Customer Journey Map: How to Use a Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual tool that represents a theoretical customer's user experience from their very first interaction with a company to their very last. Also known as a user journey map, it is used by marketing, product management, and sales teams to influence design thinking, pricing, customer support, and customer retention. Customer journey mapping tools serve as a type of market research where business executives metaphorically stand in a customer's shoes and try to experience their own business from a different point of view. They then follow up by tweaking business practices to better meet customer expectations.

A customer journey map works by simulating all the touchpoints in a customer experience. By traveling along the CJM with the theoretical customer, business leaders can see all the positives of the customer's journey as well as pain points. They may also be able to identify customer touchpoints that are missing entirely. In this way, customer journey mapping gives business stakeholders a point of view that they might never otherwise have from their position running the company, which in turn, helps them improve the customer experience.

Consider the following customer journey map example for a hypothetical business that sells portable sheds.

1. 1. Initial interaction with the company's advertising: Perhaps a customer becomes acquainted with the brand and its services via ads. This touchpoint occurred before the potential customer even took interest in the company's core offering—in this case, a garden shed.
2. 2. A customer need arises: The customer has identified a pain point in their own life, which is that they have run out of space for the tools they used to keep in their garage. They need a better place to store tools and decide a garden shed might be the answer.
3. 3. The research process: Now that the customer needs a shed, they begin an online research session. The CJM will make an assumption about whether or not the customer encountered the company's sheds during this research.
4. 4. A visit to the retail store: The customer journey map template now takes us to a physical store, where the customer has arrived with plans to purchase a garden shed. This phase requires considering whether the brand's shed offerings look appealing in person and whether the price is reasonable for the benefits it provides. This part of the CJM ends with assuming the customer makes a purchase.
5. 5. Setting up the product: The customer journey map now assumes the customer will take home the shed and assemble it following the step-by-step directions that came with the unit. The CJM may reveal whether those directions were good, whether assembly called for a reasonable number of tools, and whether the overall build time would produce customer satisfaction.
6. 6. Everyday usage: At this stage, the shed is built and the customer is using it on a daily basis. This is where overall quality comes into play. Is the shed weatherproof as promised? Does it have structural integrity? By honestly viewing the process from a customer-centric point of view, business leaders should be able to determine whether they've sold a quality product.
7. 7. Customer service: Finally, the customer journey map imagines that the customer encounters a problem and needs help fixing their shed. Can a phone agent help them repair the shed in real-time? Do the company's online support documents and web tutorials do the trick? Assuming your customer persona, ask if you would truly be happy with the service experience. Consider what kind of customer feedback you would give for the product and its follow-up service.

In order to create a customer journey map that provides worthwhile data for your team, consider the following steps and factors.

1. 1. Create multiple buyer personas. Not every customer will interact with your business in the same way, which is why it’s important to create different customer personas that account for a variety of ages, demographics, and personalities. Send multiple theoretical customers through your CJM to see how their experiences might differ.
2. 2. Create a CJM that reflects your business model. If you primarily provide physical goods to your customers, create a customer journey map template that hits all the touchpoints of buying physical items. If you provide services, create a service blueprint that your theoretical customers can go through. As you create your CJM, remember that the specific interactions your customers have with your brand may not be the same they have with other brands or other types of products. Make your customer journey map unique to how your company operates.
3. 3. Apply different workflows to different departments. When a customer interacts with your business, it affects individual departments in different ways. For a large company, the CJM might feature silos for different departments. For instance, the marketing department would care a great deal about the theoretical customer's interactions with company ads, while the sales team, which tracks sales conversion metrics, would want to study the moment that the hypothetical client decided to be a paying customer. Empower different departments to hone in on their areas of expertise.
4. 4. Discard your biases whenever possible. The point of a CJM is to embody the mindset of a customer. This means casting aside your engrained perspectives as an employee of the company. Imagine yourself as a person who does not know the company's history and its full line of goods and services to get more benefits out of your CJM.

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