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How to Improve Customer Journey on Instagram: Part 1

Home Blog Digital Marketing Planning & Strategy How to Improve Customer Journey on Instagram: Part 1

Updated on March 4th 2020

Hugh Beaulac | 10 min read

1. Awareness

In 2019, consumers can discover hundreds of items in a day without leaving their homes. There is no need to visit brick-and-mortar stores to spot things you want to purchase. Moreover, 70% of buyers trust online reviews  and friends recommendations more than branded copies. Once a potential customer wants to find a certain product to satisfy his or her needs and wants, online searching begins: as specified in one report by Pew Research Center , 84% of U.S. online shoppers review at least one social media site before making a purchase. The customer journey starts with customer awareness, so companies should know how to hook potential clients and convince them to consider their products as an option when making purchase decisions.

Show off your product on Instagram posts and Stories

• Use lifestyle photos to depict products without keeping the main focus on them
• Share carousel posts to show your product from different angles
• Add Instagram Stories to reach more followers

Your customers have to know everything about your product before buying it, so it’s important to tell them everything they may want to understand about your company, products, and benefits.

Collaborate with influencers to build trust

• Use a social listening tool   to find opinion leaders within your niche
• Keep track of your engagement rate
• Work with influencers who share your views

Boasting about your product’s benefits it’s not enough to grab your audience’s attention these days. Modern customers crave recommendations, so working with niche-focused influencers is a proven way to spread a word about your product.

2. Consideration

Create Stories Highlights to make the navigation easier

• Think about what new followers may wonder about and group Stories Highlights to answer their questions
• Create a descriptive title within 15 characters (you can also use emojis)
• If possible, add clickable links to Stories so that your followers can learn everything in-app

Since followers want to learn more about your product during this stage, you need to help them without easily and quickly. Thus, it’s important to keep all relevant information below your bio – and Stories Highlights is a perfect tool for it.

Publish UGC

• Offer discounts and perks for sharing UGC
• Engage with UGC posts by like and commenting
• Share the best posts and tag authors

It’s in human’s nature to follow a crowd, so potential customers will always choose a product other people buy. To influence buying behavior, post UGC on Instagram and your followers will be more likely to complete purchases.

Run a contest with branded freebies

• Think about the rules and gifts for your contest
• Announce your contest in advance to attract more participants
• Interact with all participants (like and comment on their posts) to build relationships with loyal followers
• Ask winners about their feedback on your product after the contest

If you have interested people in your company, that’s great. If you have convinced followers to purchase your products, that’s even better. While your potential customers are hesitating, you can take the bull by the horns and provide them with an opportunity to get your product for free. Over the long haul, the payoff is huge.

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What is a customer journey map and how to make your own [examples included]

Written by by Kiran Shahid

Published on  November 2, 2023

Reading time  12 minutes

Do you know what your customers see and do before they purchase from you?

They see your ads, interact with you on social media and explore your website before they buy. All these interactions—from the first ad impression to every “Please help” DM customers send—define your customer journey. To keep up with it all and better inform your social media marketing strategy , create a customer journey map as a blueprint to help you understand your customers at each stage.

Let’s explore what customer journey mapping is and how it helps your brand.

Social Customer Care by Sprout Social

What is customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of each point of interaction your customers have with your company. You can style the map like a flowchart, timeline, table or even on sticky notes.

Creating the map is a great internal exercise. Along the way, you might find pain points or touchpoints you didn’t know existed. A basic customer journey map includes the buying stages (and support touchpoints) a customer goes through.

More detailed maps include:

• actions your customers take
• good and bad emotions your customers experienced
• departments involved in customer touchpoints
• content types you serve your customers
• solutions to pain points

What is a customer touchpoint?

A touchpoint on the customer journey map is the point of interaction a customer has with your brand. It doesn’t need to be a two-way interaction. Seeing a social media ad, getting a branded newsletter and asking a friend for a product recommendation are all touchpoints.

Customers may experience emotions and actions at touchpoints. When someone asks for product recommendations, people might mention your brand. You might not serve that recommendation to them directly but someone still introduces you to a potential customer.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

A customer journey map puts the customer first by giving you a deeper understanding of how your customers interact with your brand. This enable you to make better decisions and improve customer experiences.

When coupled with social media market research , they help brands:

• Provide an overview of the resources your customers use . This helps determine the ROI of customer-centric engagement and service. For example, if blogs are your highest traffic sources, investing more in those channels makes sense.
• Identify content gaps . Pain points without solutions are an excellent source for content ideation and development . If customers need help with a specific product issue, for example, but find limited guidance, create in-depth video tutorials to address this pain point.
• Identify inefficiencies . Maybe some processes are repetitive, or some solutions cause more friction. If your customers have trouble checking out due to a complicated form, for example, simplify it to reduce cart abandonment rates.
• Generate marketing campaign ideas . A clear understanding of customer motivations and journey stages creates targeted campaigns. You can provide them with relevant content and incentives to move them closer to a purchase.
• Guide multiple departments. Streamline content creation, social customer care strategy and messaging optimization across every touchpoint. Departments use the customer journey map as a central reference to ensure a consistent and customer-focused approach.
• Enhance customer communication . Customer journey maps reveal critical touchpoints, like social media interactions, for timely and meaningful engagement. In fact, The Sprout Social Index™ shows 51% of customers believe the most memorable brands on social respond to customers.

Every business and industry has its unique customer journey maps, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Recently, our social team talked about using social media for the customer journey in the auto industry. Watch the video below to hear their discussion on touchpoints, customer experience and how legacy brands are going beyond traditional tactics like targeted ads to tell their story.

It’s a great example of how industry-specific customer journey follows the fundamentals but also has touchpoints specific to them.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is like a detailed travel itinerary for your customer’s experience with your brand. It includes elements like:

1. The buying process

The buying process is the step-by-step path a customer follows to make a purchase decision. It tells you where customers drop off or face obstacles during making purchases.

Use prospecting tools, content management systems (CMS) and behavior analytics tools to gather data. Facebook Shops, Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop data also provide valuable insights into how customers find products and engage with content via social commerce .

Pro tip : Categorize the journey into stages like awareness, consideration and decision to map these steps horizontally on the customer journey map.

Don’t forget to integrate feedback mechanisms, such as customer surveys or user testing. These offer qualitative insights into the buying process. Understanding the “why” behind customer behavior can be as important as knowing the “what.”

2. Emotions

Emotions show how customers feel at different touchpoints in their interaction with your brand. Emotions heavily influence purchase decisions and brand loyalty which is exactly why it’s so important to include them.

Think about it: When someone has a great experience with your brand and feels happy, they’re more likely to buy from you again. On the flip side, if they feel frustrated or unhappy, they’ll knock on your competitor’s door.

Use surveys or feedback forms to ask customers how they felt during their experience. You might have come across these smileys during your own shopping experience:

These scales are a convenient way to gauge how your customers feel at any point.

Pay attention to what they say on social media and in reviews. You can tell if they’re happy or upset by their tone.

Tools like Sprout Social use AI-driven sentiment analysis to dig into social listening data to give you insights on what people think about your brand.

These insights are handy when creating emotional marketing campaigns . When you know how customers feel, take actionable steps to solve any negative experiences and encourage positive ones.

3. User actions

User actions are the steps customers take when they interact with your brand. They include steps like visiting your website, clicking on a product, adding items to their cart or signing up for your newsletter.

Actions highlight what people do at each stage. Each of these actions tells you something about what customers are interested in and how close they are to making a purchase.

Analytics tools for your website or app are your best bet for such data. These tools show you which pages customers visit, what they click on and where they drop off.

Once you have this information, tailor your marketing efforts and content to align with the actions customers take at each stage.

4. User research

User research examines what customers search for or where they turn for information during the buying process. This part of the customer journey map helps you understand how customers gather information.

For example, in the awareness stage, buyers often rely on search engines like Google to research solutions to their problems. But it’s not just about where they go—it’s about what they’re looking for. Knowing their specific research topics allows you to address their pain points.

What’s the trick? Keep an eye on what customers search for online. Tracking keywords and phrases they use on search engines, as well as social media market research are good places to start.

Also, monitor discussions and conversations to get a deeper understanding of the questions, concerns and topics that are top-of-mind for your potential customers.

The key is to use this information to provide potential customers with what they need at each stage. Targeted content delivery positions your brand as a valuable source of information.

5. Solutions

This section outlines the actions and strategies your brand implements to address customer pain points and improve their overall experience.

It documents the specific solutions or improvements applied at each stage of the customer journey. These include steps like changes to website design that resolve issues and improve the customer experience.

It visualizes how your brand responds to customer needs and challenges at different touchpoints. Besides that, it’s a good reference to ensure your team implements the solutions and refines them to increase customer satisfaction.

What are the 7 steps to map the customer journey?

A strategic approach to building a map ensures you capture every touchpoint, anticipate customer desires and address potential pain points. Here are seven steps to build a journey map unique to your customers and business needs.

1. Set your goals

What do you want to get out of this process? And why does it matter to your business? Knowing your goals sets the stage for how you assemble your map.

Some examples of goals include:

• Identify the top three customer pain points. Use these pain points to create content.
• Understand customer interests and motivations to develop better products and services.
• Total the cost of customer interactions to set a better social media budget .

2. Decide on a customer journey map type

There are several different customer journey maps and each one has its advantages. When you decide which map to work with, you know which details to focus on.

These are four of the most common types of customer journey maps: current state, future state, day in the life and service blueprint. We’ll go further into detail on each one later on.

Understanding your goals and where your brand stands in its evolution will guide you in selecting the appropriate map type.

3. Create and define your customer personas

Which customers will you focus on? It’s difficult to map a customer journey if you don’t have a customer in mind. Customer personas are fictional characters that represent each of your target customer groups. They’re detailed with everything from demographics to interests to buying behavior.

If you’ve already created social media personas to understand your audience, you’re more than halfway there. But if you haven’t, then our buyer persona template  or Xtensio’s will be useful. To really get to know someone’s purchase decisions and shopping processes, interview existing customers.

Pro tip: If you have distinctively different personas—such as, if you serve both a B2C and B2B market—set up different customer journey maps.

4. Break it down: touchpoints and stages

The customer journey map is divided into stages that usually fit within the funnel illustrated above. List out the stages to begin. Next, list out the main customer touchpoints that exist for your company. When you’re done with both lists, place the touchpoints into the different stages.

To get even more detailed, assign department owners to each touchpoint. You can identify where certain social media channels fit into the mix. And, you can assign predicted customer sentiment or emotions to different stages of the journey. It’s up to you how detailed you want the map to be.

5. Gather data and customer feedback

You need rock-solid data on how customers interact with your brand to create an accurate customer journey map. Focus on these three aspects:

Analyze existing data

Jump into the data you already have—more specifically website performance, chats with customer support and sales records. This information can tell you loads about how customers act, what they like and what frustrates them.

This quantitative data offers a foundational perspective on how customers interact with your brand, helping you identify both strengths and areas of improvement.

Conduct customer interviews

Get personal with one-on-one chats with customers. Ask them about their experiences, what bugs them and what they expect when they deal with your brand. These talks reveal qualitative insights that numbers can’t, like understanding the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer journey.

Create surveys and questionnaires

Turn to surveys and questionnaires for a more structured and broader approach to gathering feedback. Send them out to a bunch of customers and get structured feedback. Ask questions about their journey with your brand, how happy they are and where they think things could get better.

A combination of these three aspects gives you a 360-degree view of what your customers really experience with your brand.

6. Test and identify pain points

To confirm your customer touchpoints, you probably checked in on various departments and spoke to customers. This is great work but you need to take another step further: test it yourself. Go through the customer journey from the viewpoint of the customer.

While you’re testing the journey, keep an eye out for challenges, confusion or any frustrating moments. For example, if the website takes forever to load, if instructions aren’t clear or if reaching customer support is a headache, make detailed notes of these issues.

It’s also a smart move to collect feedback from both colleagues and customers who’ve gone through the journey. This way, you double-check and confirm your findings for a more complete picture.

A hands-on approach ensures your customer journey map reflects the real-world experience and equips you to take targeted actions to improve the overall customer journey.

7. Make changes and find solutions

So your map is complete. What’s next? You need to find or create solutions to the pain points you identified in the previous step.

Now’s the time to check in on the goals you established in step one and make the moves to smooth out the journey. Give yourself time and space to implement some of the solutions, whether a quarter or six months, and check back on the map to update it.

As you put these changes into action, make sure to watch your customer journey map closely. Don’t forget to keep it up to date to show the improvements and how they affect the customer experience. This keeps your customer journey map fresh and super useful for steering your brand toward delivering an exceptional customer experience.

4 types of customer journey maps and examples

Let’s take a look at the four most common customer journey maps and examples of each.

1. Current state

Current state customer journey maps are like an audit. You document how your customers experience their buying and service paths in your company’s current state. These are especially helpful to establish a baseline for your customer service experience.

Take a look at this simplified current state customer journey map from Nielsen-Norman.

The map follows the journey of “Jumping Jamie” as they navigate the process of switching to a different mobile plan. The map defines the current journey into four stages. Apart from the journey, it also highlights opportunities and metrics to track.

Current state maps are fantastic for sharing user frustrations with all departments. This helps you get everyone on board with investing in solutions and brainstorming ways to address user pain points.

2. Future state

Future state customer journey maps follow the same format as current state maps except they represent the ideal journey. You can use them alongside your current state maps to identify painpoints and areas to improve.

Here’s an example of a future state journey map:

Why does this visual work? It covers different states, feelings and even touchpoints in a cohesive format.

The map visualizes the best-case scenario to create a north star vision for your brand. It aligns your efforts toward achieving the ideal customer journey.

3. Day-in-the-life

Day-in-the-life customer journey maps outline one of your persona’s schedules as they go about their day. The interactions may or may not involve your company. Creating one of these maps helps you identify the best times and areas to interact with your customer.

Here’s a “day-in-the-life” visual from Pipedrive.

The map doesn’t just highlight when the persona does something, but it also highlights different touchpoints and the different people they interact with throughout the day. And, notice those thumbs ups and downs? Those highlight how the child feels during different activities too.

4. Service blueprint

A service blueprint customer journey map focuses solely on when you provide customer service. It ignores components like ads that might exist in other maps.

Miro, a collaborative online whiteboard for teams, created the above map with a bank in mind. You’ll notice how this map is only about a customer’s visit to the bank. This type of map helps brands look at individual service areas and interactions. It’s a macro version of the current and future state maps.

Get started with customer journey map templates

Creating a customer journey map doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are plenty of free and paid templates out there to help you create one. If you think you’ll need more guidance or many maps, some companies offer special software to design a custom map. Build your first journey map or improve your existing one with these options.

• Current state template , provided by Bright Vessel.

• Customer journey map template by Moqups, a design and collaboration tool.

• Service blueprint template by Miro

• Customer journey map template by Mural, a planning tool.

• UXPressia’s customer journey map online tool , made specifically to create presentation-ready customer journey maps.

Create a strong foundation with a well-integrated customer journey map

A customer journey map gives you the recipe for crafting personalized, impactful interactions that build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

When you know what they are and why they’re important, it’s time to make yours. Use data to create a solid customer journey map that exceeds customer expectations at every touchpoint.

Check out how you can turn your B2B social media data into a revenue-driving powerhouse and create a memorable brand.

• Customer Care
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The role of AI in creating a more human customer experience

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How to use voice of customer data to grow your brand

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How to map a social media customer journey

• June 5, 2023

Ever wondered what path your customers take before they finally make a purchase? No, we are not talking about spying or tailgating your customers. In marketing, the process is called mapping your customer journey. It is like following footprints in the sand, tracing their steps through the online world. In this article, we will share how you can map your social media customer journey and use it to improve your conversion rates. 

Let us begin by unraveling the mystery of customer journeys by looking at the basics first.

Understanding the customer journey. 

Before we start mapping your customer’s footsteps on social media, it is important to understand customer journey. 

Think of it like a pathway of all customer experiences, from the first time they discover your brand to interaction, from making a purchase online to interacting with you on social media and eventually becoming a loyal customer. 

The customer journey is the story of your customer’s experience regarding their behavior, emotions, perceptions, challenges, and actions while interacting with your brand. Each stage changes their opinion about your company or business. 

Now, going back to our discussion, how do you add social media to your customer journey mix? 

Social media is an important growth medium where brands interact with customers (and vice versa). Your potential customers spend hours daily on social media, discovering new products, interacting with their favorite brands, and sharing opinions about their experience with businesses as reviews. 

• 54% of consumers use social media to research products online; 
• 71% are more likely to purchase a product/service based on social media referrals or reviews; 
• 29% of social media users are likely to buy on the same day they discover a product on social media.

Components of a social media customer journey map. 

Social media is important for understanding the customers and even growing brand in 2023. But how do we utilize this information to succeed? 

First, we must break down the social media customer journey into smaller components. Think of it this way — the map will give you an understanding of who your customers are, what they are looking for, where they are most active, how they are influenced, their preferences, likes/dislikes, and other elements. Here is how it works: 

First up, we have customer personas. They are the heart and soul of any customer journey map. They represent your typical customer, their preferences, behaviors, and needs. Then comes the journey stages – stages your customer moves through, like awareness, consideration, decision, and loyalty.

Next, we have touchpoints or interactions your customer has with your brand on social media. It could be viewing an Instagram post, clicking on a Facebook ad, or engaging with a Tweet.

Then comes understanding what actions customers take at each stage and how they feel. Are they confused, excited, or frustrated? These emotions can significantly impact their journey.

Lastly, we have pain points. These are the challenges or issues your customers face at each stage. It is like the villain in our customer’s journey story, the obstacle they need to overcome to reach their goal.

Steps to create a social media customer journey map. 

Now that we have outlined all the elements, let us get down to why you are here — how to map a social media customer journey. Here is a step-by-step framework for creating your very own social media customer journey map:

Define your customer personas. 

Think of this as character-building. You need to create a visual representation of who your customers are. Ask yourself: 

• Who are your customers? What is their age? 
• What do they like? What are their hobbies
• Where do they live? 
• How do they spend their free time? 
• Which social media platforms they are most active on? 

For instance, if you are a D2C eCommerce brand, your persona could be shopper Susan, a 30-year-old who loves Tiktok and keeps searching for new outfits to buy online. 

Outline the stages of the journey. 

Just like in a story, there are different stages in your customer’s journey. 

They start at the awareness stage, where they first discover your brand; move to the consideration stage, where they are evaluating if your product meets their needs; then to the decision stage, where they decide to purchase; and finally, the loyalty stage, where they become repeat customers.

Identify the touchpoints. 

Once you have outlined the stages, it is time to identify the times, places, and situations where customers interact with your brand. It could be a sponsored ad on Facebook, a product review on YouTube, or a customer testimonial on Instagram. 

One amazing example of identifying touchpoints comes from Spotify. They use data research and customer surveys to discover where customers interact with their brand and understand how users feel at each point, identifying pain points and areas of improvement.​

Highlight customer actions and emotions. 

The next two steps are an extension of the previous step. You need to understand what your customer is doing at each stage, how he behaves, and what they feel. 

For example, customers might feel curious or excited at the awareness stage when they first discover your social media page and see that you have a product that can solve their problem. Following this, they can visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, or buy your product immediately. 

Identify pain points and opportunities. 

After your customers have interacted with your brand, you should find their pain points. You need to dig deeper and find out what challenges they are facing. And most importantly, how can you help them overcome these challenges? 

Maybe they are having trouble navigating through your social media page and finding the relevant product category link, or they are confused by your product options on the Facebook shop. Once you have identified these pain points, you can brainstorm solutions to improve their experience. This can further improve your customer experience on the website, too. 

Draft and validate the map. 

Once you have marked out the components, it is time to bring everything on a single canvas — the persona, the stages, touchpoints, customer actions, behavior, perceptions, emotions, and more. 

You can use a simple mind map or a whiteboard to create a visual map highlighting everything. By the end of this activity, you will have a clear idea about how customers discover you and buy from you. 

In the following sections, there are a few real-life examples of customer journey maps to be inspired. Also, did you know you need to validate your customer map using online surveys or feedback tools? 

You can also validate the map by conducting market research on autopilot using GapScout. Gapscout scans online reviews and gives detailed insights into customers’ feelings about your brand or business online. 

Examples of social media customer journey maps.

To help you visualize what a customer journey map looks like, let us look at some real-world examples. 

First is Spotify’s customer journey map. They wanted to improve the music-sharing experience, so they created a map to understand where music-sharing fit into the customer experience, as below. 

With this information, they could identify pain points and make the music-sharing experience smoother and more seamless​.

Similarly, TurboTax created a customer journey map when launching a new product, Personal Pro. 

They used data research, customer surveys, and key conversations with tax professionals to understand how the product fits into customers’ lives. This allowed them to see and address pain points to improve the customer experience​​. 

Optimize your social media customer journey map using Gapscout.

Creating a social media customer journey map is great, but how do you keep it fresh and aligned with evolving customer expectations? 

GapScout is a valuable tool for mapping the customer journey and keeping it relevant. Scanning online platforms and gathering reviews offers real-time data about customers’ experiences and sentiments at different stages of their journey. Here are several ways it could be useful:

• Understanding customer sentiment at each stage: By analyzing reviews and comments, GapScout can help you understand how customers feel at each stage of their journey. For example, if many customers are expressing frustration about a particular aspect of your product during the consideration phase, this might be a pain point that needs addressing.
• Identifying common paths through the customer journey: GapScout can help identify common patterns in customer behavior, enabling you to map out customers’ most common journeys when interacting with your brand.
• Spotting gaps and opportunities: By collecting and analyzing a large amount of customer data, GapScout can help identify gaps in your current customer journey where customers might be dropping off or experiencing difficulties. These could represent opportunities for improvement.
• Personalizing the customer journey: Understanding customer sentiment and behavior can help personalize the customer journey. For example, if GapScout identifies that certain customers often express a particular need or preference, you could use this insight to tailor your communications and offerings to this group.
• Measuring the impact of changes: If you make changes to your customer journey based on insights from GapScout, you can then use social listening tools to track the impact of these changes. Are customers happier? Are they progressing more smoothly through their journey?

Next steps…

Remember, creating a social media customer journey map is not just about understanding your customers better. It is about improving their experience and making their journey as seamless and enjoyable as possible, and GapScout can help you in this regard. 

So, create your social media customer journey map, and do not forget to use Gapscout to make your journey map more meaningful. 

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Customer journey mapping 101 (+ free templates)

When I was a kid, I remember watching my parents switch between different credit cards to get the best rewards for a particular purchase. They almost always pulled out the American Express first because (as they explained to me) the base reward rate was higher than even the sector-specific perks offered by other cards. Twenty years later, when I decided to get a high-end credit card, Amex was the first one that came to mind.

Customer journey mapping is the process of planning out people's awareness of and relationship to your brand, starting with their very first impression—even if, as in my case, that impression is made a full decade before they can actually use your product.

Table of contents: 

Customer journey map template

Parts of a journey map, stages of the customer journey, advanced customer journey mapping tips, types of journey maps, customer journey mapping example, what is a customer journey map.

A customer journey is the path a person takes to move from general awareness to prospective customer to (in the ideal scenario) brand loyalist . A customer journey map is a visual document that traces this path through all of the interactions, or touchpoints, a person will have with a brand.

Think back to any recent purchase of your own, and try to trace your own customer journey:

When and where was your first contact with the product or service?

How many channels of communication with the company did you have available?

How was the contact you had, if any? Was it personal or formulaic?

Were your problems, if any, solved? If so, were they solved in a timely manner?

What do you now know about the brand besides the product or service itself?

Of course, every customer is different. But you can't create a customer journey map for every individual—and you don't need to. Instead, you can segment your audience into customer personas and create a map for each. 

The customer journey vs. the user journey vs. the buyer journey

What's the difference between the customer, user, and buyer journeys?

The customer journey is split up into two parts: the buyer journey and the user journey. The buyer journey covers everything up to the point of purchase. After that point, the customer becomes a user, and all of their experiences are part of the user journey. 

Benefits of customer journey mapping

In a world where there are multiple high-quality options for just about every product on the market, brands need to foster long-term relationships with their customers to prevent them from being poached by competitors who offer a better customer experience .

Here are the main benefits of the customer journey mapping process:

Touchpoint optimization: With a clear understanding of what your touchpoints are and where they occur, you can track and adjust them based on how they perform.

Enhanced customer experience insights: Through customer profiling and a better overview of all the touchpoints that make a journey, you can acquire more precise and actionable customer experience insights.

Improved product development: Thoughtful and intentional journey planning creates more opportunities for meaningful customer feedback, which gives businesses better information to improve their product.

The customer journey map includes additional details within each phase (which I'll discuss in more detail later) to help you strategically plan your customers' touchpoints and move them closer to a purchase.

This customer journey map template is separated into five stages along the leftmost column, with guiding questions to help plan the customer's experience in each stage.

Below, we'll walk through each part of the customer journey map and how to use it. 

If you're already familiar with journey mapping, you can start filling in the template right away. Otherwise, here's a quick walkthrough of what goes in each section.

What is the customer doing?

In this section, you'll jot down the main things that the prospect, lead, or customer is doing during this stage. For example, if you're a personal trainer, an awareness stage key step might include something like "Prospect wants to get in shape." Or if you offer an email newsletter app, an expansion and advocacy stage key step might be "Customer upgrades their plan." 

Each stage will likely have more than one key step or milestone—that's good. You should be specific enough to be able to create touchpoints, content, and marketing campaigns geared toward each milestone.

What is the customer thinking?

Next, put yourself in the customer's shoes and think about what questions they might have at each stage. In the awareness stage, it might be things like "How can I do X better?" or "What is [your product name]?" In the consideration phase, questions like "Is this worth my time/money?" or "Will this help me solve my problem?" will come to the forefront. 

Where and how could the customer encounter our brand?

After you've outlined what your customer is thinking at each stage, align each question with the relevant touchpoint that could address each concern.

Not all existing touchpoints will be a part of the planned customer journey . For example, I seriously doubt that American Express's customer journey map includes a milestone labeled "Customer gets a free ride because her friend has an Amex card and gets $15 in Uber cash each month." However, each question must have at least one touchpoint that directly and specifically addresses the customer's needs and questions at that point.

What touchpoint opportunities are missing?

When you have a question or milestone that doesn't have a corresponding touchpoint, you've found a gap in your customer journey. That means customers at this stage are going to be left with unmet needs and unanswered questions, and may look more seriously at competitor products as a result. It's essential to develop touchpoints to fill this gap and prevent losing potential customers at a key milestone.

The customer journey map can be split into five phases: awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and brand loyalty.

Customers can't decide whether or not they want your product if they don't know that it exists. In the earliest phase of the customer journey, a business's goal is to reach the individual and, ultimately, attract them to the brand.

For a small- to medium-sized business, the work of this stage involves reaching out directly to consumers via channels like advertising , SEO , and social media . For a household name like American Express, this stage is dedicated to ensuring the impression their brand makes is a positive one. 

Consideration

Once potential customers are aware of your brand, the next phase they enter is called "consideration" or "research." This is when the customer's perspective shifts from simple awareness of your brand's existence to an understanding of the value that you have to offer them. 

During this phase, the brand's goal is to design touchpoints that demonstrate to the user why their product can solve a problem or improve an experience that's specific to that person. This can be done using guides and how-tos, partnerships with other brands , and ads that portray a customer problem being solved.

Some businesses also include a mini-stage called "Intent" or "Onboarding," when the customer has decided they're interested in the product and is testing it out. The company's goal in this stage is simply to provide an exceptional user experience—they want to make sure the product works as intended and the customer's questions and requests are handled well.

A business can identify customers that are primed for conversion based on behavior in the consideration stage. Someone who signs up for a newsletter isn't a hot sales prospect quite yet, but when they start opening more emails and spending more time on the site, that's when brands know they're ready for a conversion push.

Types of conversions vary depending on the type of business and industry. Examples of conversion pushes include:

An abandoned cart email pushing a browsing shopper to complete a purchase

A physical mail offer pushing a potential customer to open an account

A seasonal campaign highlighting why a product is perfect for a particular holiday, celebration, or event

When a conversion is successful, a potential buyer becomes an actual customer. The goal in the retention stage is to demonstrate to the customer why they were right to make their purchase, and set them up to make more purchases or renew services in the future.

The retention stage is also where the user experience or user journey begins. The company's job in this phase, then, is to provide the best possible user experience. Easy installation, frictionless customer service, and—this part should be obvious—a product or service that works well and provides the user what they need are all key components to improved customer retention.

Brand loyalty

In the final customer journey phase, users go from run-of-the-mill satisfied customers to active advocates for your business. 

You can encourage brand loyalty by offering exceptional customer service, referral programs, and loyalty discounts and exclusives.

Keep in mind: a customer doesn't need to be a zealot for your company to be an unintentional brand advocate. One of the biggest reasons I made the decision to apply for Amex's high-end card is because my best friend has it. She didn't specifically recommend it to me, but I became interested after experiencing a lot of the card benefits vicariously through her. 

Everything we've covered up to this point will only get you as far as a basic customer journey map. That doesn't mean, however, that your customer journey map will be good . Once you have the basic journey mapping structure down, you'll want to take steps to continually improve your map's effectiveness.

Survey your customers and customer teams

When designing touchpoints and determining where and how customers interact with your business, don't guess—your existing customer base is a valuable resource you can tap for a firsthand customer perspective. You can i ncentivize customers to participate in surveys and fill out feedback forms by offering discounts and perks in exchange.

Talk to your customer-facing employees, too. The people who work directly with customers day-to-day will have more accurate information about how to interact with them.

Automate customer data collection

High-quality, premium experiences are defined by their high level of personalization, and that personalization is only possible if you have information about your customer. It's not possible to sit there and take notes on every person who interacts with your brand, but it is possible to automatically collect lead data from customer interactions and have them collated in your CRM tool . 

Set up your contact management platform to automatically tag contacts with information like gender, age, products they've bought, events they've attended, what types of emails they open consistently and what emails they regularly ignore, whether their purchases indicate that they have pets or children, and so on. The more information you have, the better your customer experiences will be.

Tweak for B2B, B2C, and SaaS industries

The nature of the customer journey is different for SaaS, B2B, and B2C companies. A B2B company's interactions with prospects might include in-person conferences, while a SaaS company's touchpoints will be mostly digital. Companies that sell to consumers will need to think through individual people's experiences in a way that B2B companies don't. A company whose products are designed for emergencies will need to think through crisis scenarios instead of day-to-day customer experiences.

Tweak your customer journey categories to fit your company, product, and industry. Using a generalized or poorly-fitting customer journey map will result in vague and unhelpful interactions with your brand.

Create multiple maps for different journeys

When people refer to the customer journey, they're typically talking about the overarching journey from awareness to brand loyalty that we outlined above. However, you can map any part of the customer journey and experience. 

Do you target college students? Replace the five stages with four academic quarters and map their experience over the course of a year. 

Is your product designed to be used in the car? Map the customer journey through each hour of a long road trip. 

Zooming in to create detailed maps of different aspects of the customer journey will help you create even more specifically tailored customer experiences.

The template above follows the standard stages of the customer journey, but it's not the only way to do your customer journey mapping.

Two other commonly-used journey maps are the "Day in a life" journey map and the customer support journey map. We've provided the key elements of both below, as well as customer journey map templates for each.

Day/week/month in the life map

The best way to map mini-journeys within the larger customer experience lifecycle is with a "Day in a Life" journey map . This map plots the same things as the general customer journey map—key milestones, questions, touchpoints, and gaps—but over a particular period of time instead of over the course of the entire relationship. 

This map includes space for you to record the buyer persona's name, occupation, and motto, but these are really just shorthand for key persona characteristics. If you're selling baby diapers, for instance, your persona's occupation would be "parent," even if the person in question is also an accountant. 

The "motto" should be a condensed version of your persona's primary mindset with regard to their wants, needs, and pain points. The motto for an expecting first-time parent might be, "I'm excited but nervous—I have to make sure I'm prepared for anything."

Use the column headers to set your time frame. If you're marketing to expecting parents, the time frame might be the nine months of a pregnancy, or you might map an expectant mother's experiences through a single day in her third trimester. At each stage, ask yourself the same questions:

Where and how could the customer encounter our brand? Alternatively: how could our brand provide value at each stage?

A day in the life customer journey map will not only help you zoom in to develop more tailored experiences, but it will also give you insights into what might be useful to add or improve in your product or service.

Support experience map

One of the most common, and most significant, customer/brand interactions is the customer support journey . A frustrating customer service experience can turn someone off of your brand and product entirely, while a particularly impressive experience can immediately convert a regular user into a brand advocate.

This journey map is a bit different in that it doesn't just map touchpoints; it maps functional interactions between the customer and customer service representatives as well as the behind-the-scenes activities necessary to support the customer-facing team.

This map starts when the support ticket is opened and ends when the customer's issue is resolved. The top row of the map is simple: what is the customer doing at each stage in the support process?

​​Next, you'll record the corresponding actions of your customer-facing, or "frontstage" team. This includes both employees' actions and the systems engaged in the support process. For example, if the first step of your customer support process is handled by a chatbot or automatic phone system, these will go in the technology row. If the customer moves forward to request to speak with a representative, then the second stage is where your "employee actions" row will come into play.

Finally, the bottom row is for behind-the-scenes activity performed by employees who don't interact with the customer at all. For example, if the customer representative needs to get information from another department to answer the customer's questions, the other department's involvement will be recorded in the "backstage actions" section of the map.

To put it all together, here's an example customer journey map for a gym. 

Researches local gyms online

Reads reviews

Compares membership options

"I can't go up a flight of stairs without getting winded; I need to get my health and fitness on track."

"I wish I knew someone who could recommend this gym." 

Encounters: 

Online reviews

Social media pages

Missing touchpoint:

Success stories on social media in a front-and-center location, like a saved Instagram Stories collection or a pinned post 

Views gym's social media

Visits gym's website

Views membership pricing page

"This gym looks clean and modern from the photos."

"I hate calling the gym, but I'd like to learn more about personal training or class options."

Contact form

Free trial request pop-up

A live chat box on the gym's website for prospective customers to ask questions about the facility or membership options before visiting 

Visits the gym to take a tour

Meets with a membership consultant

Potentially signs up for free trial

"The staff was friendly and it was easy to sign up."

"I wish I could see what classes they offer and weekly schedules without having to visit the gym."

In-person visit

Facility tour

Consultation

Free trial sign-up

Orientation session

Gym access card

A mobile app where members can track their progress, access class schedules, book personal trainer sessions, and receive personalized workout recommendations

Visits the gym regularly

Participates in classes

Engages with personal trainers

Potentially pays for membership after free trial ends

"Maybe I should compare options again." 

"I wish I knew someone who could work out with me."

Personal trainer consults

Email reminders about upcoming end to free trial

Personalized offer encouraging renewal

Follow-up call

Community-building events like workshops or challenges to foster a sense of community and support among members and staff

Refers friends and coworkers

Promotes the gym on social media

Regularly visits and attends classes 

"My coworker would love this gym since it's so close to work." 

"I love that teacher. I'm going to try some of her other classes."

Referral programs

Social media engagement

Reviews gym

Potentially provides a testimonial for gym

Missing touchpoints:

A loyalty rewards program for members' continued commitment and engagement that offers exclusive discounts, merchandise, or access to premium services 

Your customers' spending habits, interests, challenges, and problems are always changing, and your customer journey maps should adapt along with them. But with so much data to track, it's a good idea to connect your insights to CRM software. Then you can automate your CRM to create specific, valuable experiences for your customers without breaking a sweat.

Related reading:

Beyond the sales pipeline: Using a CRM for customer success

A quick guide to contact management

B2B email marketing: Proven strategies + examples

4 tips for creating an inbound marketing strategy

This article was originally published in May 2021 by Nick Djurovic. The most recent update was in August 2023.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

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How to create a customer journey map — a step-by-step guide with examples

Learning more about client experience is the best way to understand and improve it. As you are reading this article, you already know that 😉 

Here, you will find a detailed step-by-step guide on making a customer journey map (CJM), examples, expert tips, templates, and a PDF guide to download and save for later.

• 1 What is a customer journey map?
• 2 Benefits of client journey mapping
• 3.1 Step 1: Define your persona
• 3.2 Step 2: Set customer journey stages
• 3.3 Step 3: Define journey map sections
• 3.4 Step 4: Set customer goals
• 3.5 Step 5: Define touchpoints
• 3.6 Step 6: Processes and channels
• 3.7 Step 7: Problems and ideas
• 3.8 Step 8: Emotional graph
• 3.9 Step ?: Be Creative!
• 4 Customer journey map examples
• 5 A customer journey mapping checklist
• 6 The free guide to download

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is the final output of the collaborative visualization process called customer journey mapping. This process lets you reveal typical experiences the customers have over time when interacting with your organization, service, or product. A finished map provides insights into their actions, processes, goals, needs, channels, emotions, and many other aspects shaping the customer experience. 

Journey maps can be of different scopes. For example, a broad-scope map would include multiple customer journey stages like ‘Awareness’, ‘Decision’, ‘Purchase’, ‘Support’, and ‘Renewal’. In contrast, a map with a narrower focus would look at a few specific stages like ‘Decision’ and ‘Purchase’.

CJMs focusing on the current experience are AS-IS maps, while journey maps visualizing the future, desired, state of the experience are called TO-BE maps.

There’s also a similar technique, customer experience mapping, which is often used interchangeably with journey mapping. Experience maps are variations of CJMs, but they typically cover a wider range of interactions and contexts beyond a specific consumer-business relationship. 

Benefits of client journey mapping

Why make journey mapping your tool of choice? There are plenty of reasons, the major of which include:

• Gaining a deeper understanding of your customers 

For instance, a high-end fashion retailer may discover that its younger customers prefer online shopping, while older customers enjoy the in-store experience.

• Getting a single view of your customer within the organization

Journey mapping will help you turn a fragmented vision of the customer experience into a unified, organization-wide one. It will have a massive impact on the decision-making process, encouraging you to consider how your actions will affect your clients and become customer-focused.

• Breaking corporate and cross-department silos 

To make the way toward delivering a great customer experience, you will need to collaborate with others. Understanding why this collaboration is essential, departments and employees will be more inclined to participate in conversations and collaborate.

• Improving customer experience, retention, and loyalty

While working on a map, you will discover customer pain points at different stages of their journey with you. Fixing the most crucial one as quickly as possible will do you a good turn by eliminating the reasons for leaving you. If fixes take much time, look for quick wins first. 

For instance, adding details about your shipping policy on the website will take a developer half an hour, while it will set the right expectations among customers. They won’t be expecting the delivery the next day anymore, bombarding your customer support team with frustrated messages. Another example is a subscription-based video streaming service that can personalize content recommendations to keep subscribers engaged and less likely to cancel their subscriptions.

• Better conversion and targeting of your target customers

Sometimes, it makes sense to focus on a specific segment or, talking journey mapping terms, specific personas. Customer journey insights will help you with this endeavor by giving you a glimpse into these people’s minds and ensuring the higher effectiveness of your marketing.

How to build a customer journey map

Although there is no gold standard for creating a customer journey map, we’ll try to create a somewhat generalized map. So that you can use it as a reference when making maps of your own.

We’ll be using our CJM Online tool along the way for two reasons. Because it’s easy to use and lets you create a CJM fairly quickly without wasting time setting up the environment. Oh, and there's a Personas building tool that comes with it 😉

We’ll take a pizza restaurant as an example of business and learn how to make a customer journey map together.

Step 1: Define your persona

Creating personas is a crucial part of customer experience service and journey mapping in particular. We won’t go into details — you can find them in this post about defining personas .

Let’s just say that our persona’s name will be Eva Moline — 29, works as a journalist and loves pizza. Eva is not really tech-savvy, and she tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Step 2: Set customer journey stages

Stages are the steps customers take when interacting with a business. The easiest way to identify them is to think of all the actions the person has to take throughout their journey, organize them into logical groups, and name these groups. These will be your map stages. 

The number of stages varies from business to business, but we’ll take 8 for this example:

💡 Expert tips: 

• If you’re unsure about the order or names of the stages, don’t worry about that. You can change both at any time when working on the map.
• If your stages are complex, you can break them into smaller ones. Read this blog post about defining customer journey stages to learn more.

Step 3: Define journey map sections

Sections are horizontal rows with data that, together with the stages you defined, make up a customer journey map.

When picking sections for a map, your choice will depend on your journey’s type and purpose. 

As for UXPressia’s Journey Map tool, it offers a set of more or less universal sections for all kinds of maps. 

We’ll use some of the sections in the current example.

Step 4: Set customer goals

Setting customer goals at each stage is great for multiple reasons:

• It helps you understand how your business goals align with the goals of your customers.
• You can meet your customers’ needs better, gaining their loyalty by helping them achieve their goals at each stage.

Above, you can see some of the goals we set for Eva. They are self-explanatory, so there’s no need for extra details.

Step 5: Define touchpoints

Touchpoints are encounters that happen between your business and customers. In the pizza restaurant example, touchpoints happen:

• At the Awareness phase, when Eva is actively looking for a pizza place nearby. She is asking around, searching locations on Google Maps, etc.
• At the Research phase, when she is trying to find out what people say about the place by asking her friends and reading online reviews.
• At the Arrival stage, when Eva searches for a parking spot and enters the restaurant to get seated after parking the car.
• At the Order stage, when she makes an order and waits for it.
• Time to eat! At this stage, touchpoints occur when Eva is being served and when she is eating her meal.
• At the Leave stage, Eva interacts with the waiter, pays for the meal, etc.
• At the Feedback stage, she goes to the pizzeria’s website and drops a few lines on Instagram.
• At the last stage, Eva gets a promo email from the restaurant with discounts or other special offers.

Defining all the touchpoints is critical because each touchpoint leaves some impression, and your main goal is to keep it up to the mark.

You can also have a separate section to describe the actions your persona takes:

Step 6: Processes and channels

Now, you may want to add some processes and channels to the map. Just to see what channels your persona uses and what types of processes are in their journey. Luckily, our tool lets you do it in the most awesome way. Processes can be linear, non-linear & time-based, cyclic, or bi-directional. In UXPressia, you can specify up to 10 channels per process.

Step 7: Problems and ideas

It’s time to explore problems Eva might have when using our service. It could be a lack of info about the pizza house. Few reviews and ads do not show how our pizza differs from others.

Upon arriving, Eva may struggle with locating the place due to unclear information on signboards or just because of a hard-to-find location.

When making her order, Eva may look for detailed info on dish ingredients to learn whether it contains peanuts she’s allergic to. Descriptions may not be as detailed as she’d want them to be.

While waiting for the pizza, Eva may want to check out the place. Finding a restroom can turn into a nightmare if you don’t have clear signs showing what’s where in the restaurant.

Once you’re done with problems, it’s time to find solutions to these problems. Brainstorm for some ideas on how this or that problem can be solved. Here’s what we brainstormed for Eva’s case:

Step 8: Emotional graph

Never underestimate the power of visualization. And our Customer Journey tool is all about it. We added an emotional graph to see where our service example shines and where it stinks. Plus, we filled text boxes with Eva’s thoughts:

There’s also a special section ( “Think & feel” ) to put personas’ thoughts.

Step ?: Be Creative!

This is a good start, but the map is far from being complete. So, keep exploring Eva’s journey to find more insights and then add all of them to the map.

If you use our tool (which we highly recommend you to do), check out other CJM sections:

• Image section for screenshots, photos, or any other relevant imagery. You can even turn it into a storyboard , describing the journey from beginning to end with your images or those from our library.

• Charts section for communicating data in a visual and meaningful way, just like we did it in the persona:

• Video and document sections for journey-related videos and documentation (e.g., an annual marketing report).
• Personas section for visualizing different personas’ interactions within the same journey.

💡 Expert tip: The section with the persona’s questions works like a charm for marketing and content purposes. So be sure to add one 😉

Customer journey map examples

There are also a whole lot of free CJM templates for all sorts of journeys in our library. Here are three examples we picked for you.

• Example 1: a mobile user journey

This user journey map template covers the digital experience of the persona who discovers a new mobile app, installs it, and uses the app for some time before deleting it.

• Example 2: a client journey map for a corporate bank

This free template is an example of a multi-persona, B2B customer journey. The key persona is a newly opened company looking for a bank to run their business. The CJM also visualizes interactions between the personas involved. 

• Example 3: a digital customer journey

This customer journey map example shows the digital journey of three customer personas who want to buy a new pair of sneakers online. They go through the same stages, but if you look at the map, you will be able to see the differences in customer behavior, goals, and actions. It’s also a multi-persona journey map .

A customer journey mapping checklist

As a quick recap, here is a checklist with key steps to follow when creating a customer journey map:

• Do research

To represent real people, your real customers, and visualize their journeys, you must base your personas and journey maps upon actual data.

• Define your customer persona(s)

Identify your target personas. Create detailed profiles focusing on information relevant to your journey mapping initiative. Include such details as background, customer needs, motivations, channels, etc. 

• Specify journey map stages

Determine the stages you want to have on your map and come up with their names.

• Decide on the map sections

Determine which sections to include in your map (e.g., actions, touchpoints, emotions, channels).

• Set customer goals for each stage

Make sure that it is your customers’ goals, not your business goals.

• Identify touchpoints between the persona(s) and your organization, product, or service

Consider both online and offline interactions.

• Map out processes and channels

Visualize the journey-specific processes and the channels your customers use at each stage. Include both digital and physical channels.

• Highlight problems and look for opportunities

Identify any pain points and issues customers might encounter. Brainstorm potential solutions and quick wins to improve the experience.

• Add details about the emotional experience

Visualize the persona’s emotional journey. Include thoughts and feelings where it’s relevant.

• Use more sections

Include illustrations, images, and charts to make the map visually engaging and easy to understand. Enrich your journey map with more data, like KPIs related to journey stages.

Feel free to tailor this checklist to the specific context of your business and your project's needs.

The free guide to download

As a bonus, download our free customer journey mapping guide. Fill in the form below to get a PDF file as an email.

Related posts

The post was originally written in 2017.

Rate this post

first of all, excellent example and I’m very happy to I could understand how to create user journey map, due to for a long time I can’t understand it and how, many thanks for your efforts 🙂 I have some question about ser journey map. I hope to open your chest for me,

1-no there are rules for user journey map? 2-I need another example ?(for example Uber)?further understand 3-have I create user journey map without customer?

Hello, Karim!

I am very glad that this article helped you understand customer journey mapping 🙂

In regards to your first question, I would say that journey maps differ from business to business. However, they tend to have the same structure give or take. So no matter what industry you make a CJM for, you will end up having several stages and a bunch of sections we mentioned in this post.

If you’re looking for CJM examples of Uber customers, here is one: https://www.mindomo.com/doc.htm?d=92be818b774d422bad7eab790957ebc0&m=7d286174ccf1450bbb77c921a609ff65 Plus we have a lot more on our template page: https://uxpressia.com/templates

As for your last question, yes. You may have a journey map without a customer (persona) and use target audience segments instead (or have a generic map without personas at all, though I don’t recommend the latter as in this case it will be hard to empathize with real people). So you will certainly have to introduce a customer down the road to gain a deeper understanding of the journey.

many thanks for your reply to me and again I have some questions

1-why you don’t use in your example? user experience, empathy maps such as use goal touch point, and how to create it 2-As for the previous example (Uber) very confuse for me not as your example

Could you please rephrase your first question? And as for the Uber map, well, that’s all I managed to find. 🙂 But again, here you can find a hundred of map examples of all stripes and colors: https://uxpressia.com/templates

welcome again, my question is? what’s different between Aware and Research

The differences come from the names.

At the aware stage your client realizes that there’s a need for a service/product. Or they find out that your company exists and offer a desired service.

While at the research stage they either do research on your business (e.g. visit your website or ask their friends if they used your service) or they research what is out there on the market that can help them.

Makes sense? 🙂

Thank you for this,

I am wondering , Have you done examples on B2B services. I work in Accreditation & Certification, this seems to be the least visited topic in marketing platforms and blog sites.

We have some B2B templates in our Template Library . Type B2B tag in the search placeholder and you will see all categories with the fitting templates. You can also explore the B2B mapping guide here .

Good luck and happy customers!

Great article, well articulated and detailed. I am starting off with service design and was wondering if I could get some advice mapping out a customer journey for a specific project. I was mapping out how do one approach to repair services?

Hi Shreya, glad you liked the article!

If you’re dealing with home repair, I might suggest our pre-filled template for an interior design agency customer journey: https://uxpressia.com/templates/real-estate . Templates can be a great starting point even if they’re not a 100% match to your use case.

Other than that, you will need to create a persona. If you don’t have any research data yet, do it based on your assumptions. Then, try to visualize what their experience across all stages and interactions with the repair service might be. Once you have the first draft, you can proceed with validating it and adding more data as it comes in.

If you have more context on the project, I can look into it and come up with specific tips 🙂

I very delighted to find this internet site on bing, just what I was searching for as well saved to fav

Thank you for sharing, it was something I researched.

Hi Rok! Happy mapping 🙂

Customer Journey Map (2024): How-to & Examples [+ Template]

Home » Customer Journey Map   | 🕑 

Gust de Backer

November 10, 2023.

The Customer Journey is the process your customers go through with your company. This then covers the first to last interaction someone has with your company.

Many companies do not have a map of how their customers orient, what they care about or when the company comes into the potential buyer’s mind.

Not having enough mapping of the Customer Journey puts you at risk of having, perhaps unknowingly, negative touchpoints with your (potential) customer.

I’m going to show you:

• What the Customer Journey is
• How to create your Customer Journey
• And what good examples of a Customer Journey are

Let’s get started…

Table of Contents

What is the Customer Journey?

The Customer Journey is the process that maps every interaction with your brand:

The first interaction someone has with your brand is the beginning of the Customer Journey. If you find yourself in a niche market, it can also be interesting to map interactions with your niche.

The Customer Journey for B2B and B2C often looks quite different:

The Customer Journey is relevant to any business, but particularly important for companies that:

• Are customer-centric
• Want to improve customer satisfaction
• Want to increase sales

In general, you often see in companies that the marketing department is responsible for ensuring that (potential) customers have a positive experience with the brand.

A nice trend you see is that marketing/growth teams are becoming more responsible for the entire funnel rather than just reaching and bringing in new customers.

7 Stages of the Customer Journey

There are different models you can use to map out the Customer Journey, but in the end they all boil down to the same thing:

Keep in mind the different roles of the Decision-making Unit , but essentially there are 7 steps you can include in the Customer Journey….

Your (potential) customer can have 2 types of needs:

• Latent need : the person does not yet know he needs something. If you are going to buy a car you are not yet directly concerned with insurance.
• Concrete need : the person knows they have a certain need, here it is important to be visible with your brand. For example, think of buying a phone when your old one is broken.

Every Customer Journey basically starts with a certain need.

In practice, you can encounter 5 types of customers in this:

• Unaware : don’t realize they have a problem or need.
• Problem Aware : realize they have a problem or need.
• Solution Aware : they know there are solutions to their problem or need, but they don’t know you.
• Product Aware : they know you, but haven’t bought you yet.
• Most Aware : brand ambassadors.

2. Orientation

The orientation process has changed a lot in recent years thanks to digitalization, which makes it extra important to map it out using research.

You want to be visible with your brand at least in the orientation phase so that you will eventually be included in the consideration phase .

Some examples of behavior in the orientation phase:

• Concrete keywords in search engines
• Asking acquaintances for their opinions
• Checking out inspiration platforms such as Pinterest, TikTok or Instagram

3. Consideration

In the consideration phase, we examine which option from the orientation phase best meets the customer’s wishes and needs.

Here it is important to know which decision criteria weigh most heavily for the customer; this should be properly researched.

Some examples of decision criteria:

• Brand awareness

4. Decision

In the decision phase, a product or service from a specific vendor is actually chosen.

There are a number of things that make it easier for the customer to choose your product or service:

• Make it easy to compare
• Provide a good selection in different options
• Offer a good deal, make sure your customer can’t say no
• Provide a smooth payment process
• Increase engagement in your brand by providing valuable content, offers and support

Provide as few distractions as possible during the decision phase, people who are still Googling “[company name] discount code” from the checkout want to be convinced to convert.

5. Delivery

After someone has become a customer, a product or service will need to be delivered.

Here the first moments of evaluation will be whether someone actually made the right choice to choose your company, product or service.

• Make sure you deliver on time and that your product arrives in the right condition or that your service is of high quality.
• Give clear instructions on how to use or what the added value of the service is.
• Provide good support if the customer experiences problems in using your product or service.

In the use phase it is important that customers get the most out of your product or service and that they really see the added value .

You can stimulate this in a number of ways:

• Include tutorials
• Measuring and communicating impact
• Aftersales phone call

This is the ultimate evaluation moment ; if your product or service did not help the customer well, there is little chance that they will make a repeat purchase or become a brand ambassador .

In any case, it is important to prevent people from talking badly about your brand, so make sure that in the earlier stages you already make sure that people who are not ideal customers for you are excluded and that you make sure that customers see the added value of your product or service.

It is 5 to 7 times cheaper to retain a customer than to bring in a new customer. This is precisely why it is so important to encourage loyalty.

Loyalty can be expressed in the number of repeat purchases or upsells a customer eventually makes with you. You can encourage this by offering valuable content, offers and support.

The goal is for people to remain loyal to your brand and not switch to a competitor or go out of business in the first place.

There are different forms of loyalty:

• Transactional Loyalty : getting customers to make repeat purchases by giving offers.
• Social Loyalty : interacting with your customers on social media, for example.
• Engagement Loyalty : you reward people who engage with you where you can receive points for subscribing to a newsletter, for example.
• Emotional Loyalty : if your brand is positively aligned with your customer’s emotions, you can’t get this kind of loyalty with offers. In this, you want to make people feel part of something.
• Behavioral Loyalty : a level of loyalty in which you want to make customers do something like buy higher volumes where you give a third product for free after buying 2 products.
• Advocacy Loyalty : you are going to reward people who recommend others to become customers of your brand.

Customer Journey Mapping

Download the Customer Journey Canvas:

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How do you complete the Customer Journey Canvas?

Once you know who all is in your Decision-making Unit, you can start creating personas and empathy maps so you can better understand the behaviors, needs, problems and wants of those individuals.

Determine what questions you would like to have answered after doing your Customer Journey Mapping research. Some common questions are: – When do you experience X? – On a scale of 1 – 10, how much would you like a solution to X? – How much are you willing to pay for a solution on X? – How would you orient yourself to a solution for X? – What brands would you consider in a solution for X? – What should a solution for X satisfy you in? – How would you go about determining if the solution was effective?

The threshold in terms of time and cost is often somewhat lower for quantitative research than for qualitative research. In it, you can gather good insights about your target audience from a helicopter perspective. Consider, for example: – Questionnaire – Post-purchase survey – Exit-intent Survey – Search volume

Once you have a high-level validated understanding of your target audience, you can begin to supplement your findings at a detailed level using qualitative research. Consider: – Customer interviews – User tests – Screen recordings

If you have made your Customer Journey Map comprehensible, you have gathered many insights on which you can improve your Customer Journey. To prevent it from becoming a dusty document that is no longer looked at, it is important to determine follow-up actions and evaluate them accordingly.

Common mistakes

There are a number of mistakes that you often see passed in Customer Journey Mapping:

• Based on assumptions : often you see that a Customer Journey is completely based on assumptions and not on validated research.
• Wrong scope : critically determine in advance where you want your Customer Journey to begin and end otherwise you quickly lose focus and overview.
• No customer perspective : reason the Customer Journey from your persona or customer and not from your company.
• Inside-out : if you start from how you do it as a company you are not customer-centric and there is going to be a mismatch in how the customer experiences something and how your company does it. Make sure your Customer Journey is actually completed from the customer’s perspective.
• Stakeholders : it is important to involve all relevant stakeholders so that you start creating support for the Customer Journey.
• End goal : the Customer Journey is not an end goal, but a starting point. It is something that will continuously play out and needs to be changed.

And now you…

Now you’re armed with enough knowledge to start visualizing your Customer Journey.

I’m curious, what has been the biggest insight for you in understanding your target audience?

Let me know in a comment.

P.S. if you would like additional help you can email me at [email protected]

Frequently Asked Questions

The 7 steps of the Customer Journey are: need, orientation, consideration, decision, delivery, use and loyalty.

A customer journey is a term used in marketing and customer experience management to describe the path a customer takes through the stages of awareness, consideration, purchase and use of a product or service. The term can also be used to describe the path a potential customer takes.

A customer journey map is a visualization of a customer’s experience with a company, product or service. It begins when the customer first becomes aware of a need and ends at the level of loyalty. The map tracks all the contact moments the customer has with a brand, both online and offline. Customer journey maps can help companies understand where they need to make improvements to provide a better experience for their customers.

The Customer Journey for every business is different. It is important to research for your business what the most ideal customer journey is, in doing so you want to validate all assumptions.

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Account-Based Marketing | Business Strategy | Customer Development Process | Customer Journey | Decision-Making Unit | Digital Marketing | Lead Generation | Market Research | Marketing and Sales | Marketing Strategy

Gust’s Must-Reads 👇🏼

• TAM SAM SOM
• Value Proposition
• Brainstorming
• Decision Making Unit
• Product-Market Fit
• North Star Metric
• Market Research
• Customer Development
• Growth Hacking
• Brand Identity
• Customer Journey
• Account-Based Marketing

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Bedankt Nicole!

Thanks! I’m trying to understand how to explain this approach in simple words, and your material is one of the best so far.

Thank you, Marie!

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Customer Journey Map

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What is a Customer Journey Map? [Free Templates]

Learn what the customer journey mapping process is and download a free template that you can use to create your own customer journey map.

Table of Contents

Mapping the customer journey can give you a way to better understand your customers and their needs. As a tool, it allows you to visualize the different stages that a customer goes through when interacting with your business; their thoughts, feelings, and pain points.

And, it’s shown that the friction from those pain points costs big: in 2019, ecommerce friction totaled an estimated 213 billion in lost US revenue .

Customer journey maps can help you to identify any problems or areas where you could improve your customer experience . In this article, we’ll explain what the customer journey mapping process is and provide a free template that you can use to create your own map. Let’s get started!

Bonus: Get our free, fully customizable Customer Experience Strategy Template that will help you understand your customers and reach your business goals.

What is a customer journey map?

So, what is customer journey mapping? Essentially, customer journey maps are a tool that you can use to understand the customer experience. Customer journey maps are often visual representations showing you the customer’s journey from beginning to end. They include all the touchpoints along the way.

There are often four main stages in your sales funnel, and knowing these can help you create your customer journey maps:

• Inquiry or awareness
• Interest, comparison, or decision-making
• Purchase or preparation
• Installation, activation, or feedback

Customer journey maps are used to track customer behavior and pinpoint areas where the customer experiences pain points. With this information uncovered, you can improve the customer experience, giving your customers a positive experience with your company.

You can use customer journey mapping software like Excel or Google sheets, Google Decks, infographics, illustrations, or diagrams to create your maps. But you don’t actually need customer journey mapping tools. You can create these maps with a blank wall and a pack of sticky notes.

Though they can be scribbled on a sticky note, it’s often easier to create these journeys digitally. That way, you have a record of your journey map, and you can share it with colleagues. We’ve provided free customer journey mapping templates at the end of this article to make your life a little easier.

The benefits of using customer journey maps

The main benefit of customer journey mapping is a better understanding of how your customers feel and interact with your business touchpoints. With this knowledge, you can create strategies that better serve your customer at each touchpoint.

Give them what they want and make it easy to use, and they’ll keep coming back. But, there are a couple of other great knock-on benefits too.

Improved customer support

Your customer journey map will highlight moments where you can add some fun to a customer’s day. And it will also highlight the pain points of your customer’s experience. Knowing where these moments are will let you address them before your customer gets there. Then, watch your customer service metrics spike!

Effective marketing tactics

A greater understanding of who your customers are and what motivates them will help you to advertise to them.

Let’s say you sell a sleep aid product or service. A potential target market for your customer base is young, working mothers who are strapped for time.

The tone of your marketing material can empathize with their struggles, saying, “The last thing you need is someone asking if you’re tired. But we know that over half of working moms get less than 6 hours of sleep at night. While we can’t give you more time, we know how you can make the most of those 6 hours. Try our Sleep Aid today and sleep better tonight.”

Building out customer personas will show potential target audiences and their motivation, like working moms who want to make the most of their hours asleep.

Product advancements or service improvements

By mapping your customer’s journey, you’ll gain insights into what motivates them to make a purchase or prevents them from doing so. You’ll have clarity on when or why they return items and which items they buy next. With this information and more, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products.

A more enjoyable and efficient user experience

Customer journey mapping will show you where customers get stuck and bounce off your site. You can work your way through the map, fixing any friction points as you go. The end result will be a smoothly-running, logical website or app.

A customer-focused mindset

Instead of operating with the motivation of business success, a customer journey map can shift your focus to the customer. Instead of asking yourself, “how can I increase profits?” ask yourself, “what would better serve my customer?” The profits will come when you put your customer first.

At the end of the day, customer journey maps help you to improve your customer experience and boost sales. They’re a useful tool in your customer experience strategy .

How to create a customer journey map

There are many different ways to create a customer journey map. But, there are a few steps you’ll want to take regardless of how you go about mapping your customer’s journey.

Step 1. Set your focus

Are you looking to drive the adoption of a new product? Or perhaps you’ve noticed issues with your customer experience. Maybe you’re looking for new areas of opportunity for your business. Whatever it is, be sure to set your goals before you begin mapping the customer journey.

Step 2. Choose your buyer personas

To create a customer journey map, you’ll first need to identify your customers and understand their needs. To do this, you will want to access your buyer personas.

Buyer personas are caricatures or representations of someone who represents your target audience. These personas are created from real-world data and strategic goals.

If you don’t already have them, create your own buyer personas with our easy step-by-step guide and free template.

Choose one or two of your personas to be the focus of your customer journey map. You can always go back and create maps for your remaining personas.

Step 3. Perform user research

Interview prospective or past customers in your target market. You do not want to gamble your entire customer journey on assumptions you’ve made. Find out directly from the source what their pathways are like, where their pain points are, and what they love about your brand.

You can do this by sending out surveys, setting up interviews, and examining data from your business chatbot . Be sure to look at what the most frequently asked questions are. If you don’t have a FAQ chatbot like Heyday , that automates customer service and pulls data for you, you’re missing out!

Get a free Heyday demo

You will also want to speak with your sales team, your customer service team, and any other team member who may have insight into interacting with your customers.

Step 4. List customer touchpoints

Your next step is to track and list the customer’s interactions with the company, both online and offline.

A customer touchpoint means anywhere your customer interacts with your brand. This could be your social media posts , anywhere they might find themselves on your website, your brick-and-mortar store, ratings and reviews, or out-of-home advertising.

Write as many as you can down, then put on your customer shoes and go through the process yourself. Track the touchpoints, of course, but also write down how you felt at each juncture and why. This data will eventually serve as a guide for your map.

Step 5. Build your customer journey map

You’ve done your research and gathered as much information as possible, now it’s time for the fun stuff. Compile all of the information you’ve collected into one place. Then, start mapping out your customer journey! You can use the templates we’ve created below for an easy plug-and-play execution.

Step 6. Analyze your customer journey map

Once the customer journey has been mapped out, you will want to go through it yourself. You need to experience first-hand what your customers do to fully understand their experience.

As you journey through your sales funnel, look for ways to improve your customer experience. By analyzing your customer’s needs and pain points, you can see areas where they might bounce off your site or get frustrated with your app. Then, you can take action to improve it. List these out in your customer journey map as “Opportunities” and “Action plan items”.

Types of customer journey maps

There are many different types of customer journey maps. We’ll take you through four to get started: current state, future state, a day in the life, and empathy maps. We’ll break down each of them and explain what they can do for your business.

Current state

This customer journey map focuses on your business as it is today. With it, you will visualize the experience a customer has when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product. A current state customer journey uncovers and offers solutions for pain points.

Future state

This customer journey map focuses on how you want your business to be. This is an ideal future state. With it, you will visualize a customer’s best-case experience when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product.

Once you have your future state customer journey mapped out, you’ll be able to see where you want to go and how to get there.

Day-in-the-life

A day-in-the-life customer journey is a lot like the current state customer journey, but it aims to highlight aspects of a customer’s daily life outside of how they interact with your brand.

Day-in-the-life mapping looks at everything that the consumer does during their day. It shows what they think and feel within an area of focus with or without your company.

When you know how a consumer spends their day, you can more accurately strategize where your brand communication can meet them. Are they checking Instagram on their lunch break, feeling open and optimistic about finding new products? If so, you’ll want to target ads on that platform to them at that time.

Day-in-the-life customer journey examples can look vastly different depending on your target demographic.

Empathy maps

Empathy maps don’t follow a particular sequence of events along the user journey. Instead, these are divided into four sections and track what someone says about their experience with your product when it’s in use.

You should create empathy maps after user research and testing. You can think of them as an account of all that was observed during research or testing when you asked questions directly regarding how people feel while using products. Empathy maps can give you unexpected insights into your users’ needs and wants.

Customer journey map templates

Use these templates to inspire your own customer journey map creation.

Customer journey map template for the current state:

The future state customer journey mapping template:

A day-in-the-life customer journey map template:

An empathy map template:

A customer journey map example

It can be helpful to see customer journey mapping examples. To give you some perspective on what these look like executed, we’ve created a customer journey mapping example of the current state.

Buyer Persona:

Curious Colleen, a 32-year-old female, is in a double-income no-kids marriage. Colleen and her partner work for themselves; while they have research skills, they lack time. She is motivated by quality products and frustrated by having to sift through content to get the information she needs.

What are their key goals and needs? Colleen needs a new vacuum. Her key goal is to find one that will not break again.

What are their struggles?

She is frustrated that her old vacuum broke and that she has to spend time finding a new one. Colleen feels as though this problem occurred because the vacuum she bought previously was of poor quality.

What tasks do they have?

Colleen must research vacuums to find one that will not break. She must then purchase a vacuum and have it delivered to her house.

Opportunities:

Colleen wants to understand quickly and immediately the benefits our product offers; how can we make this easier? Colleen upholds social proof as a decision-making factor. How can we better show our happy customers? There is an opportunity here to restructure our website information hierarchy or implement customer service tools to give Colleen the information she needs faster. We can create comparison charts with competitors, have benefits immediately and clearly stated, and create social campaigns.

Action Plan:

• Implement a chatbot so customers like Colleen can get the answers they want quickly and easily.
• Create a comparison tool for competitors and us, showing benefits and costs.
• Implement benefit-forward statements on all landing pages.
• Create a social campaign dedicated to UGC to foster social proof.
• Send out surveys dedicated to gathering customer feedback. Pull out testimonial quotes from here when possible.

Now that you know what the customer journey mapping process is, you can take these tactics and apply them to your own business strategy. By tracking customer behavior and pinpointing areas where your customers experience pain points, you’ll be able to alleviate stress for customers and your team in no time.

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Colleen Christison is a freelance copywriter, copy editor, and brand communications specialist. She spent the first six years of her career in award-winning agencies like Major Tom, writing for social media and websites and developing branding campaigns. Following her agency career, Colleen built her own writing practice, working with brands like Mission Hill Winery, The Prevail Project, and AntiSocial Media.

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Building a Customer Journey Map: A Step-by-Step Guide for Customer Success

A Customer Journey Map is the foundation of your Customer Success Strategy. Yet most CS leaders skip it.

Because it’s damn near impossible to find a simple explanation online of WHAT it is and HOW to accurately map it out. That ends here.

This article will outline what the customer journey map is, why you need it, how to create one with a few fun workshops, and how it can power every part of your customer success strategy.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the length of this article. TLDR – You’re going to put post-its on a wall. Four times.

If you can handle that, you can do a customer journey map.

Prefer to watch instead of read? Here’s an overview:

Customer Journey Mapping and Customer Success

What is Customer Success

Far too many people don’t understand what customer success is, or the benefits. While most of those people are OUTSIDE CS, here’s a simple definition you can use to explain CS to the rest of your company:

A Customer buys a product because they have a problem (A) and want to fix it using your product (B).

Customer success helps take the customer from A to B as quickly and easily as possible.

When you do that they will:

2) Tell their friends (free marketing and new sales!)

3) Buy more from you – because you’ve proven you are trustworthy and can get ^%#* done.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

If Customer Success is getting the customer from A to B, the customer journey map is HOW they get there.

It’s a visual representation of every step both the customer and your company need to take in order for the customer to get from A to B.

In many ways, it’s similar to a Success Map. The difference here is that a Success Map is customer-facing, whereas a customer journey map is internal and also contains some additional strategic guidance.

Pre-Sale vs. Post-Sale Customer Journey

One of the reasons Customer Success Leaders have trouble finding information on the Customer Journey is because Customer Success is relatively new, at least compared to Sales and Marketing, who have been using a Customer Journey for the buyer’s journey. So a Google search is a lot more likely to pull up information on that version. Here’s how they differ:

The Pre-sale Customer Journey Map includes:

User Actions

Pain Points

The Pre-sale customer journey map stages are:

Awareness – Customer becomes aware of their problem

Consideration – They discover there are solutions available and consider different providers

Decision – Customer lets the provider know they are interested in their product

Acquisition – Customer chooses provider and purchases the product

For a long time, most businesses thought that was the end of it. The customer wanted the product, they bought the product… why would there be an issue?

Well first of all, because these are humans and humans are not particularly logical. Second, products are almost never as intuitive as the provider thinks they are. Third, they give the customer too many choices.

The Post-Sale Customer Journey

The Post-Sale Customer Journey Map includes:

➡️ Every step the customer has to take on their end to achieve their desired outcome – and beyond

➡️ Every step the provider (aka your company) has to take on their end to ensure the customer achieves their desired outcome – and beyond

The Post-Sale customer journey map stages are:

Onboarding – Customer learns to use the product and is brought to first success milestone

Adoption – The product becomes part of their everyday life

*Achievement – Customer’s initial goal is achieved

Expansion – Customer’s goal expands to include additional products, services, or licenses

Renewal – What it sounds like…

Advocacy – Customer agrees to testimonials, referrals, social media posts, speaking engagements

While Achievement is not typically included in other articles I’ve read, I think it’s essential to know WHERE in the customer journey it occurs, since it’s, y’know, the whole point.

How they work together

These two journeys together define the customer experience. While it’s typical for Marketing and CS to develop them separately, it’s essential that they are combined to make sure the customer has a positive experience throughout – ESPECIALLY in the transitions between departments (marketing/sales/cs/support)

Customer Journey vs Customer Lifecycle

These can often be used interchangeably, but I like to think of it this way:

The customer journey is the customer’s perspective

The customer lifecycle is your company’s perspective . It’s a way to break up the journey to operationalize, analyze, and improve it.

Why is a Journey Map Important?

Far too many companies focus on themselves. What THEY have to do to drive business outcomes. That is, of course, important. Without that, nobody’s getting paid. (Don’t forget that!)

But by implementing a customer journey map focusing on what the customer is experiencing, and what they need to do internally, you are better able to guide them toward their goals.

It’s far too easy to miss the change management aspect of Customer Success. It’s not only the buyer who is going to use your product. You need to help them get buy-in from the end users. And without the guidance and enablement from CS, it’s 50-50 on whether that will ever happen. And if it doesn’t? An unused tool isn’t getting renewed.

You need more than one Customer Journey Map

I know, I know. Just doing ONE was overwhelming enough. But if you have different use cases, and/or different segments of customers, it will take a different set of steps to get them from A to B.

Even if you think you only have one use case, look at something like Calendly . They have segments for Customer Success, Recruiting, and Education… They don’t talk about booking meetings – they talk about increasing retention, decreasing time to hire, and planning office hours. Even though these customers are all using the same tool, they will use the features differently to achieve those outcomes.

Customer Journey Maps can help you better understand how customers interact with your product. They help you identify the steps and touchpoints customers take in order to achieve their goals. By creating multiple Customer Journey Maps, you can identify how different customer segments interact with different features of your product and how you can tailor your product to meet their needs and achieve better outcomes. With Customer Journey Maps, you can plan out how you can best guide customers from one step to the next, creating an optimal user experience.

How to create a Customer Journey Map

Creating a customer journey map is a great way to gain a better understanding of how customers interact with your business, website, or product. It is a visual representation of a customer’s experience of interacting with your business and is used to identify areas of improvement, create a more personalized experience, and increase customer satisfaction. To create a customer journey map, you will need to collect customer data and feedback, identify touchpoints along the customer journey, and map out the journey itself. You should also identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to optimize the customer experience. With a customer journey map in hand, you will be able to better understand the customer experience and make improvements that will increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Alright enough talk. Let’s get down to action . Here’s how to create a customer-focused journey map.

Important – Customer Journey Mapping is a team sport

Here’s the great news. You cannot and should not do this alone! The best way to create a customer journey map is with your CSMs. Including them in this part of the strategy will give you much more insight into what actually goes on day to day with your customers, even if you are a player-coach. It also improves employee engagement and development because they can see how their thoughts drive results for the whole company. It’s respectful and it’s motivating. And as an added bonus, it’s less work for you.

1. Run Workshops

This will be an interactive brainstorming session between you and the CSMs. (Add CS Ops if you’ve got them!)

You will map the four views of the customer journey below in separate workshops. One for the customer journey, one for your company’s journey, and one or two to list pain points and opportunities for your target audiences.

Don’t overthink it. Get some post-it notes (or a miro board) and have everyone start listing every touchpoint, resource, action, and communication.

List Out All The Action Steps – Internal and External

Workshop 1. customer actions.

Starting with the customer perspective is essential. It’s the customer journey, not the company journey.

What is everything the customer needs to do internally to successfully:

• Onboard – including reaching their first success milestone
• Adopt – make it a part of their routine.
• Achieve their goal using your product
• Expand their use case – approvals etc.
• Renew the product – contracts, legal, finance
• Advocacy – have achieved impressive results using the product. May need to consult with legal

Have everyone create sticky notes for fifteen minutes, then put the stickies on a board and group them together. This will let you see where there is a repeated pattern of success and where customers act differently. Try to think about only SUCCESSFUL customers — those who have a good relationship with your company and either have renewed or have confirmed they will.

I prefer to split this session into two parts – 1) what they have to do to meet their original goal and 2) what has to happen for them to want to expand, renew, and tell their peers. If you don’t complete 1, you can’t get to 2…

*Bonus – Don’t only think of this in terms of the executive stakeholder. You have to consider the motivations of the end users as well.

Workshop 2. Your Company’s actions

Meet again with the same board you created the customer actions on. Then collaborate on the internal version – adding sticky notes in a DIFFERENT COLOR from the client actions.

What are all the internal steps and customer touchpoints your company has to take to ensure the customer meets their goals?

• What other departments get involved and where? (Sale-CS handoff, Implementation team to CS etc)
• Who are the key stakeholders?
• What standard interactions do you have with the customer? (Welcome email, kickoff call, etc.)
• What actions does the CSM take independently
• What are our success milestones?

Workshop 3. Customer Obstacles & Pain Points

No one wants to have points of friction in the customer journey, but it’s better to acknowledge them (internally) and plan around them. Ostriches make terrible CSMs.

• Where along this route have you found that customers complain or don’t complete the required actions?
• How do you get them back on track?
• Are there alternative routes to take if you know there’s going to be an issue?

4. Success Milestones & Opportunities

What are the milestones where the customer sees value? Where do they frequently comment that they liked something? These milestones can be great opportunities to ask for testimonials or prompt upsells (if their goal is within reach).

2. Let Data Be Your Guide

If you have data – USE IT. Data-driven customer journey maps are far more effective than relying on qualitative data. Here’s where you can learn how to use data to drive the customer journey )

The best bet is to use a three-pronged approach:

• CSM Feedback
• Customer Feedback
• Validate and Fill in the Gaps with Data

3. Talk to Customers to Understand Their Journey.

This is the step that seems to stop people in their tracks. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Talk to customers who are doing well with your product. Offer them a Starbucks or Amazon gift card to give some user insights. It’s less about the money ($10-$20 is plenty) and more about the fact that you are acknowledging their time is valuable. You don’t need to beat around the bush.

What to Ask

Give them an excuse to brag. Tell them they have a great use case and they are a great example of a well-done product rollout. Then ask:

• How did you start using the product?
• How does that differ from how you use it now?
• Change can be hard. What did you do internally to roll out the product?
• How do you motivate your employees to use the product?
• How does the product help you achieve your goals in your industry/niche
• What makes you want to keep using the product?
• Is there anything exciting enough about the product to make you recommend it to others?

Then track these on a Miro board (we have a template for this in CSLA ) over a quarter or two. Themes will start to emerge that you can then use to improve your first pass at the customer journey map.

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

1. Set a Goal for the Journey Map.

No matter what the project is, or how complex the technologies, you have to begin with the end in mind. Otherwise, there’s no point. If I want to drive from New York to Austin, Texas, I could either enter a specific GPS, or I could drive SouthWest. One is going to get me where I want to go. The other will take twice as long and be pretty much pointless.

2. Done is better than perfect

Perfectionism is the enemy here. While you’re busy trying to make it perfect, you’re neglecting your clients. Do the post-its and get a baseline.

3. Measure and Iterate

Your customer journey is never done. But on the bright side it usually just requires some minor tweaks along the way. See what’s working and what’s not. Twice a year see if anyone has thoughts on how you might improve the customer journey. See if there are steps you can automate without the customer feeling the difference.

Try not to change more than two things at a time though. If you have a positive change you want to know what caused it. The same is true for a negative change.

4. Make the Customer Journey Map Accessible to Cross-functional Teams.

Silos are almost unavoidable in SaaS companies, but you can still do your part to be transparent. Share the customer journey with other departments. Communicate where it will be housed and be open to feedback. Yes, they may have different motivations, but you are all working together for the benefit of your company – not only the customer. Look for win-win situations.

Encourage collaboration and allow team members to offer input. This will help ensure the customer journey is up to date and that everyone is on the same page. Make sure to document the customer journey, so it is easy for cross-functional teams to access and reference. Additionally, consider creating a customer journey repository to store all customer journey maps, so that everyone is aware of how crucial the customer journey is to the success of the company.

I’d love to say you’re done, but a customer journey map is pretty useless just sitting in Google Drive. The whole point is to operationalize it.

Create Playbooks

A playbook is simply a set of step-by-step instructions to achieve a result. Create a separate playbook for each phase of the customer lifecycle:

Then create playbooks for

Expansion O pportunities

Advocacy Opportunities

Then add resources. This can be built as you go but will include things like email templates, slide presentations, calendar agendas, etc.

A final word

A Customer Journey Map is an incredibly powerful tool that allows organizations to understand and optimize the customer experience. It is a visual representation of every step a customer takes while interacting with an organization, from initial contact to post-purchase follow-up. By mapping out the journey and determining points of friction and areas for improvement, companies can create a more personal, and ultimately more successful, customer experience. Additionally, Customer Journey Maps can be used to identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling, and they are the building blocks of what you will create in a CS tool . Utilizing a Customer Journey Map is an invaluable step in the customer success process and should be considered a priority for any business. PS – Want the templates that make this CS Strategy as easy as fill-in-the-blanks? Join CSLA!

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

When and how to create customer journey maps.

July 31, 2016 2016-07-31

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In This Article:

What is a customer journey map, deconstruction of a customer journey map, why do you need a journey map and when should you have one, key elements of customer journey maps, rules for creating successful journey maps.

In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton. Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. Finally, that narrative is condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform design processes.

Storytelling and visualization are essential facets of journey mapping because they are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise and that creates a shared vision. Fragmented understanding is chronic in organizations where KPIs are assigned and measured per individual department or group because many organizations do not ever piece together the entire experience from the user’s standpoint. This shared vision is a critical aim of journey mapping, because without it, agreement on how to improve customer experience would never take place.

Journey mapping creates a holistic view of customer experience, and it’s this process of bringing together and visualizing disparate data points that can engage otherwise disinterested stakeholders from across groups and spur collaborative conversation and change.

Zone A: The lens provides constraints for the map by assigning (1) a persona (“who”) and (2) the scenario to be examined (“what”).

Zone B: The heart of the map is the visualized experience, usually aligned across (3) chunkable phases of the journey. The (4) actions, (5) thoughts, and (6) emotional experience of the user has throughout the journey can be supplemented with quotes or videos from research.

Zone C: The output should vary based on the business goal the map supports, but it could describe the insights and pain points discovered, and the (7) opportunities to focus on going forward, as well as (8) internal ownership.

Journey maps should always be created to support a known business goal. Maps that do not align to a business goal will not result in applicable insight. The goal could be an external issue, such as learning about a specific persona’s purchasing behaviors, or an internal issue, such as addressing lack of ownership over certain parts of the customer experience. Some potential business goals that journey mapping could be applied toward are listed below.

Shift a company’s perspective from inside-out to outside-in. If an organization lets internal processes and systems drive decisions that affect customer experience, a journey map could help turn the culture of that organization by refocusing on the thoughts, actions and emotions of customers. Journey mapping sheds light on real human experiences that often organizations know very little about.

Break down silos to create one shared, organization-wide vision. Because journey maps create a vision of the entire customer journey, they become a tool for creating cross-department conversation and collaboration. Journey mapping could be the first step in building an organization-wide plan of action to invest in customer experience, as it helps answer the question, “Where do we start?” by highlighting areas of friction.

Assign ownership of key touchpoints to internal departments. Often, areas of inconsistencies and glitches in customer journeys exist simply because no internal team has been tasked with ownership of that element. Journey maps can create clarity around alignment of departments or groups with different stages or key touchpoints in the journey that need addressing.

Target specific customers. Journey maps can help teams focus in on specific personas or customers, whether that means understanding differences or similarities across the journeys of multiple personas, prioritizing a high-value persona or exploring ways to target a new type of customer.

Understand quantitative data. If you are aware through analytics or other quantitative data that something specific is happening—maybe online sales are plateauing or an online tool is being underutilized—journey mapping can help you find out why.

While journey maps can (and should) take a wide variety of forms, certain elements are generally included:

Point of view. First and foremost, choose the “actor” of the story. Who is this journey map about? For example, a university might choose either students or faculty members, both of which would result in very different journeys. “Actors” usually aligns with personas, if they exist. As a guideline, when creating a basic journey map, use one point of view per map in order to provide a strong, clear narrative.

Scenario. Next, determine the specific experience to map. This could be an existing journey, where mapping will uncover positive and negative moments within that current experience, or a “to-be” experience, where the mapper is designing a journey for a product or service that doesn’t exist yet. Make sure to clarify the user’s goal during this experience. Journey maps are best for scenarios that describe a sequence of events, such as purchasing behavior or taking a trip.

Actions, mindsets, and emotions. At the heart of a journey map’s narrative is what the user is doing, thinking, and feeling during the journey. These data points should be based on qualitative research, such as field studies, contextual inquiry, and diary studies . The granularity of representation can vary based on the purpose of the map. Is the purpose to evaluate or design an entire, broad purchasing cycle or a contained system?

Touchpoints and channels. The map should align touchpoints (times when the actor in the map actually interacts with the company) and channels (methods of communication or service delivery, such as the website or physical store) with user goals and actions. These elements deserve a special emphasis because they are often where brand inconsistencies and disconnected experiences are uncovered.

Insights and ownership. The entire point of the journey-mapping process is to uncover gaps in the user experience (which are particularly common in omnichannel journeys), and then take action to optimize the experience. Insights and ownership are critical elements that are often overlooked. Any insights that emerge from journey mapping should be explicitly listed. If politically possible, also assign ownership for different parts of the journey map, so that it’s clear who’s in charge of what aspect of the customer journey. Without ownership, no one has responsibility or empowerment to change anything.

Even with all the above critical elements included, two journey maps could look completely different, yet both be perfectly suitable for the context in which they were designed.Tradeoffs in scope, focus, and breadth vs. depth are required when deciding on what elements to include. To make informed decisions on those tradeoffs, consider the following:

• What level of detail is needed in order to tell the complete story?
• What elements (such as device, channel, encountered content) are also necessary in order to provide the most truthful narrative?
• Is the purpose of this journey map to diagnose issues with a current experience or to design a new experience?
• What’s the balance between external actions (on the customer side) and internal actions (on the organization side)?
• Who will be using this journey map?

Successful journey maps require more than just the inclusion of the “right” elements. Journey mapping should be a collaborative process informed by well-defined goals, and built from research. It requires hard work to keep the process on the right track and to build the buy-in needed to evangelize the insights it provides. Below are some tips for making sure that the process starts and stays in the right direction:

Establish the “why" and the “what.”  First, identify the business goal that the journey map will support. Make sure there are clear answers to these basic key questions before you begin the process:

• What business goal does this journey map support?
• Who will use it?
• Who is it about and what experience does it address?
• How will it be shared?

Base it on truth. Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Start with gathering any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative-research process. While quantitative data can help support or validate (or aid in convincing stakeholders who may view qualitative data as “fuzzy”), quantitative data alone cannot build a story .

Collaborate with others. The activity of journey mapping (not the output itself) is often the most valuable part of the process, so involve others. Pull back the curtain and invite stakeholders from various groups to be a part of compiling the data and building the map.

Don’t jump to visualization. The temptation to create an aesthetic graphic or jump to design can lead to beautiful yet flawed journey maps. Make sure the synthesis of your data is complete and well-understood before moving to creating the visual.

Engage others with the end product. Don’t expect to get “buy-in” and foster interest in your journey map by simply sending a lovely graphic as an email attachment. Make it a living interactive document that people can be a part of. Bring up your story in meetings and conversations to promote a narrative that others believe in and begin to reference. One idea is to create a journey-mapping showroom where anyone not on the direct team can come experience the process and resulting artifacts.

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Customer Journey Map: What It Is & How to Create One

By Jennifer Gaskin , Dec 10, 2021

Creating a customer journey map gives a business the opportunity to visualize the path a person takes to become a loyal customer with your organization. A customer journey map is an excellent way to understand how consumers interact with your business.

Many companies use the customer journey map creation process to identify areas of improvement in their internal processes to help ensure all consumer interactions are the best they can be.

With Venngage’s Customer Journey Map Maker , you can easily create a customer journey map that aligns with your brand guidelines and helps all team members better understand your target customer.

Click to jump ahead:

What is the customer journey, what is customer journey mapping, why do businesses need to map their customer journey, steps to map a customer journey, how to create a customer journey map with venngage, customer journey map templates.

• FAQs about customer journey maps

Broadly, the customer journey describes how your customers or users interact with your organization. It is a way for companies to understand the complete customer experience and learn how to optimize it.

For a brick-and-mortar shop, that could be physical interactions like taking their trip through your store.

For companies that produce mostly digital products and services, the customer journey describes the consumer’s perspective as it relates to your company and its goods and services.

Mapping the customer journeys means understanding the path a person takes from becoming a lead or potential customer to transforming into a loyal patron of your business, so that you can visualize how a customer interacts with your organization at various points, as in the example below.

This customer journey map describes the journey the average customer of GLIDE App will experience, divided into different stages. You also see the steps the customer is expected to take, which customer touchpoints they’re going to interact with and how each touchpoint is coordinated with each business department.

As we’ve touched on, customer journey mapping means creating a visual representation of the entire customer journey: how existing and potential customers interact with your business. Some customer journey maps are map-like, while others are more linear, flowing in a straight line, and still others have unique shapes.

What all customer journey maps have in common is that they focus on the customer experience as it relates to the product you make or the services you sell.

This customer journey map is represented in a circle: customer journey begins with Discovery and ends in Conversion. You can also tell that this customer journey map illustrates the importance of continual customer engagement even after leads have turned into customers.

In this customer journey map, activities, motivations, emotions and barriers are all plotted against the stages of the buyer’s journey. At the start, customers have little to no awareness of the product and by the end, they are reliable returning customers — in an ideal world. Of course, to make this even more seamless, customer training software can be deployed as it helps understand customers’ use of products in their daily life.

This infographic takes the traditional customer journey map a step toward the customer by depicting a theoretical client, lead or consumer—or in other words, a buyer persona. This allows the organization to ensure they’re keeping the buyer top of mind at all times.

To learn more about buyer or customer personas, check out our posts:

• 10 Buyer Persona Templates, Examples & Marketing Tips
• 20+ User Persona Examples, Templates and Tips For Targeted Decision-Making

Taking into account the customer perspective, this customer journey map template plots the buyer’s activities along the top, from the moment they realize they need to purchase something until they’ve paid for it. The business can then populate the cells with the appropriate answers based on the metrics they are attempting to visualize; in this case, emotions, experiences and customer expectations.

Mapping the customer journeys can help businesses understand bottlenecks or pain points they didn’t realize existed. And it can help organizations diagnose internal issues by enabling them to visualize things from their customers’ perspective.

In short, customer journey maps give businesses a chance to develop a deep well of knowledge about their consumer beyond the metrics of sales or engagement. Putting themselves in the customer’s shoes and understanding why consumers behave as they do can empower an organization with all the tools it needs to better serve consumers.

This eCommerce customer journey map, for example, can allow a savvy sales, marketing or operations team to optimize customer satisfaction by correlating a bad customer experience with poor UI/UX design or other issues.

Customer journey maps are also useful for simplifying and visualizing only one aspect of the journey. In this case, the focus is the outreach tools a business uses to reach potential customers, but it’s easy to customize this type of design to apply to many other segments of the buyer journey or add details that can aid decision-making.

Use this type of customer journey map to visualize the content you’ll use in your marketing efforts at each stage of the buyer’s journey or sales funnel . Remember that it’s important to consistently offer leads and prospects something new to maintain their interest.

The first step to any successful journey is understanding where you want to go. In the case of mapping your customer journey, the first step is determining your end goal. Do you want to identify bottlenecks in your process, increase conversions or push new products? Think about what you want to get out of the process before you begin.

Once you’ve outlined your goals, you can begin the steps to mapping a customer journey.

Step 1 . In most cases, a customer’s journey should first be broken down into a timeline or customer stages. This typically follows the buyer’s journey (Awareness—Consideration—Decision) or a variation of that.

Here’s an example of a customer journey map that divides the common 3-stage customer’s journey into 5 stages:

Step 2 . From there, you should determine what should go down the side of your customer journey. In the case of the above example, the customer’s approach and resulting experience are listed.

Step 3 . List or visualize the customer touchpoints.

The template below does that by including a row in the graphic for physical and digital touchpoints. In some cases, you may consider listing these as pain points if all customers or this particular persona in question have to deal with a lot of hurdles to successfully move on to the next phase of the journey. This could be something like price or product availability.

Step 4 . Include solutions or opportunities for your organization to optimize the customer experience at each step. That could mean removing pain points or roadblocks, such as offering them discounts or other incentives to select your company.

Visualizing your customer’s journey can be difficult without using the right customer journey mapping tools.

Venngage makes it very easy to create a customer journey map by offering dozens of templates that you can quickly customize with your company’s information. With just a few clicks, you can list out the steps of your customer journey and detail the experiences at each point.

Check out our library of customer journey map templates you can easily customize:

Notice the Smart Templates? They are created with our Smart Diagram editor. You can easily add icons, move things around and space the design elements however you like. As you add or delete text, the editor will automatically adjust so you won’t need to resize anything.

For businesses that want to have consistent branding across their customer journey design, you can use My Brand Kit to apply brand colors or logos to your customer journey map in one click:

Here are a few more effective customer journey map examples to inspire you as you work to create your buyer’s journey to better understand your consumer.

This customer journey map lists the stages of the process across the top and the categories the organization must consider down the side. Organizing your buyer’s journey in this way allows you to visualize each issue at a glance and make correlations between segments and outcomes.

Similarly, use this customer journey map to quickly see which channels apply to what phases and what opportunities exist for reaching out to potential buyers during each segment along the way.

Buyer’s journey maps can also lean toward the simple size, as in this example, which is appropriate for companies that need to list digital and physical touchpoints along with opportunities that could help convert leads to customers.

When considering your customer journey, it’s important to think about how your customer has changed after every contact with your organization. In the beginning, they may not know exactly what they need, and then by the end, they should be more confident about what you can do for them.

Remember that not all customers are the same, and pain points for one person may not be pain points for another. So, it’s best to make customer journey maps for your major buyer types or personas.

FAQ about customer journey maps

Do you have more questions about customer journey maps? We’ve got answers.

What are the 7 steps to map the customer journey?

When creating a customer journey map, many experts recommend the following seven steps:

• Set targets
• Create buyer personas
• Identify motivations and define barriers or pain points
• Visualize buyer journey
• Maximize touchpoints
• Identify opportunities to establish trust
• Test and revise

What do you use a customer journey map for?

Customer journey maps are useful for visualizing a buyer’s interaction with your company. This can help you understand your buyer and their motivations better, as well as helping you identify reasons why they might not choose your business, thus changing strategy or decision-making to make your organization more attractive.

Ultimately, creating a customer journey map can help you learn what the customer needs and know how to provide consistently excellent service to acquire new customers as well as retaining customer loyalty.

What are touchpoints in customer journey maps?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map describes a moment in which your customer interacts with your company or brand, and a customer journey map should include all touchpoints along the way.

In summary: Optimize the customer experience by creating a customer journey map

With Venngage’s Customer Journey Map Maker , you can quickly and easily visualize your customer journey so you can eliminate pain points, resolve bottlenecks and better understand how to give your customers what they want. It’s free to get started.

• Social Media

• May 19, 2023
• Marketing Strategies , Social Media Management

Putting Theory into Practice: 3 Customer Journey Map Examples Across Various Small Businesses

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Our previous blog post discussed the importance of customer journey maps and how they can help you better understand your customers, create more targeted marketing campaigns and drive growth. 

Now that you’re familiar with customer journey mapping and the 9-step process, it’s time to dive deeper and explore some real-world customer journey examples across various industries. 

This blog post will showcase three customer journey map examples for small business industries, demonstrating how the 9-step process can be applied to different businesses with unique goals and challenges.

We aim to provide inspiration and practical insights to help you create your customer journey map tailored to your business needs. 

3 Customer Journey Map Examples Across Various Small Businesses

So, let’s dive into these customer journey examples and discover how you can successfully navigate the customer experience using customer journey maps.

Customer Journey Map Example: Local Coffee Shop

Let’s say you own a charming local coffee shop, and your primary goal is to grow your social media following by 25% within the next six months. To achieve this goal, you’ll need to create a customer journey map that focuses on engaging your target audience through social media. 

Here’s how the 9-step process can be applied to this specific goal in this Local Coffee Chop customer journey map example:

Step 1:  Define your goal.

As we’ve established, your goal is to grow your social media following by 25% in six months. This goal will involve creating engaging content, reaching your  target audience , and implementing effective social media management strategies.

Step 2:  Develop customer persona.

Your  target audience in marketing  might consist of coffee enthusiasts, students, freelancers, or residents who value a cozy atmosphere for work or relaxation. 

Understanding your target audience’s preferences and habits will help you tailor your social media content to resonate with them. 

Do you struggle with managing multiple social media platforms for your brand's presence? The Sociosight app can help you simplify the process and save you time. With Sociosight, you can publish, schedule, and monitor posts and engage with your followers across multiple social media platforms, all from one dashboard. Get started today with a free sign-up!

To gain a deeper understanding, develop customer personas that represent different segments of your audience.

For example, let’s create two  customer personas  for your coffee shop in this customer journey map example:

• Persona-1 : Jane is a 28-year-old professional working near the local coffee shop. She’s looking for a place to grab a coffee and a quick breakfast on her way to work. She often uses Instagram to find new and trendy places to visit.
• Persona 2:  David is a 45-year-old freelance writer who enjoys working at coffee shops for the ambiance and the company of other creatives. He loves discovering new places to work and sharing his experiences on Facebook with his friends.

If you want to learn more about creating customer personas,  check out this article . 

Step 3:  Map out the customer journey stages for each persona.

In this customer journey map example, we would focus on how each persona discovers your coffee shop on social media, engages with your content, and ultimately follows your account. 

Since the goal of your coffee shop is to increase your social media following, we may only discuss three journey stages in this customer journey map example: awareness, consideration, and decision.

Jane’s Customer Journey Stages:

• Awareness:  Discovers the local coffee shop through Instagram posts and stories shared by friends and influencers.
• Consideration:  Visit the coffee shop’s Instagram profile to view more images, read reviews, and get a sense of the vibe and the menu.
• Decision:  Follow the local coffee shop’s Instagram account to learn more about the shop and stay updated on its offerings and promotions.

David’s Customer Journey Stages:

• Awareness:  Discovers the local coffee shop through a Facebook post shared by a friend who visited the shop recently.
• Consideration:  Visit the coffee shop’s Facebook page to read customer reviews and learn about the shop’s environment and offerings.
• Decision:  Follow the local coffee shop’s Facebook page to stay informed about the shop’s news, events, and promotions.

Step 4:  Identify touchpoints and channels for each persona.

To effectively engage your target audience and achieve your goal, you must identify the touchpoints and channels that are most relevant to each persona. 

Touchpoints are your audience’s specific interactions with your brand, while channels are the platforms through which these interactions occur.

For each persona in this Local Coffee Shop customer journey map example, consider the following touchpoints and channels:

Jane’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Awareness stage:  Instagram posts and stories shared by friends and influencers.
• Consideration stage:  The local coffee shop’s Instagram profile where she can view images, read reviews, and get a sense of the vibe and the menu.
• Decision stage:  She follows the account to learn more about the shop and stay updated on its offerings and promotions.

David’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Awareness stage:  Facebook ads.
• Consideration stage:  The local coffee shop’s Facebook page where he can read customer reviews and learn about the shop’s environment and offerings.
• Decision stage:  He follows the account to stay informed about the shop’s news, events, and promotions.

Once you’ve identified the most relevant touchpoints and channels for each persona, you can tailor your social media strategy to engage your audience at these points in their journey. This targeted approach will help you create more meaningful connections with your audience and ultimately achieve your goal of growing your coffee shop’s social media following.

Step 5:  Capture customer emotions and expectations.

Before developing your content, it’s essential to consider your target audience’s emotions and expectations when engaging with your brand on social media. Understanding these emotional triggers and expectations will help you create content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to take the desired action.

For each persona, consider the following emotions and expectations:

Jane’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Awareness stage:  Curiosity and excitement about discovering a new local coffee shop through friends’ and influencers’ Instagram posts and stories.
• Consideration stage:  Interest in learning more about the shop, its atmosphere, and menu items by browsing the Instagram profile, with the expectation of seeing visually appealing images and positive reviews.
• Decision stage:  Satisfaction with the information she gathered led her to follow the coffee shop’s Instagram account expecting to receive updates on the shop’s offerings, events, and promotions.

David’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Awareness stage:  Intrigue and desire to explore a new local coffee shop through a friend’s Facebook post.
• Consideration stage:  Keenness to learn more about the shop’s environment and offerings by visiting its Facebook page, expecting positive reviews and informative content.
• Decision stage:  Contentment with the information he found, prompting him to follow the coffee shop’s Facebook page to stay up-to-date on news, events, and promotions.

Remember these emotional triggers and expectations when crafting your social media content, ensuring you create a more personalized and impactful experience for your audience.

Step 6:  Develop engaging content.

Now that you deeply understand your target audience’s emotions, expectations, and preferences, it’s time to create engaging content that speaks directly to each persona. 

Employ  content batching  with effective  copywriting for a social media  strategy to develop content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to follow your coffee shop’s social media accounts.

Jane’s persona:

Awareness stage:  

Use the  AIDA copywriting  formula to create eye-catching and informative Instagram posts showcasing your unique coffee blends and highlighting special promotions. 

Attract attention with visually appealing images and engage Jane’s interest by discussing the quality and origin of your coffee beans. Create a desire for your products by sharing each blend’s taste profile and benefits, and prompt action with a call to action directing Jane to follow your coffee shop’s Instagram account for more updates.

Let’s see an example of Instagram posts below using the AIDA copywriting formula for Jane’s persona in the awareness stage:

🔥 Introducing our new Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee! ☕ Experience the unique flavors of this single-origin coffee while it’s hot! 🔥 Follow us for more updates and coffee inspiration! #coffee #coffeelovers #ethiopiancoffee #yirgacheffe

Image: A beautifully styled photo of a cup of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee on a table with coffee beans scattered around, a small sign with the coffee’s name, and your coffee shop’s logo subtly visible in the background.

• A – Attention:  The eye-catching image and use of emojis in the caption grab Jane’s attention as she scrolls through her Instagram feed.
• I – Interest:  The mention of a new single-origin coffee, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, piques Jane’s interest in learning more about this unique blend.
• D – Desire:  By describing the coffee as “unique” and “hot,” the caption creates a sense of desire in Jane to try this unique offering at your coffee shop.
• A – Action:  The call-to-action at the end of the caption encourages Jane to follow your coffee shop’s Instagram account for more updates and coffee inspiration, driving her further along the customer journey.

Consideration stage:

Engage Jane by sharing informative blog posts about coffee origins, brewing methods, and menu items. Use Instagram Stories to share behind-the-scenes looks at your coffee shop and introduce your friendly baristas. Include positive customer reviews to build trust and credibility.

Decision stage:  

Encourage Jane to visit your coffee shop by offering exclusive discounts or promotions for Instagram followers. Create a sense of urgency by setting a deadline for the rise, and showcase the enjoyable atmosphere and high-quality coffee experience awaiting Jane at your coffee shop.

David’s persona:

Use Facebook ads targeting local coffee enthusiasts, like David, with the  FAB copywriting formula . Highlight the Features, Advantages, and Benefits of your coffee shop, such as your unique coffee blends, inviting environment, and knowledgeable staff. Include positive customer reviews and images of your shop’s interior to build trust and credibility.

Let’s see an example of a Facebook ad using the FAB copywriting formula for David’s persona in the awareness stage:

🌿 Discover our eco-friendly, community-focused coffee shop! 🌿 Come by to enjoy delicious coffee, support local artists, and positively impact the environment. 🌎 Click to learn more and get directions! #ecofriendly #community #coffeeshop

Image:  A high-quality photo showcasing your coffee shop’s interior, featuring repurposed furniture, local wall artwork, and a lively atmosphere with customers enjoying their coffee.

• F – Features:  The ad highlights the features of your coffee shop, such as its eco-friendly approach, and focuses on supporting local artists.
• A – Advantages : By emphasizing the positive environmental impact and the opportunity to support the local community, the ad communicates the advantages of choosing your coffee shop over other alternatives.
• B – Benefits:  The overall benefit for David is the chance to enjoy a delicious coffee while contributing to a better environment and a thriving local arts scene.

The caption and image work together to appeal to David’s values, encouraging him to click on the ad to learn more about your coffee shop and get directions.

Consideration stage: 

Share informative and engaging content on your Facebook page, such as blog posts about coffee origins, brewing methods, and menu items. Showcase your shop’s inviting environment, comfortable seating areas, well-lit spaces, and tasteful decor to pique David’s interest and encourage him to learn more about your coffee shop.

Decision stage: 

Encourage David to follow your coffee shop’s Facebook account by offering exclusive discounts or promotions for Facebook followers. Create a sense of urgency by setting a deadline for the promotion and emphasizing the enjoyable atmosphere and high-quality coffee experience awaiting David at your coffee shop.

Publishing Content

Once you have created your content, you can now publish your content across social media platforms where your customer personas hang out. 

You can use  social media scheduling  tools like the  Sociosight  App to ease your job in posting for various platforms. 

With the  Sociosight  App as your  social media content management  tool, you can publish and schedule your content and reply to comments on your posts directly from the app. So, you don’t have to log in and log out of each of your social media accounts and manage them all from one place. 

In addition, you may incorporate social media ads to complement your social media organic marketing strategy. For example, you can boost social media posts that earn good organic interaction, and doing so will improve your post’s engagement and eventually increase the number of your followers. 

Step 7:  Analyze data and Improve.

Once you have developed and published content

on various social media, it’s time to measure how their performance and what to

do to improve.

Let’s see the steps in the coffee shop case:

Gather the data.

You should collect data from social media platforms. 

Following are the examples of social media metrics to gather include that you can collect for your coffee shop account:

• Follower   growth –  to measure the increase in followers on each platform.
• Engagement   rates , such as likes, comments, and shares, indicate how well the content resonates with the audience.
• Impressions and reach  show how many users have seen the content and the potential size of the audience.
• Audience demographics –  include age, gender, location, and interests to understand the target audience better. Then, tailor your content accordingly.

Analyze the data.

After gathering the relevant social media metrics, you need to analyze the data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. 

Some examples include:

• Comparing engagement rates for different types of content, such as videos, images, and text-based posts, to determine what content resonates best with the audience.
• Identifying which social media platforms contribute the most to follower growth to allocate resources and efforts accordingly.
• Examining audience demographics ensures that the content effectively targets the desired customer personas, such as the Busy Professional, College Student, and Stay-at-Home Parent.

Make improvements.

Based on the data analysis, you can improve your content and marketing on social media. 

Here are some examples:

• Suppose the data analysis reveals that the College Student persona is highly engaged with video content on Instagram. In that case, you can create more content tailored to their interests, such as study-friendly spaces or promotions on study breaks.
• Suppose the data shows that the Busy Professional persona prefers LinkedIn and is likelier to engage with content about quick, convenient coffee options. In that case, the coffee shop can create LinkedIn-specific content showcasing its to-go offerings and mobile ordering options.
• Suppose the Stay-at-Home Parent persona demonstrates high engagement with Facebook posts featuring the coffee shop’s kid-friendly environment. In that case, you can create more content showcasing your play area, special events for families, and child-friendly menu items.

Continuous improvement.

Finally, you should continuously monitor your social media metrics to ensure its content and marketing strategies are effective. 

By regularly analyzing data and making improvements, you can:

• Adjust your content strategy to focus on the types of content that resonate best with your target audience.
• Test different posting times and frequencies to optimize engagement and reach.
• Experiment with new marketing channels or advertising formats, such as Instagram Stories ads or sponsored posts on Facebook.

By gathering and analyzing social media data, improving content and marketing, and continuously monitoring the results, your coffee shop will be better positioned to increase its social media following by 25% within the next six months.

Customer Journey Map Example: Boutique Clothing Store

Imagine you’re the owner of a thriving boutique clothing store with both a physical location and an online presence, catering to the everyday fashion needs of your female audience. 

As a business owner, you understand the importance of delivering a seamless and enjoyable experience for your customers in-store and online. But have you considered mapping the entire customer journey to understand customer journey touchpoints better? 

In this customer journey map example, we will guide you through creating a practical map tailored to your boutique clothing store. By following these steps, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement, enhance your marketing strategies, and ultimately create an outstanding experience that keeps customers returning for more. 

Let’s dive in and discover how you can elevate your clothing store’s success in this customer journey map example!

Imagine that your brick-and-mortar boutique clothing store has been doing well, but you need help to gain traction and improve conversions on your online store, which has been going live for six months. 

To boost your online sales, you’ve decided to set a clear goal: increase the overall conversion rate of your online store by 20% within the next six months. 

By focusing on this objective, you can create a customer journey map that identifies areas for optimization.

Step 2:  Develop a customer persona.

Understanding your target audience is crucial for creating a customer journey map that accurately reflects the needs and preferences of your potential buyers. 

As a boutique clothing store catering to casual fashion for a female audience, developing detailed customer personas that represent your ideal customers is essential. 

Consider factors such as age, income, location, interests, and shopping habits to create a comprehensive profile of your typical customers.

For example, you might have two primary customer personas for your boutique casual clothing store:

• Sarah  is a 28-year-old working professional living in an urban area. She values comfortable yet stylish clothes that she can wear at work and during her leisure time. She regularly shops online and is willing to pay a premium for high-quality, fashionable items.
• Emily  is a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom who enjoys dressing casually but still wants to look stylish when running errands or attending social events. She prefers shopping online for convenience and often looks for deals and discounts.

By defining these customer personas, you can better understand the needs and expectations of your target audience, allowing you to tailor your online store’s customer journey to cater to their preferences and boost conversions.

Now that you’ve defined your customer personas, it’s time to map the customer journey stages for Sarah and Emily. 

Each stage represents a different point in their decision-making process, and understanding their needs at each stage will help you optimize your online store to drive conversions.

Sarah’s Customer Journey:

• Awareness : Sarah discovers your online store through targeted social media ads showcasing your stylish and comfortable clothing options for working professionals.
• Consideration : Sarah browses through your website, comparing product offerings, reading customer reviews, and checking shipping and return policies. She’s interested in your product and wants updates on your offers. Therefore, she signs up to subscribe to your newsletter. 
• Decision : Sarah feels confident about the quality of her clothing and decides to purchase it. She selects a few work-appropriate outfits and proceeds to the checkout.

Emily’s Customer Journey:

• Awareness : Emily stumbles upon your online store while browsing her favorite mommy blog, which features a sponsored post about your boutique’s casual yet fashionable clothing.
• Consideration : Emily explores your online store, looking for deals and discounts and adding items to her Wishlist for future reference.
• Decision : Emily finds a limited-time sale on your online store, which prompts her to complete her purchase. She chooses several casual outfits that suit her lifestyle and adds them to her cart.

By analyzing the customer journey for each persona, you can optimize your content and online store user interface to provide a personalized and satisfying shopping experience, increasing your conversion rate.

Sarah’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Awareness Stage:
• Social Media Ads:  Use Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to showcase stylish and professional clothing options. Target women in Sarah’s age group and profession.
• LinkedIn Groups:  Engage in discussions and share relevant content within LinkedIn groups Sarah and her peers frequented.
• Consideration Stage:
• User Interface Optimization:  Make sure your online store is easy to navigate, with clearly labeled categories and filters that allow Sarah to quickly find the professional clothing options she’s interested in. Include a comparison feature to help her compare different products.
• Customer Reviews:  Highlight customer reviews on product pages to provide social proof and help Sarah make an informed decision.
• Newsletter Subscription:  Add a subscription box to your website, encouraging Sarah to sign up for your newsletter. Offer valuable tips and occasional vouchers as an incentive. Once she subscribes, send her personalized emails with relevant content, product recommendations, and exclusive offers tailored to her preferences.
• Decision Stage:
• Website : Optimize your online store for easy navigation and a smooth shopping experience. Highlight customer reviews and testimonials to build trust with Sarah.
• Retargeting Ads : Use the ad to remind Sarah of items she viewed on your website but didn’t purchase, encouraging her to return and complete her purchase.

Emily’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Mommy Blogs : Collaborate with famous mommy bloggers who cater to Emily’s demographic. Sponsored posts and product reviews can help create awareness about your online store and drive traffic.
• Social Media : Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest to share images of your casual, fashionable clothing options, styling tips, and outfit inspiration.
• User Interface Optimization : Ensure your online store is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly. Create categories and filters that allow Emily to quickly find the casual clothing options she’s interested in and any items on sale or with special discounts.
• Deals and Discounts : Prominently feature ongoing promotions on your website to catch Emily’s attention. Use eye-catching visuals and clear messaging to communicate the value of the promotion.
• Retargeting Ads : When you integrate a Facebook pixel into your online store, you can create an ad to target those who have visited your website but have yet to act. 
• Website : Ensure your online store is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate. Create a wishlist feature that allows Emily to save items for future reference and has a simple and secure checkout process. 
• Retargeting  Ads: Use retargeting ads to remind Emily of items she viewed on your website but didn’t purchase, encouraging her to return and complete her purchase.
• Thank You Email:  Once Emily has completed a purchase, send her a thank you email and an invitation to subscribe to the newsletter for future updates. 

By identifying the right touchpoints and channels for each persona at each stage of the customer journey, you can effectively reach and engage your target audience, ultimately leading to an increase in the conversion rate for your online boutique clothing store.

Understanding the emotions and expectations of your customers at each stage of their journey is crucial for creating a seamless and engaging experience that leads to conversions. 

Here’s how you can capture Sarah and Emily’s emotions and expectations in their respective customer journeys:

Sarah’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Awareness Stage : Sarah expects to find professional clothing options that align with her style and make her feel confident. She values quality, comfort, and versatility. Your content and marketing efforts should evoke a sense of professionalism and sophistication to attract her attention.
• Consideration Stage : As Sarah browses your online store, she expects an easy-to-navigate user interface, informative product descriptions, and reliable customer reviews. Her emotions during this stage range from curiosity to excitement as she discovers potential outfits for her professional wardrobe. Ensure that your website meets her expectations to maintain her engagement and interest.
• Decision Stage : When Sarah is ready to purchase, she expects a smooth and secure checkout process, with multiple payment options and transparent shipping and returns policy information. Her emotions at this stage may include anticipation and satisfaction as she finalizes her purchase. Deliver an exceptional user experience to instill trust and confidence in your brand.

Emily’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Awareness Stage : Emily wants to find casual, stylish, affordable, and on-trend clothing. She expects to find deals and discounts that excite and value her as a customer. Your content and marketing efforts should evoke a sense of fun and affordability that resonates with her.
• Consideration Stage : As Emily explores your online store, she expects an intuitive, mobile-friendly user interface with clear information on deals and discounts. Her emotions during this stage range from curiosity to excitement as she uncovers potential additions to her casual wardrobe. Ensure your website caters to her expectations and keeps her engaged throughout her browsing experience.
• Decision Stage : When Emily decides to purchase, she expects a seamless and secure checkout process, flexible payment options, and transparency regarding shipping and returns policies. Her emotions at this stage may include anticipation and satisfaction as she completes her purchase. Provide an outstanding user experience to build trust and foster loyalty to your brand.

By capturing and addressing the emotions and expectations of Sarah and Emily at each stage of their customer journey, you can create a personalized and delightful experience that encourages them to convert and become loyal customers of your boutique clothing store.

Step 6:  Develop engaging content. 

Creating engaging and relevant content tailored to each stage of your customer persona’s journey is critical to guiding them toward making a purchase. 

You can craft compelling content that resonates with your target audience using  copywriting formulas for website  and social media like the 4Ps (promise, picture, proof, push), BAB (before, after, bridge), AIDA, or other  copywriting formulas . 

Here are examples of content writing for each stage of Sarah and Emily’s customer journeys.

Sarah’s Content:

Awareness stage.

As Sarah discovered your store through a social media ad, creating engaging content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn that will resonate with her professional aspirations and lead her to your online store is essential.

Here’s an example of a Facebook ad copy for Sarah using the 4Ps (promise, picture, proof, and push) copywriting formula:

PROMISE: 

• Visual : Showcase your clothing line’s stylish and professional options. 
• Caption : “Discover the Perfect Blend of Style and Comfort in Our Premium Casual Collection for Modern Professionals.”

PICTURE: 

• Visual : Display how your clothing can elevate Sarah’s work wardrobe. 
• Caption : “Imagine stepping into your next business meeting or presentation, exuding confidence in a chic outfit that combines sophistication and comfort.” “Our collection offers versatile pieces that transition seamlessly from the office to after-work events, making you feel empowered and stylish all day.”

PROOF: 

• Visual : Include testimonials from satisfied customers who have successfully incorporated your clothing into their professional attire. 
• Caption : “Join the hundreds of satisfied customers who have elevated their professional wardrobes with our carefully curated selection. “Check out our 5-star reviews and testimonials that showcase the quality, style, and comfort our clothing line offers.”

PUSH: 

• Visual : Encourage Sarah to visit your online store to explore your collection.
• Caption : “Remember your chance to make a lasting impression. “Click “Shop Now” to explore our collection and upgrade your wardrobe today with FREE shipping on orders over $50!”

This Facebook ad promises Sarah the stylish, comfortable clothing she desires, paints a picture of her confidently wearing the outfits, provides proof through customer reviews, and pushes her to take action by offering free shipping on orders over $50.

Consideration Stage

Create an email series for newsletter subscribers offering styling tips for workplace settings (e.g., client meetings, casual Fridays, office parties). Use the BAB formula to show Sarah how her work attire can evolve to suit different occasions, making your clothing options even more appealing.

Here’s an example of a newsletter for Sarah during her consideration stage, using the BAB (Before, After, Bridge) copywriting formula:

(Introduction)  “Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter, Sarah! “We’re excited to have you on board and can’t wait to share our styling tips, exclusive offers, and new arrivals.”

(Before ) “Are you tired of feeling uninspired and underdressed in your workplace? “We understand that dressing up for work can sometimes feel like a chore, making finding the motivation to look your best difficult.”

(AFTER)  “Imagine confidently walking into the office, turning heads with your effortlessly chic and professional outfit.” With the right styling tips and wardrobe choices, you can conquer your work week in style, leaving you feeling empowered and ready to take on any challenge.”

(BRIDGE)  “At [Your Boutique], we’ve got the perfect solution to transform your workplace wardrobe. Here are five styling tips to help you look and feel fabulous in any professional setting:

• Choose versatile pieces that can be easily mixed and matched.
• Opt for comfortable, high-quality fabrics that look and feel great.
• Accessorize with statement pieces to elevate your outfit.
• Balance bold colors and prints with neutral, classic pieces.
• Feel free to express your style and creativity.

Ready to revamp your work attire? Visit our online store today and explore our premium casual collection designed for modern professionals like you. “Enjoy a 15% discount on your first purchase with the code STYLE15!”

With this introduction, Sarah will feel welcomed and appreciated for subscribing to the newsletter.

Decision Stage

Here’s a product description example for Sarah’s decision stage using the AIDA copywriting formula:

Attention:  “Introducing our stunning tailored blazer dress: the ultimate statement piece for every modern professional woman!”

(Interest)  “Crafted with high-quality fabric and designed with a sophisticated silhouette, this blazer dress seamlessly combines style and comfort. Its chic lapel collar and flattering waist-cinching belt make it a versatile addition to your work wardrobe, suitable for day-to-day office wear and after-work events.”

(Desire)  “Imagine the confidence you’ll exude as you step into the office wearing this elegant piece, turning heads and impressing colleagues. With the perfect balance between bold and classy, this dress showcases your impeccable taste and allows you to express your style.”

(Action)  “Ready to make the Tailored Blazer Dress your new go-to workwear staple? Visit our online store and add it to your cart now. And don’t forget, use the code STYLE15 for an exclusive 15% discount on your first purchase!”

This product description speaks directly to Sarah’s persona, highlighting the features and benefits most relevant to her needs and preferences in a professional setting while encouraging her to take action and make a purchase.

Emily’s Content:

Since Emily’s touchpoint with your store is through a blog post, you’ll want to develop informative and engaging content that showcases your trendy yet affordable clothing options, leading her to explore your online store further.

For example, you can write a blog post on “10 Trendy Outfit Ideas for Fashionistas on a Budget” using the 4Ps formula to outline what you want to cover in your blog post:

• Promise : Share affordable and fashionable outfit ideas. 
• Picture : Describe how these outfits can help Emily look stylish without breaking the bank. 
• Proof : Include testimonials from customers who have successfully built a fashionable wardrobe on a budget. 
• Push : Encourage Emily to browse your online store for more budget-friendly fashion options.

At Emily’s consideration stage, she’s browsing your online store for casual day-to-day outfits but has yet to take action. To re-engage Emily and encourage her to make a purchase, you can create a Facebook ad targeting those who have visited your website, including Emily.

In this ad, you’ll want to showcase a collection of casual outfits that suit Emily’s taste, using the Instant Experience format to create an immersive, mobile-optimized shopping experience. 

Here’s an example of a Facebook ad copy targeting Emily:

(Headline)  “Discover Your Perfect Casual Outfit!”

(Description)  “Revamp your everyday wardrobe with our stylish, comfortable casual wear collection. Find the perfect fit for your day-to-day activities, from cozy loungewear to chic streetwear.”

(Instant Experience)  “Click ‘Shop Now’ to explore our handpicked collection of casual outfits, perfect for your laid-back lifestyle. Enjoy seamless browsing and easy shopping right on your mobile device!”

(Call to Action)  “Shop Now”

This Facebook ad highlights the casual outfit options in your store and entices Emily to explore the collection within the Instant Experience. 

The ad speaks directly to her desire for comfortable, stylish day-to-day clothing and encourages her to click the “Shop Now” button to view the collection and add items to her cart. Targeting Emily with this tailored ad increases the likelihood of turning her browsing behavior into a purchase.

For Emily’s decision stage, you’ll want to create two pieces of content: a retargeting ad to remind her of the items she viewed and a thank you email assuming she completed her purchase through a guest account. 

Let’s first look at the Facebook retargeting ad using the Collection ad format:

(Headline)  “Complete Your Outfit Today!”

(Description)  “Looking for the perfect casual outfit? Don’t miss out on upgrading your wardrobe with our stylish selection. Complete your purchase now and enjoy your new look!”

(Collection Ad)  Feature the items Emily viewed and complementary products she might be interested in.

This Facebook retargeting ad reminds Emily of the items she viewed and encourages her to complete her purchase by showcasing the products in a collection ad format.

Now let’s move on to the thank-you email, assuming Emily has completed her purchase through a guest account:

Subject: “Thank You for Your Purchase!” “Get the Latest Updates on Our Casual Collection”

Thank you for your recent purchase from [your store name]! We appreciate your support and hope you’ll enjoy your new casual outfit.

We’d love to stay in touch and update you on our latest arrivals, special offers, and styling tips. We invite you to subscribe to our newsletter to ensure you get all the benefits.

[Subscribe Button: “Join Our Newsletter”]

By subscribing, you’ll be the first to know about our newest collections, exclusive discounts, and tips on how to make the most out of your casual wardrobe. Take advantage of the latest trends and deals from [your store name]!

Thanks again for your support, and we look forward to keeping in touch.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

[Your Store Name]

This email acknowledges Emily’s purchase, expresses gratitude, and invites her to subscribe to the newsletter for updates on new arrivals, special offers, and styling tips. 

By sending this personalized email, you can encourage Emily to engage further with your brand and stay informed about future promotions and products.

Step 7:  Analyze the data and improve.

As a boutique clothing store owner, it’s

It is essential to gather data and analyze your customer journey to make constantly

improvements. 

By monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as bounce rates, conversion rates, time spent on site, and the success of your marketing campaigns, you can identify areas where your customer journey can be optimized.

For example, suppose you find that Sarah and Emily’s personas are not engaging with your Facebook ads or are abandoning their carts before completing a purchase. In that case, you can test different ad copy, targeting options, or website layouts to determine what resonates with them. 

Additionally, you can analyze your newsletters’ open and click-through rates to see if they effectively engage your audience and drive them toward making a purchase.

Using tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads Manager, and email marketing platforms is essential to gather data and insights on your customers’ behavior. By understanding their pain points and preferences, you can tailor your content and marketing strategies to serve their needs better.

Regularly reviewing and updating your customer journey map based on the gathered data will enable you to make informed decisions and improvements. 

This iterative process of analyzing and optimizing will ultimately lead to a better online shopping experience for your customers and increased conversion rates for your boutique clothing store. 

Learning, adapting, and growing with your target audience is key.

Customer Journey Map Example: Online Fitness Coaching Service

Imagine owning an online fitness coaching service offering personalized workout and nutrition plans to clients looking to improve their health and well-being. 

Your business has been gaining traction, and you’re ready to take it to the next level by optimizing your customer journey. 

In this example, we’ll walk you through creating a customer journey map for your online fitness coaching service, focusing on strategies to help you better understand and connect with your clients. 

Let’s dive into the first step!

Step-1 : Define your goal.

Before we dive into creating the customer journey map, having a clear goal is essential. 

Here are some goals you might consider for your online fitness coaching service:

• Increase the number of monthly subscribers by 30% within the next six months.
• Improve the retention rate of existing clients by 15% within the next six months.
• Boost the conversion rate of website visitors to paying clients by 25% within the next six months.
• Increase the average lifetime value of a client by 20% within the next six months.
• Grow social media following and engagement by 50% within the next six months.

For this example, let’s choose goal number 3: “Boost the conversion rate of website visitors to paying clients by 25% within the next six months.” This goal focuses on turning potential clients who visit your website into paying customers, ultimately increasing your business revenue.

To effectively reach your goal of boosting the conversion rate of website visitors to paying clients, it’s crucial to understand your target audience. Developing customer personas will help you identify their needs, preferences, and pain points, allowing you to create targeted content and messaging that resonates with them. 

Let’s consider two customer personas for your online fitness coaching service:

Persona 1: Busy Professional (Mark)

• Age: 30-45 years old
• Gender: Male
• Occupation: Corporate job, long working hours
• Pain points: Limited time for workouts, struggles to maintain a healthy lifestyle
• Goals: Wants efficient workouts, improve overall fitness, reduce stress

Persona 2: Stay-at-home Parent (Laura)

• Gender: Female
• Occupation: Stay-at-home parent, manages household and children
• Pain points: Struggles to find time for self-care, low energy levels, lacks motivation
• Goals: Wants at-home workouts, improve overall health, lose weight, increase energy levels

Mark’s Customer Journey Stages:

• Awareness Stage:  Mark discovers your online fitness coaching service through a LinkedIn ad or a post shared by a friend. He’s intrigued by the idea of efficient workouts that cater to his busy lifestyle.
• Consideration Stage:  Mark visits your website to learn more about your coaching services, reads client testimonials, and watches a few workout videos.
• Decision Stage:  Mark reviews the available coaching plans, compares prices, and considers the time commitment required before purchasing.
• Retention Stage:  Mark regularly engages with your coaching services, follows the workout plans, and experiences improvements in his fitness level, motivating him to continue using your services.

Laura’s Customer Journey Stages: 

• Awareness Stage:  Laura stumbles upon your fitness coaching service through a Facebook group for stay-at-home parents or a Pinterest pin featuring at-home workout ideas.
• Consideration Stage:  Laura browses your blog for workout tips and healthy meal ideas and signs up for your free newsletter to receive more resources.
• Decision Stage:  Laura weighs the benefits of investing in a personalized coaching plan versus following free resources online and evaluates the affordability of her coaching services.
• Retention Stage:  Laura successfully loses weight and increases her energy levels through your coaching program, leading her to recommend your services to other stay-at-home parents in her network.

Understanding the touchpoints and channels that Mark and Laura interact with during their customer journey is crucial for delivering the right message at the right time. 

Let’s explore the touchpoints and channels for both personas.

Mark’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Awareness Stage: 
• Touchpoints: LinkedIn ad or a post shared by a friend
• Channels : LinkedIn, word-of-mouth
• Touchpoints : visiting your website, reading client testimonials, watching workout videos
• Channels : Website, YouTube
• Touchpoints : reviewing coaching plans, comparing prices, evaluating time commitment
• Channels : Website, email communication
• Retention Stage:
• Touchpoints : following workout plans, engaging with coaching services
• Channels : Online coaching platform, email communication, social media groups

Laura’s Touchpoints and Channels:

• Touchpoints : Facebook group for stay-at-home parents, a Pinterest pin featuring at-home workout ideas
• Channels:  Facebook, Pinterest
• Touchpoints:  browse your blog for workout tips and healthy meal ideas, and sign up for your free newsletter.
• Channels:  Blog, Email
• Touchpoints:  weighing benefits of investing in a personalized coaching plan, evaluating affordability
• Channels:  Website, email communication
• Touchpoints : successfully losing weight and increasing energy levels, recommending your services to others
• Channels:  Online coaching platform, email communication, social media groups, word-of-mouth

Understanding the emotions and expectations of your personas at each stage of their customer journey helps you create more personalized and engaging experiences.

Let’s delve into the emotions and expectations of both Mark and Laura at each stage of their journey.

Mark’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Emotions:  Curious, intrigued.
• Expectations:  Discover an efficient fitness coaching service that caters to busy professionals.
• Emotions:  Interested, cautious.
• Expectations:  Find comprehensive information about coaching plans, testimonials, and workout videos to gauge quality. 
• Emotions:  Evaluative, confident.
• Expectations:  Choose a coaching plan that fits his schedule, budget, and goals.
• Emotions:  Motivated, satisfied.
• Expectations:  Receive ongoing support and guidance from the coach, and achieve desired fitness results.

Laura’s Emotions and Expectations:

• Emotions : Excited, hopeful.
• Expectations : Discover a flexible fitness coaching service that accommodates her busy life as a stay-at-home parent.
• Emotions : Engaged, eager.
• Expectations : Learn from workout tips and healthy meal ideas, receive valuable content via newsletters
• Emotions : Analytical, optimistic.
• Expectations : Choose a coaching plan that’s affordable and effective in helping her lose weight and increase energy levels.
• Retention Stage :
• Emotions : Accomplished, grateful
• Expectations : Maintain a healthy lifestyle, share her positive experience with others, and receive ongoing support from the coach

Step 6: Develop engaging content

Creating engaging content for Mark and Laura at each customer journey stage will help you address their needs and preferences.

Let’s explore examples of content that can be created to target each persona at each stage.

Mark’s Content Examples:

• Facebook Ad : “Transform Your Body in Just 30 Minutes a Day! Our Online Fitness Coaching is Designed for Busy Professionals. Learn More Now!”
• Website Testimonials : “See What Our Clients Are Saying: Discover How Busy Professionals Have Transformed Their Lives with Our Fitness Coaching.”
• Workout Videos : “Efficient 30-Minute Workout Routines for Busy Professionals: Watch Our Easy-to-Follow Workout Videos and Learn How to Stay Fit on Your Schedule.”  
• Email Series : “Discover Our Coaching Plans: Customized Workouts, Nutritional Guidance, and 24/7 Support. Get Started Today!”
• Landing Page : “Choose the Perfect Plan for You: Compare Features, Prices, and Benefits of Each Coaching Plan.”
• Weekly Progress Reports : Personalized email updates on Mark’s fitness progress and goal achievements
• Exclusive Webinars : Monthly live webinars and a Facebook group for members to ask questions and receive expert advice. 

Laura’s Content Examples:

• LinkedIn Ad : “Achieve Your Fitness Goals from Home with Our Online Fitness Coaching! Personalized Workouts and Nutrition Plans Tailored for Moms. Learn More Now!”
• Blog Post : “Top 5 Fitness Tips for Busy Moms: Find Time for Exercise and Stay Motivated.”
• Webinar : “Stay Fit and Healthy While Juggling Family Life: Join Our Free Webinar to Learn How Our Online Fitness Coaching Can Help You.”
• Email Series : “Why Choose Our Fitness Coaching for Moms? Learn About Our Customized Workouts, Nutritional Guidance, and Support Designed for Busy Moms.”
• Landing Page : “Find the Perfect Plan for Your Needs: Compare Features, Prices, and Benefits of Each Mom-Friendly Coaching Plan.”
• Monthly Challenges : Offer exclusive fitness challenges to keep members motivated and track their progress.
• Community Support : Access a private Facebook group for moms to share experiences, ask questions, and get encouragement from other members.

Step 7:  Analyze data and improve.

For an online fitness coaching service, tracking the performance of the content and marketing efforts are essential to improve and achieve the goal of increasing sign-ups.

Analyze performance metrics :

• Keep a close eye on the performance of your content across different channels.
• Monitor engagement, click-through, conversion, and other relevant metrics.
• Use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics to gather data and identify trends.

Identify areas for improvement:  Based on the data collected, determine which areas need improvement. For example, you may find that the webinar for the consideration stage has a low attendance rate, so you might want to try a different format or adjust the topic to better resonate with your audience.

Test different content strategies:  Implement A/B testing to identify

which content types, headlines, copywriting formulas, and visuals are most effective in attracting and converting your target audience. Continuously test and optimize your content to maximize results.

Seek feedback from clients:  Regularly survey your clients to gather feedback on the content you’re providing and the overall experience with your coaching service. This survey will help you better understand their needs and expectations, allowing you to adjust your content and marketing strategies accordingly.

Make data-driven decisions:  Use the insights from data analysis and client feedback to make informed decisions about your content and marketing strategies. Continuously refine and improve your approach to reach your goal of increasing sign-ups for your online fitness coaching service.

This blog post delves into three diverse customer journey map examples across various small business industries: a local coffee shop, a boutique clothing store, and an online fitness coaching service. These examples illustrate the power of customer journey mapping to create targeted marketing strategies and engage with your audience effectively.

By understanding your customers’ needs, emotions, and expectations at every stage of their journey, you can tailor your content and marketing efforts to resonate with them. This strategy ultimately leads to stronger customer relationships and increased conversions, helping your small business thrive in a competitive marketplace.

In each example, we’ve emphasized the importance of setting clear goals, developing customer personas, and identifying the touchpoints and channels relevant to each persona. We’ve also explored various copywriting formulas, such as AIDA and FAB, to create compelling content that speaks to the heart of your target audience.

Remember, analyzing data and iterating on your customer journey map is essential to ensure effectiveness. Keep refining and improving your strategies as you learn more about your customers and their evolving needs. 

By putting theory into practice and utilizing the power of customer journey mapping, you’ll be well on your way to growing your small business and achieving your marketing goals.

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Customer journey map template

Think critically about your users' needs and motivations

Use the customer journey map template to better understand customer touchpoints, needs, motivations, and obstacles by illustrating the customer journey from start to finish. When possible, use this map to document and summarize interviews and observations with real people rather than relying on your hunches or assumptions.

Customer journey maps are a visual representation of a customer’s experience with a brand, product, or service. Journey maps often include key steps a customer takes, their interactions, goals, positive moments, negative moments, and more.

Journey maps are crucial for understanding the customer experience, allowing teams to understand what pain points users or customer experience, create better solutions for the end-user, reduce frustrations, and make areas of opportunity clear from the onset.

Customer journey maps help teams:

• Step into a customer’s shoes and understand their perspective
• Gain empathy to understand customer needs, perceptions, and overall experience
• Identify problems and roadblocks that a customer may experience
• Align with other team members and stakeholders to solve cross-functional problems

How to use the customer journey map template

Follow these step-by-step instructions to build a robust customer journey map from the template.

1. Establish your customer scenario

Choose a customer persona or segment that you want to understand, and decide on a specific scenario that your customer would find themselves in (i.e.: browsing, booking, attending, and rating a local city tour).

If possible, choose a user persona informed by customer data and user research. This prevents teams from making incorrect assumptions and ensures that your target audience benefit from any changes in the customer journey.

2. Define the steps your customer or buyer persona takes

What steps does the customer persona take during the scenario you defined? List out each step and describe any smaller steps that are involved. Think about what someone may experience during this step and what the desired future-state of that experience would be. 

Dig Deep: For each of the following sections, ask the following questions:

• Entice : How does somebody initially become aware of this process? Where is the starting point?
• Enter : What do potential customers experience as they begin the step or process?
• Engage : In the core moments in the process, what happens?
• Exit : What do people typically experience as the process ends?
• Extend : What happens after the experience is over?

3. List the different interactions customers might have

Mention what interactions users face during each step of the process. This includes the people they see or talk to, where they are, and the digital touchpoints or physical influences used to move them into the funnel.

This could be anything from learning about a new product from a promoted social media post, to contacting customer support for an issue the user faces. Keep in mind that interactions and touchpoints can and should be different depending on where someone found you, or how they got to your website. 

4. Think about the customer’s goals and motivations

Step into the customer's shoes. For each step, what is the customer's primary goal or motivation? What can you do to fulfill their needs? For an emphasis on how your customer or user is feeling during the journey, an empathy map can help you tap into their thoughts and emotions.

5. Highlight the customer’s positive moments

List the steps users found enjoyable, productive, or motivating. Take inspiration from positive moments to improve weak areas. Positive moments can help you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers and how to communicate with them on other channels.

6. Consider a customer’s negative moments

List which steps the user found frustrating, angering, or time-consuming. Identifying pain points, in particular, helps to make changes and improve the user experience.

For more instructions, check out our guide to creating customer journey maps .

Tips for creating better customer journey maps

• Use market research to guide your assumptions : Conduct surveys or interviews that ask customers how they came to learn about your company and how they interact with your brand. You may be surprised. Real customer interactions will make your journey map more accurate and successful.
• Revisit and optimize the customer journey map : Your customer journey map will likely need to be updated and adjusted over time. Just as customers' wants, needs, and expectations change, so must your strategy.
• Share the customer journey map with involved stakeholders : The user journey will likely span multiple efforts in your organization, so be sure to let stakeholders know if they can help make the buyer journey more customer-focused. ‍
• Get real customer feedback : While you should be creating your customer journey map based on interviews and real-world data, try validating your assumptions by getting feedback from a customer on how accurate the user experience matches the different stages in your finished map.

How to create a Customer journey map template

Get started with this template right now.

Features to help you seamlessly map out your customer touchpoints

Sticky notes & text

Add ideas, action items, and more as a sticky note or text box — then change the colors and cluster to identify patterns and new solutions.

Infinite & resizable canvas options

Choose the right canvas for your collaboration goals — flexibility without limits.

Flexible permissions

Control access to collaboration features with view-only, edit, and facilitator settings.

Mapping and diagramming

Build quick and easy visualizations of flows, maps, processes, hierarchies, journeys, and more.

Real-time collaboration

Add more productivity and engagement to meetings and calls with features to guide collaboration.

Summon collaborators

Easily direct everyone’s attention to a specific part of the mural — no screen sharing required.

Customer journey map template frequently asked questions

What is a customer journey map, what are some benefits of customer journey mapping, when would you want to create a customer journey map.

Template by Product School

Mural is the only platform that offers both a shared workspace and training on the LUMA System™, a practical way to collaborate that anyone can learn and apply.

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How to Map Your Ecommerce Customer Journey [Template Included]

Published: October 20, 2023

We’ve discussed how the customer journey impacts sales, service, and marketers.

But one segment that feels different is the ecommerce customer journey. The customer journey is different from service-based companies because it can be much quicker (buying from Amazon or an Instagram ad).

However, if you work at an ecommerce company, it’s important to understand the customer journey: all the touch points and stages. Below, let’s learn how to map your ecommerce company's customer journey.

Plus, you can download some templates to help you get started.

Ecommerce Customer Journey

The ecommerce customer journey is just like any customer journey. It describes the entire experience that a customer goes through to purchase a product from a company online — from the moment they're aware of your product to when they complete the purchase and reach out to customer support.

Touchpoints can include when someone sees a social media ad, when a friend tags them in a post online, when they come across your website when they read your blog posts, when your product shows up on Google, when they search on Amazon, etc.

The ecommerce customer journey includes the path from when they first contact you to when they purchase your product to if they reach out for a return.

Writing down these touchpoints might make you realize that the journey on your website isn't ideal. If that happens, you can look for solutions to help you, like WooCommerce (a WordPress plugin).

Stages of Ecommerce Customer Journey

• Consideration

1. Awareness

The first stage of the ecommerce customer journey is awareness. During this stage, a potential customer is experiencing a problem and is researching to understand their problem.

They see if it has solutions, overcome misconceptions, and prioritize solutions.

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, potential customers research products and methods to solve their problems in the consideration stage.

For example, let's say that I want to start a morning routine. I do some research on Google and see a few ads on social media, then realize I want a morning routine journal.

Now that I know what I want to buy and how to fix my problem, it’s time to research solutions. I’ll go to Google and Amazon to see what morning routine journals are available and which have the best reviews.

3. Decision

During this stage, potential customers are now narrowing their list to the top products they want.

This is when they’re learning what makes your product stand out from the competition and why your product is the one they need.

During this stage, it’s essential to understand the various touch points to communicate what makes your product unique.

4. Retention

For ecommerce, I'll add one more stage to the customer journey. That stage is retention.

After a customer buys your product, their experience and decision to purchase from you again rely solely on the quality of your product and customer service.

Let’s say the package was missing, delivered to the wrong address, or they want to return the product. They won't buy from you again if that experience fails. They’ll probably consider leaving a positive review if it does go well.

In this stage, consider retargeting marketing and social media ads so more of your products show up for them online. Once you’ve delighted your customers, they see you show up online and want to engage with you.

They’ll buy from you again and again.

To learn more about ecommerce marketing, you can check out HubSpot Academy’s free Ecommerce Marketing Course .

How to Improve Your Ecommerce Customer Journey

Now that you understand what the ecommerce customer journey is, you can take steps to improve your own.

To achieve this, your overarching mission must be to make each customer journey as enjoyable and personal as possible. Here are some general guidelines and practical steps you can take.

What might you fill out in each of these sections? Let’s take a look.

What is the customer thinking or feeling?

Consider what customers think or feel in each section of the buyer’s journey. By getting into their head, you can better address their concerns and meet their expectations to get them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.

• Awareness Stage: The customer is only becoming aware they have a problem. They may feel uncertain or uneasy, frustrated, or simply curious. They may have questions about things they are experiencing resulting from an underlying issue they have not yet identified.
• Consideration Stage: The customer is looking for potential solutions to their problem. They ask questions like their budget and what type of solution best fits their needs or lifestyle. Having identified the problem, they are considering the shape of a potential solution.
• Decision Stage: The customer evaluates specific solution providers and their advantages and drawbacks. Eventually, the customer will decide on a solution, reconsider their needs, or forego a solution if none match their constraints.

What is the customer’s action?

Customers will take different actions at each stage of the buyer’s journey that can either move them to the next step, return to an earlier stage, or see them leave your flywheel .

• Awareness Stage: The customers will look for information that informs them about a phenomenon they experience related to a problem or the problem itself. They may submit their email for a content offer, download a content offer, or click a link from a social post.
• Consideration Stage: The customer will want to explore different solutions but may need to settle on a particular provider. They will want to sign up for a free trial, schedule a live demo, attend a virtual conference, or read a white paper or case study.
• Decision Stage: The customer is considering purchasing your product and wants to learn more about it. They may schedule a meeting with a salesperson to learn more, sign a contract, or take a reduced deal.

What or where is the buyer researching?

Buyers will turn to different sources of information at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

• Awareness Stage: The customer will seek general information and answers to questions about their experiences. They are looking for blogs, white papers, social posts, and short videos addressing some of the problems they’re facing.
• Consideration Stage: The customer is looking for more in-depth material that addresses potential solutions to their problem. They will want to look for more in-depth content, such as long-form blogs, case studies, industry journals, and longer videos, to understand the benefits and drawbacks of potential solutions.
• Decision Stage: The customer will want to learn more about your product. They will want to read or watch testimonials, try out free trials, take samples, read spec sheets, and better understand your product's capabilities, benefits, and limitations.

How will we move the buyer along their journey with us in mind?

Customers require different incentives, calls to action, and cues to move from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the next.

• Awareness Stage: The customer may be enticed to submit their contact information in exchange for a piece of content.
• Consideration Stage: Once you have the customer’s contact information, you may try to set up a meeting with your sales team. This can be accomplished by offering them content tailored to their needs.
• Decision Stage: The customer will be ready to close a deal, sign up for a lesser one, or part ways. Whatever the outcome, you can work to keep the customer in your flywheel to make a future sale with them, enjoy word-of-mouth promotion, or receive referrals.

For more information, you can check out this post on customer journey thinking and watch the video below to learn more:

Making Your Map

Now, you might wonder, “How do I create an ecommerce customer journey map?”

First, you'll create your buyer personas and then envision what your ideal customer goes through when they seek your product.

Once you do that, download our templates and take HubSpot's Ecommerce Marketing Course . Then, you can fill out the template and brainstorm how to improve the journey at every touch point.

Ecommerce customer journey mapping is essential to understanding your target audience and improving the customer experience. Focusing on providing the best customer experience will help retain customers and drive more leads and sales.

Creating the Best Ecommerce Customer Journey Possible

You can do it for your business now that you know the importance of ecommerce customer journey mapping.

With a visual representation of your customer journey, you can better understand the path a customer takes and ways to improve the overall experience. With the correct application of customer journey mapping, you can even increase conversions.

Ready to get started? Check out our free resource below for some templates you can use to map out your customer journey!

Don't forget to share this post!

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Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

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Customer Success Manager: A Career Road Map

In today's consumer-driven world, delivering outstanding customer experiences is essential for any business. It's no surprise that customer success roles are gaining momentum and top companies are channeling substantial resources into helping customers be more successful. 

When they’re working well, customer success teams lead to improved retention rates and additional business growth, meaning building out a customer success team is often a great business strategy. 

Whether you’re a recent graduate, considering a career change, or simply curious about the customer success manager (CSM) role, this guide has you covered. It contains all the essential information you need to know about being a successful CSM. 

What is a customer success manager?

A customer success manager is responsible for maximizing a customer’s results with the product they represent. The ultimate goal of a CSM is to assist customers in achieving their desired outcomes, which in turn boosts the customer lifetime value (CLTV) for the business.

CSMs work hand in hand with customers throughout the entire customer journey, providing ongoing support , aligning product usage with the customer's specific business objectives, and acting as a bridge between the customer and the organization.

Typically, CSMs represent complex B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) products that require thorough onboarding and training to fully unlock their ROI potential. Companies like Salesforce and Oracle’s Siebel were pioneers in adopting the customer success function back in the early 2000s.

Since then, the role of CSM has become increasingly important as customer acquisition costs continue to rise while product switching costs for customers have decreased.

Put another way, it’s easier than ever for customers to leave your business, so companies are recognizing the importance of proactively helping customers be successful with their products and services.

Recommended Reading

SaaS Customer Success: Key Roles, Strategies, and Tools

Customer success manager job description.

As a customer success manager, your primary mission is to ensure the satisfaction and success of your customers . You will serve as the main point of contact throughout the entire account lifespan, working closely with them to understand their business needs and define their vision of success.

In this role, your key responsibilities will revolve around promoting product adoption, building strong relationships, advocating for your customers within your organization, and developing strategies to retain and grow your customer base while combating churn.

To promote product adoption, you will perform the following tasks:

Guide new customers through the onboarding process to ensure a successful start.

Provide personalized communication and training materials for each customer to grow their usage and help adopt the product effectively.

Building impactful relationships with customers involves tasks such as:

Conducting regular check-ins and business reviews to assess customer satisfaction, gather feedback, and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

Networking with key contacts within your customer base to establish strong working relationships.

In terms of customer success strategy , you will:

Track and analyze customer data, including health metrics and touchpoints, to identify potential churn signals and upsell opportunities.

Develop and execute initiatives to secure renewals, encourage upsells, and expand customer accounts.

Lastly, you will advocate for customers internally by:

Reviewing customer feedback and acting as the voice of the customers within your organization.

Collaborating with sales, product, marketing, support, and development teams to ensure customer needs are met.

While this may seem like a long list, everything here revolves around co-creating a plan that enables customers to achieve their goals and maximize the value they receive from your product.

To excel in this role, a successful candidate should possess strong communication and networking skills, a strategic and analytical mindset, impeccable customer service skills, and the ability to quickly adapt and learn about new products. Additional requirements may vary depending on the specific role and company, but these key competencies are present in most customer success manager job descriptions.

A Guide to Customer Success Manager Career Paths

A customer success manager's responsibilities and challenges.

Working closely with customers, CSMs juggle a lot of different tasks and impact various business areas and metrics. There are four key areas of customer success management that we will delve into, along with the key performance indicators (KPIs) for each.

Customer onboarding

The onboarding phase is critical for establishing strong customer relationships and setting the stage for future collaboration. During this stage, a CSM’s goal is to create a positive first impression and ensure a seamless transition from the sales process to implementation. They aim to understand the customer's definition of success, assist in configuring the product for the client’s specific needs, and provide training to help achieve their business goals.

Drawing from her experience, Kristen Gray Psychas , a senior customer success manager at Banzai and a renowned expert in the field, shares:

Effective customer success management should always begin with foundational onboarding. The market has shifted, and we are seeing fewer technical roles in software buying positions, leading to an increase in purchase regret. Onboarding should be more focused than ever on purchase validation, self-service ROI reporting, and customer alignment on TTV (time to value).

Kristen Gray Psychas

Director of Customer Success at Banzai

The duration of the onboarding process varies depending on the complexity of the product and the time it takes for customers to realize its value.

For instance, enterprise customer success managers typically engage in high-touch onboarding, which involves frequent check-ins and calls with customers. CSMs may also collaborate with product or customer marketing teams to develop a low-touch onboarding flow that promotes self-service resources.

KPIs for customer onboarding include:

Product and feature adoption rate (percentage of customers actively using a specific feature or product). 

Time to value (time it takes for customers to realize the product value).

Number of support tickets opened by customers during the onboarding stage.

Relationship building and customer loyalty

While CSMs primarily support B2B products, their interactions are ultimately human to human. People, rather than businesses, make purchasing decisions, become frustrated when desired results aren't achieved, and may choose to switch to another tool if that happens.

CSMs prioritize human connections and invest resources into building strong relationships with key contacts within their clients’ organizations. With high levels of empathy and charisma, they foster an environment where customers feel comfortable sharing direct feedback and enjoy working hand in hand with the CSM throughout their customer journey.

Developing these relationships is crucial for customer loyalty. When customers have a positive connection with their CSM, they are less likely to churn, more likely to expand their existing contract, and more inclined to advocate for the product, generating positive word-of-mouth.

KPIs for measuring customer loyalty include: 

Net Promoter Score (NPS), measuring customer loyalty by looking at the likelihood of them recommending a specific product.

Customer retention rate (the rate at which customers stay with a business in a given period of time).

Customer lifetime value (LTV), showing how much a business earns from an average customer.

Customer Success: What It Means, Why It Matters, and More

Retaining and growing business.

While building relationships is important, the primary objective of CSMs is to retain and grow business since customer success is closely tied to the overall success of the company. In an environment where customers have the flexibility to switch between cloud solutions and competition is fierce, effective customer success programs are crucial for business growth.

CSMs actively seek opportunities to make customers more successful while generating business results. This can involve suggesting an upgrade to a higher plan to unlock crucial features for customer success or securing renewals by increasing product adoption and identifying new use cases for account expansion.

KPIs for retaining and growing business include: 

Average customer lifetime value.

Net recurring revenue (NRR) and gross recurring revenue (GRR), reflecting the revenue a business keeps over a time period and the revenue from existing customers over a time period.

Churn rate (the percentage of users who have stopped using an app).

Customer success operations

Some companies allocate dedicated resources for customer success operations to alleviate the burden of administrative tasks on CSMs. However, it is still common for CSMs to handle the operations role, especially at smaller companies and growing start-ups.

CSM operations include responsibilities such as:

Creating playbooks and setting up customer success tools to streamline and optimize the workflow for efficient management of customer relationships.

Administrating customer relationship management (CRM) systems to update account statuses, assign appropriate account owners, and ensure accurate subscription information.

Analyzing data from marketing tools and product usage in order to gain insights into customer behavior and engagement to proactively address customer needs.

Conducting customer churn analysis and forecasting to develop retention strategies and improve customer satisfaction, ultimately reducing churn rates.

As the CSM team grows, it becomes more beneficial to have a dedicated operations specialist who can free up the CSMs' time for customer-facing and strategic work. However, it is still important for CSMs to have a strong understanding of customer success operations.

Customer Success vs. Account Management: Why Both Matter

Skills and qualifications for a successful career in customer success.

Successfully fulfilling all of these responsibilities requires a broad skill set encompassing both hard and soft skills. 

Here’s a list of skills that are commonly sought after in job descriptions for CSM positions:

Strong communication skills.

Empathy and customer service skills.

Prioritization and organization skills.

Stakeholder management skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally.

Understanding of best practices in customer retention.

Proficiency in using technical software products.

Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and stay calm under pressure.

Specific industry expertise.

Other essential skills for the contemporary CSM are strong discovery question-asking and listening skills, the ability to apply curiosity to every customer conversation to dig deep into retention and expansion opportunities, and a researched awareness of the competitive market. Gartner research indicates that 60% of customers today explore competitors during the renewal process. A great CSM needs to be fearless in entering renewal conversations to discern and effectively manage risk.

There is no formal education requirement for a CSM role, and it varies depending on each business's specific needs. On the other hand, work experience is crucial as the majority of employers require relevant experience in customer success or related fields.

In our interview builder , you will find a list of core tasks performed by CSMs as well as the skills and experience that employers typically look for when hiring.

Salary benchmarks for customer success managers 

When considering a career in customer success management, it's important to understand the compensation and financial aspects. 

Salary range for customer success manager (CSM) role

According to Glassdoor, the average base salary range for CSMs is between $61,000 and $96,000. Senior CSMs earn an average base salary between $84,000 and $135,000.

Research conducted by Totango , which surveyed practicing CSMs, reported similar salary numbers, with annual salaries ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 across the board. The median salary for CSMs in 2022 was $89,500.

In addition to the base salary, CSMs often have opportunities for additional earnings through commissions. These commissions can come from upsells, cross-sells, expansions, and bonuses for meeting renewal quotas. If the company allows it, taking on more customers or responsibilities can also lead to increased earnings.

Salary range for customer success operations role

For professionals in the customer success operations role, Glassdoor suggests an average salary range of $82,000 to $132,000.

The Totango survey is aligned with this range, reporting a salary range of $54,000 to $225,000 for professionals in customer success operations in 2022.

It's important to note that salary ranges can vary based on factors such as experience, location, company size, and industry.

How to become a CSM

If you're interested in pursuing a career as a customer success manager, here are the steps you can take to increase your chances of success:

Create a plan. Review your resume against the list of required customer success manager skills and qualifications, and create an action plan to fill in gaps in your knowledge through online courses or certifications.

Highlight transferable skills. In your resume and interviews, emphasize transferable skills from your previous roles or experiences that align with customer success. These may include strong communication, problem-solving, relationship-building, and account management abilities. Relevant experience in roles such as sales, account management, or project management can also be valuable.

Gain relevant work experience . There are several options to consider here:

Internships can provide valuable hands-on experience and insights into the role before you transition into a full-time position.

Look into junior and associate roles to learn the fundamentals and gain practical experience as you kick off your career.

Consider customer support or technical support roles. They can serve as a stepping stone toward a customer success career.

Keep informed about industry news, trends, and opportunities . Engage with customer success communities and learning platforms such as CS Insider and Support Driven . Connecting with professionals in the field, expanding your knowledge, and building your network can enhance your chances of finding great career opportunities.

Customer Service Interview Builder

Good interviews are at the heart of great hires. This tool makes it quick and easy to build a thoughtful interview process, from crafting job descriptions to asking the right questions.

Tips for advancing in the field of customer success

If you've decided to pursue customer success as a career, you have many growth opportunities , either as an individual contributor or in a leadership role. 

Alternatively, you can specialize in areas such as customer onboarding and implementation, customer success and revenue operations, customer or product marketing, or account management. All of these roles require skills that you can develop and master in your role as a CSM.

To excel in your CSM career, there are several areas to focus on:

First and foremost, immerse yourself in the industry and position yourself as an expert your customers can turn to.

Listen to industry-related podcasts, read news articles, and engage in specific communities. Here are a few resources worth your attention: Churn.FM podcast , Vitally Success Network , Gain.Grow.Retain community , Women in Customer Success community , and Women in Customer Success podcast .

Consider obtaining customer success certifications to boost your credibility and demonstrate your expertise. Gainsight   and Customer Success Collective offer leading certifications for CSMs.

Take the initiative to improve existing processes within your organization and work to bridge the gaps in documentation and customer experience flow. A strategic approach is crucial for advancing your career, especially if you’re interested in the manager path.

If you aspire to climb the vertical ladder, developing data analysis skills is paramount. You have to be able to extract insights from customer data, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. The CSMath course on Udemy can be a great starting point.

As you develop these key competencies, continuously work on your communication and negotiation skills. These skills are essential for success in the CSM role, enabling you to effectively manage customer expectations, resolve conflicts, and gain buy-in from decision-makers and internal stakeholders.

9 Key Aspects of a Stellar Customer Success Strategy

Kick off your csm journey.

If you're gearing up for the next chapter in your career, take the time to familiarize yourself with the tools that modern customer success teams use in their work. Having a good grasp of these tools can give you a competitive edge when interviewing for customer success roles.

You might also find this collection of 47 tips on how to talk to your customers helpful. It includes all of our best insights on how to communicate thoughtfully with customers, gathered over more than a decade of helping businesses improve their customer communications.

Customer success managers do their best work when they’re able to talk to their customers, understand their needs, and communicate clearly on how they can achieve their goals. We hope some of the information in this guide has given you what you need to start down the path of helping customers find success and future growth.

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Maryna paryvai.

Maryna is a results-driven CX executive passionate about efficient processes and human-centric customer support. With a track record of scaling ecommerce support operations, she firmly believes that exceptional customer experiences lie at the heart of every successful business.

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