improved wayfinding and modern updates provided shoppers an easier, more pleasant experience.

Bonus: Be Your Own Disruptor!

What would a disruptor do to shake up your industry? Have you ever thought about how many industries were disrupted simply because…they never asked this question?

What stinks about a customer’s journey in your industry? What’s happening because “it’s always been done that way?”

Customer journey maps can be used to think through these ideas. What if there was a magic wand? This type of customer journey mapping exercise can go beyond the Ideal State journey map by rethinking the entire industry. This is what brands like Uber, AirBnB, and Kiva did. They threw out the original journey map and started over completely to deliver new experiences.

Customer journey mapping is a great way to think through a variety of situations.

So where should you start?

If you’re just getting started with customer journey mapping, I always recommend starting with Current State customer journey mapping. This is critical if you’ve never looked at the journey from the outside-in before and necessary if you plan on making real improvements to your customer’s journey.

But don’t stop there! Journey mapping is a way to explore what is possible today, tomorrow and in a future we design on behalf of our customers.

Tools to help:

• CX Mission Statement Workbook
• CX Success Statement Workbook
• Customer Journey Mapping Workbook
• Customer Journey Mapping Template  

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Case Study: How Successful Customer Journey Mapping Boosts Conversion Rates

Walk into the shoes of your customer. Imagine them journeying through your brand’s story, asking questions, searching for answers, and making decisions. Yes, the customer journey, when surveyed correctly, is quite a tale.

This story, however, is more than just an engaging narrative. It’s a roadmap to significantly improve conversion rates. With effective customer journey mapping, businesses have unlocked impressive change – seeing conversion rocket by as much as 40%. Not too shabby for some thoughtful empathy.

So, how’s this transformation achieved? We’re about to delve into a real-life case study, where successful customer journey mapping led to a remarkable boost in conversion rates. Because when the customer’s story becomes your business’s plot, success tends to follow suit.

The Power of Customer Journey Mapping: A Deep Dive into Successful Case Studies

• Mapping the customer journey effectively can increase conversions.
• Successful businesses have used journey mapping to optimize their customer experience.

Understanding the Concept of Customer Journey Mapping

A customer journey map charts the course taken by consumers as they interact with a company. It’s a visual story that communicates the user’s experience, needs, and feelings from their perspective. It captures every touchpoint, enabling businesses to identify pain points or areas of improvement. If we peek at successful brands’ under hood, we find their secret engine – customer journey mapping.

The Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

Why is customer journey mapping making waves? Simply put, it drives business growth. This tool provides profound insights into customer behaviors, emotions, queries, and predicaments at each stage of their journey. These insights are precious gold mines, waiting to optimize the user experience and elevate conversion rates.

Infusing Strategy into Customer Journey Mapping

Effective customer journey mapping isn’t a leap of faith. The successful businesses we’re about to discuss didn’t just get lucky; they built strategies. They meticulously studied their customer’s footsteps – not literally, but metaphorically, through behaviors, habits, pain points, desires, and expectations. And then, they aligned these insights strategically to their business goals.

Strategy-Infused Mapping in Action

An industry champion effectively doubled their conversion rates by integrating a strategic approach to customer journey mapping. How? By realizing that their audience was not a homogeneous one – but a spectrum of diverse personas with unique behaviors and needs. They tailored every customer touchpoint to resonate with these personas, transforming the standard user experience into a personalized one.

Transformational Power of Customer Journey Mapping: Case Studies

Now, let’s consider some real-world examples. These businesses succeeded because customer journey mapping wasn’t just a buzzword to them – it was a way to connect, empathize, and ignite engagement at every step.

Case Study 1: Optimized Touchpoints Yield Higher Conversions

deRamon Plastic Surgery Institute used Google Analytics’ Users Flow feature to understand how visitors interacted with their website. By analyzing common paths and user behaviors, they discovered significant visitor interest in their gallery and specific service pages. They optimized these pages with more informative content , updated photos, and client testimonials, leading to improved conversion rates by providing essential information their customers were seeking​ ​.

Case Study 2: Enhancing Engagement Through Personalized Experiences

A B2B Scenario with Strategic Journey Mapping by HPE : HPE developed multi-persona maps for two distinct personas, focusing on their jobs, goals, and most important outcomes. By tailoring the customer journey to address specific pain points and priorities of each persona, they successfully enhanced operational performance for one persona while optimizing costs and growing revenue for the other. Their journey mapping included various phases like Discovery, Consideration, Purchase, and more. HPE’s approach involved understanding the customer’s priorities, which were instrumental in retaining them and optimizing the conversion rates​ ​.

Case Study Outcomes

Both case studies emphasize the importance of understanding customer interactions, identifying pain points, and tailoring the experience to meet their specific needs. By using strategic customer journey mapping, businesses can significantly improve their understanding of the customer, leading to better-targeted efforts that boost conversion rates.

How Successful Customer Journey Mapping Boosts Conversion Rates: A Step-by-Step Guide

• Gain an in-depth understanding of customer journey mapping
• Understand its impact on conversion rates
• Dive into real-life success stories

Creating a Customer Journey Map: 2024’s Ultimate Guide to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Step 1: Understanding the Concept of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool used to outline the path your customers take from their first interaction with your brand to the final purchase or, if all goes well, to becoming a loyal customer. It’s all about understanding the customer’s perspective – their needs, motivations, and concerns as they move through your sales funnel. With a comprehensive map, businesses can identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and optimize every interaction.

In essence, customer journey mapping is about empathizing with your customers: viewing your business from their perspective, and adjusting your approach accordingly. You’d be surprised how often this insight can lead to simple but effective changes in your customer strategies.

Step 2: The Connection between Customer Journey Mapping and Conversion Rates

Your conversion rate is heavily influenced by the experience a customer has on their journey through your funnel. Think of the journey as a path. If it’s full of obstacles or confusing signs, people will struggle to reach the end. Conversely, a smooth, well-maintained path enables people to reach their destination with ease – in this case, making a purchase.

Your map identifies these obstructions, making it easier for you to remove them. A streamlined customer journey can improve your conversion rates, as it often leads to a more beneficial and engaging experience for your customers.

On the flip side, mapping your customer journey can also help identify what you’re doing right. These areas can become a focal point to drive even more conversions, underlining the strong connection between customer journey mapping and conversion rates.

Step 3: Real-life Examples of Successful Customer Journey Mapping

Undoubtedly, there’s no better validation for the impact of customer journey mapping on conversion rates than success stories. One such example is, for instance, a popular e-commerce platform XYZ – with the help of a well-thought-out customer journey map, they managed to significantly boost their conversion rates.

Furthermore, various industries from healthcare to insurance, and real estate to consumer tech have made substantial gains via customer journey mapping. By understanding their customers better, they’ve been able to tailor their services to match customer expectations, resulting in improved conversion rates.

Techniques for Effective Customer Journey Mapping

• Identify the key stages of a customer’s interaction with your business
• Understand individual customer behaviors and their potential pain points
• Create highly targeted and personalized strategies for customer communication

Identifying Key Stages in the Customer Journey

Any interaction a customer has with your business, be it online on your website or in a physical store, contributes to their overall customer journey. These interactions are typically classified into various stages, often starting from awareness, consideration and decision stages, to post-purchase or loyalty stage. Recognizing these stages aids in creating a clear picture of how your customer moves through your sales funnel.

Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is when the prospective customer first hears about your business or product. This could be through a multitude of channels like word-of-mouth, social media, web search, or a specific marketing campaign. Tailor your strategies to create a credible and compelling first impression during this stage.

Consideration Stage

In the consideration stage, customers evaluate different options available in the market. They often compare various features and benefits of your product with others before making a decision. Ensure you highlight your unique value proposition forcefully at this stage.

Decision Stage

At the decision stage, the potential customer reaches the pivotal moment of selecting your product over competitors’. This stage is where the effectiveness of your engagement and clarity of information culminate.

Here, it’s essential to streamline the purchasing process by removing any potential barriers and providing clear, accessible support for any inquiries or concerns. Enhance this crucial point with testimonials, clear benefits, and a straightforward checkout process to reassure the customer’s choice and facilitate a smooth transition from consideration to purchase. Prioritize clear communication and support to address last-minute hesitations, thereby sealing the deal with confidence and ease.

Retention Stage

The retention stage occurs after the initial purchase. This stage is crucial for maintaining customer engagement and encouraging repeat business. Your goal here is to ensure customer satisfaction through excellent after-sales service, customer support, and by addressing any issues or concerns they may have post-purchase.

Implement follow-up strategies, such as sending thank-you emails, requesting feedback, and offering post-purchase support, to enhance customer retention. Also, consider introducing loyalty programs or incentives for repeat purchases. Ensuring a positive post-purchase experience can significantly reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.

Brand Loyalty Stage

Brand loyalty is the ultimate stage in the customer journey. This is where customers not only make repeat purchases but also become brand advocates. They recommend your products or services to others, contributing to word-of-mouth marketing, which is invaluable.

Achieving this stage means you have succeeded in building a strong relationship with your customers. Enhance brand loyalty by consistently delivering value, maintaining engagement through personalized communication, and rewarding loyal customers. Implement loyalty programs, provide exclusive offers, and actively engage with your customers on social media to foster a community around your brand.

By understanding and optimizing each of these key stages in the customer journey, you can create a more effective and integrated customer experience, leading to higher conversion rates, improved customer retention, and the development of strong brand loyalty.

My Top Picks for Customer Journey Mapping Tools [+1 Surprising Find]

The Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

• Enhances customer experience
• Bolsters customer retention

Leading from our discussion on techniques for effective customer journey mapping, we use those insights to understand their value in the business equation.

Improved Customer Experience

Customer journey mapping displays the customer’s interaction with your business from their perspective. These pathways reveal the customer’s expectations, needs, and experiences.

The adoption of customer journey mapping leads to a more valuable and appropriate customer experience . Holistically evaluating these interactions allows businesses to identify any friction points in the customer journey and subsequently find solutions to alleviate these. Additionally, understanding customer behavior allows businesses to anticipate customer needs before they arise, providing a more proactive and seamless approach to customer service.

Furthermore, customer journey mapping gives businesses a more comprehensive understanding of the customer lifecycle. This understanding allows the creation of more personalized experiences, enhancing the perception of value for the customer.

Increased Customer Retention

An improved customer experience directly correlates with increased customer retention. Customers are more likely to remain loyal to a brand that anticipates their needs, resolves their frustrations, and delivers value consistently.

The insights drawn from customer journey mapping can support customer retention strategies by revealing what drives customer loyalty and identifying opportunities for improvement. This helps businesses focus resources on the most effective strategies to retain customers, resulting in optimized return on investment.

Moreover, long-term customers tend to spend more and advocate for the brand, further boosting business growth. This ability to retain valuable consumers goes beyond mere transactions and equates to a strategic source of competitive advantage.

While the adoption of customer journey mapping carries costs and demands time and resources, the benefits achieved significantly outweigh these investments.

Case Studies of Successful Customer Journey Mapping

• Discover the transformative power of customer journey mapping through real-life examples from Starbucks and IKEA.
• Understand the direct link between well-executed journey mapping and improved conversion rates.
• Learn from their successful strategies and common pitfalls to avoid.

Case Study 1: Starbucks

Starbucks: a globally recognized brand, a revered morning ritual, and a leader in crafting immersive customer experiences. But what sets Starbucks apart in the crowded coffee marketplace is not just their quality beans. It’s their uncanny ability to map out and enhance their customer’s journey, fostering loyalty and increasing conversions.

The Journey Begins

From the moment you step foot in Starbucks, you’re not just a customer. You’re a part of the Starbucks journey. The warm greeting from the barista, the aromatic coffee smell, and the customized, hand-crafted beverages. All are vital cogs in the Starbucks experience wheel, carefully orchestrated via meticulous customer journey mapping.

Starbucks stands out for its strategic customer journey mapping which prioritizes understanding customer interactions both online and offline. Their approach involves extensive research, leveraging data from interviews, surveys, and digital analytics to create detailed maps that outline customer emotions, touchpoints, and pain points.

Starbucks’ strategy includes addressing long wait times, product consistency, and navigating rewards programs. Initiatives such as Mobile Order & Pay, personalized rewards, and digital store integrations illustrate the success of their customer journey mapping, enhancing the entire customer experience and strengthening brand loyalty

The Outcome – Increased Conversions

The result of Starbucks’s fanatical focus on the customer journey? Engaged customers, brand loyalty, and boosted conversion rates. By making every customer feel special and heard, Starbucks effectively converts one-time visitors into lifelong customers.

Case Study 2: IKEA

IKEA: A household name in affordable, trendy furniture. Behind their success is a customer journey that’s been intricately mapped and continuously revamped.

The Journey Starts Online

IKEA’s journey often starts online, where customers can visualize new solutions for their homes. Each subsequent store visit, product assembly, and even the much-discussed meatball meal is a carefully considered piece of the puzzle.

IKEA’s customer journey mapping success lies in its seamless integration of online and offline experiences, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The journey often starts online with product visualization and continues in-store, touching every aspect of the customer experience, from product assembly to the in-store cafeteria.

Their attention to detail in every customer interaction has improved conversions by creating efficient, enjoyable shopping experiences that reflect deep customer understanding and operational excellence

The Results are Unquestionable

High conversion rates and customer loyalty are proof positive of IKEA’s successful journey mapping.

The blend of digital and physical experiences and the commitment to understand their customers’ needs and challenges are central to IKEA’s conversion success.

These case studies offer ample proof of the transformative power of customer journey mapping. Both Starbucks and IKEA have used it effectively to optimize their customer experiences and increase conversions. You can do the same, and even more, by learning from their approaches and adapting their strategies to your business.

Mapping the Path to Higher Conversions

Success in customer journey mapping is defined by perceptive identification of touchpoints, optimized interaction at each stage, and personalization of the customer experience.

The core value? – More than just increased conversion rates. It’s about understanding your customer deeply, predicting their needs and delivering the right solution at the right time.

Now, it’s your turn. Look into your business model. Can you pinpoint the crucial touchpoints in your customer journey? Have you established your unique value proposition in each stage? If not, it’s time to take out your cartographer’s tools and start sketching your customer journey map.

What barriers do your customers face frequently in their journey?

Remember, every customer journey map designed, every touchpoint understood, is a stepping stone towards better conversions. It’s not just a map, it’s your route to business growth.

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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

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

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. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

How often should you update your customer journey map?

Your map should be a constant work in progress.

Reviewing it monthly or quarterly will help you identify gaps and opportunities to streamline your customer journey further. Use your data analytics and customer feedback to check for roadblocks.

To keep all stakeholders involved in this process, consider visualizing your maps in a collaborative tool such as Google Sheets.

Additionally, I recommend conducting regular meetings to analyze how new products or offerings have changed the customer journey.

Featured Resource: Customer Journey Map Template

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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 Mapping

Journey mapping helps you visualize how customers experience your product or service, and how they feel along the way. Scroll to step 6 for a real-life example from one of our product teams!

USE THIS PLAY TO...

Understand the customer journey from a specific persona's perspective so that you can design a better experience.

Running the play

Depending on how many touchpoints along the customer journey you're mapping, you might break the journey into stages and tackle each stage in pairs.

Sticky notes

Whiteboards.io Template

Define the map's scope (15 min)

Ideally, customer journey mapping focuses on the experience of a single persona  in a single scenario with a single goal. Else, the journey map will be too generic, and you'll miss out on opportunities for new insights and questions. You may need to pause creating a customer journey map until you have defined your customer personas . Your personas should be informed by  customer interviews , as well as data wherever possible.

Saying that, don't let perfect be the enemy of good! Sometimes a team just needs to get started, and you can agree to revisit with more rigor in  a few months' time. Once scope is agreed on, check your invite list to make sure you've got people who know the details of what customers experience when using your product or service.

Set the stage (5 min)

It's really important that your group understands the user  persona  and the goal driving their journey. Decide on or recap with your group the target persona and the scope of the journey being explored in your session. Make sure to pre-share required reading with the team at least a week ahead of your session to make sure everyone understands the persona, scope of the journey, and has a chance to delve deeper into research and data where needed. Even better- invite the team to run or attend the customer interviews to hear from customers first hand!

E.g. "We're going to focus on the Alana persona. Alana's role is project manager, and her goal is to find a scalable way for her team to share their knowledge so they spend less time explaining things over email. We're going to map out what it's like for Alana to evaluate Confluence for this purpose, from the point where she clicks that TRY button, to the point where she decides to buy it – or not."

Build a customer back-story (10 min)

Have the group use sticky notes to post up reasons why your target persona would be on this journey in the first place. Odds are, you'll get a range of responses: everything from high-level goals, to pain points, to requested features or services. Group similar ideas and groom the stickies so you can design a story from them.

These narratives should be inspired by actual customer interviews. But each team member will also bring a different perspective to the table that helps to broaden the lens.

Take a look at the example provided in the call out of this section. This back story starts with the pain points – the reasons why Alana would be wanting something like Confluence in the first place.

• E.g., "Her team's knowledge is in silos"

Then it basically has a list of requirements – what Alana is looking for in a product to solve the bottom pain points. This is essentially a mental shopping list for the group to refer to when mapping out the customer journey.

• E.g., "Provide structure"

Then it has the outcomes – goals that Alana wants to achieve by using the product

• E.g., "To keep my team focused on their work instead of distracted by unnecessary emails and shoulder-taps"

And finally the highest-level goal for her and her team.

• E.g., "Improve team efficiency"

Round off the back story by getting someone to say out loud what they think the overall story so far is, highlighting the main goals the customer has. This ensures a shared understanding that will inform the journey mapping, and improve the chances that your team will map it from the persona's point of view (not their own).

• E.g., "Alana and her team are frustrated by having to spend so much time explaining their work to each other, and to stakeholders. They want a way to share their knowledge, and organize it so it's easy for people outside their team to find, so they can focus more energy on the tasks at hand."

For example...

Here's a backstory the Confluence team created. 

Map what the customer thinks and feels (30-60 min)

With the target persona, back story, and destination in place, it's time to walk a mile in their shoes. Show participants how to get going by writing the first thing that the persona does on a sticky note. The whole group can then grab stickies and markers and continue plotting the journey one action at a time.

This can also include questions and decisions! If the journey branches based on the answers or choices, have one participant map out each path. Keep in mind that the purpose of this Play is to build empathy for, and a shared understanding of the customer for the team. In order to do this, we focus on mapping the  current state of one discrete end to end journey, and looking for opportunities for improvement.

To do a more comprehensive discovery and inform strategy, you will need to go deeper on researching and designing these journey maps, which will need to split up over multiple sessions. Take a look at the variation below for tipes on how to design a completely new customer journey.

Use different color sticky notes for actions, questions, decisions, etc. so it's easier to see each element when you look at the whole map.

For each action on the customer journey, capture which channels are used for the interactions. Depending on your context, channels might include a website, phone, email, postal mail, face-to-face, and/or social media.

It might also help to visually split the mapping area in zones, such as "frontstage" (what the customer experiences) versus "backstage" (what systems and processes are active in the background).

Journey mapping can open up rich discussion, but try to avoid delving into the wrong sort of detail. The idea is to explore the journey and mine it for opportunities to improve the experience instead of coming up with solutions on the spot. It's important not only to keep the conversation on track, but also to create an artefact that can be easily referenced in the future. Use expands or footnotes in the Confluence template to capture any additional context while keeping the overview stable.

Try to be the commentator, not the critic. And remember: you're there to call out what’s going on for the persona, not explain what’s going on with internal systems and processes.

To get more granular on the 'backstage' processes required to provide the 'frontstage' customer value, consider using Confluence Whiteboard's Service Blueprint template as a next step to follow up on this Play.

ANTI-PATTERN

Your map has heaps of branches and loops.

Your scope is probably too high-level. Map a specific journey that focuses on a specific task, rather than mapping how a customer might explore for the first time.

Map the pain points (10-30 min)

"Ok, show me where it hurts." Go back over the map and jot down pain points on sticky notes. Place them underneath the corresponding touchpoints on the journey. Where is there frustration? Errors? Bottlenecks? Things not working as expected?

For added value, talk about the impact of each pain point. Is it trivial, or is it likely to necessitate some kind of hack or work-around. Even worse: does it cause the persona to abandon their journey entirely?

Chart a sentiment line (15 min)

(Optional, but totally worth it.) Plot the persona's sentiment in an area under your journey map, so that you can see how their emotional experience changes with each touchpoint. Look for things like:

• Areas of sawtooth sentiment – going up and down a lot is pretty common, but that doesn't mean it's not exhausting for the persona.
• Rapid drops – this indicates large gaps in expectations, and frustration.
• Troughs – these indicate opportunities for lifting overall sentiments.
• Positive peaks – can you design an experience that lifts them even higher? Can you delight the persona and inspire them to recommend you?

Remember that pain points don't always cause immediate drops in customer sentiment. Sometimes some friction may even buold trust (consider requiring verification for example). A pain point early in the journey might also result in negative feelings later on, as experiences accumulate. 

Having customers in the session to help validate and challenge the journey map means you'll be more confident what comes out of this session. 

Analyse the big picture (15 min)

As a group, stand back from the journey map and discuss trends and patterns in the experience.

• Where are the areas of greatest confusion/frustration?
• Where is the journey falling short of expectations?
• Are there any new un-met needs that have come up for the user type?
• Are there areas in the process being needlessly complicated or duplicated? Are there lots of emails being sent that aren’t actually useful? 

Then, discuss areas of opportunity to improve the experience. E.g., are there areas in the process where seven steps could be reduced to three? Is that verification email actually needed?

You can use quantitative data to validate the impact of the various opportunity areas identified. A particular step may well be a customer experience that falls short, but how many of your customers are actually effected by that step? Might you be better off as a team focused on another higher impact opportunity?

Here's a user onboarding jouney map our Engaging First Impressions team created.

Be sure to run a full Health Monitor session or checkpoint with your team to see if you're improving.

MAP A FUTURE STATE

Instead of mapping the current experience, map out an experience you haven't delivered yet. You can map one that simply improves on existing pain points, or design an absolutely visionary amazeballs awesome experience!

Just make sure to always base your ideas on real customer interviews and data. When designing a totally new customer journey, it can also be interesting to map competitor or peer customer journeys to find inspiration. Working on a personalised service? How do they do it in grocery? What about fashion? Finance?

After the mapping session, create a stakeholder summary. What pain points have the highest impact to customers' evaluation, adoption and usage of our products? What opportunities are there, and which teams should know about them? What is your action plan to resolve these pain points? Keep it at a summary level for a fast share out of key takeaways.

For a broader audience, or to allow stakeholders to go deeper, you could also create a write-up of your analysis and recommendations you came up with, notes captured, photos of the group and the artefacts created on a Confluence page. A great way of sharing this information is in a video walk through of the journey map. Loom is a great tool for this as viewers can comment on specific stages of the journey. This can be a great way to inspire change in your organization and provide a model for customer-centric design practices.

KEEP IT REAL

Now that you have interviewed your customers and created your customer journey map, circle back to your customers and validate! And yes: you might learn that your entire map is invalid and have to start again from scratch. (Better to find that out now, versus after you've delivered the journey!) Major initiatives typically make multiple journey maps to capture the needs of multiple personas, and often iterate on each map. Remember not to set and forget. Journeys are rapidly disrupted, and keeping your finger on the pulse of your customer's reality will enable your team to pivot (and get results!) faster when needed.

Related Plays

     Customer Interview

     Project Poster

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Drop a question or comment on the Atlassian Community site.

Shared understanding

Different types of teams need to share an understanding of different things.

LEADERSHIP TEAMS

The team has a  shared vision  and collective  purpose  which they support, and  confidence  they have made the right strategic bets to achieve success.

Proof of concept

Project teams.

Some sort of demonstration has been created and tested, that demonstrates why this problem needs to be solved, and demonstrates its value.

Customer centricity

Service teams.

Team members are skilled at  understanding , empathizing and  resolving  requests with an effective customer feedback loop in place that drives improvements and builds trust to improve service offerings.

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The 7 best research methods for customer journey mapping

Getting authentic insights from customers is essential to effectively map out their journey. And understanding how users really interact with your product is the best way to provide tailored experiences that fit your customers’ diverse needs.

But it’s often hard to know where to begin the customer journey mapping research process and which methods to use.

Last updated

Reading time.

This article outlines the seven most effective research methods for customer journey mapping. Use our guide to prioritize the right qualitative and quantitative research processes for your needs—and implement them right away.

Use product experience insights to map your customer journey

Hotjar helps you understand your users by combining observational data with voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights

7 effective customer journey mapping research methods

A customer journey map is a visual representation of how your users engage with your brand, from initial discovery—like searching online for a solution to their problem—to browsing your site, trying out your product, making a purchase—and beyond. 

Make sure your customer journey maps are informed by user-centric research rather than assumptions and guesswork.

Carry out both qualitative and quantitative research using the methods below to create a map that accurately represents your users' product experience (PX):

Qualitative research methods

Quantitative research methods are essential for effective customer journey mapping: they provide hard data that’s easy to track and compare over time. But qualitative methods uncover the how and the why behind the numbers, helping you deeply understand your customers' experience.

Hotjar Product Designer Iga Gawronska stresses the importance of diving into customer emotions in research:

"I think it’s important to map out the actions, and also the emotions and thoughts of the people that perform the actions, your users."

Use the following four qualitative research methods to get an in-depth understanding of how customers engage with your brand online.

1. Customer interviews

Customer interviews are one-on-one conversations with people who actually use your product or service. Conducting them in-person often yields the best results because it’s easier to pick up on non-verbal cues and the interview can flow more naturally—but video conferencing with tools like Zoom is a good secondary option.

By engaging in an open-ended conversation with customers, you’ll get unexpected insights and granular details about your customer’s journey, which helps you empathize with the user experience (UX).

Structuring your user interviews in different stages can help get the conversation going. Start with a warm-up that establishes trust and builds rapport, then home in on your core questions, and end with more informal, concluding thoughts from both parties.

Input your results into a user research repository as you go, so you don’t get overwhelmed at the end of the interview process. Some researchers make simple spreadsheets in Google Sheets or Excel, while others use dedicated tools like EnjoyHQ or Dovetail .

Once you’ve aggregated your interview data, you’ll start to notice trends and commonalities between interviewees and understand how they’re engaging with key touchpoints in your customer journey and what’s most important to them.

Pro tip : use a transcription tool like Otter.ai to stay focused on conducting your interview without having to take detailed notes. Having a written record of interviews at your fingertips also speeds up your data organization and analysis later.

2. Remote observation

Remote observation lets researchers see how users are behaving using online tools like video calling and screen recordings.

Remote research is convenient for both researchers and participants—neither party has to leave the comfort of their home or workspace and they can do what they need to do when it suits their schedule. Using remote research gives you insights into how your customers interact with key touchpoints on the customer journey in their everyday environment and context.

Here are two effective ways to observe your customers’ journey remotely:

Use a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Google Meet and ask users to share their screen with you while they’re interacting with your site, app, or product. Draw on the data you gather to inform your customer journey map.

Use a product experience insights tool like Hotjar Session Recordings and watch playbacks of real users interacting with your site or product across an entire session, as you observe how they scroll, what attracts attention, and where they backtrack or bounce.

Recordings are particularly valuable tools to understand the customer journey because they let researchers observe users remotely without them feeling ‘watched’ and behaving differently than usual.  

Filter your Hotjar Recordings to show certain user sessions based on referrer URL, the landing page they visited, whether they’re a new or returning customer, their session, the specific action they take, their location, and u-turns. This helps you spot trends, understand behavior patterns for different user personas , and dig deeper into the customer journey.

3. Lab observation

In lab observation, the researcher observes the participant in person, either in a formal ‘lab’ setting or another professional, controlled environment.

Lab observation can be complicated to carry out because of the cost and logistics involved, and it’s often more time-consuming than remote methods. But it’s a valuable research technique, with a reduced risk of technical difficulties and a great opportunity to build a friendly rapport with participants.

If you op for lab observation, record your conversations with participants or use a note-taking tool like Notion or Evernote to write down your observations while the participant is interacting with the site or product, so it’s easy to find the data later. As the participant explores key customer journey touchpoints , take the opportunity to ask follow-up questions to understand why your test customers are making certain choices.

4. Qualitative surveys

Qualitative surveys usually involve asking open-ended questions that prompt detailed, long-form user responses. They give you great customer insights to inform your journey map, are easy to put together, inexpensive, and work well with large numbers of participants.

The success of your survey depends on the UX research questions you ask . 

It’s important not to (knowingly or unknowingly) ask leading questions, as you’ll likely get biased responses from your participants, which won’t help you in accurately mapping out your customers’ journey. Let’s imagine you ask a research participant the following survey question:

“Did our ‘sign up for a free trial’ button catch your attention on our homepage? Why?”

This doesn’t work because the participant can’t really answer your question freely: you’re implying that your homepage CTA button should have caught their attention, so they’re more likely to answer ‘yes.’ 

Instead, you should ask:

“What site element attracts your attention most on our homepage? Why?”

Or, if they’ve already converted:

“What made you decide to click the ‘sign up for a free trial’ button on the homepage?’

Here, you’re letting the research participant fill in the blanks on their own, which will get you a more accurate picture of their user experience.

Pro tip: use Hotjar’s Survey tool and s urvey templates to quickly and easily create your own qualitative surveys and get all the details about your customers’ journey—in their own words. Filter responses and set up automations for your team to receive alerts when you get certain survey responses to uncover trends in your user data all in one place.

Use Hotjar Surveys to connect with customers and hear about all the stages in their journey with your brand.

Quantitative research methods to complement qualitative data

While qualitative research is the best way to build empathy with your customers and get a holistic view of their product experience, you also need quantitative data to get an objective, granular understanding of key moments in the customer journey.

Use these three quantitative research methods to gather precise information about your customers’ digital journey with your product:

5. Website analytics

Because website analytics show you hard data about how people are interacting with your site, they’re a great resource for customer journey mapping research. Investigate these key metrics to better understand how your users move across touchpoints:

Traffic source: are customers searching for your site on Google, clicking on a landing page, or visiting from a social media channel?

Bounce rate : do visitors arrive on your site and navigate away soon after? Or do they stay for a while, browse, and take a conversion action, like making a purchase?

New vs. returning customers: how many users are new leads and how many are existing customers?

Session duration: how long do customers spend engaging with your site on average?

While website analytics don’t explain why your users are taking certain actions, they clearly show what customers are doing on your site —and how they got there .

For best results, use a PX insights platform like Hotjar to fill in the gaps between the numbers with rich qualitative insights.

Matthew Nixon, managing director of  Molzana , illustrates how teams can combine website analytics and qualitative research tools for optimal customer journey mapping:

"Using tools like Hotjar adds color to our quantitative analysis. Before, events like button clicks, scroll rate, and video plays might not have been tagged. This is where Hotjar comes in; click and scroll maps allow us to quantify user behavior in a much more granular way, which complements the trend data we collect from web analytics."

Google Analytics is a great option for quantitative website or app data: it’s both powerful and relatively easy to set up and navigate. Use Hotjar’s Google Analytics integration to go deeper and gather both qualitative and quantitative insights to inform your customer journey map .

6. Quantitative surveys

Quantitative surveys ask customers closed-ended questions that can be answered quickly—by checking yes or no, typing in one word, or selecting a multiple-choice answer.

Quantitative surveys can take a bit longer to put together, but they’re quick and easy for customers to fill out. With Hotjar, you can quickly create quantitative surveys by modifying questions from our question bank, and build surveys your users can address in a click or two, without disrupting their experience. 

While quantitative surveys don’t give you the same level of in-depth information as qualitative, open-ended questions, they’re helpful to get a statistical overview on the customer journey, or if you’ve already identified a potential problem and want to better understand the issue.

Imagine you've discovered, through qualitative research, that several customers report difficulties browsing your website. Place a quantitative survey on key web or product pages to get more details about the exact issues they’re experiencing with questions like:

Did you experience friction when browsing our website?

What was the biggest problem you experienced when browsing our website:

Difficult to navigate on mobile

Bugs or glitches

Confusing navigation menu

Pages loaded slowly or incorrectly

I had trouble finding what I wanted

Collecting enough responses to quantitative questions helps you prioritize the most important elements of the customer experience to map out an improved user journey.

7. Customer satisfaction scores

Measuring customer satisfaction is important to understand which touchpoints are working well for your users, and which you need to improve. In particular, Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is a great indicator of overall customer loyalty and satisfaction. 

Researchers calculate this metric by asking existing customers how likely they are to recommend your product to their network on a scale of 1 to 10. Their ratings help you understand overall customer satisfaction levels, and also split users up into specific groups:

Promoters (9-10): your biggest fans. They’re highly likely to stay loyal to your company and recommend you far and wide.

Passives (7-8): middle of the road. These customers are more or less satisfied with your brand but would consider jumping ship to a competitor who meets their needs better.

Detractors (0-6): these users may have had a negative experience with your company that’s made them unlikely to return—they may even write negative reviews or testimonials about your product or services. However, negative feedback is also useful as it helps you understand which parts of your customer journey you need to focus on and fix.

While NPS scores give you an idea of how well your brand is serving your customers, they don’t tell you why customers are so loyal they regularly recommend your company. That’s why it’s a good idea to ask a couple of quick follow-up questions in your NPS survey , like “What can we do to improve your score?”

Use Hotjar’s non-intrusive Feedback widgets and Survey tools to get NPS survey responses from customers while they’re navigating your site.

Once you’ve calculated your NPS score, use your findings to identify how you can improve the customer experience and where the customer journey needs updating. For example, if many customers complained about friction in the checkout process, that’s a good indication you should focus on optimizing that part of your on-site customer journey.

Deep customer knowledge makes for easy journey mapping

Thorough research is the best way to build a customer journey map that lets you truly understand your customers and their user experience. It’s essential to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods to dig deep into how customers are behaving on your site and understand why and how they’re carrying out certain actions.

Combine these methods to understand your customers’ experiences from different perspectives and prioritize creating a stellar user journey.

Hotjar helps you understand your users by combining observational data with voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights.

FAQs about customer journey mapping research

Why is customer journey mapping research important.

Customer journey mapping is important because it helps teams understand how customers interact with their brand in the wild. Customer journey mapping research makes sure your maps are based on accurate user data rather than guesswork and assumptions. By doing research, teams dig deep into the customer experience, uncover the touchpoints that are most impactful, and optimize their products or services accordingly.

What methods are good for customer journey mapping research?

Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to get a full picture of how customers experience brand touchpoints and engage in strong customer journey mapping research. Here’s what we recommend:

Qualitative methods: customer interviews, remote observation, lab observation, and qualitative surveys

Quantitative methods: website analytics, customer satisfaction scores like Net Promoter Scores®, and quantitative surveys

Is quantitative or qualitative research better for customer journey mapping?

Neither quantitative nor qualitative research is better for customer journey mapping—both approaches complement each other and should be used together to get a full picture of how customers are behaving—and why they’re behaving that way. While qualitative research excels in uncovering genuine customer feelings and emotions, quantitative research is valuable because it gives research teams hard data that’s easily measurable and useful for analytics and spotting trends.

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Case Study: Starbucks’ Success Elevating Customer Experience with Customer Journey Mapping

Customers journey mapping to deliver great customers experiences.

Starbucks, the world-renowned coffee company, is known for its exceptional customer experience and innovative offerings. To stay ahead in the competitive coffee industry and maintain its reputation, Starbucks has consistently prioritized understanding its customers and their needs. One key strategy that Starbucks has used to achieve this is customer journey mapping.

Customer Journey Mapping Strategy

Starbucks embarked on a comprehensive customer journey mapping initiative, aiming to identify pain points in its customers’ experiences and develop solutions to address these issues. The company engaged in a cross-functional approach, involving teams from various departments such as marketing, store operations, and product development, to ensure a holistic understanding of the customer journey.

Understanding the Customer Journey

Starbucks conducted extensive research to gain insights into its customers’ interactions with the brand, both online and offline. The company collected data through customer interviews, surveys, and observations, as well as leveraging digital analytics and transactional data. This information was used to create detailed customer journey maps, highlighting key touchpoints, emotional states, and pain points.

Identifying Pain Points and Opportunities

The customer journey maps revealed several areas where Starbucks could improve its customer experience. Some notable pain points included long wait times, inconsistent product quality, and challenges in navigating the rewards program. The company also identified opportunities to enhance the in-store experience, such as incorporating digital technologies and personalizing customer interactions.

Developing a Customer Experience Roadmap

Armed with these insights, Starbucks developed a customer experience roadmap that outlined the strategic initiatives and improvements needed to address the identified pain points and capitalize on opportunities. Some of the successful implementations based on the roadmap include:

• Mobile Order & Pay: To reduce wait times and streamline the ordering process, Starbucks introduced the Mobile Order & Pay feature in its app. This allowed customers to place orders in advance and pick up their drinks without waiting in line, significantly enhancing the overall customer experience.
• Personalized Rewards: Starbucks revamped its rewards program to make it more accessible and user-friendly, tailoring offers and promotions based on customers’ preferences and purchasing habits. This personalized approach encouraged customer loyalty and increased engagement with the brand.
• Consistent Quality Standards: Starbucks invested in employee training and quality control measures to ensure consistent product quality across all locations. This focus on excellence helped reinforce the brand’s reputation for offering high-quality coffee and beverages.
• Digital Integration: Starbucks introduced digital touchpoints in its stores, such as interactive menu boards and mobile payment options, to create a seamless and engaging customer experience. These innovations helped bridge the gap between the online and offline customer journey.

The company’s attention to the entire journey has been a key factor in the development of the premium coffee category.

According to PeopleMetrics, Starbucks has been able to simplify and operationalize Customer Journey Mapping which has helped them unlock the intersection of convenience and connection by introducing enhancements to the customer experience across retail and digital that meet customers wherever they are, expanding the Third Place experience beyond the physical store.

Initiatives that have been uncovered through journey mapping exercises:

Starbucks is investing in its partners, creating personalized experiences for customers, and innovating its digital and retail strategy.

Investing in Partner Success

Starbucks is placing its partners at the core of its Reinvention plan. The company believes that investing in its partner base is key to delivering high-quality customer experiences, uplifting brand affinity and customer loyalty, and increasing value back to partners through wages, benefits, programming, and tools for continued personal growth. In fiscal 2023, Starbucks has identified a number of near-term solutions that will be implemented to ensure a thriving partner experience:

How to Improve Customer Experience

Wage and Recognition Innovation:

Starbucks is helping partners by giving them the hours they need, expanding digital tipping, and incorporating other opportunities to increase overall pay. The company is committed to paying partners competitively and has raised its starting wage in the U.S. to $15 per hour.

New Well-being Benefits:

Starbucks is offering enhanced sick pay, new savings and student loan management benefits, and additional mental health support to its partners.

Personalized Career Mobility:

Starbucks is introducing a new partner app and the development of personalized career paths to enable its partners to achieve their career goals.

Investments in Store Managers:

Starbucks is providing new leadership trainings, reinventing scheduling and decision-making tools, and creating career journey mapping to improve store manager retention and empower them to focus on core functions of the job that increase satisfaction and overall performance of their store partners.

These investments are aimed at empowering Starbucks partners to thrive at work, thrive as individuals, and thrive together. Stores managed by partners with over three years of tenure have 13% greater weekly sales and higher customer satisfaction, making it clear that investing in partner success is a win-win for both partners and the company.

Creating Personalized Experiences for Customers

Starbucks is committed to unlocking the intersection of convenience and connection by introducing enhancements to the customer experience across retail and digital that meet customers wherever they are, expanding the Third Place experience beyond the physical store. The company is investing in purpose-built store concepts, delivering beverage innovation, and expanding effortless digital convenience to create personalized experiences for its customers.

Investing in Purpose-built Store Concepts:

Starbucks is reimagining the store environment by introducing purpose-built store concepts that meet customers wherever and whenever they want and improve the partner experience. The company is investing an incremental $450M in the existing U.S. store base in fiscal year 2023 with continued investment in fiscal 2024 and 2025. Starbucks expects these investments will create efficiencies, unlock capacity for partners, and enable increased throughput to support increasing customer demand.

Digital and Physical Customer Journey Optimization

Delivering Beverage Innovation:

To improve partner and customer experiences, Starbucks has developed the Siren System, a proprietary new equipment innovation designed to meet the growing demand for customization of hot and cold beverages and warm foods. As part of the Siren System, Starbucks has redesigned its cold beverage station, which significantly reduces the time and number of steps to make cold beverages, unlocking productivity gains and ultimately freeing up time for partners to connect with customers.

In addition, Starbucks is developing a new way of extracting cold coffee and espresso with the Cold Pressed Cold Brew system. This new, proprietary technology delivers cold press coffee in a matter of seconds and in fewer than four steps, a step-change improvement when compared to today’s cold brew which is steeped for 20 hours and takes more than 20 steps to make. The Cold Pressed Cold Brew will begin testing in stores in fiscal 2023.

Expanding effortless digital convenience

Starbucks’ Reinvention Plan aims to create a seamless and personalized experience for customers, making it easier for them to get their favorite Starbucks beverage when and where they want. The company has recognized the increasing importance of digital convenience in providing a better customer experience. The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the need for contactless ordering and payment options. Starbucks has responded by investing in and expanding its digital offerings, such as its mobile ordering platform, Starbucks Rewards program, and Starbucks Delivers.

Growing Starbucks Delivers program with DoorDash and UberEats

One of Starbucks’ major initiatives for expanding digital convenience is growing its Starbucks Delivers program. The company has partnered with DoorDash to expand the program to a national scale alongside UberEats in fiscal 2023. This partnership aims to improve delivery efficiency, expand delivery areas, and offer more delivery options to customers. Starbucks Delivers is expected to be available in over 10,000 stores across the United States by the end of 2022.

Increase Customer Satisfaction with a Digital Customer Experience Platform

Starbucks Rewards program with Starbucks Odyssey

Starbucks is also evolving its Starbucks Rewards program with Starbucks Odyssey, a Web3-enabled experience that will bridge the physical and digital customer experience. Starbucks Odyssey aims to unlock a new generation of experiential benefits for customers. Through Starbucks Odyssey, customers will be able to earn and redeem rewards, access exclusive content, and become part of a digital community built on human connection. Starbucks plans to roll out Starbucks Odyssey to all customers in the United States and Canada by the end of 2022.

The CDO TIMES Bottom Line

Starbucks’ successful application of customer journey mapping demonstrates the value of understanding customers’ experiences for customers, partners and employees and using these insights to drive improvements and innovation. By identifying pain points and opportunities in the customer journey, Starbucks was able to develop a customer experience roadmap that addressed these issues and reinforced its position as a leader in the coffee industry.

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In this context, the expertise of CDO TIMES becomes indispensable for organizations striving to stay ahead in the digital transformation journey. Here are some compelling reasons to engage their experts:

• Deep Expertise : CDO TIMES has a team of experts with deep expertise in the field of Digital, Data and AI and its integration into business processes. This knowledge ensures that your organization can leverage digital and AI in the most optimal and innovative ways.
• Strategic Insight : Not only can the CDO TIMES team help develop a Digital & AI strategy, but they can also provide insights into how this strategy fits into your overall business model and objectives. They understand that every business is unique, and so should be its Digital & AI strategy.
• Future-Proofing : With CDO TIMES, organizations can ensure they are future-proofed against rapid technological changes. Their experts stay abreast of the latest AI advancements and can guide your organization to adapt and evolve as the technology does.
• Risk Management : Implementing a Digital & AI strategy is not without its risks. The CDO TIMES can help identify potential pitfalls and develop mitigation strategies, helping you avoid costly mistakes and ensuring a smooth transition.
• Competitive Advantage : Finally, by hiring CDO TIMES experts, you are investing in a competitive advantage. Their expertise can help you speed up your innovation processes, bring products to market faster, and stay ahead of your competitors.

By employing the expertise of CDO TIMES, organizations can navigate the complexities of digital innovation with greater confidence and foresight, setting themselves up for success in the rapidly evolving digital economy. The future is digital, and with CDO TIMES, you’ll be well-equipped to lead in this new frontier.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

How to run a journey-mapping workshop: a step-by-step case study.

July 5, 2020 2020-07-05

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When journey maps are used in the right way — as a means to address a specific, known business goal — the benefits are vast. Our earlier research on practitioners’ journey-mapping activities identified several advantages, including aligning stakeholders around common goals and vision, enabling focus on customer needs, and helping team members establish a personal connection with the end users.

One of the biggest practitioner pain points revealed during the same research, however, is that many people are unclear about the specifics of the actual journey-mapping process. While we’ve previously provided a 5-step process for journey mapping , this article is a more detailed guide to one of those steps: the journey-mapping workshop.

Because the structure of a workshop is dependent on the skill level and preferred methods of the facilitator, there are many ways to lead a journey-mapping workshop. This article provides an overview of one way—a case study with examples from a recent workshop—but there could be many variations of the activities listed that could also be productive.

In This Article:

Before the journey-mapping workshop, during the journey-mapping workshop, after the journey-mapping workshop.

Before getting everyone together in the same room, take these steps to ensure that all contributors are engaged, prepared, and that they understand the purpose and scope of the workshop.

Step 1. Build a team: Journey mapping is a collaborative process. If you create your map in a silo without involving others, you run the risk that the people whose support you need to get things done post mapping will not believe in it or be passionate about your findings. Create a crossfunctional team of allies who can help you advertise the process and build buy-in for your recommendations. They will also be your workshop participants.

Step 2. Prioritize actors and scenarios: Decide whose journey (the actor ) and what journey (the scenario ) you’ll be mapping ahead of time. You should focus on one actor and one scenario per map , but that doesn’t mean you can’t have more than one scenario or journey map per workshop. You’ll just have to allow for extra time and figure out logistics (e.g., splitting up into small groups) to accommodate the additional complexity. If necessary, plan how you’ll split up teams before the workshop. Know who’s coming and assign each person to the most appropriate journey. (You wouldn’t want the designer of a small-business product working on the journey for consumer products.)

Step 3. Gather and share existing research: It’s often beneficial to start with what you already have. Gather and review any existing UX, marketing, analytics, or customer support data related to your journey, consolidate relevant insights, and identify knowledge gaps. Create a shared repository so everyone on the team has access to the artifacts you’ve gathered, which may include previous experience maps , research reports, data from diary studies , or brand or experience guidelines .

Step 4. Assign “homework”: Provide attendees with background reading ahead of the workshop. No matter how much you feel like you have shared, briefed, and campaigned, prime participants one last time before the workshop. Provide relevant background reading, existing research takeaways, and a few open-ended thought-starter questions to mentally prepare participants.

This particular journey-mapping workshop structure incorporates activities to lead participants through:

• Creating a current-state hypothesis map
• Evolving the current-state journey map based on customer input
• Prioritizing pain points within the journey
• Brainstorming new ideas and potential solutions with customers
• Creating a future-state vision through sketching and design-studio activities

It’s divided into three parts:

• Part I: Laying the foundation: Review of basic concepts and inputs for mapping
• Part II: Current-state mapping: Creation of an assumption map, review and evolution of the map with customers, and prioritization of pain points
• Part III: Future-state visioning: Brainstorming future-state ideas and interactions through sketching

Depending on the number of workshop attendees and the number of prioritized scenarios and actors, this workshop could be structured over a period of a couple to several days.

Part I: Laying the Foundation

The activities within the first segment of the workshop ensure that participants share the  mental model and the language of journey mapping, understand existing research, and agree on the workshop inputs — specifically, the journey-map stages, actor(s) and scenario(s) that will be used.

Step 1. Refresh and educate: Here’s something you may find shocking: Some participants may not even open your thoughtfully prepared workshop homework! That means you’ll have to find a creative way to ensure that attendees understand core concepts while not putting those who did diligently prepare to sleep. Blend teaching opportunities into methods for gaging the room’s level of preparedness with an activity such as trivia based on your provided background reading. Bonus: Trivia also acts as an energizer to start the day. Split the room into small groups so that those who were sincerely unable to prepare are not singled out and the vibe remains fun.

Step 2. Review actors and scenarios: Though you will have decided which actor(s) and scenario(s) to focus on before walking into the room, give your participants a chance to feel ownership over them (and ensure they understand these concepts). For example, enabling discussion over a quick interactive quiz like the one below helps participants connect with the narrative of the scenario and reinforces buy-in for the scenario.

Step 3. Review the research (again): Even if you consolidated and shared existing research with the team before the workshop, it’s possible that not everyone took the time to pore over it like you did. You should dedicate time within the workshop agenda to review the key findings. And even if the team is familiar with the research, it’s still better for everyone to be aligned on the takeaways as a group and for those takeaways to be fresh in everyone’s heads. The research review could take the form of one or two people simply presenting recent research findings, or it could be something more interactive.

For a recent journey-mapping workshop for a team very familiar with existing research, we did a quick postup of “what we know” about the journey. Participants worked in small groups to generate one research insight per sticky note, cluster them into groups, and then shared their themes back to the larger group. This approach has the bonus of providing an artifact that the team can hang and reference in their workspace as they begin mapping

Step 4. Provide facilitation training for participants: If customers will join your workshop, help your participants prepare. As the workshop facilitator, you’ll likely have more small groups than you can actively lead, so you’ll need to empower your attendees. Remember: This is a crossfunctional team, so not everyone is familiar with user research! Provide some guidance. I prefer to do two things: First, plan a training segment within the workshop to review facilitation guidelines . Secondly, provide teams with printed interview guides with suggested lines of inquiry related to their scenario.

Part II: Current-State Mapping

In the second segment of the workshop, teams go through a series of activities to create a draft map, update the map based on customer input, and identify pain points.

Step 1. Map the current state: Here, each team concentrates its collective knowledge into a map specific to its assigned scenario. It’s helpful to remind participants that they are creating an assumption map, meaning that there may be gaps or unknowns. At this point in time, it’s okay to make some assumptions, because they’ll continue to adapt the map and make adjustments with additional research. That’s why we make maps with sticky notes — so we can tear them off or scribble over them with Sharpies as learning evolves!

Step 2. Interview customers: The act of consolidating what the team knows from existing research creates a current-state assumption map. At this point, customers who align to each group’s primary actor or persona join the teams. Recruit your customers based on relevant screening criteria . (For example, for journeys related to opening a new credit card, it’s ideal to recruit participants who are actively looking for a new credit card or who have recently opened a credit card.) Using the provided facilitation guide, small groups interview the customers, asking open-ended questions about their experience with the journey they are assigned.

Step 3. Evolve the map: Once customers have shared experiences without seeing their team’s assumptions, the discussion moves to the wall. Teams walk customers through their assumption maps, continuing to ask open-ended questions and encouraging customers to share stories. It can be useful to provide some tangible tools to customers to lower their barrier to engagement. For example, in this journey-mapping workshop, we gave customers stickers to represent agreement or disagreement, and asked them to physically contribute to the map to reflect their experience and help us validate or evolve our assumptions.

Step 4. Generate and prioritize pain points: After time for in-depth discussion and map adaptation, allow the groups to focus on frustrations that occur throughout the journey. These frustrations, also called pain points, will serve as an input for the future-state visioning. Make pain-point generation easier for attendees by providing a fill-in-the-blank structure for them to fill in:

• I need ______ in order to ______.
• I need ______ so that ______.

Example: “I need a simple way to compare options so that I don't get overwhelmed.”

Give participants a time limit to silently generate needs statements on sticky notes, have them place the stickies on the pain-points swim lane of the map, and then discuss and affinity diagram them. After discussion, use dot voting to identify which pain points are most critical.

Part III: Future-State Visioning

The workshop concludes with a third segment: future-state visioning. Here, participants brainstorm ideas with customers, then use rounds of sketching, presentation, and critique to create future-state flows.

Step 1. Generate “big ideas”: Using the identified pain points as catalysts, both internal workshop participants and customers come up with abstract ideas that align to known frustrations within the journey. It’s useful to encourage the teams to think big and use metaphors to express their ideas so that they don’t jump to specific solutions (e.g., features) too soon. Use a time limit and provide a quantity goal (e.g., try to generate at least 5 ideas in 5 minutes) to keep participants from over-censoring their ideas. After this round of idea generation, participants post up and present their ideas to the rest of the team.

In this workshop, we followed the presentation of ideas with a round of impact and effort voting. Customers and internal participants whose primary job responsibility was user research voted on the most impactful ideas by placing a set number of gold stars on the corresponding stickies. Remaining internal team members voted on the most feasible ideas by placing the same number of green dots on the ideas. The result was a visual ranking of the ideas that takes both feasibility and impact into account. This is a good time to break, thank customers for their time, and continue the workshop with internal participants only.

Step 2. Sketch individual future-state flows: Armed with the ranked “big ideas,” internal participants begin the task of translating the ideas into a set of interactions using the design-studio technique of timed rounds of sketching, presentation, and critique. First, individuals silently sketch flows based on the most feasible and impactful big ideas. Next, they present their ideas back to their team for critique. In the example below, we used tangibles (i.e., sticky notes) to capture the critique discussion: The team members called out aspects of the sketches they thought were particularly powerful or well-aligned to known frustrations on green sticky notes (green = good). For aspects of the individual flows that could be improved, they wrote comments on yellow sticky notes (yellow = ideas). These sticky notes were placed directly on the sketches for reference.

Step 3. Create consolidated future-state flows: In the final workshop activity, small groups combine the most powerful ideas and strongest aspects of their individual sketches into one group sketch, reflecting a future-state journey for their scenario. Small groups then present their consolidated journey back to the entire workshop team.

Move quickly after the workshop in order to maintain momentum and make use of the excitement generated in the workshop.

Step 1. Share takeaways: Capture the workshop outputs by taking photos of each artifact and action shots of internal participants and customers working through the activities. (Of course, make sure you have consent ahead of time.) Share these artifacts in a central repository for reference, and capture and share next steps and action items in one place for the entire team.

Step 2. Bring the ideas life: The team members left the workshop with several strong flows and new interactions captured in sketches. Now, they can use iterative design to create low-fidelity prototypes of these flows and test them with customers, continuing to make adaptations based on user feedback.

Step 3. Keep refining the process: As you apply the workshop structure to additional journeys, continue to tweak and refine the activities to be the most successful and productive for your team.

This article provides guidance on a specific set of activities; however, there are many ways to run a journey-mapping workshop. The overall structure and activities are a starting place, created for one specific context. Use this as a starting place and adapt it based on your needs, scope, and limitations.

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7 Interesting Real-Life Customer Journey Map Examples

Creating a customer journey map is vital for any business to optimize its sales and marketing processes.

According to Salesforce , “among high-performing teams, 88% say a customer journey strategy is critical to the success of their overall marketing.”

An effective customer journey map will include each customer touchpoint a shopper interacts with on the way to making a purchase.

If you’re looking to create this document from scratch or looking for ways to improve your map, below are some customer journey map examples from highly successful companies.

Customer Journey Map Examples

When doing customer journey mapping, you should think deeply about your business and the customer experience. On that note, let’s dive into some real-life customer journey mapping and walk you through what makes customer journey maps so valuable.

Consumer SaaS Customer Journey Map Examples

Customer journey maps are essential to B2C companies in the SaaS space. It can be expensive to acquire a new customer and each month that you’re able to keep a subscription active deepens your ROI and ROAS.

Understanding each customer interaction, pain points and customer needs is vital for maximizing value throughout the customer lifecycle - and a user journey map will help identify these areas.

Spotify is one of the world’s most popular audio streaming services. When Spotify wanted to improve the music-sharing experience for its customers, it hired a marketing firm to create a customer journey map .

The goal of this user journey map was to determine where music sharing features the best fit into the customer experience .

In this example, we see the user experience mapped out from the moment the user first opens Spotify on a mobile device, all the way through to whether they like a song that a friend has shared.

Also Read: Effective Customer Journey Design

Throughout each stage and every touchpoint, the brand lists what a customer is engaging with, doing, thinking, and feeling (something that's commonly done with an empathy map ). The agency used data research and customer surveys to better understand how users felt at each touchpoint in the customer journey to collect this information.

Based on the customer journey map, Spotify was able to identify pain points for users and address those pain points so that the music sharing experience is smooth and seamless, encouraging more users to share music -- and to do it more often. \

This journey map is excellent because it identifies key areas of customer engagement, takes into account customer behavior , and has the goal of making the customer experience as enjoyable as possible.

The end result is significantly higher customer satisfaction, which can have several key benefits, including a smoother buyer journey, greater customer loyalty, and in many cases, existing customers becoming brand advocates.

2. TurboTax

Turbo Tax is a leading online software package for preparing taxes. When the TurboTax team was ready to launch a new product called Personal Pro, they created a customer journey map to better understand the overall customer experience with this new product.

The team used a mix of data research, customer surveys, and key conversations with tax professionals to understand how the product fits into the lives of those using it.

TurboTax’s customer journey analytics exercise starts when someone enters the website and is in the consideration phase through to the completion of the tax filing.

This customer journey map is great because it allows the team to see each customer pain point experienced and, therefore, address these pain points to make the customer experience smoother and more satisfactory.

Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Examples

The Ecommerce space is highly competitive in almost every niche these days. To maximize profit margins while keeping pricing competitive, it’s important to convert as many shoppers that visit your site as possible.

Also Read: Customer Journey Template

In addition to converting first-time customers at high rates, it’s important to have up-sell and cross-sell touchpoints in your customer journey as well. This increases the lifetime value of your customers and drives up the ROI against your acquisition costs.

Customer journey mapping is a vital exercise that can help E-commerce businesses skyrocket conversion rates from all online shoppers and achieve higher customer success.

1. Columbia Road

E-commerce agency, Columbia Road, created this map template for a fictitious online grocery shop . Here the agency demonstrates the core activities, goals, touchpoints, and experiences that a customer will go through during the decision-making process to place an order.

In this customer journey mapping exercise, the Columbia Road team went one step further than others by also including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and which department is responsible for ensuring a customer has the best experience possible at each stage within the user journey.

Including KPIs is important because it lets you know if your customer journey map template is effective or if it needs to be adjusted to better serve your shoppers.

Amazon is one of the largest E-commerce shops in the world, with its own technology and custom systems in place for moving a customer through the sales journey. Its customer journey map is one of the most complex around and would take most people days to read through and understand each customer journey stage.

The good news is that the map can be broken down into several more digestible parts for analysis.

Here we can see Amazon’s customer conversion funnel and how the customer journey is enabled by its own products that push users through the sales funnel to maximize customer engagement.

Most interesting here is how Amazon includes its success metrics for each stage of the customer journey. These are the same success metrics that just about every E-commerce shop should be monitoring:

• Impressions
• Add to list
• Add to cart
• Purchase assists
• Conversion rate
• Subscriptions
• Repeat purchase rates

When conducting your customer journey mapping exercise, be sure to include these key metrics to monitor your success and gain deeper insight into the overall customer experience.

3. A More Common Scenario

If looking at the Amazon customer journey map feels overwhelming to you know that you’re not alone. Most E-commerce businesses will have a much less complicated customer journey to map out.

Here's a customer journey map template for the checkout process for online shops.

For instance, you see the most important stages of the checkout process, including the technology involved, common customer frustrations, and space to include solutions to make the process smoother.

For example, if a customer finds creating an account to be a barrier to checkout in the very first step - then offering a guest checkout option would be one solution for improving the customer experience.

Start your E-commerce customer journey mapping exercise using the above customer journey mapping template as an outline and then customize it for your own needs.

(If this isn't a good fit for your company, check out these other customer journey templates .)

B2B Customer Journey Map Examples (SaaS)

In the B2B customer journey , the sales cycle can vary significantly based on price point and the buy-in from stakeholders needed to make a business purchase.

When it comes to a B2B SaaS purchase for something reasonably inexpensive like Hootsuite’s social media management platform or the MailChimp email marketing platform, most of the customer journey will happen digitally with minimal to no involvement from a sales representative.

In this case, customer journey maps might be made using a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Because there are few high barriers to conversion, the customer sales journey can happen quickly and easily as long as the right digital touchpoints are in place.

The journey map example above shows that touchpoints can all be online assets from social media for awareness, to blog posts for research, to case studies or webinars for consideration. Finally, there might be a personal touchpoint at the very end if someone has a question right before or after purchasing.

If your customers go from Awareness to Purchase (or even Free Trial purchase) quickly, a simple user journey mapping might work for you.

If a B2B SaaS company has a longer sales cycle with a more highly considered product or service, the customer journey map should be more complex and done differently.

Below is an example from HubSpot. The first part of their customer journey map includes the various stages of the journey throughout each customer touchpoint:

Because this is an example of a journey with a longer sales cycle, it also breaks down the stages into substages to dig further into the mindset of a potential customer.

Under the Awareness Stage would be the Stranger. Under the Consideration Stage would be the Subscriber/Lead and MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). And under the Decision Stage would be the Opportunity and the Deal Closed/Handoff.

As a customer moves from, say, Subscriber to MQL in the Consideration Stage, they will experience different emotions and require different touchpoints to move through the sales funnel.

For example, a blog subscriber or newsletter subscriber might not even be able to afford your product or service, so it wouldn’t make sense to assign them a sales rep and waste that rep’s time.

However, once a subscriber becomes an MQL, and you know they fit your customer profile you can start treating this person as a real potential customer by dedicating more time and resources.

This also makes for a more relevant experience from your customer’s perspective. No one likes to be hassled to buy a product they can't afford.

In the overall customer journey, the subscriber and the MQL are both still in the Consideration Stage but they should be treated in a different way which is why it’s important to break the journey down into smaller stages if you have a longer sales cycle.

What Makes a Good Customer Journey Map

Above we walked through several interesting examples of customer journey maps and discussed the pros and cons. Now, as you get ready to create your own map, let’s talk about key elements to keep in mind for best practices.

1. It Should Be Based on Market Research Plus Real Customer Data

According to a study from Ascend2 in partnership with Ansira, enterprise marketers are using customer feedback surveys (53%) and customer journey marketing research (47%) to build journey maps.

This is a great combination because it includes work based on theory as well as the real-world experiences of shoppers. And having this mix is critical for constructing effective journey maps and ultimately optimizing the customer experience.

Why is this combination key?

Customers don’t always know what they want or what they would prefer if they have never experienced a new product or feature before.

Therefore, it’s up to the business to continuously innovate and present ideas to shoppers. These new products and features should be workshopped based on a customer persona and user research.

Then, once the product or new feature is created, to make it as beneficial to the user as possible, feedback should be collected so improvements can be made.

Because customer journey maps need to take into account the thoughts and actions of users, compiling a document that includes a combination of market research and customer feedback surveys is the best way to get the data you need to make an effective journey map for your ideal buyer persona.

2. It Expands Beyond Your Marketing Funnel

A common pitfall for many companies when customer journey mapping is making a storyboard of the marketing funnel or marketing plan.

The marketing funnel is a good basis for creating a skeleton of the marketing portion of experience maps, but the user journey map should go well beyond marketing.

What does this mean?

The marketing funnel can be broken down into customer journey stages , just like your customer’s journey. It starts with awareness with your target audience and ends with a purchase from your ideal customer persona in the most basic sense (we often like to take this beyond purchase to gaining a loyal customer and getting a repeat purchase).

This means in the awareness stage of your marketing funnel you may talk about social media, Google Ads, and other forms of awareness building.

Then in the interest section, you may discuss email marketing, webinars, and other forms of content that increase interest. And in the consideration phase, you may talk about the UX design of your website, sales demonstrations, customer service, and so on.

A good marketing funnel will detail basic activities that should be carried out at each stage of the funnel for your user persona.

The Customer journey maps goes well beyond these basic activities and also lists out what a customer is thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage of the marketing funnel.

Think of it as a marketing funnel on steroids! It’s a much stronger and more powerful document than just your basic marketing funnel or marketing plan.

Additionally, any customer experience mapping needs to go beyond the marketing funnel. It should include the entire user experience with the product or service, each step in the sales cycle, and the touchpoints a person may routinely have with customer service.

3. It Includes KPIs

Good customer journey maps will include the various stages of the sales and marketing cycle as well as the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the user at each stage. Great customer journey maps will include KPIs for each stage.

Including KPIs is important so that the map can be evaluated by each customer touch point and adjusted when necessary.

Also, note that a customer journey map isn’t a document that is set in stone. It should be updated when new information is learned about:

• Customer behavior
• Customer needs
• Customer goals
• Customer expectations
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer support
• Customer service

It should also be evaluated and adjusted if overall sales and marketing goals are not being met.

Because the world is always evolving, so is the entire customer journey.

Whether you’re using a basic platform like Google Analytics or something more advanced like Woopra that’s specifically designed with the customer journey in mind, it should be capable of tracking all essential KPIs.

Get Started Creating Your Customer Journey Map

There's no better time to start laying the foundation for your customer journey mapping process than today.

By creating a visual representation of the buying process, you’ll gain valuable insight into the customer experience and reasons why customers do and don’t buy from you.

Once you’ve identified customer pain points you can make improvements at the necessary customer journey touchpoints, as well as optimize your customer service blueprint to position your business for sales success.

Remember, the whole goal is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes to create the best possible shopping experience for customer retention!

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Strategic journey mapping: case study-based tips

In the CX spaces, we often talk a lot about customers and their feelings. Still, we don't really connect with what needs to happen for a customer to continue doing business with us. The same goes for the importance of customer retention.

At our recent webinar, Percy Rose , Head of Customer Success Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise , explored the challenges of retaining customers in today's environment, emphasizing the value of strategic journey mapping. 

Are you ready to learn more about strategic customer journey maps and delve into the process of creating one? Then brace yourself for not a theory but a case study. Only real experience, only CX hardcore.

• 1 The recording
• 2 The significance of customer retention
• 3.1 Personas
• 3.2 Customer journey phases
• 3.4 Sentiment analysis 
• 3.5 Competitive benchmarking
• 4 Impact of strategic journey mapping on customer retention
• 5 The Q&A
• 6 About the speaker

The recording

Don't have time to read? Watch the event recording. After all, all the little details are there:

The significance of customer retention

Why is customer retention so vital, especially in customer experience and customer success? 

• Acquiring a customer is challenging, so it's essential to do your best to retain them. 
• It's five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain, upsell, or cross-sell to existing customers. It's far easier to sell to existing customers than new prospects, even if they seem genuinely interested in your product or service. 
• Businesses can’t grow and develop without an existing customer base.

Very often, we don't have customer retention as a central point in developing our strategy. However, customer retention has become more challenging than ever before. Why? 

In the past, a business may have had unique products, but today competitors are constantly on the watch, and there are a lot of similar products on the market. What distinguishes businesses now are their customers’ experience and customer success strategies. 

Another challenge is that unhappy or churned customers tend to be silent. Customers unhappy with you often do not provide feedback, making it difficult to gauge their sentiments and stay closely connected with your customer base. As a result, you cannot be completely sure that your customers are truly valuing their experience.

This is where strategic journey mapping comes into play. A strategic customer journey map serves as a vision. It's a high-level document that examines the factors contributing to a customer's ability to have a great experience with you. Ultimately, the experience plays a major role in their decision to continue doing business with you.

A real-life strategic journey map example

Now, let's look at the example of a strategic customer journey map HPE's team recently created in collaboration with a consulting agency, Heart of the Customer. 

This strategic customer journey map has five components:

• Personas and outcomes;
• Journey phases;
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs);
• Sentiment analysis;
• Competitive benchmarking.

There could be more components, but in this case, these were enough to provide a comprehensive view for assessing the retention rate and reasons for customer attrition.

Now, let's dive into the first component — personas and outcomes. 

For their project, HPE created personas to represent their customer group and focus on what they value most and what truly matters to them. 

“When building customer journeys, I avoid relying solely on surveys. While survey data has its place, I emphasize the importance of direct conversations with customers to achieve the level of detail and quality I seek.”

When working on the map above, Percy's team talked to 50 customers and balanced the results against the survey data to understand their personas and the outcomes they cared about most. That helped them get insight into customers’ decision-making and contributed to the ultimate goal — understanding what can help retain them. 

What was the final output? The multi-persona map above that showcases the journeys of two personas, Mira and Travis.

When creating personas, Percy’s team was focused on understanding their jobs, the related goals they aim to achieve, and the most important outcomes. 

For example, Mira manages a large corporation's data center and is involved in various initiatives like firmware updates. The second persona, Travis, who is a CIO, prioritizes profitability. 

In this B2B journey, Mira is measured on her ability as a data center manager to keep the data center running smoothly, while Travis is measured on his ability to use technology to make the business much more profitable.

Talking to customers helps you gain a clear understanding of their priorities. When conducting interviews with someone in a field you're knowledgeable about, an outcome-oriented approach can work effectively.

“I present a list of potential outcomes to interviewees and have them tell me which are the most important and why.” 

The next step is to understand their priorities to determine how to measure success.

For example, Mira cares about maximizing operational performance, while Travis cares about optimizing costs and growing revenue.

Without comprehending why maximizing operational performance is valuable for Mira, we will never be able to establish a connection between Mira's preferences and whether she'll decide to continue purchasing from me.

Customer journey phases

With the personas in place, we are ready to identify the phases of the customer journey. 

While the specific phases may vary depending on the business, they are likely to include Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Onboarding, Engagement, and Retention. 

The HPE’s map has the following phases:

• Purchase; 
• Expand/Renew.

At the 'Discovery' phase, the customer expresses interest in making a new purchase. As they progress, they narrow down their options, considering our company along with others and evaluating various factors. 

Eventually, they decide to purchase, move through an onboarding experience, and adopt our solution or products. In the following phase, they seek our assistance in optimizing their use. 

Then the moment of truth of whether you can retain them arrives, and this should be a fundamental aspect of every strategic customer journey map. Ultimately, it all boils down to whether customers choose to renew, refresh, or expand with us. Have we done a good enough job throughout this journey to retain their loyalty?

The third component, KPIs, adds depth to our strategic journey mapping exercise. It goes beyond qualitative information from interviews, like emotions. This aspect is especially crucial when communicating with executive leadership who talk numbers.

On this journey map, you can see the integrated KPIs beneath each phase. Please excuse the blurred lines — HPE must protect sensitive data. 

These metrics helped them gain a deeper understanding of how different factors are impacting the customers. 

For instance, during the onboarding phase, customers verbally expressed that it was a poor experience.

So, Percy’s team decided to examine the numbers, and they revealed that "the time to value," or what they referred to as "delivery to activation," was significantly longer than they had anticipated. This information helped validate the customers’ experience and gave them clear targets. 

Additionally, they incorporated net dollar retention into their metrics. And, of course, they included the most critical metric — the customer retention rate. 

Sentiment analysis 

The fourth layer, sentiment analysis, helps gain a holistic understanding of customer emotions as they go through their journey.

On our map, you can see how Mira and Travis's emotions evolve as they move through the phases. The heart means a phase has a major impact on the persona’s decision to leave or retain.

They both started positively, but the experiences got poor during the 'Purchase', 'Onboarding', and 'Optimize' phases. 

HPE already knew the personas' priorities: Mira cared about maximizing operational performance, while Travis was primarily concerned with reducing costs and increasing revenue. They also knew that after starting to use HPE’s product or service, the personas sought guidance to achieve these particular outcomes. Therefore, the more effectively they could align with Travis and Mira's priorities, the more likely they would substantially impact those metrics.

That is how organizing all this information in a strategic map may help identify the actions needed to make a difference for your customers.

Competitive benchmarking

The final, fifth component of our customer journey map is competitive benchmarking. 

It's a powerful tool when communicating with a leadership team. 

“Nothing will get them sitting on the edge of their seat more than when you're comparing against other companies.”

So, Percy’s team compared in-country HPE (represented by green) with other companies to show that they were falling short across the board. They found themselves either in the middle or lagging behind others compared to their top six competitors in this particular part of their business offering. 

“When we measured what customers thought about us versus what they thought about some of our key competitors, unfortunately, we were behind.”

All five journey map components provided HPE with a comprehensive understanding of the current state of their customer retention rate. In simple terms, they had an "as-is" journey map that described the current situation.

The next step was to create a "desired state" journey map to outline targeted KPIs they wanted to achieve in two years. In virtual workshops, they gathered people from various departments, including marketing, sales, delivery, customer success, and customer experience. 

“In our onboarding time frame, it was X in the current state, it should be Y in the future state.”

They had a target and could work with teams to put projects together, revise their processes and methodologies to deliver the desired state. 

Percy’s team included the emotions for the "as-is" current state. The green represented the projected future state. 

In the benchmarking section, they determined where they should rank compared to their competition based on the changes we were going to implement. 

“We aimed for customers to perceive us as delivering value, security, and trustworthiness, resulting in gratitude.”  

HPE established a clear starting point by understanding their customers and identifying the factors hindering their ability to achieve the desired retention rate. Then, they outlined areas that needed improvement. They recognized that purchasing, onboarding, and optimization were major contributors to their retention rate and developed strategies to address them differently moving forward. With as-is and to-be maps, HPE developed a clear vision to be at the core of its retention strategy.

Therefore, strategic journey mapping helped the organization identify the way forward; everyone now knows where to go.

Impact of strategic journey mapping on customer retention

Strategic journey mapping serves as the cornerstone of our retention strategy. It helps us understand our customers, what is important to retain them, and develop targeted solutions.

A well-executed strategic journey map provides critical insights into what customers value, helping develop a targeted retention strategy. 

The Q&A

Here are some questions from the Q&A session with Percy (and not all of them are about strategic journey mapping). You can listen to others in the event recording 😉

How long did it take to create a journey map? How many iterations did you have?

Creating the journey map took about five months, mainly due to customer interviews, data analysis, and organization. The interview process duration can vary and depends on team size. After collecting data, the actual map production took around a month, with multiple iterations. The pre-map work, involving customer engagement and data analysis, was the most time-consuming part.

How did you get around to speaking to 50 customers? What strategy did you employ for that?

We involved account teams and customer success managers who already have relationships with customers. Initially, direct outreach for interviews yielded no responses. So, we turned to account and success managers, sometimes offering incentives to motivate them to identify interested customers.

Remember that maintaining independence during interviews is crucial. Customers tend to be more honest when their account or success managers are not present during the conversation. This helps gather unbiased feedback.

How do you narrow down the appropriate personas?

We narrow it down to who's actually buying and who's closest to the decision-maker as an influencer. In larger deals, the CIO is often the buyer, while the head of infrastructure or Mira heavily influences the CIO. In smaller deals, Mira might be the buyer if it fits within the budget. The focus is on who's signing the check in the end.

What did your persona creation process look like?

We began with customer research and initially consulted the marketing team, which provided a list of around 15 personas. Then we narrowed it down to the most crucial ones for our retention strategy. For example, if a persona, like a user among 15,000 people in an organization, wasn't influential, we didn't track it. We focused on personas' key success metrics, such as profitability for the CIO and operational performance for Mira, to build our list of outcomes.

How many client interviews determine statistical significance for you?

We typically conduct around 25 to 30 interviews, but interestingly, after about 15 interviews, we start seeing clear patterns and can almost predict customer responses. 

Are all the KPIs and metrics linked to revenue, or are they linked to other points like satisfaction?

Yes, we strike a balance by using various metrics. For instance, in the onboarding phase, we focus on "time to value." If customers expect to derive value within 30 days, and it's taking 75 days on average, that's a significant pain point. While “time to value” isn't strictly a financial metric, it's linked to the overall customer experience and influences their decision to continue doing business with us. It can impact their perception when it's time to renew the contract.

At what point do you create a customer journey, especially when you don't have much data?

You can create your vision right from the beginning, even if you're a startup or a new company. This exercise helps you focus on what customers should experience and the outcomes you want to enable for them. It's easy to get caught up in loving your product, but customers care about the outcomes they can achieve, not just the product itself. By outlining your vision early on, you ensure that your product aligns with these desired outcomes, even if you have no customers at the start. It's a guiding light for your company's journey.

About the speaker

Percy Rose is the Head of Customer Success Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he is responsible for driving strategic improvements in their +$1 Billion hybrid cloud portfolio based on insights gained from the voice of the customer. Through outcome engineering and customer journey mapping, Percy helps HPE connect the dots between what the company offers, what customers value most, and the strategic transformation initiatives needed to bridge any gaps. He is an outside-in thinker who believes that delivering value for the customer as well as constantly improving the ease of doing business is at the core of increasing customer retention & expansion rates.

Percy is a passionate leader who is committed to enabling business outcomes for his customers through HPE products and services.

Prior to joining HPE, Percy worked at Accenture where he gained expertise leading complex global SAP systems integration programs for Fortune 500 clients. As a seasoned account leader, he has extensive experience working internationally with customers in England, Sweden, France, and Germany. Percy received his BA of Communications and Broadcast Journalism degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1997.

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