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Customer journey mapping in 2 and 1/2 days
How to create a customer journey map that improves customer success.
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There’s a common saying that you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes—and that’s exactly what customer journey maps do: they help you put yourself in different customers’ shoes and understand your business from their point of view.
Why should you do it? How should you do it? Find the answers in this guide, which we wrote after interviewing 10+ customer journey experts who shared methodologies, dos and don’ts, and pro tips with us.
On this page:
What is a customer journey map?
How to create a customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days
4 benefits of customer journey mapping for your business
In later chapters, we dive deeper into customer journey analytics, workshops, and real-life examples.
Start mapping your customer journey
Hotjar lets you experience the customer journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.
A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of how customers interact with and experience your website, products, or business across multiple touchpoints.
By visualizing the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers experience, a customer journey map helps you better understand them and identify the pain points they encounter. This is essential if you want to implement informed, customer-focused optimizations on your site.
Mapping the customer journey: narrow vs. wide focus
A customer journey map can have a very narrow focus and only look at a few, specific steps of the customer experience or buyer’s journey (for example, a product-to-purchase flow on a website), or it can take into account all the touchpoints, online and offline, someone goes through before and after doing business with you.
Each type of customer journey map has its advantages:
A CJM with a narrow focus allows you to zero in on an issue and effectively problem-solve
A CJM with a wide focus gives you a broader, holistic understanding of how customers experience your business
Regardless of their focus, the best customer journey maps have one thing in common: they are created with real customer data that you collect and analyze . The insights are usually organized into a map (hence the name), diagram, or flowchart during a group workshop, which is later shared across the entire business so everyone gets a clear and comprehensive overview of a customer’s journey.
How to create your first customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days
The process of creating a customer journey map can be as long or short as you need. Depending on how many people and stakeholders you involve, how much data you collect and analyze, and how many touchpoints there are across the business, you could be looking at days or even weeks and months of work.
If you’re new to customer journey mapping, start from a narrower scope before moving on to mapping every single customer touchpoint .
Here’s our beginner customer journey mapping framework to help you create your first complete map in 2 and ½ working days:
Day 1: preliminary customer journey mapping work
Day 2: prep and run your customer journey mapping workshop.
Final ½ day: wrap up and share your results
Download your free customer journey map checklist (as seen below), to mark off your tasks as you complete them.
On your first day, you have three essential tasks:
Define the goal and scope of your CJM
Collect customer data and insights
Invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop
Step 1: define the goal and scope of your CJM
Clarifying what part(s) of the journey you're looking at, and why, helps you stay focused throughout the mapping process.
If this is your first map, start from a known issue or problematic area of your website. Keep the scope small, and focus on anything you can break down into four or five steps. For example:
If you have a high drop-off on a pricing page with five calls-to-action, each of which takes users to a different page, that’s enough for a mappable journey
If your purchase flow is made of five self-contained pages, each of which loses you potential customers, that’s a good candidate for mapping
✅ The output: a one- or two-sentence description of what your map will cover, and why, you can use whenever you need to explain what the process is about. For example: this map looks at the purchase flow on our website, and helps us understand how customers go through each step and the issues or obstacles they encounter. The map starts after users click ‘proceed to checkout’ and ends when they reach the 'Thank You' page .
Step 2: collect customer data and insights
Once you identify your goal and scope, the bulk of your first day should be spent collecting data and insights you’ll analyze as part of your mapping process. Because your map is narrow in focus, don’t get distracted by wide-scale demographics or data points that are interesting and nice to know, but ultimately irrelevant.
Get your hands on as much of the following information as you can:
Metrics from traditional analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) that give you insight into what’s happening, across the pages and stages your customer journey map covers
Data from analyzing your conversion ‘funnels’ , which record how many visitors end up at each stage of the user journey, so you can optimize those steps for potential customers and increase conversions
Behavior analytics data (from platforms like Hotjar) that show you how people interact with your site. For example, heatmaps give you an aggregate view of how users click, move and scroll on specific pages, and session recordings capture a user’s entire journey as they navigate your site
Quantitative and qualitative answers to on-site surveys relevant to the pages you’re going to investigate, as customer feedback will ultimately guide your roadmap of changes to make to improve the journey
Any demographic information about existing user and customer personas that helps you map the journey from the perspective of a real type of customer, rather than that of any hypothetical visitor, ensuring the journey makes sense for your target audience
Any relevant data from customer service chat logs, emails, or even anecdotal information from support, success, and sales teams about the issues customers usually experience
✅ The output: quantitative and qualitative data about your customers' interactions and their experiences across various touchpoints. For example, you’ll know how many people drop off at each individual stage, which page elements they interact with or ignore, and what stops them from converting.
💡Pro tip: as you read this guide, you may not yet have most of this data, particularly when it comes to heatmaps, recordings, and survey results. That’s ok.
Unless you’re running your CJM workshop in the next 12 hours, you have enough time to set up Hotjar on your website and start collecting insights right now. The platform helps you:
Learn where and why users drop off with Funnels
Visualize interactions on key pages with Heatmaps
Capture visitor sessions across your website with Recordings
Run on-site polls with Surveys
When the time comes for you to start your customer journey mapping process, this data will be invaluable.
Step 3: invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop
In our experience, the most effective way to get buy-in is not to try and convince people after things are done—include them in the process from the start. So while you can easily create a customer journey map on your own, it won’t be nearly as powerful as one you create with team members from different areas of expertise .
For example, if you’re looking at the purchase flow, you need to work with:
Someone from the UX team, who knows about the usability of the flow and can advocate for design changes
Someone from dev or engineering, who knows how things work in the back end, and will be able to push forward any changes that result from the map
Someone from success or support, who has first-hand experience talking to customers and resolving any issues they experience
✅ The output: you’ve set a date, booked a meeting space, and invited a group of four to six participants to your customer journey mapping workshop.
💡Pro tip: for your first map, stay small. Keep it limited to four to six people, and no main stakeholders . This may be unpopular advice, especially since many guides out there mention the importance of having stakeholders present from the start.
However, when you’re not yet very familiar with the process, including too many people early on can discourage them from re-investing their time into future CJM tasks. At this stage, it’s more helpful to brainstorm with a small team, get feedback on how to improve, and iterate a few times. Once you have a firm handle on the process, then start looping in your stakeholders.
On workshop day, you’ll spend half your time prepping and the other half running the actual session.
Step 1: prepare all your materials
To run a smooth workshop, ensure you do the following:
Bring stationery: for an interactive workshop, you’ll need basic materials such as pens, different colored Post-its, masking tape, and large sheets of paper to hang on the wall
Collect and print out the data: use the data you collected on Day 1. It’s good to have digital copies on a laptop or tablet for everybody to access, but print-outs could be the better alternative as people can take notes and scribble on them.
Print out an empathy map canvas for each participant: start the workshop with an empathy mapping exercise (more on this in Step 2). For this, hand each participant an empty empathy map canvas you can recreate from the template below.
Set up a customer journey map template on the wall: use a large sheet of paper to create a grid you'll stick to the wall and fill in as part of the workshop. On the horizontal axis, write the customer journey steps you identified during your Day 1 prep work; on the vertical axis, list the themes you want to analyze for each step. For example:
Actions your customers take
Questions they might have
Happy moments they experience
Pain points they experience
Tech limits they might encounter
Opportunities that arise
Step 2: run the workshop
This is the most interactive (and fun) part of the process. Follow the framework below to go from zero to a completed draft of a map in just under 2 hours .
Introduction [🕒 5–10 min]
Introduce yourself and your participants to one another
Using the one-two sentence description you defined on Day 1, explain the goal and scope of the workshop and the activities it will involve
Offer a quick summary of the customer persona you’ll be referring to throughout the session
Empathy mapping exercise [🕒 30 min]
Using the personas and data available, have each team member map their observations onto sticky notes and paste them on the relevant section of the empathy mapping canvas
Have all participants take turns presenting their empathy map
Facilitate group discussions where interesting points of agreement or disagreement appear
Customer journey mapping [🕒 60 min]
Using Post-its, ask each participant to fill in parts of the map grid with available information. Start by filling in the first row together, so everybody understands the process, then do each row individually (15–20 min). At the end of the process, you should have something like this:
Looking at the completed map, encourage your team to discuss and align on core observations (and take notes: they’ll come in handy on your final half day). At this point, customer pain points and opportunities should become evident for everybody involved. Having a cross-functional team means people will naturally start discussing what can, or cannot, immediately be done to address them (35–40 min).
Wrap up [🕒 5 min]
Congratulations! Your first customer journey map is complete. Finish the session by thanking your participants and letting them know the next steps.
Final half-day: wrap up and share
Once you’ve gone through the entire customer journey mapping workshop, the number one thing you want to avoid is for all this effort to go to waste. Instead of leaving the map hanging on the wall (or worse: taking it down, folding it, and forgetting about it), the final step is to wrap the process up and communicate the results to the larger team.
Digitize the map so you can easily update and share it with team members: it may be tempting to use dedicated software or invest time into a beautiful design, but for the first few iterations, it’s enough to add the map to your team’s existing workflows (for example, our team digitized our map and added it straight into Jira, where it’s easily accessible)
Offer a quick write-up or a 5-minute video introduction of the activity: re-use the description you came up with on Day 1, including who was involved and the top three outcomes
Clearly state the follow-up actions: if you’ve found obvious issues that need fixing, that’s a likely next step. If you’ve identified opportunities for change and improvement, you may want to validate these findings via customer interviews and usability testing.
4 benefits of customer journey mapping
In 2023, it’s almost a given that great customer experience (CX) provides any business or ecommerce site with a competitive advantage. But just how you’re supposed to deliver on the concept and create wow-worthy experiences is often left unsaid, implied, or glossed over.
Customer journey maps help you find answers to this ‘How?’ question, enabling you to:
Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers
Create cross-team alignment around the business
Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership
Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers
We’ve done a lot of customer journey work here at Hotjar, so we know that the above is true—but don’t just take our word for it: all the people we interviewed for this guide confirmed the benefits of journey mapping. Let’s take a look at what they shared.
1. Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers
It’s one thing to present your entire team with charts, graphs, and trends about your customers, and quite another to put the same team in front of ONE map that highlights what customers think, want, and do at each step of their journey.
I did my first customer journey map at MADE.COM within the first three months of joining the company. I was trying to map the journey to understand where the pain points were.
For example, people who want to buy a sofa from us will be coming back to the site 8+ times over several weeks before making a purchase. In that time, they may also visit a showroom. So now I look at that journey, at a customer’s motivation for going to the website versus a physical store, and I need to make sure that the experience in the showroom complements what they're doing on-site, and vice-versa, and that it all kind of comes together.
The map helps in seeing that journey progress right up to the time someone becomes a customer. And it also continues after: we see the next touchpoints and how we're looking to retain them as a customer, so that they come back and purchase again.
A customer journey map is particularly powerful when you incorporate empathy into it, bringing to light specific emotions that customers experience throughout the journey.
2. Create cross-team alignment around the business
The best, most effective customer journey maps are not the solo project of the user experience (UX) or marketing team (though they may originate there).
Customer journey maps are a quick, easy, and powerful way to help everybody in your business get a clearer understanding of how things work from a customers’ perspective and what the customers’ needs are—which is the first step in your quest towards creating a better experience for them.
Our first goal for preparing a customer journey map was to improve understanding customers across the company, so that every employee could understand the entire process our clients go through.
For example, people from the shipping department didn't know how the process works online; people from marketing didn't know how customers behave after filing a complaint. Everything seems obvious, but when we shared these details, we saw that a lot of people didn't know how the company itself works—this map made us realize that there were still gaps we needed to fill.
If we discover that customers have a pain point in a specific section of the map, different teams can look at the same section from several angles; customer support can communicate why something is not possible, and engineering can explain why it’s going to take X amount of effort to get it done. Especially in cross-functional teams where we all come from really different disciplines, I find these maps to be an incredible way for us all to speak the same language.
3. Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership
As a company grows in size and complexity, the lines of ownership occasionally become blurry. Without clarity, a customer might get bounced like a ping pong ball across Sales, Success, and Support departments—not great for the seamless and frictionless customer experience we all want to offer.
A central source of ‘truth’ in the form of a customer journey map that everybody can refer to helps clarify areas of ownership and handover points.
We were growing as a team, and we realized we needed to operationalize a lot of the processes that, before then, had just been manually communicated. We did it through a customer journey map. Our goal was to better understand where these hand-off points were and how to create a more seamless experience for our customers, because they were kind of being punted from team to team, from person to person—and often, it was really hard to keep tabs on exactly where the customer was in that entire journey.
4. Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers
A customer journey map will take your team from 'It appears that 30% of people leave the website at this stage' to 'Wow, people are leaving because the info is incomplete and the links are broken.' Once everyone is aligned on the roadblocks that need to be addressed, changes that have a positive impact on the customer experience and customer satisfaction will happen faster.
The customer journey map brings it all together: it doesn't matter who you've got in the room. If you’re doing a proper journey map, they always get enlightened in terms of ‘Oh, my word. I did not know the customer's actually experiencing this.’ And when I walk out of the session, we have often solved issues in the business. Accountability and responsibilities have been assigned, and I find that it just works well.
Shaheema (right) working on a customer journey map
Collect the right data to create an effective customer journey map
The secret of getting value from customer journey mapping is not just building the map itself: it's taking action on your findings. Having a list of changes to prioritize means you can also measure their effect once implemented, and keep improving your customers' experience.
This all starts with collecting customer-centric data—the sooner you begin, the more information you’ll have when the time comes to make a decision.
Start mapping your customer journey today
Hotjar lets you experience your customer’s journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.
FAQs about customer journey mapping
How do i create a customer journey map.
To create a useful customer journey map, you first need to define your objectives, buyer personas, and the goals of your customers (direct customer feedback and market research will help you here). Then, identify all the distinct touchpoints the customer has with your product or service in chronological order, and visualize the completion of these steps in a map format.
What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?
Customer journey mapping provides different teams in your company with a simple, easily understandable visualization that captures your customers’ perspective and needs, and the steps they’ll take to successfully use your product or service.
Consider customer journey mapping if you want to accomplish a specific objective (like testing a new product’s purchase flow) or work towards a much broader goal (like increasing overall customer retention or customer loyalty).
What is the difference between a customer journey map and an experience map?
The main difference between an experience map and a customer journey map is that customer journey maps are geared specifically toward business goals and the successful use of a product or service, while experience maps visualize an individual’s journey and experience through the completion of any task or goal that may not be related to business.
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Customer Journey Canvas Explained
Mapping out a customer journey canvas is the best way to understand how to meet the customer’s needs. A basic way to diagram this is by using a customer journey . The customer journey canvas helps make things real. If you want to map out the different stages in the customer journey and the related user experience, keep reading to learn how to best use a customer journey canvas.
What Is a Customer Journey Canvas?
A customer journey canvas is a board that documents the user’s journey through your product/service. It is similar to a storyboard and maps out your user’s journey through different stages and emotions.
Customer journey canvases are similar to Customer Journey Map s but diagram elements on the surface level before diving deeper. In this template, you use sticky notes to build out customers experience and develop an understanding of areas where customer satisfaction is achieved.
How to Build a Customer Journey Canvas
Customer journeys are a straightforward way to define your customer’s journey and main expectations. In doing this, there are a couple of necessary stages you need to incorporate to accurately display their customer experience . We’ve gathered them here so you can build your own customer journey canvas.
Target Persona
The first stage in creating a customer journey canvas highlights the user persona you are targeting. Defining your persona is vital because it will narrow what you focus on, the user’s goals, and how you will meet them. The persona can help you identify and empathize with a customer segment. Start with individual clients you know, not generic customer segments.
LEARN ABOUT: Customer Journey Mapping Tools
If you have a predefined persona, you can insert it here, and if you need to create one, you can use a persona map.
The stages section is where you list each stage in the customer’s journey as they interact with your products and services. These stages should be very descriptive and record the user’s actions in their route to completion.
These stages should be critical in the journey but also to the customer. If there is a misalignment between what is important to the customer and what is emphasized in the product, this is a place you need to rethink your journey.
Customer Needs
The customer needs section is very important and asks you to specify what the customer requires from this stage of their interaction. This will mainly manifest in their actions, and it’s essential to look at what they do concerning their needs.
Additionally, two things are critical to emphasize when analyzing customer needs: intention and expectation.
Customer intention is not only the actions they take en route to completion but the reasons behind their actions. What motivates each action? Why do they do what they do?
When you analyze intention, you must also consider expectations. When the user does something, what result are they expecting? Does this line up with their intentions?
Addressing intention and expectation is vital to breaking down the customer’s needs.
- Customer Experience
Lastly, based on the stages and needs, you must analyze the customer’s overall experience. This process is mainly an emotional analysis, stating if they are happy, neutral, or dissatisfied. This real customer data is usually gathered through user research and product feedback.
After you map out this data, you will know where your customer is happy with the product and what pieces require improvement. Understanding this information is key to building a successful and trustworthy brand, and using a customer journey is the first step in that journey.
Customer Journey Canvas Template
Below we are providing you with a template that can serve as an example for you to start creating your own Customer Journey Map and identify the points to improve at each point of contact with the customer.
Download the customer journey canvas here
Customer Journey Canvas Tips
If you haven’t mapped out a customer journey, doing so can feel daunting. Follow these tips to make sure you create a practical customer journey canvas.
Do Your Research
Doing research is the core of everything that follows in a customer journey canvas. You cannot simply map out what you think the customer experiences. You need to know, from them, what the customer feels and goes through in order to address their needs adequately.
When creating a customer journey canvas, don’t skimp on your research.
Focus on a Persona
When creating a journey map, it can be easy to slip up and focus on a broad user base. For it to be effective, you have to do just the opposite.
Instead of focusing on a large group of users, it’s usually more effective to target a specific persona and alleviate their issues. Unless you have a large group of users expressing similar concerns, it’s usually best to start narrow and expand from there.
Try Mapping Your Assumptions
If you’re struggling to focus your map on your persona, it might be because your assumptions are getting in the way. As we previously mentioned, it’s dangerous to create these maps based on assumptions because they will rarely be accurate.
If this is the case, try creating another row for your personal/shared assumptions. This will help you compare them to the actual customer’s point of view and identify any discrepancies.
Don’t Stop at Customer Needs
The canvas stops here, but the optimization shouldn’t. After you’ve identified what the customer needs and where their experience is lacking, ensure that you conduct a brainstorming session to make each stage better. This can be done on the same board or as a different exercise, but each effectively creates the next steps for auditing your customer journey.
LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey
If you need to audit your customer experience, a customer journey canvas is the perfect first step. To learn more about journey mapping , check out our other articles about improving CX.
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Customer Journey Canvas
Introduction.
The Customer Journey is a tool to help you get insight into, track, and discuss how a customer experiences a problem you are trying to solve. How does this problem or opportunity show up in their lives? How do they experience it? How do they interact with you?
How To Use the Customer Journey Canvas
Mapping this journey will provide you with insights into how customers experience a product or service, as well as how they might be better served or even delighted. This is especially true when co-creating the journey together with your customers or when validating your assumptions with them. What are the circumstances? How do customers feel throughout? What are the moments when the experience can best be improved?
Customer journeys are not linear. A customer can jump from one phase to another depending on many factors. They interact with some touchpoints and miss out others. It is your job, as a designer, to understand the moments when customers engage so that you can design better experiences for them in the future. This tool helps in looking at your products and services through the lens of the customers.
Of course, no customer journey is totally complete or made without assumptions. Mapping the customer journey is based on the knowledge and insights of your team. This tool simply helps you understand and explore from the customer’s point of view.
The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer journey maps, you can add real customer data gathered through customer safaris, interviews, and feedback. This will enable you to make informed decisions based on reality.
The customer journey is relevant for everyone. Everyone on the team, and in your company, must understand what your customers experience, how they feel, what they struggle with, and how you can improve the experience. The underlying goal: to solve our customers’ problems and make them happy.
Tool Overview
Persona Start with defining the Customer Personas that you are creating the journey for. Be specific (e.g., name, age, occupation, skills, interests).
Touch Points What are the different moments of interaction with the customer (e.g., in a shop, online, via webinar, by phone, mail, or in contracts)? Some moments may be important to the customer, but are currently not touch points: map these moments as well! The customer is the primary focus.
Mood What is the customer’s mood at that very moment? Are they happy, frustrated, angry? What in the moment makes it so?
Timeline and Stages Define at least 5 moments in the journey. What is the timespan? What is the step-by-step experience for the customer? How much time has passed in the journey? Don’t overcomplicate: test with customers to see what to adapt.
Customer Needs What is the job the customer wants to get done in each of the stages? For example, if your customer seeks to identify the company they want to work with, we need to understand the various touch points. What are the questions customers have at each point?
Step-by-step guide
1 before you start.
Arrange for a comfortable environment. Definitely not a meeting room. Create a creative athmosphere and have plenty of colorful materials and magazines at the ready.
- Arrange a relaxed, positive and private environment
- Have markers (fine tip) and paper for everybody
- Print or draw the canvas on a big sheet of paper
- Have plenty of sticky notes and markers ready
- Allow yourself 45 minutes of undisturbed time
2 Define your Customer
To make a good customer journey, you need to define who it is for. Who is the customer you are going to follow? And easy way to do this is by using the persona canvas. You don't want to specify generic customer segments here, but start from specific customers, that you know. This will help enrich the journey. Generalizing it comes later.
3 Map the Journey
With the team, come up with moments in the journey of your customer. Think from that customer's perspective. His or her goal in life is not to buy your product or use your service, that is (usually) a means to an end. What end is that? How do they experience the problem you are trying to solve? And do they really experience it? What do they currently do to deal with that problem?
While you are defining moments for the customer, try to place them in an order. That could be a short interval, for example a day in the life of the customer, or a longer duration. The goal is to find the meaningful moments for the customer first, and then to look for the touchpoints where your product or service comes into the picture.
An easy way to build moments is to think of what happened first (what would be the movie frame for that moment?) and then to proceed what the customer thinks or feels, and ultimately what their needs are. Make sure it's their needs, don't sneak your product back in!
4 Challenge your Assumptions
Now that you have mapped out a lot of moments, it's time to challenge assumptions. So far, almost everything you have done is an assumption, starting from what you know about the customer, and going all the way to their needs in specific moments. Some of these assumptions are more impactful than others. They need to be checked before you start building product ideas on top of them. To do this, you need to go out of the building, and run experiments.
Show your journey to actual or potential customers, and see if they recognize themselves. What is their journey? Map it out with them. Once you have done that, you will start to see patterns and learn what the actual needs are that they have. Sometimes they may not even know it themselves!
5 Hack: Online Safari
In the age of the Internet it would be silly not to take an online safari. There are several tricks for getting a quick idea of what people are actually doing online. Take a look at your own user forum or that of a competitor. What are people complaining about? What conversations are they having? Use Twitter to get in touch with people that write about similar products. What kind of pictures do they post on social media? Are there any video blogs or YouTube channels that cover similar topics? How popular are they? What trends can you find there? You can get a lot of information in a very short amount time if you start following some online leads!
6 Hack: Do it yourself!
It pays to step into your customer’s shoes for a while. If you really want to understand your customers and their preferences, slip into their shoes, do what they do, and shop where they shop. We learned this trick from an expert retail food marketer. If you’re interested in understanding what attracts customers, go to the stores they shop at, observe them, and start pulling things off the shelf that attract you. Compare what you bought with what you see in customer’s shopping carts. You’ll likely find customer segments that stick together and look for similar qualities in the things they buy. Best of all, you’ll quickly learn what attracts customers to your competition.
7 Hack: Be the Barista
When you really want to surprise your customers and put them into a different state of mind, consider going the extra mile. Find (or build) a nice coffee cart and add to it everything you need to get people talking. Making the rounds in a place where your customers hang out is guaranteed to put a smile on their faces. You’d be surprised at what people tell their barista! What we’re actually saying: be a perfect host(ess) and facilitate the interaction.
8 Check your Customer Journey
Check the following items to see if you have worked enough on the Customer Journey.
- Is the persona you used specific enough?
- Is the journey complete? are there any moments missing?
- Ask yourself where the journey really starts and ends. Are there moments before and after?
- You can't think of moments you left out
9 Next Steps
- Use what you learned to inform your point of view.
- Go back and check your design criteria .
- Use the knowledge to work on new value propositions .
Additional Resources
design a better business ( patrick van der pijl, justin lokitz, lisa kay solomon, maarten van lieshout, erik van der pluijm ), contagious - why things catch on ( jonah berger ), hooked ( nir eyal ), made to stick ( dan heath and chip heath ), the mom test ( rob fitzpatrick ), you may also like, experiment cheat sheet.
A free overview of 25 Validation Experiment Recipes from WRKSHP.tools.
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5 best practices to create a customer journey canvas
Did you know that 74% of Dutch consumers are more likely to order at a webshop after they've had a positive experience with customer service? This insight is a result of a survey by Trengo that took place among 1000+ consumers. It shows us that good customer service is essential for the growth of your business.
If you optimize your service in every stage of the customer journey, you can turn a one-time customer into a returning one.
A Customer Journey Canvas plays an essential role in creating a better customer experience. The canvas helps you to align your customer service with your customer's needs in every stage of the customer journey.
In this article, we share five best practices you can use to create a Customer Journey Canvas.
What is a Customer Journey Canvas?
A Customer Journey Canvas gives you an overview of your customer's needs. It provides you and your customer service team with action points for your customer service teams in different stages of the customer journey. With a Customer Journey Canvas, you'll make sure that your customers get what they need during every stage of their journey.
The canvas gives you the following insights:
- Customer needs: what are the basic needs of your customer at every stage? Write it down from your customer's perspective.
- Key moment: what does this exact moment look like for your customer? You can add screenshots of your webshop or the communication channels they have to use in this stage.
- Actions: how can your team offer the best service at every stage?
Five best practices per stage of the customer journey
With the following five best practices you can get the most out of the customer journey canvas.
Stage 1. Awareness
In the first stage of the customer journey, your customer is aware of a problem or challenge and is looking for information that will help them. You can look at the Awareness stage as the first impression the customer has of your company.
Let's take an example: Mark would like to start running but has been struggling with severe back pain for years. He's looking for sports shoes that provide good support. That's why he searches Google for 'best sports shoes to avoid back pain'.
It's now up to you to convince Mark that you understand his problem best and want to solve it.
Best practice
Mark probably has a lot of questions. Such as:
- What makes a sports shoe provide good support?
- Should the sole of a sports shoe be flexible or not?
- Why can a good sports shoe make a difference when it comes to back pain?
To get these questions answered, he will start doing online research on your website and other online sports sellers. This research will also cover this stage. However, the customer may still have questions regarding an interesting article on your website.
In this case, live chat is the best channel to use. Live chat is easily accessible for the first contact. You can answer the questions that Mark has at the exact time he is asking them. This means you should respond quickly. You can use tools like chatbots, quick- and auto-replies to support you with that.
Stage 2. Consideration
In this stage, Mark is aware of the different options he has. He'll start doing more in-depth research on pricing, reviews, competitors, and product details. He may list the webshops that have the best delivery times and return policies.
It's now up to your team to get ready with answers to these questions.
Mark is looking for more in-depth information. The best way to offer this is by creating a help center with answers to frequently asked questions.
Mark may have the following questions:
- What is the shipping time?
- What does the return process look like?
- How can I follow my order status?
In this stage, it's important to monitor your social media . More and more customers are asking questions via Instagram or Facebook. Be active on your channels, and answer questions or clarify uncertainties. This way, you come across as a professional and engaged brand.
Stage 3. Decision
In this stage, Mark is ready to make his choice. He added the sports shoes to his cart. Ka-ching!
But, wait...
It turns out, 46.1% of cart abandonments occur at the payment stage. This can happen at the following moments:
- At the checkout login (37.4%)
- Once Mark sees shipping costs (35.7%)
- When Mark needs to enter their billing address (20.9%)
- When Mark needs to enter their shipping or delivery address (20%)
It can go wrong for different reasons. Maybe the customer doesn't like to share personal information, the discount coupon doesn't work, or the preferred shipping date is missing.
At this point, it's up to your team to offer fast service and reach out with proactive support.
In this stage, Mark needs fast support to finish up his order. If you're not there to help, you might lose him as a customer.
Make sure that your customer service team is available via:
- Live chat: this is the fastest way for support. All Mark needs to do is click on the chat widget to start a conversation.
Tip: you can automate your live chat by setting up a chatbot. But when you do, make sure your customer can still choose a real-life agent over the chatbot.
- Phone: by picking up the phone, Mark is sure he'll receive an answer immediately.
- Email: has Mark already abandoned his cart? You can send him a follow-up email. Emails sent within 3 hours after the customer's visit have an open rate of 40% and a click-through rate of 20%.
Stage 4. Retention
Awesome. Mark has bought his sports shoes in your webshop. Good job. But will he remain a customer in the long run ?
This stage might be the most important one of the entire customer journey. By doubling down on customer retention, you increase your customer lifetime value and boost your revenue. That's why you should try your best to gain trust and build a long-term customer relationship.
It's time to send Mark an email asking for feedback about his purchase. You can think of the following questions:
- It's been a week since you received your sports shoes. We are curious about your experience. How many extra miles did you run?
- Thanks for purchasing the sports shoes. How did you experience your purchase?
In addition to asking these questions, you can refer to a feedback form so Mark can help other runners finding the perfect sports shoes as well.
For building a customer relationship, it is important to stay in touch. Encourage your customer to follow you on social media . It's the perfect place to share tips on product usage and maintenance.
Stage 5. Advocacy
In this last stage, you'll make Mark an active advocate for your brand. You want him to tell everyone about his shopping experience and amazing sports shoes.
So, how do you get him to this stage?
Easy. If you've offered good service during the whole customer journey, chances are he is more than willing to give you something in return. All you have to do is ask.
You can send Mark an email including one of these messages:
- Hi Mark! Thanks for your feedback. We're glad to hear that you love your new shoes. You would make us very happy if you share your experience on Instagram using #newshoes. Chances are, you'll spot your picture on our website during your next visit. 📸 We hope to see you soon!
- Hi Mark. We're glad to hear the sports shoes fit you very nicely. Did you already share your experience with your friends? This discount code gives you and your friends 10% off on your next purchase. 💸Enjoy your day.
Start creating a Customer Journey Canvas
You can start with creating a Customer Journey Canvas right away by downloading this free template :
Customer Journey Canvas - Trengo Download
If you would like to get the most out of this canvas, I suggest you look into multichannel customer service as well. This way, you'll find out which channels there are and how to connect them all in one inbox.
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Top 5 Customer Journey Mapping Tools (+ Templates)
As the digital world continues to change, you must know more about your customer's journey. Customer Journey maps help you see and analyze how customers interact with your brand. You can improve marketing strategies and customer experiences using them. Let's explore customer journey mapping tools and top templates that you can use to understand customer behavior better and create customer-centric products and services.
A customer journey map is a visual storyline of a customer's experience with a brand—from initial contact to long-term engagement. Such maps are crucial for you to understand and improve customer interactions. With the right tools, creating these maps becomes easier and more effective.
Explore the top five customer journey mapping tools and templates to streamline your design efforts and elevate the customer experience.
But first, let’s get into some basics.
Why Use a Customer Journey Map?
Customer journey maps serve a specific purpose : to show customers' paths with your brand. They reveal insights into customer interactions. Let’s understand how customer journey maps contribute to a more customer-centric business approach.
Matt Snyder, Head of Product and Design at Hivewire, discusses the power of journey mapping.
- Transcript loading…
1. Enhance Customer Understanding
Creating a journey map fosters a deep understanding of your customers. You see their experience through their eyes. This insight helps you create a customer experience design and tailor services to their needs, which will ultimately lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Identify Pain Points
Mapping the customer journey highlights areas where customers face challenges. You can work on solutions as you identify these pain points.
3. Boost Cross-Functional Collaboration
Journey maps bring various teams together, from marketing to product development . This collaboration ensures a cohesive strategy. It can enhance the consistency and quality of customer interactions across all touchpoints.
4. Informed Decisions Based on Real Data
Teams create customer journey maps based on real user data. This helps all stakeholders make informed, strategic decisions that are aligned to ensure a better match between what customers want and what the business offers.
5. Foster Innovation
Journey maps inspire innovation in customer experience. They reveal opportunities and spark new ideas that could lead to breakthroughs in brand engagement. This innovation shapes how you connect with your audience.
How to Create a Customer Journey Map
Creating a journey map is a strategic process that unveils how customers interact with your brand. It provides a detailed overview of their experience, from initial contact to post-purchase engagement. This section guides you through the essential steps to craft a comprehensive customer journey map.
Define Your Map’s Business Goal : Determine the purpose of the map and its target audience. Focus on specific user experiences it aims to address.
Conduct Research : Gather data on customer experiences across all touchpoints. Collect statistical and anecdotal evidence using customer interviews , surveys , and social media insights.
Whether it’s an interview or a survey, the quality of the results depends on the quality of the questions. Watch William Hudson, UX expert and Author, discuss how to write good questions.
Review Touchpoints and Channels : Identify all customer touchpoints and channels. Customers may make online bill payments or do other work through your app.
Make a Persona : Create a customer persona where you understand customer actions, thoughts, feelings, and needs. You must identify barriers and annoyances.
Sketch the Journey : Combine all elements, including touchpoints, timescale, and persona. Illustrate the customer's path through these elements. Note down their emotions at each stage.
Iterate and Refine : Continuously improve your sketch with the aim of an ideal representation of the customer journey.
Share with Stakeholders : Ensure all stakeholders understand the map’s significance. It helps you enhance customer experiences and benefit the organization.
Tools and Software for Customer Journey Mapping
The right tools for customer journey mapping can make a significant difference. We’ll discuss the top five tools and provide a starter template for each tool to help you get started. This synergy ensures you extract maximum value from the tool and its accompanying template. Let's explore some of the top options available.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
© ClickUp, Fair Use
ClickUp stands out for crafting outstanding customer journey maps. You can visualize your workflow using its whiteboard tool and mind map creator. These tools allow you to map out every stage of your customer's journey, including awareness, purchase, repeat buying, and churn.
Additionally, ClickUp provides a variety of pre-made templates for customer journey maps. This saves time and effort. The Mind Maps feature lets you set up detailed workflows and approval processes. It simplifies the task of assigning dependencies for each step.
Best Features
Whiteboard to visualize ideas.
Mind Map Maker for dynamic outlines and flowcharts.
Customizable templates for different use cases.
Variety of views for task management and journey mapping.
Limitations
Numerous customizations can be overwhelming.
A steep learning curve for new users.
Free Forever plan.
Unlimited: $7/month per user.
Business: $12/month per user.
Enterprise: Custom pricing.
ClickUp’s Customer Journey Map Template
ClickUp's customer journey map template helps teams visualize the customer's path. It allows teams to track actions, touchpoints, and experiences for strategic improvements. This tool fosters collaboration, as team leads can oversee the journey for a seamless customer experience from awareness to conversion.
Get the template
© Miro, Fair Use
Miro is a versatile digital whiteboarding platform. It excels in facilitating remote collaboration across teams. You can use Miro for brainstorming , project planning, and customer journey mapping. Its intuitive interface and extensive template library make it a popular choice.
Expansive template library for various use cases.
Real-time collaboration tools for product teams and cross-functional stakeholders.
Integration with popular apps like Slack, Microsoft Team and Jira.
Infinite Canvas offers vast space for mapping complex journeys.
New users may find using Mitro overwhelming due to its extensive features.
Occasional lag with larger boards or when many users collaborate.
Limited customization options in templates.
Basic: Free with limited features.
Starter: $8/month per user.
Business: $16/month per user.
Enterprise: Custom pricing for comprehensive needs.
Miro’s Customer Journey Map Template
This Miro template features a comprehensive customer journey map. It helps teams capture key goals, struggles, actions, touchpoints, and customer feelings. Miro enables collaborative editing and brainstorming to support the process. It makes the mapping exercise highly interactive and efficient.
3. Figjam by Figma
© Figma, Fair Use
Figjam by Figma is an excellent tool for collaborative interface design and prototyping . It lets people and teams create designs from scratch, including customer journey maps.
This tool has a free whiteboarding feature. It's great for sketching designs and wireframes . While mainly for UI / UX design , it stands differently than other customer journey mapping tools.
Modern pen tool for precise design.
Plugins for automating tasks.
Flexible styles and accessible libraries.
Easy export options for sharing designs.
No offline accessibility .
Difficulty in finding specific resources in the community section.
Limited image manipulation options when you create customer journey maps.
Free plan available.
Professional: $12/month per editor.
Organization: $45/month per editor.
Enterprise: $75/month per editor.
Figjam by Figma’s Customer Journey Map Template
This FigJam template includes a profile section that ensures teams focus on the user. Key sections capture user actions, goals, emotions, opportunities, and challenges. You can document the learnings at the end and add insights for future strategies.
4. Lucidchart
© Lucidchart, Fair Use
Lucidchart is an advanced diagramming tool that creates customer journey maps. It enables teams to collaborate and visualize complex processes, systems, and customer interactions.
Integrates data into diagrams for dynamic mapping.
Generates visual representations from data.
Compatible with Google Workspace, Atlassian, Slack, and more.
Visualization filters to highlight specific parts of the customer journey.
Saves and shares customer personas and journey maps.
Performance lags with large, complex diagrams.
Steep learning curve compared to simpler alternatives.
Issues with low-resolution exports.
Free: $0, offers basic features.
Individual: $7.95/month per user for more advanced capabilities.
Team: $9/month per user, designed for team collaboration.
Enterprise: Custom pricing, suitable for larger organizations with specific needs.
Lucidchart’s Customer Journey Map Template
The Lucidchart template features a persona profile, scenarios , and expectations. Lucidchart offers tools like shape libraries, text formatting options, and diagram key creation for a clear, structured journey visualization in the template.
5. UXpressia
©UXpressia, Fair Use
UXpressia is a leading UX tool for creating customer journey maps, personas, and impact journey maps. It enables individuals and teams to collaborate in real-time. Also, UXpressia offers interactive online courses to help teams with their journey-mapping initiatives.
It has 70+ customer journey maps, personas, and impact map templates.
It has a big list of features to make small and big/complex journey maps.
Comes with integrated web analytics to detail the customer experience.
Its presentation mode displays journey maps online.
Allows exports with custom branding.
Limited features and unintuitive workflow
Steep learning curve
Starter: $16/month per user
Pro: $36/month per user
Enterprise: Contact the UXPressia sales team for pricing
UXpressia’s Customer Journey Map Template
UXpressia offers a blank canvas for a customer journey map segmented into stages like Aware, Join, Use, Develop, and Leave. It's structured to define user goals , processes, channels, problems, and experiences. The design encourages adding personas for tailored journey mapping. You can change the positioning of stages and add different colors to each stage.
Design Your Own Customer Journey Map
Use this five-step approach to map your customer’s experience:
Add a Persona : You can create a persona representing a typical customer. Add detailed information about this persona at the top of the map. Include their demographics and characteristics relevant to the journey.
Add Phases : Divide the customer experience into key segments or phases. Each phase column will include the persona's thoughts and actions later.
Add Actions : Next, detail the actions and thoughts of the persona in each phase based on user research findings.
Add Trends : Here, you include quantitative measures that show how the experience changes over time. These could be survey results or any relevant data that suggests fluctuations in the journey.
Add Narrative Facts : This step uses qualitative and quantitative elements from user research. You can add quotes from the persona or significant data points explaining the highs and lows in the journey. You may include any roadblocks the customer faces.
You can use the IxDF Customer Journey Map Template as a handy reference to quickly design your map.
This template helps you map crucial parts of the customer journey to make informed design decisions. It keeps the process simple and uses standard data representation methods.
Customer journey maps don’t need to follow a specific format; you can tailor them to suit your project. Here’s another example, along with a blank template to inspire your map.
The Take Away
Customer journey maps help teams understand the customer's experience and reveal pain points, emotions, and interactions. Use these maps to:
Understand customer experiences to tailor strategies for each stage of their journey.
Consider customer emotions and pain points as significant influencers in their decision-making.
As a visual tool to capture these insights and guide business strategies.
To optimize customer experiences or identify new business opportunities.
These insights help you create a delightful and compelling customer journey.
Where to Learn More
The topic Customer Journey Map: Definition & Process .
Take our course Journey Mapping
Read Hubspot’s Whitepaper on the Customer Journey Map
Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX
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Customer Journey Canvas
What is this canvas.
The Customer Journey Map is a visual representation of the customer's experience throughout their interaction with a business . Its core purpose is to understand the customer's perspective, emotions, and touchpoints at each stage of their journey, helping businesses identify pain points, optimize interactions, and deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience.
Why use this canvas?
Provides a detailed breakdown of the user experience at each phase of the journey, creating better understanding of the user experience
Provides pinpoint accuracy to when and why customers are experiencing pain
Serves as a visual tool that creates linkage between the product/service and the user throughout the experience
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- Research & Design
- Brainstorming
- Strategy & Planning
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Customer Journey Map Canvas
Start mapping your customers' journey with this easy-to-use template.
Create converting customer journeys
A customer's journey is one of the key items any business should be interested in. By mapping your business' customer journeys you'll be able to pinpoint pain spots and areas of success, both for your customers and within your organisation.
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Design a better business
Take a walk through your company’s Customer Journey
September 28 by Patrick van der Pijl
The Customer Journey is a tool to help you get insight into, track, and discuss how a customer experiences a problem you are trying to solve. How does this problem or opportunity show up in their lives? How do they experience it? How do they interact with you?
This tool helps in looking at your products and services the way that your customers experience them. Mapping this Customer Journey will provide you with insights into how customers experience a product or service, as well as how they might be better served or even delighted. This is especially true when co-creating the journey together with your customers or when validating your assumptions with them.
As a designer, it is your job to understand the moments when customers engage so that you can design better experiences for them in the future. What are the circumstances? How do customers feel throughout? What are the moments when the experience can best be improved?
HOW TO USE THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY CANVAS
We recommend first filling in The Persona Canvas before you and your team fill in the Customer Journey Canvas.
We see five different key moments in the Customer Journey of Richard Williams. 1. Richard is not satisfied with his current car. He has an old car and it needs to be repaired regularly. He really wants a new car, and he is thinking about getting an electric car. He would like to live as sustainably as possible and he has a friend who also drives an electric car who is very happy with it. 2. After another reparation he started with searching the internet to look for a new car. Richard also asked his friend and family for advice and experiences with (electric) cars. He is excited about the idea of buying a new car, but he also feels that it takes a lot of time to get clear and enough information about which car fits him best. 3. After a few weeks of research, he made a couple of appointments with car dealers (electric and nonelectric.) He is satisfied about the appointment, but he is not totally convinced which car he should choose. 4. The next step in his journey is comparing his three favorite cars with each other. He tested all three cars, which was really fun. 5. Eventually, after a long thought he decided to go with the electric car, and he is very happy with it!
Of course, no customer journey is totally complete or made without assumptions. Mapping the customer journey is based on the knowledge and insights of your team. This tool simply helps you understand and explore from the customer’s point of view. The customer journey is one to continue to explore in your company.
The Customer Journey Canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer journey maps, you can add real customer data gathered through customer safaris, interviews, and feedback. This will enable you to make informed decisions based on reality. The customer journey is relevant for everyone. Everyone on the team, and in your company, must understand what your customers experience, how they feel, what they struggle with, and how you can improve the experience. The underlying goal: to solve our customers’ problems and make them happy. If you want to make your own personas with your team, have a look at the step by step guide .
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By Patrick van der Pijl - Author
Patrick is CEO of Business Models Inc. and producer of the worldwide bestseller Business Model Generation. He is passionate to help entrepreneurs, leaders, rebels and corporate companies to innovate their business model and design a future strategy.
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Enexis is one of the 7 network operators in the Netherlands. The most important task of a network operator is to install and maintain the energy network in the Netherlands. Enexis carried out a survey among its employees, resulting in eight different personas. We as ISS wanted to start providing a service experience for those […]
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Customer Journey Canvas
Gain insights into what a customer goes through and how they interact with products and services.
Once you know your ideal customer persona, the next step is to delineate their journey. When you define the experience a customer goes through to fulfil a particular need, then you can define how to connect with and support them throughout the journey – whether they are searching, buying or actually using the product or service.
By using the Customer Journey Canvas, you can find out how and why your customers search for, buy and use products and services. This way, you can develop different features and processes that will satisfy them and build loyalty.
Before You start with the Customer Journey Canvas
Before starting with the Customer Journey Canvas you can do some preparations. Focus on your customer. Try to put yourself in their shoes. How do they experience the problem that you are providing solutions for?
3 Advantages of using the Customer Journey Canvas
1. Mapping the customer journey allows companies to study the user experience and learn where improvements can be made
2. Businesses can better understand customer emotions instead of framing customer decisions on their own views
3. The customer journey reveals gaps in customer service and communication which serves as a great foundation for planning and designing
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Customer Journey Canvas
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The Customer Journey canvas is a tool to help you get insight into, track, and discuss how a customer experiences a problem you are trying to solve according to Design a Better Business .
It helps you answer questions such as How does this problem or opportunity show up in their lives? How do they experience it? How do they interact with you?
They also explain that mapping this journey will provide you with insights into how customers experience a product or service, as well as how they might be better served or even delighted. This is especially true when co-creating the journey together with your customers or when validating your assumptions with them. What are the circumstances? How do customers feel throughout? What are the moments when the experience can best be improved?
Customer journeys are not linear. A customer can jump from one phase to another depending on many factors. They interact with some touchpoints and miss out others. It is your job, as a designer, to understand the moments when customers engage so that you can design better experiences for them in the future. This tool helps in looking at your products and services through the lens of the customers.
Canvanizer explains that the customer journey canvas tool supports the audit of existing services and covers not only the period of time associated with the encounter but also the pre-service and post-service phases of the journey. Customer journey maps are typically focused on the front stage encounter from the customer’s point-of-view but as an audit it’d be great to see a complementary version demonstrating the connections with the back stage supporting processes.
And Brucey Industrial Marketing states that they like it because it allows a business to go beyond identifying a customer need, to defining their customer’s changing needs at each key moment (stage) of the overall journey. Businesses can then identify how best to connect with and support their customers throughout the journey.
Of course, no customer journey canvas is totally complete or made without assumptions. Mapping the customer journey is based on the knowledge and insights of your team. This tool simply helps you understand and explore from the customer’s point of view.
The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer journey maps, you can add real customer data gathered through customer safaris, interviews, and feedback. This will enable you to make informed decisions based on reality.
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Expectations ? Insert
- What are (potential) expectations towards the service and/or service provider?
Experiences ? Insert
- What are the individual experiences customers have with the service and/or service provider during the service period?
Great ux Edit [x]
Intuitive, anticipatory
Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction ? Insert
- Customers individual assess the service by comparing service expectations with their personal service experiences
Brainstorming Space ? Insert Brainstorm Mode
- What are you temporary Brainstorming notes?
Acceso a la plataforma Millenium Edit [x]
http://www.millenium.itesm.mx/
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Customer Journey Canvas
The Customer Journey is a tool to help you get insight into, track, and discuss how a customer experiences a problem you are trying to solve.
Use this tool when:
What is it and when should I use it?
The Customer Journey is a tool to help you get insight into, track, and discuss how a customer experiences a problem you are trying to solve. How does this problem or opportunity show up in their lives? How do they experience it? How do they interact with you?
Mapping this journey will provide you with insights into how customers experience a product or service, as well as how they might be better served or even delighted. This is especially true when co-creating the journey together with your customers or when validating your assumptions with them. What are the circumstances? How do customers feel throughout? What are the moments when the experience can best be improved?
Customer journeys are not linear. A customer can jump from one phase to another depending on many factors. They interact with some touch points and miss out others. It is your job, as a designer, to understand the moments when customers engage so that you can design better experiences for them in the future. This tool helps in looking at your products and services through the lens of the customers.
Of course, no customer journey is totally complete or made without assumptions. Mapping the customer journey is based on the knowledge and insights of your team. This tool simply helps you understand and explore from the customer’s point of view.
The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer journey maps, you can add real customer data gathered through customer safaris, interviews, and feedback. This will enable you to make informed decisions based on reality.
The customer journey is relevant for everyone. Everyone on the team, and in your company, must understand what your customers experience, how they feel, what they struggle with, and how you can improve the experience. The underlying goal: to solve our customers’ problems and make them happy.
Tool Overview
Stakeholder personas The customer that experiences the journey is your stakeholder persona.
Goals and expectations The goals and expectations for the stakeholder personas.
Journey moments The moments (‘touch points’) that are memorable for the customer.
Emotional states How does the customer feel when he/she experiences these moments?
Opportunities What are the opportunities to improve the customer experience for these moments?
1 Defince your customers
To make a good customer journey, you need to define who it is for. Who is the customer you are going to follow? And easy way to do this is by using the persona canvas. You don't want to specify generic customer segments here, but start from specific customers, that you know. This will help enrich the journey. Generalizing it comes later.
2 Map the Journey
With the team, come up with moments in the journey of your customer. Think from that customer's perspective. His or her goal in life is not to buy your product or use your service, that is (usually) a means to an end. What end is that? How do they experience the problem you are trying to solve? And do they really experience it? What do they currently do to deal with that problem?
While you are defining moments for the customer, try to place them in an order. That could be a short interval, for example a day in the life of the customer, or a longer duration. The goal is to find the meaningful moments for the customer first, and then to look for the touchpoints where your product or service comes into the picture.
An easy way to build moments is to think of what happened first (what would be the movie frame for that moment?) and then to proceed what the customer thinks or feels, and ultimately what their needs are. Make sure it's their needs, don't sneak your product back in!
3 Challenge your assumptions
Now that you have mapped out a lot of moments, it's time to challenge assumptions. So far, almost everything you have done is an assumption, starting from what you know about the customer, and going all the way to their needs in specific moments. Some of these assumptions are more impactful than others. They need to be checked before you start building product ideas on top of them. To do this, you need to go out of the building, and run experiments.
Show your journey to actual or potential customers, and see if they recognize themselves. What is their journey? Map it out with them. Once you have done that, you will start to see patterns and learn what the actual needs are that they have. Sometimes they may not even know it themselves!
4 Next Steps
Check the following items to see if you have worked enough on the Customer Journey.
- Was the persona specific enough?
- Is the journey complete? Are any key moments missing?
- Ask yourself where the journey really starts and ends. Are there moments before and after that you should include?
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Elliot Page Boards New Canvas VR Adaptation of Hugh Ryan’s ‘When Brooklyn Was Queer’ (EXCLUSIVE)
By Naman Ramachandran
Naman Ramachandran
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Elliot Page has boarded XR entertainment studio New Canvas’ virtual reality -based series inspired by Hugh Ryan’s acclaimed book, “When Brooklyn Was Queer,” as an executive producer.
The series dives into LGBTQ history from the mid-1850s to the present day, celebrating identity, resilience and achievements against adversity. It will be directed by Emmy winner Yasmin Elayat (“Zero Days VR”) and written by Agnes Borinsky (trans coming-of-age novel “Sasha Masha”).
Joining Page as executive producers are author Ryan, Matt Jordan Smith and Tuck Dowrey of Pageboy Productions as well as Maor Azran and Dan Adler of MA Productions.
“Our company’s mission is to tell elevated, entertaining, original intersectional and socially responsible stories that explore themes like generational queerness. As a creative company that pushes boundaries, it is exciting for us to work with New Canvas to bring queer stories into the world of XR for the first time,” said Page and Jordan Smith, head of development for Pageboy Productions. “We believe making quality art that portrays varied, authentic experiences elicits empathy, understanding and ultimately has the power to change hearts and minds.”
Wadooah Wali, chief strategy officer and executive producer at New Canvas, added: “‘When Brooklyn Was Queer’ isn’t just a book; it’s a beacon for an extraordinary VR adaptation that enables us to connect the past with the present. We are thrilled to have the incredible talent and passion that both Yasmin and Agnes bring to the project. This team is uniquely positioned to transform these profound stories inspired by real people and events that will immerse audiences in bold new ways for the very first time. It’s both our joy and obligation to honor these historical truths, presenting them in a dynamic new medium that goes well beyond what can be achieved with traditional, flatscreen entertainment.”
Borinsky added, “Hugh’s book upended my assumptions about the many forms of queerness that have long pulsed through our history. With this amazing team, we get to overturn conventions about how stories get told and how we position ourselves relative to the past.”
Production commences later this year.
MA Productions is represented by CAA, Paradigm and Donaldson Callif Perez LLP. Page and Pageboy Productions are repped by UTA, VIE Entertainment and Morris Yorn Barnes; Ryan is repped by CAA and Smith is repped by Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson.
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COMMENTS
The Customer Journey Map Canvas - 9 Steps To Powerful CX Design. The Customer Journey Map Canvas is a simple way to research and map the goals, gains and pains of the customer journey. The canvas links to the Value Proposition canvas created by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. At the bottom of this article, please share your thoughts ...
Map out your customer journey. Start mapping the current or future states of your customer journey in a template you've chosen from Canva. Organize in the diagram all the insights and touchpoints you've gathered and listed as a team earlier. You can arrange them in the most visually appealing way you can think of.
Here's our beginner customer journey mapping framework to help you create your first complete map in 2 and ½ working days: Day 1: preliminary customer journey mapping work. Day 2: prep and run your customer journey mapping workshop. Final ½ day: wrap up and share your results.
A customer journey canvas is a board that documents the user's journey through your product/service. It is similar to a storyboard and maps out your user's journey through different stages and emotions. Customer journey canvases are similar to Customer Journey Map s but diagram elements on the surface level before diving deeper. In this ...
The Customer Journey Canvas is a template to facilitate this process. The big deal about service design thinking is that it can help a business to stand out from its competitors by offering value-added services that will heighten customer satisfaction and develop brand loyalty. As a consumer, you might have come across both retailers selling ...
Mapping the customer journey is based on the knowledge and insights of your team. This tool simply helps you understand and explore from the customer's point of view. The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why.
A Customer Journey Map Template is where you can see your customer experience, understanding their pain points so you can build products they love. ... cumbersome, and complex, and evaluating them can be a real challenge. Let a lean canvas streamline things and break down your business idea for you and your team. A great tool or entrepreneurs ...
Five best practices per stage of the customer journey. With the following five best practices you can get the most out of the customer journey canvas. Stage 1. Awareness. In the first stage of the customer journey, your customer is aware of a problem or challenge and is looking for information that will help them.
Present the CJM's purpose & goals. Now it's time to kick off the customer journey map exercise. Start by speaking to the purpose and goals you've identified for the map. It's important to make sure your team understands what you're trying to accomplish, or else you run the risk of the session getting off track.
ClickUp's customer journey map template helps teams visualize the customer's path. It allows teams to track actions, touchpoints, and experiences for strategic improvements. This tool fosters collaboration, as team leads can oversee the journey for a seamless customer experience from awareness to conversion. 2.
1. Visualizing the user experience. Customer journey mapping provides a tangible way to measure and understand the customer experience, which can often be somewhat abstract and challenging to grasp fully. By visualizing this entire process, product managers receive a clear and comprehensive view of the product from the user's perspective.
845 templates. Create a blank Customer Journey Map Whiteboard. Stakeholder Map Team Whiteboard in Green Yellow Purple Trendy Stickers Style. Whiteboard by Canva Creative Studio. Brand Guidelines and Brand Kit Team Whiteboard. Whiteboard by Canva Creative Studio.
The Customer Journey Map Canvas is a powerful tool that visualizes the path customers take with your brand, from the first point of contact to the final purchase and beyond. This article delves into the intricacies of using this canvas effectively, ensuring you capture every touchpoint, emotion, and opportunity. ...
The customer journey canvas is a clear overview of the entire service design process. You are likely to refer to it again and again because there are always improvements to be made and problems to be solved. An element of surprise is always possible. When it presents itself to you as a challenge to your business, the customer journey canvas ...
What is this canvas? The Customer Journey Map is a visual representation of the customer's experience throughout their interaction with a business.Its core purpose is to understand the customer's perspective, emotions, and touchpoints at each stage of their journey, helping businesses identify pain points, optimize interactions, and deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience.
Customer Journey Map Whiteboard in Dark Blue Light Blue Simple Colorful Style. Whiteboard by Canva Creative Studio. 1 of 15. Blue and Green Modern Customer Experience Presentation. Presentation by Carleigh Emelie. Doodle Sketch Customer Journey Map Brainstorm. Brainstorm by Smartly Designed.
Keep track of your customer journey, it will keep bringing value. Building and maintaining an accurate customer journey (backed up by real world evidence) is a vital tool to find new possibilities in your business model - not only in terms of ideas but also in terms of quality of execution. Keeping track of the behaviours customers actually ...
Customer Journey Map Canvas. Start mapping your customers' journey with this easy-to-use template. Download the canvas. Create converting customer journeys. A customer's journey is one of the key items any business should be interested in. By mapping your business' customer journeys you'll be able to pinpoint pain spots and areas of success ...
The Customer Journey Canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer ...
3 Advantages of using the Customer Journey Canvas. 1. Mapping the customer journey allows companies to study the user experience and learn where improvements can be made. 2. Businesses can better understand customer emotions instead of framing customer decisions on their own views. 3.
The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer ...
You are testing a PUBLIC demo canvas. If you want to use it for "real" private data, please create your own private canvas here. You can also copy this canvas, click here. Try out Canvanizer 2.0 now! Customer Journey Demo Canvas (Edit in Canvanizer 2.0...) |. [email protected] | Preview in Canvanizer 2.0. Share Canvas. Canvas History.
The customer journey canvas helps make things real. Through the mapping exercise you can identify where customers get stuck, where they have great experiences, and why. One outcome of using this tool with your team will be the so-called low hanging fruit that you can deliver on immediately. Once you have co-created and assembled the customer ...
CX shift. Transitioning from customer journey to customer experience is crucial for brand loyalty and growth. Prioritize emotional connections in today's competitive landscape. Journey essentials ...
Elliot Page has boarded XR entertainment studio New Canvas' virtual reality -based series inspired by Hugh Ryan's acclaimed book, "When Brooklyn Was Queer," as an executive producer. The ...