What is a Customer Journey Map?

• Customer Journey Map is a visual tool for describing the customer’s experience.
• It allows to better understand the customers’ needs, problems and engagement before, during and after buying or using a product or service and by that to identify pain points in the experience.
• The map is portrayed as a timeline that plots every interaction of the customer in the different touchpoints (can include both physical and virtual touchpoints) along the various stages.

What are the typical stages?

1. Awareness: A potential customer becomes aware of the product or service
2. Consideration: The prospective customer evaluates their options
3. Purchase/Decision: The customer chooses a solution and buys it
4. Retention/Loyalty: The customer uses the solution, performs repeat purchases and might use the customer service
5. Advocacy: A customer who received value that exceeded their expectations shares their positive experience

Note: the actual stages for a certain use case might be totally different from the typical stages.

How to build a Customer Journey Map?

1. Select the target customer
2. Place relevant stages on a timeline
3. List customer touchpoints
4. Identify customer actions in the relevant touchpoints for each stage
5. Add customer thoughts and emotions before, during and after each action
6. Identify pain points and problems in the experience

Note: see Customer Journey Map Template