What is customer journey mapping?

Cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping is a strate­gic approach used by busi­ness­es to visu­alise the path a cus­tomer takes from their ini­tial aware­ness of a brand to their lat­er deci­sion to make a purchase.

It involves cre­at­ing a detailed map that out­lines every inter­ac­tion or touch­point a cus­tomer has with a brand, across var­i­ous chan­nels and plat­forms, at dif­fer­ent stages of their jour­ney. Map­ping out cus­tomer jour­neys can also high­light cus­tomer thoughts, feel­ings, and expe­ri­ences at each point, pro­vid­ing insights into their needs, pref­er­ences, and pain points.

The main pur­pose of cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping is to put busi­ness­es in their cus­tomers’ shoes. By under­stand­ing the cus­tomer’s per­spec­tive, com­pa­nies can iden­ti­fy areas of fric­tion or oppor­tu­ni­ty, stream­line inter­ac­tions, and tai­lor their mar­ket­ing, sales, and sup­port efforts to bet­ter meet cus­tomer needs. This empath­ic approach helps busi­ness­es to cre­ate more seam­less, engag­ing, and per­son­alised cus­tomer experiences.

Cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping also empow­ers busi­ness­es to antic­i­pate cus­tomer needs and proac­tive address them. In this way, cus­tomers can feel greater sat­is­fac­tion and loy­al­ty. Teams inside your busi­ness can be bet­ter aligned by a com­mon under­stand­ing and each touch­point can be exam­ined and optimised.

Keep read­ing to learn how you can map your cus­tomers’ jour­neys and opti­mise their expe­ri­ences. We’ll also delve into how your mar­ket­ing efforts can be tai­lored to each stage of the cus­tomer jour­ney (some­times known as the sales funnel).

How can customer journey mapping enhance user experience?

Cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping can enhance user expe­ri­ence in sev­er­al ways, along with numer­ous oth­er ben­e­fits. These ben­e­fits can be achieved if busi­ness­es are will­ing to metic­u­lous­ly chart each touch­point as this is where insights are gained.

One of the para­mount ben­e­fits of cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping is its abil­i­ty to high­light areas where users might encounter fric­tion or obsta­cles. Iden­ti­fy­ing these pain points is the first step in trans­form­ing poten­tial frus­tra­tions into oppor­tu­ni­ties for enhance­ment. By smooth­ing out these bumps in the road, busi­ness­es can offer a more seam­less and enjoy­able expe­ri­ence, sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and loyalty.

Fur­ther­more, jour­ney map­ping facil­i­tates a deep­er under­stand­ing of the cus­tomer’s needs, desires, and expec­ta­tions at var­i­ous stages of their inter­ac­tion with the brand. This under­stand­ing allows for the per­son­al­i­sa­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, offers, and sup­port, mak­ing cus­tomers feel val­ued and under­stood. Per­son­al­i­sa­tion is a key dri­ver of user expe­ri­ence, fos­ter­ing a sense of con­nec­tion between the cus­tomer and the brand.

Addi­tion­al­ly, by align­ing the efforts of dif­fer­ent depart­ments around a shared vision of the cus­tomer jour­ney, busi­ness­es can ensure a con­sis­tent and cohe­sive expe­ri­ence across all touch­points. This con­sis­ten­cy rein­forces trust and reli­a­bil­i­ty in the brand, fur­ther enhanc­ing the user experience.

How to map your customer journeys

There is so much to be gained from map­ping cus­tomer jour­neys but where do you start? Let’s dive into a step-by-step out­line to kick­start your project:

1. Understand your objectives

Every suc­cess­ful project begins with under­stand­ing its objec­tives. Start­ing with a clear vision of what you wish to achieve will help keep your efforts focused. Here are some poten­tial objec­tives you may have:

• Enhance the over­all cus­tomer experience.
• Increase engage­ment on a spe­cif­ic platform.
• Reduce cus­tomer com­plaints about a par­tic­u­lar service.
• Increase sales from new and exist­ing customers.
• Reduce the num­ber of aban­doned carts.

What­ev­er you’re start­ing with, make sure your objec­tives are spe­cif­ic and mea­sur­able. For exam­ple, do you want to increase sales by 5% or 10%? How much more engage­ment do you want to see from a spe­cif­ic platform?

Defin­ing goals clear­ly means your project will be focused on its efforts and you’ll know if it has been a success.

2. Collect customer data

Next, it’s time to under­stand your cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ences. This means col­lect­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of data on their inter­ac­tions with your brand. This involves collecting:

• Quan­ti­ta­tive data from ana­lyt­ics tools – e.g., web traf­fic, engage­ment rates).
• Qual­i­ta­tive insights from cus­tomer reviews, sur­veys, and social media comments.

Plus, don’t over­look inter­nal resources like sales teams and cus­tomer ser­vice logs, as they can pro­vide valu­able anec­dotes and insights about cus­tomer sen­ti­ments and com­mon ques­tions or issues.

3. Create your buyer personas

Once you’ve gath­ered your data, it’s time to syn­the­sise it into a few buy­er per­sonas.

These per­sonas should rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent seg­ments of your cus­tomer base, includ­ing demo­graph­ic details (age, gen­der, loca­tion), psy­cho­graph­ic infor­ma­tion (inter­ests, val­ues), and behav­iour­al traits (buy­ing habits, brand interactions).

Each per­sona should have its own goals and pain points (read our arti­cle about buy­er per­sonas for more infor­ma­tion). What chal­lenges does this seg­ment face in under­stand­ing and access­ing your prod­uct or ser­vice? These per­sonas will serve as the foun­da­tion for map­ping out cus­tomised jour­neys for dif­fer­ent seg­ments of your audience.

4. Identify customer touchpoints

Next up, it’s time to under­stand the ways in which leads and cus­tomers inter­act with your brand. These are called touch­points. Start by list­ing all pos­si­ble cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, from the ini­tial dis­cov­ery via an online ad, through nav­i­gat­ing your web­site, to post-pur­chase support.

It’s impor­tant to con­sid­er both direct inter­ac­tions (such as mak­ing a pur­chase or con­tact­ing cus­tomer ser­vice) and indi­rect ones (such as read­ing reviews or see­ing your prod­ucts on social media). Map­ping out these touch­points in rela­tion to your buy­er per­sonas helps you see your brand from the cus­tomer’s perspective.

5. Map the customer journey

With your objec­tives set, data col­lect­ed, per­sonas cre­at­ed, and touch­points iden­ti­fied, you can begin to map out the cus­tomer jour­ney for each persona.

At this point in the process, you need to visu­alise the path a cus­tomer takes with your brand (and by ‘visu­alise’ we mean on a spread­sheet or mind map.) Make sure the map cov­ers each stage of the jour­ney (from Aware­ness, Con­sid­er­a­tion, and Deci­sion). Do this for new cus­tomers and for exist­ing ones.

Doc­u­ment each step in the jour­ney, includ­ing what the cus­tomer is doing, think­ing, and feel­ing. Use a nar­ra­tive or sto­ry­board for­mat to depict the jour­ney, high­light­ing key inter­ac­tions, chan­nels, prob­lems, and emo­tions at each stage.

6. Identify meaningful moments

Once your map has been laid out, you can start to iden­ti­fy key and mean­ing­ful moments in cus­tomer jour­neys. These are piv­otal points that can sig­nif­i­cant­ly shape the cus­tomer’s per­cep­tion and rela­tion­ship with your brand.

Iden­ti­fy these crit­i­cal inter­ac­tions by look­ing for moments that have the high­est emo­tion­al impact or deci­sion-mak­ing importance.

For exam­ple, the ease of find­ing infor­ma­tion on your web­site or the first inter­ac­tion with cus­tomer ser­vice can be sig­nif­i­cant. Under­stand­ing these allows you to pri­ori­tise improve­ments in areas that will most sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance the cus­tomer experience.

7. Analyse and identify gaps

With the jour­ney map as your guide, scru­ti­nise each stage of the cus­tomer’s path to iden­ti­fy gaps between the cur­rent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and the ide­al one out­lined by your objectives.

Look for dis­con­nects in the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, such as expec­ta­tions not being met, dif­fi­cul­ties in nav­i­gat­ing your web­site, or delays in cus­tomer ser­vice response times. Spot any areas where more mar­ket­ing is need­ed – per­haps cus­tomers aren’t get­ting the oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about your products.

Anoth­er kind of gap may be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for inno­va­tion or dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, such as unique ways to enhance the buy­ing process or per­son­alised cus­tomer engage­ment strategies.

8. Develop action plans

For each gap or oppor­tu­ni­ty you iden­ti­fy, for­mu­late detailed action plans that out­line the steps need­ed to address these issues.

This might involve redesign­ing cer­tain touch­points, cre­at­ing an infor­ma­tive blog strat­e­gy, intro­duc­ing new com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, imple­ment­ing cus­tomer feed­back mech­a­nisms, or craft­ing entire­ly new mar­ket­ing efforts.

Ensure that each action plan is assigned to spe­cif­ic teams or indi­vid­u­als, with clear time­lines and met­rics for suc­cess. This step will take the insights from your jour­ney map­ping and turn them into more con­crete plans for the future.

Marketing at each stage of the customer lifecycle

Stage 1: Awareness

Aware­ness is the ini­tial phase where poten­tial cus­tomers first become aware of your brand, prod­uct, or ser­vice. They might dis­cov­er you through adver­tis­ing, social media, word of mouth, or by search­ing for solu­tions to their prob­lems online. Dur­ing the aware­ness stage, the goal for busi­ness­es is to make a strong first impres­sion, edu­cate the audi­ence about what they offer, and estab­lish them­selves as a poten­tial solu­tion to the cus­tomer’s needs.

In terms of mar­ket­ing at this stage, busi­ness­es should focus on cre­at­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty and intrigue. For a retail brand, for exam­ple, this could involve lever­ag­ing social media adver­tis­ing with visu­al­ly appeal­ing con­tent show­cas­ing their prod­ucts in lifestyle set­tings, aimed at spark­ing inter­est among poten­tial new customers.

Small busi­ness­es might utilise local SEO strate­gies and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment (e.g., local events spon­sor­ship) to draw atten­tion. In con­trast, larg­er busi­ness­es could deploy broad­er dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, using influ­encer part­ner­ships and tar­get­ed online ads to reach a wider audience.

The key to suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing at this stage is craft­ing com­pelling, atten­tion-grab­bing mes­sages that res­onate with the tar­get demo­graph­ic’s inter­ests and needs, encour­ag­ing them to learn more about the brand.

Stage 2: Consideration

At the Con­sid­er­a­tion stage, poten­tial cus­tomers are aware of your busi­ness and are con­sid­er­ing whether your prod­uct or ser­vice is the right solu­tion for their prob­lem. They are com­par­ing their options, look­ing at reviews, and div­ing deep­er into what sets your offer­ing apart from competitors.

The focus for busi­ness­es dur­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion stage is to pro­vide detailed and help­ful infor­ma­tion, show­case val­ue, and address any con­cerns or ques­tions that may arise, help­ing guide the cus­tomer towards mak­ing a pur­chase decision.

For a SaaS com­pa­ny, for exam­ple, this might involve cre­at­ing detailed com­par­i­son guides, host­ing webi­na­rs that demon­strate prod­uct fea­tures, and offer­ing free tri­als or demos to allow prospects to expe­ri­ence the ser­vice first-hand.

A small SaaS com­pa­ny could focus on per­son­alised out­reach, such as engag­ing direct­ly with poten­tial cus­tomers through email sequences that high­light use cas­es rel­e­vant to the prospec­t’s indus­try. Larg­er com­pa­nies, on the oth­er hand, might invest in com­pre­hen­sive con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies, includ­ing SEO-opti­mised arti­cles, case stud­ies, and cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als to build cred­i­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty at scale.

The objec­tive is to pro­vide enough infor­ma­tion and con­fi­dence-build­ing expe­ri­ences to move prospects clos­er to mak­ing a purchase.

Stage 3: Decision

When leads reach the Deci­sion phase, they’ve researched their options, con­sid­ered the alter­na­tives, and have made a deci­sion about which prod­uct or ser­vice is best for their needs.

To ensure that the deci­sion is your offer­ing, your mar­ket­ing at this stage must close the deal. This means per­sua­sive CTAs and incen­tives. Make sure your email mar­ket­ing is set up to reach out to aban­doned carts, as these leads can be per­suad­ed. Your aban­doned cart emails will be made more com­pelling if they con­tain lim­it­ed-time dis­count codes.

Small busi­ness­es might adopt a more hands-on approach to mar­ket­ing at this stage, such as per­son­al con­sul­ta­tions or live chat sup­port to answer any last-minute ques­tions and build a rap­port that nudges the prospect over the line. Larg­er busi­ness­es, lever­ag­ing their resources, could imple­ment dynam­ic retar­get­ing ads that remind prospects of the prod­ucts they viewed, along with spe­cial offers or ben­e­fits like free ship­ping or a gift with pur­chase to clinch the deal.

The goal at this stage is to remove any remain­ing obsta­cles to pur­chase, mak­ing it as easy and attrac­tive as pos­si­ble for the cus­tomer to make a purchase.

Stage 4: Repeat

Once cus­tomers have bought with you once, it’s much eas­i­er to nur­ture them again. While you have a 5–20% chance of sell­ing to new cus­tomers, you have a 60–70% chance with exist­ing cus­tomers. So, it’s worth invest­ing mar­ket­ing spend into reten­tion and restart­ing the cus­tomer life­cy­cle all over again.

To repeat the cus­tomer jour­ney, your mar­ket­ing must focus on loy­al­ty, sup­port, and per­son­al­i­sa­tion. Approach­es like offer­ing per­son­alised rec­om­men­da­tions, rewards, or loy­al­ty pro­grams can be very effec­tive. You might like to go the extra mile and offer dis­counts on a cus­tomer’s birth­day.

Auto­mat­ed email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that re-engage cus­tomers are essen­tial – high­light­ing new arrivals, best­sellers, or end-of-sea­son sales.

Final thoughts

Map­ping the jour­neys your cus­tomers take will reveal sev­er­al things. It will expose oper­a­tional and cus­tomer ser­vice prob­lems, but it will show you many oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment. By being imag­i­na­tive, metic­u­lous with your analy­sis, and keep­ing your busi­ness goals in mind, you can dis­cov­er sev­er­al ways to enhance your cus­tomers’ experiences.

If you want a fresh new approach to build strong and last­ing rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers, fos­ter brand loy­al­ty, and dri­ve repeat busi­ness, cus­tomer jour­ney map­ping is the per­fect option.