user journey map touchpoints

20 Customer Touchpoints That Will Optimize Your Customer Journey

Updated: June 15, 2021

Published: May 25, 2021

Have you ever made a model car, boat, or airplane? Or, built DIY furniture from IKEA? Or, maybe just played with Legos as a kid — or, like me, still do as an adult?

If you've tried any of these, you've encountered a set of instructions on how to build your product. Some are better than others, but all do the job of explaining the steps you need to take to achieve your goal.

Customer touch points (or touchpoints) work in a similar way. They represent important interactions that occur along the customer's journey. Grouping them chronologically paints a complete picture of an average customer experience with your business.

In this post, we'll explain what customer touch points are and the role they play on marketing and customer service teams. Then, we'll wrap up with a list of touch point examples and proven techniques to use them at your business.

Customer Touch Points

Touch points are interactions between businesses and customers that occur during the customer's journey. These moments significantly influence customer experience as well as brand perception. By outlining key touch points on a map, businesses can capitalize on timely opportunities to optimize their customer journey.

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Customer touch points are typically recorded on a customer journey map . They're put together in chronological order to demonstrate what a typical customer's experience is like with a business.

This helps marketing and customer service teams identify touchpoints that cause friction so they can remove them and enhance the customer journey.

Here's an example of what a customer touchpoint looks like on HubSpot's customer journey map .

While this is only a small section of a much larger document, it gives us a good idea of how useful touchpoints are to marketing and customer service teams. In the original document, the green dots represent interactions that are positive, and the red ones represent points of friction. Yellow dots are moments when customers have to make decisions, which leads to either a green or red dot.

With this layout, we can look at an overall view of different touchpoints occurring within various stages of the customer journey. This makes it a lot easier to spot areas of your business that can be improved to increase customer delight .

Let's take a look at some examples of customer touchpoints below.

Customer Touch Points Examples

• Social Media
• Online Advertisement
• Digital Marketing Content
• Company Events
• Peer Referral
• Conversations With Company Representatives
• Product Catalogs
• Product Reviews
• Point of Sale
• Thank You Letters
• Product Feedback Surveys
• Upsell/Cross-Sell Emails
• Billing Actions
• Subscription Renewals
• Customer Support Channels
• Customer Success Programs
• Customer Onboarding
• Customer Loyalty Programs
• Self-Service Resources

We've segmented this list to cover touch points that occur before, during, and after a purchase. Additionally, we've also added a section that's specific to customer service teams.

Touch Points Before a Purchase

1. social media.

Social media could be included in every section of this list, but it's mostly used in customer acquisition . That's because social media is a cost-effective way of reaching a large portion of your target audience. You can use it to promote products, build relationships with clients, and enhance the overall reputation of your brand.

2. Online Advertisement

Have you ever noticed banner ads displayed at the top or sidebar of a webpage? Those are touch points that take prospects back to your website. For some brands, like Best Buy below, it's an effective way to draw traffic to their sites.

Image Source

3. Digital Marketing Content

Aside from ads, digital marketing content refers to any material that your company publishes online to promote its brand. These materials could be promotional videos, infographics, or engaging blog posts — like the one you're reading right now.

4. Company Events

If you're on a marketing or sales team, then you may have attended a conference this year where you stood in a booth to promote your company. These events are an excellent way to introduce your brand to customers who may not be aware of it.

One example is INBOUND , where companies from around the world meet to discuss marketing, sales, customer service, and other business topics. It's a great chance for business leaders to connect with new partners and discover strategies that can help their organizations grow.

5. Peer Referral

It's no secret that customers trust their peers over your advertisements. 83% of customers say that their friends and family are their most trusted sources of referrals. This makes it imperative for businesses to focus on word-of-mouth marketing if they want to be seen as trustworthy.

Touch Points During a Purchase

6. conversations with company representatives.

The most direct point of contact you have with customers is your in-person interactions. These conversations that take place in your stores have an immediate impact on the customer's purchase decision.

7. Product Catalogs

Whether they're online or a hard copy, catalogs are an excellent medium for showcasing your product line. An image of the product, coupled with an enticing description, gives the customer everything they need to know before making a purchase.

You can remove friction by adding a CTA on the page that adds the product to a shopping cart, like in the example below.

8. Ecommerce

For many businesses, ecommerce is the most effective way to acquire customers and close deals. That's because websites can be accessed globally, making it possible for an SMB in one location to provide products and services to a customer on the other side of the world.

Understanding the various touch points within ecommerce can dramatically improve the customer experience for SaaS and other online companies.

9. Product Reviews

In today's digital age, product reviews are no longer a pre-purchase touch point. Now, customers have smart devices that can call up product reviews while they're shopping in your stores. Additionally, some online retailers include reviews on the listing page, so you can see what other customers think without navigating away from the page. You can see an example of this touch point in the image below.

10. Point of Sale

This is the last touch point your customers will reach before making a purchase. That's because this is where your sales rep makes their case for why the customer needs your product. For many businesses, this is a momentous step in the customer journey.

Touch Points After a Purchase

11. thank you letters.

One effective way to build customer rapport is by following up with a thank you letter. This can be an email, or, if possible, a hand-written note that thanks customers for their business. It's a great way to show customers you care and develop a long-term relationship with them.

If you're not sure how to start sending customer thank you letters, check out our guide here .

12. Product Feedback Surveys

Product feedback surveys are sent after a purchase and they evaluate the customer's experience with your product or service. If the customer leaves a negative review, the company can reach out to learn more about the issue. They then relay this information to the product development team, who makes enhancements on the next version of the product.

13. Upselling/Cross-selling Emails

Customer needs don't go away after a purchase is made. In fact, some customers have additional needs once they start to use your product.

This presents an opportunity for you to upsell or cross-sell customers on additional or premium items in your store. We can see an example of this in the image below.

14. Billing Actions

Billing is often an overlooked touch point on this list. That's because it happens after a purchase occurs and has no direct influence on the customer's decision to buy your product. However, it's still a vital step in the customer's journey because a negative experience can result in an immediate instance of churn, if not addressed properly.

15. Subscription Renewals

If you're a subscription-based business, renewals are crucial to your revenue model. You need customers to renew their subscriptions to maintain steady growth for your business. This makes it important that you remove as much friction as possible from your renewal process. After all, it should be effortless for an existing customer to stay a customer after their contract is up.

Touch Points in Customer Service

16. customer support channels.

Customer support channels are any platforms that service agents use to communicate with customers. This includes live chat , email, phone, social media, peer review sites, and more. Businesses need to invest in omni-channel support if they want to create a delightful experience for their customers.

17. Customer Success Program

Customer success programs have a variety of touch points found within them. When a customer success department recognizes a potential problem, they reach out to customers to notify them of the issue or offer a solution. This demonstrates a commitment to the customer's goals, which builds additional rapport over time.

18. Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding is a popular touch point for service teams because many customers abandon products shortly after buying them. That's because they either don't know how to use it, or they don't have the time to learn how to use it. Both result in churn, making it essential for companies to invest in effective onboarding programs.

19. Customer Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are another important touch point that service teams should be aware of. These programs strengthen your relationship with a customer and turn them into lifelong advocates. By incentivizing people with exclusive rewards and discounts, they'll be more likely to share positive reviews about your business.

20. Self-Service Resources

When customers are in a hurry or only have a quick question for your support team, they don't want to spend 20 minutes waiting on hold for a rep. Instead, you can offer self-service resources that feature troubleshooting steps customers can take on their own. That way, they're not dependent on your service team for answers and can find solutions on their own time, making your product more convenient and easier-to-use.

All of these touch points are essential for creating a strong customer journey. But how do you use them in your business? Let’s walk through that below.

Using Customer Touchpoints in Your Business

By using customer touchpoints, you’ll exponentially improve the customer experience . But not all touch points will make sense for your company. For instance, if you’re a SaaS business, you might not have an online catalog. And if you’re running the business on your own, your customer likely won’t run into a sales team.

To create a custom customer touchpoint map, you’ll want to take the following steps.

1. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

First and foremost, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and envision the steps they take as they make a purchase decision. Where do they look first? How do they reach a purchase decision? And what do they do if they run into problems using the product?

Let’s take a look at an example customer journey below.

• The customer becomes aware of a problem and researches ways to solve their issue.
• After finding a solution, they search for a particular product. They look through product listings on Google, then explore offerings on retailer websites such as Amazon.
• They search for product reviews.
• After finding sufficient information, they purchase the product.
• They use the product, but run into trouble. They look for articles and resources on how to solve the issue on their own.
• They reach out to a customer service representative.

After, match each of these customer actions to a certain touchpoint. Here’s what that looks like:

• Touchpoint one : A robust blog that covers commonly-researched issues by your customers.
• Touchpoint two : A series of paid ads in Google’s and Amazon’s product pages.
• Touchpoint three : A collection of un-sponsored product reviews on your website.
• Touchpoint four : A customer portal that allows customers to easily check out and see their order status.
• Touchpoint five : Self-service options such as knowledge bases and product how-tos.
• Touch point six : An easy-to-find customer service portal or phone number that allows them to get in touch.

2. Decide what’s feasible based on your company size and budget.

Now that you have a rough idea of the resources and information your customer will need during their journey, it’s time to decide which ones are easiest to implement based on your company size and budget.

If you sell a complicated product but run a one-person business, investing in a full-scale service desk with knowledge bases and ticketing features might not be feasible. But you could start by adding free live chat .

The key here is to find an alternative that’s easy to adopt for you and your team and that’s scalable as your business grows. You don’t want to be boxed in after your customer touchpoint strategy yields positive results.

3. Establish touch point tasks.

Deciding on the touch points is one thing; translating them to actionable tasks is another. You’ve decided what’s feasible, and now it’s time to turn it into action.

Here’s what that can look like for the example referenced above.

First Touchpoint Tasks

• Create a strong cluster content strategy that solves for the customer.
• Decide on the first five posts, which will be published in four weeks.
• Hire four freelancers to write the content.
• Use the in-house marketing team to leverage buyer personas and current customer acquisition data.

Second Touchpoint Tasks

• Create a Google Merchant Center account and Amazon seller account .
• Write unique descriptions for each product using the services of two freelancers.
• Source product photos and general information such as specifications, country of origin, sustainability score, and so on.
• Add product listings to Google and Amazon.

Third Touchpoint Tasks

• Add product reviews to the site using a WordPress review plugin or another solution.
• Invite current customers to write reviews by offering a 10% discount on a future purchase.
• Respond to reviews as they come in so prospects can see the brand is active.

You’d continue down the touchpoints list, adding tasks until you have a comprehensive checklist that everyone on your team can reference.

4. Leverage software tools to automate touch point tasks.

Use marketing , sales , and service software to ensure touch point tasks run smoothly with minor intervention.

Let’s say that you’ve decided to invest in social media marketing as the first touch point, but you have a three-person marketing team, and you don’t know how to get started. You can consider a social media management tool such as HubSpot’s Social Inbox (included in Marketing Hub). And if your team is new to social media management, you can have everyone take a social media certification course.

If you’ve decided that one of your customers’ touch points is chatting with a salesperson, you’d invest in a CRM that helps your sales team keep track of all communication and automatically schedule follow-up calls.

If one of your touchpoints is a discount delivered over email, you’ll want to automatically send the message using email marketing software . No need for you to manually type each email out and send it to every customer.

And if one of your touchpoints is an easy-to-reach service desk, you’ll invest in customer service software that can take care of ticketing — and even resolve simple inquiries with a customer service bot.

These tools can help you streamline your customer touchpoint process so that it progresses with minimal intervention from your team. In that way, as you serve more and more customers, no touchpoint slips through the cracks.

Use Customer Touchpoints to Enhance the Customer Journey

By using customer touch points, you can play a role at every step of the customer journey. Nothing is left up to chance. Instead, you provide targeted information at just the right time. Whether you’re a one-person business or an enterprise-level team, you should use touchpoints to enhance the customer experience, empowering you to retain more customers and grow better.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

How to Measure Customer Experience: 8 Metrics 1000+ Service Reps Prioritize [+Data]

How AI Image Misuse Made a World of Miscommunication [Willy's Chocolate Experience]

7 Ways to Delight Your Customers This Holiday Season

14 Customer Experience Fails that Companies Can Learn From

How Customer Experience Has Evolved Over the Last Decade [+ 2024 Trends]

Memorable Examples of AR in Customer Experience [+Tips for Implementing the Technology]

Digital Customer Experience: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

How to Implement a Hybrid Customer Service Strategy That Works [Expert Tips]

User Flows: 8 Tips For Creating A Super Smooth User Experience

11 Best Practices for B2B Customer Experience

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

Service Hub provides everything you need to delight and retain customers while supporting the success of your whole front office

Are you an agency specialized in UX, digital marketing, or growth? Join our Partner Program

Learn / Guides / Customer journey mapping (CJM) guide

Back to guides

Customer journey mapping in 2 and 1/2 days

How to create a customer journey map that improves customer success.

Last updated

Reading time.

There’s a common saying that you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes—and that’s exactly what customer journey maps do: they help you put yourself in different customers’ shoes and understand your business from their point of view.

Why should you do it? How should you do it? Find the answers in this guide, which we wrote after interviewing 10+ customer journey experts who shared methodologies, dos and don’ts, and pro tips with us. 

On this page:

What is a customer journey map?

How to create a customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days

4 benefits of customer journey mapping for your business

In later chapters, we dive deeper into customer journey analytics, workshops, and real-life examples.

Start mapping your customer journey

Hotjar lets you experience the customer journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of how customers interact with and experience your website, products, or business across multiple touchpoints.

By visualizing the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers experience, a customer journey map helps you better understand them and identify the pain points they encounter. This is essential if you want to implement informed, customer-focused optimizations on your site.

Mapping the customer journey: narrow vs. wide focus

A customer journey map can have a very narrow focus and only look at a few, specific steps of the customer experience or buyer’s journey (for example, a product-to-purchase flow on a website), or it can take into account all the touchpoints, online and offline, someone goes through before and after doing business with you. 

Each type of customer journey map has its advantages:

A CJM with a narrow focus allows you to zero in on an issue and effectively problem-solve 

A CJM with a wide focus gives you a broader, holistic understanding of how customers experience your business

Regardless of their focus, the best customer journey maps have one thing in common: they are created with real customer data that you collect and analyze . The insights are usually organized into a map (hence the name), diagram, or flowchart during a group workshop, which is later shared across the entire business so everyone gets a clear and comprehensive overview of a customer’s journey.

How to create your first customer journey map in 2 and ½ working days

The process of creating a customer journey map can be as long or short as you need. Depending on how many people and stakeholders you involve, how much data you collect and analyze, and how many touchpoints there are across the business, you could be looking at days or even weeks and months of work.

If you’re new to customer journey mapping, start from a narrower scope before moving on to mapping every single customer touchpoint . 

Here’s our beginner customer journey mapping framework to help you create your first complete map in 2 and ½ working days:

Day 1: preliminary customer journey mapping work

Day 2: prep and run your customer journey mapping workshop.

Final ½ day: wrap up and share your results

Download your free customer journey map checklist  (as seen below), to mark off your tasks as you complete them.

On your first day, you have three essential tasks:

Define the goal and scope of your CJM

Collect customer data and insights

Invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop

Step 1: define the goal and scope of your CJM

Clarifying what part(s) of the journey you're looking at, and why, helps you stay focused throughout the mapping process.

If this is your first map,  start from a known issue or problematic area of your website. Keep the scope small, and focus on anything you can break down into four or five steps. For example:

If you have a high drop-off on a pricing page with five calls-to-action, each of which takes users to a different page, that’s enough for a mappable journey

If your purchase flow is made of five self-contained pages, each of which loses you potential customers, that’s a good candidate for mapping

✅ The output: a one- or two-sentence description of what your map will cover, and why, you can use whenever you need to explain what the process is about. For example: this map looks at the purchase flow on our website, and helps us understand how customers go through each step and the issues or obstacles they encounter. The map starts after users click ‘proceed to checkout’ and ends when they reach the 'Thank You' page .

Step 2: collect customer data and insights

Once you identify your goal and scope, the bulk of your first day should be spent collecting data and insights you’ll analyze as part of your mapping process. Because your map is narrow in focus, don’t get distracted by wide-scale demographics or data points that are interesting and nice to know, but ultimately irrelevant. 

Get your hands on as much of the following information as you can:

Metrics from traditional analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) that give you insight into what’s happening, across the pages and stages your customer journey map covers

Data from analyzing your conversion ‘funnels’ , which record how many visitors end up at each stage of the user journey, so you can optimize those steps for potential customers and increase conversions

Behavior analytics data (from platforms like Hotjar) that show you how people interact with your site. For example, heatmaps give you an aggregate view of how users click, move and scroll on specific pages, and session recordings capture a user’s entire journey as they navigate your site

Quantitative and qualitative answers to on-site surveys relevant to the pages you’re going to investigate, as customer feedback will ultimately guide your roadmap of changes to make to improve the journey

Any demographic information about existing user and customer personas that helps you map the journey from the perspective of a real type of customer, rather than that of any hypothetical visitor, ensuring the journey makes sense for your target audience

Any relevant data from customer service chat logs, emails, or even anecdotal information from support, success, and sales teams about the issues customers usually experience

✅ The output: quantitative and qualitative data about your customers' interactions and their experiences across various touchpoints. For example, you’ll know how many people drop off at each individual stage, which page elements they interact with or ignore, and what stops them from converting.

💡Pro tip: as you read this guide, you may not yet have most of this data, particularly when it comes to heatmaps, recordings, and survey results. That’s ok. 

Unless you’re running your CJM workshop in the next 12 hours, you have enough time to set up Hotjar on your website and start collecting insights right now. The platform helps you:

Learn where and why users drop off with Funnels

Visualize interactions on key pages with Heatmaps

Capture visitor sessions across your website with Recordings

Run on-site polls with Surveys

When the time comes for you to start your customer journey mapping process, this data will be invaluable.

Step 3: invite your team to a customer journey mapping workshop

In our experience, the most effective way to get buy-in is not to try and convince people after things are done—include them in the process from the start. So while you can easily create a customer journey map on your own, it won’t be nearly as powerful as one you create with team members from different areas of expertise .

For example, if you’re looking at the purchase flow, you need to work with:

Someone from the UX team, who knows about the usability of the flow and can advocate for design changes

Someone from dev or engineering, who knows how things work in the back end, and will be able to push forward any changes that result from the map

Someone from success or support, who has first-hand experience talking to customers and resolving any issues they experience

✅ The output: you’ve set a date, booked a meeting space, and invited a group of four to six participants to your customer journey mapping workshop.

💡Pro tip: for your first map, stay small. Keep it limited to four to six people, and no main stakeholders . This may be unpopular advice, especially since many guides out there mention the importance of having stakeholders present from the start.

However, when you’re not yet very familiar with the process, including too many people early on can discourage them from re-investing their time into future CJM tasks. At this stage, it’s more helpful to brainstorm with a small team, get feedback on how to improve, and iterate a few times. Once you have a firm handle on the process, then start looping in your stakeholders.

On workshop day, you’ll spend half your time prepping and the other half running the actual session.

Step 1: prepare all your materials 

To run a smooth workshop, ensure you do the following:

Bring stationery: for an interactive workshop, you’ll need basic materials such as pens, different colored Post-its, masking tape, and large sheets of paper to hang on the wall

Collect and print out the data: use the data you collected on Day 1. It’s good to have digital copies on a laptop or tablet for everybody to access, but print-outs could be the better alternative as people can take notes and scribble on them.

Print out an empathy map canvas for each participant: start the workshop with an empathy mapping exercise (more on this in Step 2). For this, hand each participant an empty empathy map canvas you can recreate from the template below.

Set up a customer journey map template on the wall: use a large sheet of paper to create a grid you'll stick to the wall and fill in as part of the workshop. On the horizontal axis, write the customer journey steps you identified during your Day 1 prep work; on the vertical axis, list the themes you want to analyze for each step. For example:

Actions your customers take

Questions they might have

Happy moments they experience

Pain points they experience

Tech limits they might encounter

Opportunities that arise

Step 2: run the workshop

This is the most interactive (and fun) part of the process. Follow the framework below to go from zero to a completed draft of a map in just under 2 hours .

Introduction [🕒 5–10 min]

Introduce yourself and your participants to one another

Using the one-two sentence description you defined on Day 1, explain the goal and scope of the workshop and the activities it will involve

Offer a quick summary of the customer persona you’ll be referring to throughout the session

Empathy mapping exercise [🕒 30 min]

Using the personas and data available, have each team member map their observations onto sticky notes and paste them on the relevant section of the empathy mapping canvas

Have all participants take turns presenting their empathy map

Facilitate group discussions where interesting points of agreement or disagreement appear

Customer journey mapping [🕒 60 min]

Using Post-its, ask each participant to fill in parts of the map grid with available information. Start by filling in the first row together, so everybody understands the process, then do each row individually (15–20 min). At the end of the process, you should have something like this:

Looking at the completed map, encourage your team to discuss and align on core observations (and take notes: they’ll come in handy on your final half day). At this point, customer pain points and opportunities should become evident for everybody involved. Having a cross-functional team means people will naturally start discussing what can, or cannot, immediately be done to address them (35–40 min).

Wrap up [🕒 5 min]

Congratulations! Your first customer journey map is complete. Finish the session by thanking your participants and letting them know the next steps.

Final half-day: wrap up and share

Once you’ve gone through the entire customer journey mapping workshop, the number one thing you want to avoid is for all this effort to go to waste. Instead of leaving the map hanging on the wall (or worse: taking it down, folding it, and forgetting about it), the final step is to wrap the process up and communicate the results to the larger team.

Digitize the map so you can easily update and share it with team members: it may be tempting to use dedicated software or invest time into a beautiful design, but for the first few iterations, it’s enough to add the map to your team’s existing workflows (for example, our team digitized our map and added it straight into Jira, where it’s easily accessible)

Offer a quick write-up or a 5-minute video introduction of the activity: re-use the description you came up with on Day 1, including who was involved and the top three outcomes

Clearly state the follow-up actions: if you’ve found obvious issues that need fixing, that’s a likely next step. If you’ve identified opportunities for change and improvement, you may want to validate these findings via customer interviews and usability testing.

4 benefits of customer journey mapping

In 2023, it’s almost a given that great customer experience (CX) provides any business or ecommerce site with a competitive advantage. But just how you’re supposed to deliver on the concept and create wow-worthy experiences is often left unsaid, implied, or glossed over.

Customer journey maps help you find answers to this ‘How?’ question, enabling you to:

Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers

Create cross-team alignment around the business

Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership

Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers

We’ve done a lot of customer journey work here at Hotjar, so we know that the above is true—but don’t just take our word for it: all the people we interviewed for this guide confirmed the benefits of journey mapping. Let’s take a look at what they shared.

1. Visualize customer pain points, motivations, and drivers

It’s one thing to present your entire team with charts, graphs, and trends about your customers, and quite another to put the same team in front of ONE map that highlights what customers think, want, and do at each step of their journey.

I did my first customer journey map at MADE.COM within the first three months of joining the company. I was trying to map the journey to understand where the pain points were.

For example, people who want to buy a sofa from us will be coming back to the site 8+ times over several weeks before making a purchase. In that time, they may also visit a showroom. So now I look at that journey, at a customer’s motivation for going to the website versus a physical store, and I need to make sure that the experience in the showroom complements what they're doing on-site, and vice-versa, and that it all kind of comes together.

The map helps in seeing that journey progress right up to the time someone becomes a customer. And it also continues after: we see the next touchpoints and how we're looking to retain them as a customer, so that they come back and purchase again.

A customer journey map is particularly powerful when you incorporate empathy into it, bringing to light specific emotions that customers experience throughout the journey.

2. Create cross-team alignment around the business

The best, most effective customer journey maps are not the solo project of the user experience (UX) or marketing team (though they may originate there).

Customer journey maps are a quick, easy, and powerful way to help everybody in your business get a clearer understanding of how things work from a customers’ perspective and what the customers’ needs are—which is the first step in your quest towards creating a better experience for them.

Our first goal for preparing a customer journey map was to improve understanding customers across the company, so that every employee could understand the entire process our clients go through.

For example, people from the shipping department didn't know how the process works online; people from marketing didn't know how customers behave after filing a complaint. Everything seems obvious, but when we shared these details, we saw that a lot of people didn't know how the company itself works—this map made us realize that there were still gaps we needed to fill.

If we discover that customers have a pain point in a specific section of the map, different teams can look at the same section from several angles; customer support can communicate why something is not possible, and engineering can explain why it’s going to take X amount of effort to get it done. Especially in cross-functional teams where we all come from really different disciplines, I find these maps to be an incredible way for us all to speak the same language.

3. Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership

As a company grows in size and complexity, the lines of ownership occasionally become blurry. Without clarity, a customer might get bounced like a ping pong ball across Sales, Success, and Support departments—not great for the seamless and frictionless customer experience we all want to offer.

A central source of ‘truth’ in the form of a customer journey map that everybody can refer to helps clarify areas of ownership and handover points.

We were growing as a team, and we realized we needed to operationalize a lot of the processes that, before then, had just been manually communicated. We did it through a customer journey map. Our goal was to better understand where these hand-off points were and how to create a more seamless experience for our customers, because they were kind of being punted from team to team, from person to person—and often, it was really hard to keep tabs on exactly where the customer was in that entire journey.

4. Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers

A customer journey map will take your team from 'It appears that 30% of people leave the website at this stage' to 'Wow, people are leaving because the info is incomplete and the links are broken.' Once everyone is aligned on the roadblocks that need to be addressed, changes that have a positive impact on the customer experience and customer satisfaction will happen faster.

The customer journey map brings it all together: it doesn't matter who you've got in the room. If you’re doing a proper journey map, they always get enlightened in terms of ‘Oh, my word. I did not know the customer's actually experiencing this.’ And when I walk out of the session, we have often solved issues in the business. Accountability and responsibilities have been assigned, and I find that it just works well.

Shaheema (right) working on a customer journey map

Collect the right data to create an effective customer journey map

The secret of getting value from customer journey mapping is not just building the map itself: it's taking action on your findings. Having a list of changes to prioritize means you can also measure their effect once implemented, and keep improving your customers' experience. 

This all starts with collecting customer-centric data—the sooner you begin, the more information you’ll have when the time comes to make a decision.

Start mapping your customer journey today

Hotjar lets you experience your customer’s journey through their eyes, so you can visualize what’s working and what needs improvement.

FAQs about customer journey mapping

How do i create a customer journey map.

To create a useful customer journey map, you first need to define your objectives, buyer personas, and the goals of your customers (direct customer feedback and  market research will help you here). Then, identify all the distinct touchpoints the customer has with your product or service in chronological order, and visualize the completion of these steps in a map format.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping provides different teams in your company with a simple, easily understandable visualization that captures your customers’ perspective and needs, and the steps they’ll  take to successfully use your  product or service. 

Consider customer journey mapping if you want to accomplish a specific objective (like testing a new product’s purchase flow) or work towards a much broader goal (like increasing overall customer retention or customer loyalty).

What is the difference between a customer journey map and an experience map?

The main difference between an experience map and a customer journey map is that customer journey maps are geared specifically toward business goals and the successful use of a product or service, while experience maps visualize an individual’s journey and experience through the completion of any task or goal that may not be related to business.

Customer Journey Map: Everything You Need To Know

Updated: Jun 12, 2024, 12:10pm

Can you describe a customer’s experience with your brand or company? If you’ve never made a customer journey map, that description is probably lacking some valuable details. Creating a customer journey map will help you understand a customer’s experience before, during and after buying your product or service, so you can identify barriers and create the best possible experience for every customer. Here’s what you need to know to better understand your audience.

Featured Partners

From $8 monthly per user

Zoom, LinkedIn, Adobe, Salesforce and more

On monday.com's Website

Yes, for one user and two editors

$9 per user per month

Google Drive, Slack, Tableau, Miro, Zapier and more

On Smartsheet's Website

Yes, for unlimited members

$7 per month

Slack, Microsoft Outlook, HubSpot, Salesforce, Timely, Google Drive and more

On ClickUp's Website

$9.80 per user per month

Salesforce, Adobe, Miro, Netsuite, Quickbooks, SAP

On Wrike's Website

What Is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visual tool that helps you define your customers’ needs, problems and engagement with your brand. When used properly, a map can be a vital component of effective project management.

The map is laid out as a timeline that plots every interaction a customer has with your business from awareness to repeat business. It helps you see what the customer experiences at every touchpoint.

For example, a customer journey map might help you see that a customer has trouble evaluating your product through your mobile website, couldn’t find the information they needed online, appreciated your in-store customer service and decided to purchase again.

Benefits of a Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map helps you gain a better understanding of your customers so you can spot and avoid potential concerns, make better business decisions and improve customer retention.

The map helps you see which touchpoints your customers love, so you can emphasize those, and where there are common pain points you want to improve.

You can use the map to create standard operating procedures in your business, train your staff, help all team members better understand your customers, and improve your product or service for a better user experience.

Elements of a Customer Journey Map

Customer persona.

You can’t understand your customer’s experience until you know who your customer is. If you haven’t already created a customer persona to represent a group of your customers, start there.

A phase is the general stage of decision making and purchasing the customer is in. You can break down buying stages in several ways, but here’s a basic outline:

• Awareness: The customer realizes they have a need, problem or opportunity.
• Research: They research solutions to determine whether to make a purchase and evaluate options.
• Consideration: They decide they’ll make a purchase to address their need, and they narrow down their options.
• Purchase: They choose a solution and buy it.
• Support: The customer uses the product or service, engages with the company and decides whether to purchase again.

Touchpoints

Touchpoints are every interaction the customer has with your brand throughout the buying journey. Phases may each include several touchpoints.

The touchpoints of your customer’s journey depend on your approach to marketing, sales, product and customer service. They might include things like:

• Marketing collateral, like posters, stickers, billboards, flyers, commercials or display ads
• Physical properties, including your storefront or office space
• Digital properties, including your website and social media pages
• Interactions with your staff, such as cashiers, customer service reps and sales reps
• Purchase experience, including the price and checkout process
• Any post-purchase follow-up from your company, like an email or phone call
• Ongoing customer support
• Renewal or cancellation of your service

Customer Thoughts, Actions and Emotions

This is where you plot the precise customer experience at each touchpoint. What are they thinking to themselves? Which steps do they take? How are they feeling?

Don’t guess at this information! Get real feedback from your customers through surveys and—even better—live interactions with your customer support staff. Basic CSAT (customer satisfaction), NPS (net promoter score) and CES (customer effort score) questions are a great place to start.

Opportunities

Once you’ve plotted your customer journey, you can include room to note opportunities based on what you see on the map.

Opportunities are anywhere you can remove pain points and improve the buying journey for your customer—where are your customers hitting roadblocks that keep them from buying (or coming back)?

Six Steps to Creating a Customer Journey Map

To create a customer journey map:

• Decide what to measure. Get clear on your goals, so you know what to look for as you plot your customer journey.
• Create your customer persona. Start with knowing which buyer you’re focused on and what their general needs and wants are.
• Define your customer buying phases. What are the stages your customer goes through between discovering their problem and deciding to purchase your product or service? Which stages happen after purchase?
• Plot your touchpoints. Within each phase, where does your customer interact with your brand?
• Add customer thoughts, actions and emotions. At each touchpoint, what is the customer prompted to think, do and feel?
• Note your opportunities. Based on your goals and what you discover through your customer journey map, which changes can you make at each touchpoint or within each phase to improve the customer experience?

There’s no correct way to design your customer journey map.

You could build it in a simple spreadsheet that includes swimlanes for phases, touchpoints, thoughts/actions/feelings and opportunities. Some journey maps are more intricately designed, with touchpoints and emotions illustrated and wrapped around a series of phases.

Validating Your Journey Map

If you create a map internally based on the phases and touchpoints your company identifies, you’re relying on assumptions that aren’t necessarily valid.

To validate your customer journey map, you have to bring the customer into the process.

Using surveys and customer interactions to determine customer thoughts, actions and emotions is a good start—you’re not assuming your customers’ reactions to your touchpoints.

But what if you’ve missed touchpoints in the customer journey? Or assumed they encounter them in one phase when they actually encounter them during another? Talking to your customers can help you identify any misguided assumptions and ensure your map accurately reflects the customer experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the sections of a customer journey map.

A customer journey map generally includes a summary of your customer persona, purchase phases, touchpoints with your company, customer thoughts/actions/emotions and opportunities to improve the customer experience.

What do you use a customer journey map for?

Companies use a customer journey map to better understand their customers’ experience when interacting with their brand. Knowing what a customer is experiencing during each touchpoint with your brand can help you identify pain points and improve the customer experience.

How do you define customer journey?

The customer journey is the series of phases and steps a potential buyer experiences before, during and after purchasing your product or service. It can include everything from their independent research and your advertising and marketing to the shopping experience and your customer service and retention efforts.

Why is mapping the customer journey important?

Customer journey mapping is an essential tool used by businesses to help them understand their customers’ expectations better and help them improve their overall customer experience (CX) level.

• Best CRM Software
• Best CRM for Small Business
• Best Open Source CRM
• Best CRM For Real Estate
• Best Marketing CRM
• Best Social Media Management Software
• Best Simple CRM
• Best Customer Data Platform
• Best Mortgage CRM
• Salesforce Review
• Zoho Review
• Monday.com Review
• HubSpot CRM Review
• Pipedrive Review
• Zendesk Sell Review
• Bitrix24 Review
• Zoho Desk Review
• Benefits of CRM
• What is CRM Integration?
• Creating a CRM Strategy
• CRM Analytics Guide
• 10 CRM Best Practices
• CRM Data Types
• Customer Onboarding
• Customer Segmentation
• CRM Implementation
• What Is Churn Rate?
• What Is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

10 Best Payment Gateways Of 2024

10 Best Email Marketing Software Of 2024

7 Best QuickBooks Alternatives Of 2024

What Is A Double VPN?

BigCommerce Vs. Magento (Adobe Commerce): 2024 Comparison

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Dana Miranda is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance® who's been writing about money management and small business operations for more than a decade. She writes the newsletter Healthy Rich about how capitalism impacts the ways we think, teach and talk about money. She's the author of YOU DON'T NEED A BUDGET (Little, Brown Spark, 2024).

With over a decade of editorial experience, Rob Watts breaks down complex topics for small businesses that want to grow and succeed. His work has been featured in outlets such as Keypoint Intelligence, FitSmallBusiness and PCMag.

Skip to main content

• Contact sales
• Get started Get started for free

Figma Design

Design and prototype in one place

Collaborate with a digital whiteboard

Translate designs into code

Figma Slides

Co-create presentations

Explore all Figma AI features

Get the desktop, mobile,
and font installer apps

See the latest features and releases

• Design systems
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Online whiteboard
• Team meetings
• Strategic planning
• Brainstorming
• Diagramming
• Product development
• Web development
• Design handoff
• Engineering
• Product managers

Organizations

Creator fund

Build and sell what you love

User groups

Join a local Friends of Figma group

Learn best practices at virtual events

Customer stories

Read about leading product teams

Shortcut: The Figma blog

Stories about how products take shape—and shape our world

Get started

• Developer docs
• Best practices
• Reports & insights
• Resource library
• Help center

How to create an effective user journey map

No matter what you’re working on, the key to customer satisfaction and business growth is understanding your users. A user journey map helps you uncover pain points, explore the touchpoints from their perspective, and learn how to improve your product.

Imagine you just launched a new ecommerce platform. Shoppers fill their carts with products, but they abandon their carts before checkout. With a user journey map, you can pinpoint where the customer experience is going wrong, and how to enable more successful checkouts.

Read on to find out:

• What is a user journey map, and how it captures user flows and customer touchpoints
• Benefits of user journey mapping to refine UX design and reach business goals
• How to make user journey maps in five steps, using FigJam’s user journey map template

What is a user journey map?

Think about the path a user takes to explore your product or website. How would you design the best way to get there? User journey maps (or user experience maps) help team members and stakeholders align on user needs throughout the design process, starting with user research. As you trace users' steps through your user flows, notice: Where do users get lost, backtrack, or drop off?

User journey maps help you flag pain points and churn, so your team can see where the user experience may be confusing or frustrating for your audience. Then you can use your map to identify key customer touchpoints and find opportunities for optimization.

How to read a user journey map

Most user journey maps are flowcharts or grids showing the user experience from end to end. Consider this real-life journey map example of a freelancing app from Figma's design community. The journey starts with a buyer persona needing freelance services, and a freelancer looking for a gig. Ideally, the journey ends with service delivery and payment—but customer pain points could interrupt the flow.

Start your user journey map with FigJam

5 key user journey map phases.

Take a look at another Figma community user journey template , which uses a simple grid. Columns capture the five key stages of the user journey: awareness, consideration, decision, purchase, and retention (see below). Rows show customer experiences across these stages—their thoughts, feelings, and pain points. These experiences are rated as good, neutral, and bad.

To see how this works, consider a practical example. Suppose a new pet parent wants to learn how to train their puppy and discovers your dog-training app. Here's how you might map out the five key user journey stages:

• Awareness. The user sees a puppy-training video on social media with a link to your product website. They're intrigued—a positive experience.
• Consideration. The user visits your product website to preview your app. If they can't find a video preview easily, this could be a neutral or negative experience.
• Decision. The user clicks on a link to the app store and reads reviews of your app and compares it to others. They might think your app reviews are good, but your price is high—a negative or neutral experience.
• Purchase. The user buys your app and completes the onboarding process. If this process is smooth, it's a positive experience. If not, the customer experience could turn negative at this point.
• Retention. The user receives follow-up emails featuring premium puppy-training services or special offers. Depending on their perception of these emails, the experience can range from good (helpful support) to bad (too much spam).

2 types of user journey maps—and when to use them

User journey maps are helpful across the product design and development process, especially at two crucial moments: during product development and for UX troubleshooting. These scenarios call for different user journey maps: current-state and future-state.

Current-state user journey maps

A current-state user journey map shows existing customer interactions with your product. It gives you a snapshot of what's happening, and pinpoints how to enhance the user experience.

Take the puppy training app, for example. A current-state customer journey map might reveal that users are abandoning their shopping carts before making in-app purchases. Look at it from your customers' point of view: Maybe they aren't convinced their credit cards will be secure or the shipping address workflow takes too long. These pain points show where you might tweak functionality to boost user experience and build customer loyalty.

Future-state user journey maps

A future-state user journey map is like a vision board : it shows the ideal customer journey, supported by exceptional customer experiences. Sketch out your best guesses about user behavior on an ideal journey, then put them to the test with usability testing. Once you've identified your north star, you can explore new product or site features that will optimize user experience.

How to make a user journey map in 5 steps

To start user journey mapping, follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Define user personas and goals.

Gather user research and data like demographics, psychographics, and shopping behavior to create detailed customer personas representing your target audience.  In your dog-training app example, one key demographic may be parents. What’s their goal? It isn't necessarily "hire a puppy trainer"—it could be "teach kids how to interact with a puppy."

Step 2: Identify customer touch points.

Locate the points along the user journey where the user encounters or interacts with your product. In the dog training app example, touchpoints might include social media videos, app website, app store category search (e.g., pets), app reviews, app store checkout, in-app onboarding, and app customer support.

Step 3: Visualize journey phases.

Create a visual representation of user journey phases across key touchpoints with user flow diagrams , flowcharts , or storyboards .

Step 4: Capture user actions and responses.

For each journey stage, capture the user story: at this juncture, what are they doing, thinking, and feeling ? This could be simple, such as: "Potential customer feels frustrated when the product image takes too long to load."

Step 5: Validate and iterate.

Finally, show your map to real users. Get honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t with user testing , website metrics , or surveys . To use the dog-training app example, you might ask users: Are they interested in subscribing to premium how-to video content by a professional dog trainer? Apply user feedback to refine your map and ensure it reflects customer needs.

Jumpstart your user journey map with FigJam

Lead your team's user journey mapping effort with FigJam, the online collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming, designing, and idea-sharing. Choose a user journey map template from Figma's design community as your guide. With Figma's drag-and-drop design features, you can quickly produce your own professional, presentation-ready user journey map.

Pro tip: Use a service blueprint template to capture behind-the-scenes processes that support the user journey, bridging the gap between user experience and service delivery.

Ready to improve UX with user journey mapping?

• Vitaly Friedman
• Jul 8, 2024

Useful Customer Journey Maps (+ Figma & Miro Templates)

• User Experience , UX , Design
• Share on Twitter ,  LinkedIn

About The Author

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing, he’s most probably running front-end & UX … More about Vitaly ↬

Email Newsletter

Weekly tips on front-end & UX . Trusted by 200,000+ folks.

User journey maps are a remarkably effective way to visualize the user’s experience for the entire team. Instead of pointing to documents scattered across remote fringes of Sharepoint, we bring key insights together — in one single place.

Let’s explore a couple of helpful customer journey templates to get started and how companies use them in practice.

This article is part of our ongoing series on UX . You might want to take a look at Smart Interface Design Patterns  🍣 and the upcoming live UX training as well. Use code BIRDIE to save 15% off.

AirBnB Customer Journey Blueprint

AirBnB Customer Journey Blueprint (also check Google Drive example ) is a wonderful practical example of how to visualize the entire customer experience for two personas, across eight touch points, with user policies, UI screens and all interactions with the customer service — all on one single page .

Now, unlike AirBnB, your product might not need a mapping against user policies. However, it might need other lanes that would be more relevant for your team. For example, include relevant findings and recommendations from UX research. List key actions needed for the next stage. Include relevant UX metrics and unsuccessful touchpoints.

Whatever works for you , works for you — just make sure to avoid assumptions and refer to facts and insights from research.

Spotify Customer Journey Map

Spotify Customer Journey Blueprint (high resolution) breaks down customer experiences by distinct user profiles , and for each includes mobile and desktop views, pain points, thoughts, and actions. Also, notice branches for customers who skip authentication or admin tasks.

Getting Started With Journey Maps

To get started with user journey maps , we first choose a lens : Are we reflecting the current state or projecting a future state? Then, we choose a customer who experiences the journey — and we capture the situation/goals that they are focusing on.

Next, we list high-level actions users are going through. We start by defining the first and last stages and fill in between. Don’t get too granular: list key actions needed for the next stage. Add the user’s thoughts, feelings, sentiments, and emotional curves.

Eventually, add user’s key touchpoints with people, services, tools . Map user journey across mobile and desktop screens. Transfer insights from other research (e.g., customer support). Fill in stage after stage until the entire map is complete.

Then, identify pain points and highlight them with red dots. Add relevant jobs-to-be-done, metrics, channels if needed. Attach links to quotes, photos, videos, prototypes, Figma files. Finally, explore ideas and opportunities to address pain points.

Free Customer Journey Maps Templates (Miro, Figma)

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel from scratch. Below, you will find a few useful starter kits to get up and running fast. However, please make sure to customize these templates for your needs, as every product will require its own specific details, dependencies, and decisions.

• User Journey Map Template (Figma), by Estefanía Montaña B.
• Customer Journey Mapping (PDF), by Taras Bakusevych
• End-To-End User Experience Map (Figma), by Justin Tan
• Customer Journey Map Template (Figma), by Ed Biden
• Customer Journey Map Template (Miro), by Matt Anderson
• Customer Journey Map (Miro), by Hustle Badger
• Customer Experience Map Template (Miro), by Essense
• The Customer Journey Map (Miro), by RSPRINT

Wrapping Up

Keep in mind that customer journeys are often non-linear , with unpredictable entry points and integrations way beyond the final stage of a customer journey map. It’s in those moments when things leave a perfect path that a product’s UX is actually stress-tested.

So consider mapping unsuccessful touchpoints as well — failures, error messages, conflicts, incompatibilities, warnings, connectivity issues, eventual lock-outs and frequent log-outs, authentication issues, outages, and urgent support inquiries.

Also, make sure to question assumptions and biases early . Once they live in your UX map, they grow roots — and it might not take long until they are seen as the foundation of everything, which can be remarkably difficult to challenge or question later. Good luck, everyone!

Meet Smart Interface Design Patterns

If you are interested in UX and design patterns , take a look at Smart Interface Design Patterns , our 10h-video course with 100s of practical examples from real-life projects — with a live UX training later this year. Everything from mega-dropdowns to complex enterprise tables — with 5 new segments added every year. Jump to a free preview . Use code BIRDIE to save 15% off.

100 design patterns & real-life examples. 10h-video course + live UX training. Free preview .

How to create a customer journey map

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 8 min

How to Make a Customer Journey Map

• Conduct persona research
• Define customer touchpoints
• Map current states
• Map future states

Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple’s one-of-a-kind customer experience, said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

Nowadays, a clear vision and strategy for customer interactions is no longer an optional “nice-to-have”—it’s essential. As you refine your customer experience, a customer journey map is one of the most powerful ways to understand your current state and future state.

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the process your customers go through in interacting with your business, such as an experience on the website, a brick and mortar experience, a service, a product, or a mix of those things.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. These visuals tell a story about how a customer moves through each phase of interaction and experiences each phase. Your customer journey map should include touchpoints and moments of truth, but also potential customer feelings, such as frustration or confusion, and any actions you want the customer to take.

Customer journey maps are often based on a timeline of events, such as a customer’s first visit on your website and the way they progress towards their first in-product experience, then purchase, onboarding emails, cancellation, etc. 

Your customer journey maps may need to be tailored to your business or product, but the best way to identify and refine these phases is to actually talk to your customers. Research your target audiences to understand how they make decisions, decide to purchase, etc. Without an essential understanding of your customers and their needs, a customer map will not lead you to success. But, a well-constructed and researched customer journey map can give you the insights to drastically improve your business’s customer experience.

The benefits of customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for uncovering insights into your customer experience, driving business goals, and building resilience in a changing market. In a 2022 report, Hanover Research found that 94% of businesses said their customer journey maps help them develop new products and services to match customer needs. Another 91% said their maps drove sales. 

But understanding a customer’s journey across your entire organization does so much more than increase your revenue. It enables you to discover how to be consistent when it comes to providing a positive customer experience and retaining customer loyalty. 

This was especially evident in recent years as top of improving marketing, customer journey maps emerged as a valuable way to understand evolving buyer behavior. In fact, 1 in 3 businesses used customer journey maps to help them navigate the changing landscape during the pandemic.

When done correctly, customer journey mapping helps to:

• Increase customer engagement through channel optimization.
• Identify and optimize moments of truth in the CX.
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints.
• Shift from a company to a customer-focused perspective.
• Break down silos between departments and close interdepartmental gaps.
• Target specific customer personas with marketing campaigns relevant to their identity.
• Understand the circumstances that may have produced irregularities in existing quantitative data.
• Assign ownership of various customer touchpoints to increase employee accountability.
• Make it possible to assess the ROI of future UX/CX investments.

Following the process outlined above, customer mapping can put your organization on a new trajectory of success. Yet, according to Hanover Research, only 47% of companies currently have a process in place for mapping customer journeys. Making the investment to map your customer journey and solidify that process as part of your company’s DNA can result in significant advantages in your competitive landscape, making your solution the go-to option that customers love.

Customer journey maps can become complicated unless you keep them focused. Although you may target multiple personas, choose just one persona and one customer scenario to research and visualize at a time. If you aren’t sure what your personas or scenarios might be, gather some colleagues and try an  affinity diagram in Lucidchart to generate ideas.

1. Set goals

Without a goal, it will be difficult to determine whether your customer journey map will translate to a tangible impact on your customers and your business. You will likely need to identify existing—and future—buyers so you can set goals specifically for those audiences at each stage of their experience.

Consider gathering the key stakeholders within your company—many of whom likely touch different points of the customer experience. To set a logical and attainable goal, cross-functional teamwork is essential. Gather unique perspectives and insights about each part of the existing customer journey and where improvements are needed, and how those improvements will be measured.

Pro Tip : If you don’t already have them in place, create buyer personas to help you focus your customer journey map on the specific types of buyers you’re optimizing for.

2. Conduct persona research

Flesh out as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is based on. Depending on the maturity of your business, you may only have a handful of records, reports, or other pre-existing data about the target persona. You can compile your preliminary findings to draft what you think the customer journey may look like. However, the most insightful data you can collect is from real customers or prospective customers—those who have actually interacted with your brand. Gather meaningful customer data in any of the following ways:

• Conduct interviews.
• Talk to employees who regularly interact with customers.
• Email a survey to existing users.
• Scour customer support and complaint logs.
• Pull clips from recorded call center conversations.
• Monitor discussions about your company that occur on social media.
• Leverage web analytics.
• Gather Net Promoter Score (NPS) data.

Look for information that references:

• How customers initially found your brand
• When/if customers purchase or cancel
• How easy or difficult they found your website to use
• What problems your brand did or didn’t solve

Collecting both qualitative and quantitative information throughout your research process ensures your business makes data-driven decisions based on the voice of real customers. To assist when conducting persona research, use one of our user persona templates .

Discover more ways to understand the Voice of the Customer

3. Define customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints make up the majority of your customer journey map. They are how and where customers interact with and experience your brand. As you research and plot your touchpoints, be sure to include information addressing elements of action, emotion, and potential challenges. 

The number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map will depend on the type of business. For example, a customer’s journey with a SaaS company will be inherently different than that of a coffee shop experience. Simply choose the touchpoints which accurately reflect a customer’s journey with your brand.

After you define your touchpoints, you can then start arranging them on your customer journey map.

4. Map the current state

Create what you believe is your as-is state of the customer journey, the current customer experience. Use a visual workspace like Lucidchart, and start organizing your data and touchpoints. Prioritize the right content over aesthetics. Invite input from the stakeholders and build your customer journey map collaboratively to ensure accuracy. 

Again, there is no “correct” way to format your customer journey map, but for each phase along the journey timeline, include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned ownership of a touchpoint (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Then, customize your diagram design with images, color, and shape variation to better visualize the different actions, emotions, transitions, etc. at a glance.

Mapping your current state will also help you start to identify gaps or red flags in the experience. Collaborators can comment directly on different parts of your diagram in Lucidchart, so it’s clear exactly where there’s room for improvement.

5. Map future states

Now that you’ve visualized the current state of the customer journey, your map will probably show some gaps in your CX, information overlap, poor transitions between stages, and significant pain points or obstacles for customers.

Use hotspots and layers in Lucidchart to easily map out potential solutions and quickly compare the current state of the customer journey with the ideal future state. Present your findings company-wide to bring everyone up to speed on the areas that need to be improved, with a clear roadmap for expected change and how their roles will play a part in improving the customer journey.

Customer journey map templates

You have all the right information for a customer journey map, but it can be difficult to know exactly how to start arranging the information in a digestible, visually appealing way. These customer journey mapping examples can help you get started and gain some inspiration about what—and how much—to include and where.

Don’t let the possibility of a bad customer journey keep you up at night. Know the current state of the customer journey with you business, and make the changes you need to attract and keep customers happy.

Customer journey mapping is easy with Lucidchart.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Bring your bright ideas to life.

or continue with

By registering, you agree to our Terms of Service and you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy .

20+ User Journey Map Examples and Templates

13 min read

Looking at user journey map examples can help you come up with a visual representation of your customer’s journey.

Customer journey mapping research also allows you to identify areas of opportunity in your processes and plan to reduce those friction points. For instance, you might discover that you need user onboarding software to retain users after the first three months.

So, we’ve compiled 20+ examples and templates of customer journey maps to help you get inspired.

Let’s get started!

• A user journey map is a document that shares the steps a user must follow to accomplish a goal. It can also include sentiments, thoughts, and friction points.
• The terms user journey maps and customer journey maps are usually interchangeable. These are similar because they both tell the story of a customer’s journey . However, they vary in scope, definitions, and goals.
• For instance, a user journey map is usually reduced to a specific product or service; while a customer journey map shows the end-to-end of a customer’s activities involving your product or service, e.g., advertising.
• The touchpoints in a user journey map refer to in-app experiences, and customer touchpoints in a journey map refer to every interaction the customer has with your app.
• Usually, the user journey map influences product design, while the customer journey map informs business strategies.
• There are four types of customer journey maps:
• Current-state maps. To illustrate the customer journey in the present.
• Future-state maps. To speculate on potential user journeys in the future.
• Day-in-the-life maps. To show what a user does in relation or without any link to your product/service.
• Service-blueprint maps. To define everything that needs to happen internally to properly serve users.
• Examples of user and customer journey maps include companies like Hubspot, Zoom, Mailchimp, Dropbox, and Userpilot.
• Templates of user journey maps include service blueprints, customer empathy maps, user touchpoints, and effective journey maps.
• Did you identify friction points in your user onboarding? Try Userpilot , the all-in-one product adoption platform that’ll help you improve your onboarding experience and boost retention rates. Get a demo .

Try Userpilot and Take Your Onboarding Experience to the Next Level

• 14 Day Trial
• No Credit Card Required

What is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a document that shows the steps a user follows to reach a goal with your product or service. It’s usually used for UX visualization as it tells the story of a person navigating your product and their interaction with different touchpoints.

This document also helps you gather information about the user and the functionality they find most relevant.

In your first version of a user journey map, you may only add the user’s actions. But as you expand it, you should also add their emotions and thoughts.

User journey maps vs customer journey maps

User journey maps and customer journey maps are almost interchangeable terms. They both show the road a person takes to achieve goals and help improve the user experience .

However, these vary in scope, definitions, and goals:

• Scope. User journey maps usually showcase the way a user experiences and interacts with a specific product or service. On the other hand, customer journey maps visualize the end-to-end experience of a customer across various brand touchpoints.
• Definitions. The word ‘touchpoints’ has different meanings in each case. A touchpoint in a user journey map refers to interface interactions and in-app experiences. However, a touchpoint in a customer journey map means every moment a customer interacts with or becomes aware of your brand — e.g., advertisements, customer support, or at checkout.
• Goals. User journey maps are useful to influence product design improvements. The insights of a customer journey map , usually inform broader business strategies and customer engagement efforts.

Types of user and customer journey maps

Using customer or user journey maps for different purposes allows you to influence different aspects of your business. For instance, a day-in-the-life journey map lets you spot areas of your customer’s routine where you can participate.

Here are different types of user and customer journey visualization to implement in your business:

• Current-state map. Illustrates the critical user journey as it is now. It helps you visualize the current state of the user experience based on facts. This type of journey map allows you to identify the strengths and opportunities of your current process.
• Future-state map. Design how you wish the customers’ journey could look in the future. This type is aspirational and it’s useful when speculating potential customer paths. It’s mostly based on data from the current state map and creativity.
• Day-in-the-life map. Lists everything a customer does throughout the day despite those actions being related to your brand. A day-in-the-life map gives you an overall understanding of who your customer is, how they spend their time, and where your company falls. This map is based on user research data.
• Service-blueprint map. This is an internal document that states all the actions, policies, and processes that go behind customer-facing services. The service blueprint is usually for employees to know what they need to do to meet the customer across the journey.

User and customer journey map examples

Take a look at examples of user and customer journey maps from successful businesses and get inspired to draft your own.

1. Userpilot’s current user state journey map

To examine the user’s current state, you can use Userpilot to perform a path analysis .

With path analysis, you can identify and understand how users navigate through your product, pinpointing the key interactions and touchpoints they encounter.

For example, to optimize conversion , you can look into how enterprise users navigate toward the conversion point. Then you can use the discovered insights to replicate the experience for new users.

2. Spotify’s music-sharing user journey map

Spotify is a music streaming platform with various features. This example shows a detailed view of a Spotify user’s journey when sharing music with friends and family.

The image shows the steps the user takes to find and share music as well as their thoughts, emotions, touchpoints, and actors. It starts with a user opening Spotify to listen to music at work. They look up the different playlists and feel excited to see the suggestions.

Once they find a song that makes them feel happy, they share it with a friend by sending the link through WhatsApp. They follow up and wait for an answer.

This example is particularly interesting since it includes the actions, thoughts, and sentiments of two different personas.

3. Uber’s first experience user journey map

Uber is a popular transportation company for booking rides. This current-stage customer journey map shows all the steps a user takes from the moment they choose to use Uber as a new user, up to when they arrive at their destination.

It includes screenshots that show exactly what the user sees when they go through each of the customer journey stages.

This example includes goals from the persona on the side. It also includes verbatim thoughts and emotion tags that give you deeper insights into the target persona.

The bottom part of the map shares critical insights that help marketing and sales teams understand the user on a deeper level and improve their experience.

4. Dropbox’s customer journey map

This journey map includes the user persona’s jobs-to-be-done (JBTD) and the path they follow from the problem-awareness stage.

Since Dropbox is a cloud storage platform, using it for business affects the day-to-day of all workers. Hence, this map includes a clever section named “cast” which includes the profiles of everyone who’ll be affected by the decision to use Dropbox.

As you can see, Sophia starts her journey when she discovers Dropbox. She researches alternatives, books a demo, and signs up for the application.

This looks like a future state journey map as it seems quite simplified for a current state map.

5. Mailchimp’s day-in-the-life customer journey map

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform. The customer journey map captures everything a marketing worker named Dani does every two weeks.

This customer journey map compiles all the little tasks she does before, during, and after she sends a marketing email.

It’s considered a day-in-the-life map rather than a current-state one because it includes more detail than simply outlining the steps Dani takes to send an email. Instead, it includes the digressions she takes before actually completing the task, as well as emotions and areas of opportunity.

6. Hubspot’s customer journey map

This platform offers multiple services for managing a business. This is the current state of Hubspot’s customer journey . It shows everything a user does from the moment they become dissatisfied with previous tools.

This map explains in detail how customers interact with Hubspot until they become paying users. It also includes all the other actors involved, the factors that lead to a positive or negative experience, and the decision points.

This map also includes thoughts and sentiments, friction points, customer touchpoints, and internal actors involved.

7. Netflix’s customer journey map

Similar to the Mailchimp example, this customer journey map explains the macro steps a user like Jen takes to watch a movie on Netflix.

As a media streaming platform, Netflix’s algorithm comes up with movies and TV show recommendations. This map shows how Jen disregards those recommendations and searches for a different movie instead, making it an area of opportunity for the Netflix team.

As part of the analysis, this map also includes Jen’s pain points, motivators, and emotions. This is an example of how breaking the journey down into smaller goals can simplify spotting friction points by showing an end-to-end process on a single screen.

8. Canva’s user journey map

Canva is an online graphic design platform, mostly suited for non-designers. This user map tells the story of Laura, a woman who isn’t a designer but wants to build beautiful flyers to promote her hobby.

As you see, the map walks us through the process of building a new design. It starts with Laura creating a board and ends when she exports the design. Similarly to the Netflix example, this journey map is also restricted to one scenario.

This user journey also includes actions, pain points, goals, expectations, and thoughts across the phases.

9. Zoom’s user journey map

This popular online meeting platform serves different purposes. This example is about Zoom for teachers and it’s broken down into three main categories: Action, emotions, and thinking.

This user journey map explains what a teacher does to give online lectures. It’s separated into five main action buckets with a breakdown of the tasks that go into each bucket. For example, for a teacher to “Start teaching” they need to open Zoom and roll the call.

You can also see how the teachers’ emotions and thoughts vary throughout the session. Plus, the design of this map lets us quickly identify opportunities just by looking at the emojis.

10. HeartiCraft’s user journey map

HeartiCraft is an online store for people who want to buy handcrafted products. The experience begins when the user researches and finds the website and ends when they decide to buy again.

It’s an interesting view of a user journey map as it exposes where HeartiCraft shines but also where it fails to delight users.

This map highlights four different stages and includes all the actions, thoughts and feelings, pain points, and delights under each of them.

11. Say Yeah!’s customer journey map

This company helps businesses deliver products and services that better serve neurodiverse users. To analyze this customer journey , you need to place your eyes on the left side of the screen and skim through the stages.

As you can see, this is the journey of an adult child looking for health support for their parents. It starts at the moment they discover a problem and ends after they’ve made a purchase.

This map includes the tasks, actors, emotions, media, tactics, and the thinking process of the user across the stages. It also shows how relevant each of those moments is for serving the customer properly.

12. Gartner’s B2B customer buying journey map

As a consulting firm, Gartner has a deep understanding of the B2B sales process. You can see that in this example because it paints the B2B buyer’s journey as a non-linear path.

This is likely informed by historic customer behavior, journey analytics , and user research. In the map, you’ll see four main actions across the user’s journey that allow them to buy a product.

However, there are internal discrepancies that Gartner manages to capture in this map. For example, showing that the person meeting with the company isn’t necessarily the decision maker and needs to go back and get the CEO’s approval before agreeing to make a purchase.

13. Service blueprint map for technical support

As mentioned above, a service journey map helps employees know what needs to happen internally to power customer-facing tasks. In this example, we can see how systems are interconnected and linked to company policies.

This map also shows the actions employees take to provide service, including the invisible back-end tasks and the evidence that supports each action.

Templates for user and customer journey mapping process

Explore the different templates included on this list, and edit them to fit your customer journeys:

1. User journey map template in Figma

You can leverage this template on Figma for your customer journey mapping exercise and uncover user activities and emotions across different stages – from realizing their needs to becoming a paid customer.

It allows you to add what you expect the user’s emotions, experience, and expectations to be at each of the stages.

You can include as many ideas as you wish on this canvas or even invite your teams to work on this together.

2. User empathy mapping template in Notion

An empathy map compiles your target user’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

This Notion template follows the classical approach by including the four main categories:

• Says. Direct quotes or statements that provide insight into the user’s thoughts and opinions.
• Thinks. Reflects the user’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
• Does . Includes what the user does in real life or during their interaction with a product or service.
• Feels . Fears, frustrations, joys, and other emotional responses.

3. Future state customer journey map template from Xtensio

Use your creativity and your current state journey map to fill out this template. Explore alternative customer paths to offer a better customer experience.

This template includes space to add:

• Stages of the journey.
• User’s thoughts and feelings.
• Actions and touchpoints.
• How this map is different from the current journey.

4. Service blueprint customer journey map template from Miro

This is a typical service blueprint template. Miro lets you edit it to your liking by following these steps:

• Define the customer service scenario to investigate.
• Plot customer actions in chronological order.
• Lay out processes, actors, and support systems.
• Add roles and responsibilities by specifying interactions, visibility, and internal actions.
• Illustrate cross-functional relationships.

5. Customer journey map template from Mural

Use Mural’s customer journey map template to have a better understanding of your target audience’s touchpoints, needs, motivations, and barriers.

Here you can:

• Establish a customer scenario, e.g., buying a shirt online.
• Define the customer steps, including big and small actions.
• List all customer interactions with your brand, either in physical or digital touchpoints.
• Determine your customer’s goals and motivations.
• Highlight the positive moments at each stage.
• Define the negative or frustrating moments across the journey.

6. Customer journey map template from Canva

Find many different customer journey map templates on Canva. These all let you edit the customer actions across stages, and depending on the option that you choose, you’ll also be able to add the user’s:

• Emotions and feelings.
• Thinking process.
• Physical or digital touchpoints.
• Barriers or pain points.
• Solutions to barriers.

7. Customer touchpoint map template from InVision

Map out the customer touchpoints on this InVision template. Here, you’ll be able to list all the different interactions between the user and your business, as well as mention all the involved actors. You can break down the actions by stages and teams.

8. Customer journey mapping template from Slidesgo

Slidesgo provides you with 29 customer journey mapping examples. You can choose the design that piques your interest the most and add the different stages, touchpoints, actions, and sentiments. These designs are mostly suited for journeys of up to five steps.

9. B2B customer journey map template from UXPressia

UXPressia developed a set of B2B/B2C customer journey map templates for you to use. This mix also includes persona templates to guide you when creating personas for your journey maps.

You can use these templates as-is to guide your thinking or adapt them to fit your specific project needs.

10. Customer journey map template from Conceptboard

This customer journey map template is a classical one. Open the file with a clear understanding of your user persona.

There, you’ll be able to add customer data concerning each stage, more specifically regarding their:

• Touchpoints and channels.
• Overall experience.
• Pain points.
• Areas of improvement.

Exploring user journey map examples can inspire you to enhance your customers’ experience by pinpointing critical areas, such as better onboarding processes.

To create an effective customer journey map, you need a deep understanding of your user and a clear mapping path, i.e., via conducting user interviews and contextual research.

Userpilot is an all-in-one product platform that can equip you with actionable customer journey insights. Get a demo to explore our powerful analytics capabilities!

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Get The Insights!

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth,Management & Trends.

The coolest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends. Delivered fresh to your inbox, weekly.

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends.

You might also be interested in ...

Martech success metrics benchmark report 2024.

Aazar Ali Shad

What is Time-to-Value & How to Improve It + Benchmark Report 2024

Customer activation rate in saas: definition, benchmarks & more.

Blog / Journey Planning

Customer Journey Mapping: How To Map Out Touchpoints To Improve User Experience

Burkhard berger.

• June 12, 2024

Table of Contents

Do your customers drop off at key stages of the buying process? If so, use customer journey mapping to visualize their engagement and pinpoint friction points so you can streamline interactions, boost the user experience, and drive more sales.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand how to create a customer journey map for a better UX. You can then optimize customer touchpoints, and align your strategies for more personalized customer interactions.

Let’s get started.

What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping visualizes the steps and interactions a customer has with a brand from start to finish. This includes every touchpoint along the journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase interactions. Mapping customer journeys lets you make decisions based on data to improve your customer’s experience.

An excellent example is Funnelytics that lets you map and present your strategy on a drag-and-drop digital canvas. You can visualize how a visitor lands on a lead capture page, becomes a lead, moves on to the sales page, and proceeds to the checkout.

To understand the concept, these are the key components of customer journey mapping.

4 Key Elements Of Customer Journey Mapping

• Stages: The journey is divided into 5 stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Post-Purchase, and Advocacy.
• Touchpoints: Interactions customers have with the brand at each stage. It includes online ads, product pages, checkout processes, and follow-up emails.
• Metrics: This tracks each touchpoint’s performance. It includes conversion rates, bounce rates, and customer satisfaction scores.
• Visualization: Creating a customer journey map like a flowchart or diagram. This way, you will see the entire journey at a glance to identify gaps and improvement opportunities. 

Funnelytics lets you overlay all performance data to identify drop-off points. For example, if you notice a high drop-off rate at the sales page, Funnelytics will show that visitors are leaving because of slow loading time or unclear pricing details. Then, you can optimize the page, improve load speed, and clarify pricing to boost conversions.

Let’s map a customer’s journey in the awareness stage when buying a car. To do so, you will monitor these 5 factors to get a comprehensive view of their experience: 

• Customer Behavior: What actions is your customer taking?
• Customer Attitudes: What is your customer feeling? 
• On-Stage Experience: Who or what is your customer directly interacting with? 
• Off-Stage Experience: What elements support the customer journey but are not visible to them?

Customer Journey Mapping: A 5-Step Guide

As you go over the strategies, ask yourself: How can I optimize each customer touchpoint to create a seamless and engaging journey?

1. Specify Your Targets 

Before you start your customer journey mapping, establish clear objectives. Ask these questions: 

• Do I want to increase conversions and drive sales growth?
• How can I boost customer satisfaction at each touchpoint?
• Do I want to understand customer behaviors better?
• Do I want to improve customer retention and loyalty?
• How can I reduce friction throughout the customer buying journey?

Make sure your objectives align with your business strategy. For example, if you are launching a new product line, your journey mapping should focus on driving product awareness.

2. Represent Customer Groups

Customer personas are profiles that represent key segments of your target audience. They help to tailor touchpoints to specific customer needs and behaviors. These are the 5 steps you can follow to create your customer persona: 

2.1 Collect Customer Feedback

• Surveys : Gather customer feedback using targeted questions about satisfaction, ease of use, and customer experience.
• Reviews : Encourage customers to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, or product pages so you can understand their sentiments on your offers and interactions.
• Customer Support Interactions : Analyze tickets, emails, and calls to identify common pain points.
• Social Media Monitoring : Monitor channels for mentions, comments, and feedback.
• Focus Groups : Organize discussions with your target customers to learn about their customer expectations.

A real-life example is Breaking Eighty , a website that reviews golf products. They use quizzes to engage visitors and collect their emails for personalized marketing pain-free (30-second quiz). As the prospects finish a quiz, they are prompted to sign up for the newsletter through email so they can learn about their interests and keep them informed with targeted content. 

2.2 Research Your Audience

Get into your customer’s shoes to find out your target customer’s preferences. Are they more likely to interact with digital touchpoints or offline ones? Tailor your journey map to reflect these preferences. Find out: 

• Demographic Data : Age, gender, income, location, and occupation.
• Psychographic Data : Values, interests, lifestyle choices, and attitudes.
• Behavioral Data : Buying history, browsing habits, and engagement with marketing content.
• Market Trends : Industry developments and consumer behaviors relevant to your brand.
• Competitor Analysis : How your potential customer interacts with competitors and industry benchmarks.

Use the 3 methods to find out about the customer information: 

• Review purchase history data from your CRM system
• Conduct surveys through platforms like SurveyMonkey
• Use Google Analytics and see the demographic, interest, and geo reports
• Analyze interactions and trends on social media platforms like Facebook Insights

2.3 Segment Your Audience

Divide your audience into distinct segments based on shared characteristics. You might segment by demographic factors (e.g., young professionals, retirees). Or you can segment on behavioral patterns (e.g., frequent buyers, occasional shoppers).

For example, if you’re a telemedicine provider, create segments for patients that need preventative care. Then, offer specialized treatments , therapy sessions , and medical alerts to your target segments. Present these options early in the journey to ensure maximum patient interaction.

2.4 Develop Persona Profiles

For each segment, create a detailed persona profile that includes: 

• A fictional name and brief background story to humanize the persona
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Behavioral patterns
• Needs & pain points

2.5 Tailor Touchpoints

Use these personas to inform how you design touchpoints at each stage of the customer’s journey. For example, if a persona frequently engages with social media, focus on creating compelling social content.

Or if a persona frequently engages with social media like TikTok, create TikTok-specific content. Use dance trends or viral memes to make your content relatable. Showcase your products in action and use the TikTok Shop feature so your customers can directly purchase from your posts.

3. Define Your Mapping Stages & Touchpoints For A Smoother Journey

Ask yourself: Where is the person in the customer lifecycle? To map out the entire customer journey, start by defining the key stages. The stages reflect the different phases from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. Then, identify and categorize the key touchpoints for each. This will tell you where customers interact with your brand at each stage : 

We’ll go through each stage together and share real-life examples that should give you many aha moments. If you have the financial resources, remember, you can always hire an experienced marketing assistant to take some weight off your shoulders, true to the motto: “Who, not how.”

3.1 Awareness

This stage marks the first interaction customers have with your brand. They get to know about your products or services through omnichannel marketing tactics . For example, online ads, social media posts, or word of mouth. The goal here is to capture attention and spark interest.

At this stage, consider SEO for your marketing needs if your target audience frequently uses search engines. Otherwise, you should use channels like social media and email marketing to engage and attract leads. 

Let’s consider the touchpoints for the awareness stage: 

• Online Ads: Display ads, social media ads, and search engine marketing campaigns.
• Social Media: Posts, stories, and influencer marketing.
• Content Marketing: Blog articles, videos, and other educational content.

3.2 Consideration

The consideration stage is where they explore and compare your offers to competitors. The goal is to provide enough product information to influence their decision-making process. 

Let’s find out the touchpoints for the consideration stage: 

• Product Pages: Detailed descriptions, images, and product specifications.
• Reviews: Customer reviews and testimonials that provide social proof.
• Comparison Charts : Side-by-side comparisons of your products or services against competitors. They highlight unique product features.

An excellent example is Australian Business For Sale which provides comprehensive product information to help users convert: 

• They display FAQs section on the homepage to give immediate answers to common queries.
• Their listings give detailed and transparent business information for a comprehensive comparison.
• Their buying guides help customers in the business purchasing process.

3.3 Decision

In this stage, customers decide whether to buy or take another desired action. Make sure the touchpoints are user-friendly so that your customers can easily complete the purchase: 

• Checkout Process: The steps customers take to finalize their purchase like adding items to the shopping cart, selecting payment options, and confirming the order.
• Pricing Information: Clear pricing details, discounts, and special offers to incentivize customers to complete their purchases.
• Customer Support: Chatbots, helplines, or email support to answer last-minute questions.

At this stage, give your customers incentives so they will choose you over your competitors. For example, this custom dog stickers ’ website gives a 10% discount on the first order when a customer signs up. They also make it very convenient for the users by just asking 2 questions.

3.4 Post-Purchase

This stage includes interactions like follow-up emails, customer support, and satisfaction surveys. The goal is to engage customers so that they buy again from you using: 

• Follow-Up Emails: Confirmation emails, tracking information, and post-purchase surveys that maintain engagement.
• Customer Support: Help with returns, exchanges, and issues to ensure satisfaction.
• Loyalty Programs: Rewards, discounts, and points systems that encourage repeat purchases.

3.5 Retention & Advocacy

This stage focuses on retaining customers and turning them into brand advocates. At this stage, you can form long-term relationships and encourage word-of-mouth referrals.

The touchpoints for the advocacy stage include: 

• Customer Communities: Online forums, social media groups, and events that foster engagement.
• Exclusive Offers: Discounts and deals for loyal customers, incentivizing repeat purchases.
• Referral Programs: Incentives that encourage customers to refer friends and family.

One excellent example is Pinch , a med spa company that built a loyal customer base. Pinch uses social media to feature customer stories and reviews to make them feel acknowledged and celebrated. This makes their customer base more loyal and promotes the brand to new potential customers.

Another great example is Aura , an Amazon repricer tool that established a community forum. Here, customers discuss online business strategies, share experiences, and provide feedback on the tool.

Using this strategy, Aura improves customer loyalty and encourages word-of-mouth recommendations as happy users often tell others about the tool.

To streamline the process, you can map touchpoints for each stage using Funnelytics . Let’s say you’re mapping touchpoints for the post-purchase stage. You’ll add elements like order confirmation emails, onboarding guides, and support follow-ups on the Funnelytics’ whiteboard. Then you’ll overlay performance data to identify drop-offs.

For instance, if customers aren’t engaging with your onboarding guides, Funnelytics can reveal that the guides are too lengthy. You can then shorten and simplify the guides to improve customer satisfaction.

4. Chart Customer Path: Create A Visual Representation

Use Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Lucidchart to create a flowchart or diagram. Or use specialized journey mapping tools like UXPressia or Miro. Then, outline the main journey stages. Make sure to arrange them logically from left to right or top to bottom.

Then list the corresponding touchpoints for each stage. Connect these stages and touchpoints with arrows or lines, showing the flow from one to the next. This helps visualize the customer’s progression and shows the paths they might take. Use this customer persona as a blueprint to guide your customer journey mapping process.

Finally, revisit and update the visual representation as needed.

If you’re pressed for time and cannot manually create customer journey maps, use Funnelytics . Its analytics-powered whiteboard lets you create visual maps of customer interactions. Using this tool, you can see how your customer journey progresses so you can improve accordingly.

You can also use a pre-structured customer journey map template to save time and effort. These templates provide a clear layout where you simply need to fill in details like touchpoints, metrics, and key interactions.

5. Highlight Key Metrics To Track Progress

Highlight key metrics for each touchpoint to track progress effectively and pinpoint areas that need improving. The 5 steps will guide you on how to do it right: 

5.1 Assign Metrics To Touchpoints

For each stage, assign metrics that measure the corresponding touchpoints’ success. For example: 

• Awareness: Track impressions, click-through rates (CTR), and social media engagement to measure customer interest.
• Consideration: Monitor bounce rates, time spent on product pages, and content engagement to know how well your touchpoints guide customers.
• Decision: Check conversion rates, checkout abandonment rates, and customer service team interactions to evaluate how seamless the buying process is.
• Post-Purchase: Track satisfaction surveys, return rates, and support tickets to measure post-purchase experiences.
• Retention & Advocacy: Track repeat purchases, loyalty program participation, and referral rates to gauge customer loyalty and advocacy.

5.2 Visualize Metrics Clearly

Include these metrics near each touchpoint in the customer journey map. You can put them either as numbers, charts, or symbols so you get an at-a-glance view of each touchpoint’s performance.

For example, these are the key metrics you should track when a customer buys a digital product.

5.3 Analyze The Data

Review the metrics quarterly to understand how each touchpoint is performing:

• Set benchmarks based on past performance data or industry standards.
• Look at your current data in comparison to your benchmarks. 
• Then, identify touchpoints that are underperforming or exceeding expectations.
• Look for patterns or trends over time. Ask yourself: Are certain touchpoints consistently problematic? Is there a seasonal variation in performance?
• Prioritize areas that need urgent attention or have the most significant impact on customer experience.

5.4 Implement Changes & Track Progress

Based on the data, make necessary adjustments to touchpoints. For example, outline specific actions for each adjustment, like changing webpage layouts or improving call-to-action buttons.

At this stage, use tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Mixpanel to monitor the impact of these changes on key metrics (conversion rates or bounce rates).

The next step is to schedule review sessions to assess this data. Ask yourself: Are the adjustments improving your performance metrics? If not, reassess and tweak your approach.

As you apply the strategies, remember that each touchpoint is an opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales. Ask yourself: How can I make each touchpoint more engaging for my customers?

If you need help visualizing the customer journey, consider using Funnelytics . Our tool offers an analytics-powered whiteboard that simplifies mapping. It helps to create visual representations of customer interactions so you can create a seamless UX, boosting satisfaction, loyalty, and conversions. 

Start your free trial today and create a journey that benefits both your customers and your brand.

I. What are the types of customer journey maps?

The 5 common types of customer journey maps are: 

• Current State Maps: Visualize actual customer experiences to pinpoint existing pain points. Use these for immediate improvement in customer interactions.
• Future State Maps: Outline desired future experiences and set improvement goals. You can use them for strategic planning and vision setting.
• Day-in-the-Life Maps: Show a customer’s daily activities and brand interactions. Use them to determine the optimal times your product or service can add value to their day.
• Service Blueprint: Detail both front-end interactions and back-end processes. Use them to align organizational efforts or to ensure seamless customer support.
• Empathy Maps: Show customers’ thoughts and feelings at different stages. Use them to deepen your team’s empathy and to tailor emotional responses.

II. How often should I update my customer journey map?

You should update your customer journey map at least annually. Similarly, update whenever significant changes occur in your business, market, or customer behavior. Updates ensure your map stays accurate and relevant to address emerging customer needs.

III. Who should be involved in the mapping process?

Marketing, sales, customer service, and product development should be involved in the mapping process. This collaboration lets you understand the customer experience from multiple perspectives. Ultimately, it becomes easier for you to spot and bridge gaps in the customer journey.

Moreover, you will better align with your goals when different departments contribute to the mapping process.

IV. How many customer journey maps do I need?

The number of customer journey maps you need depends on your customer base diversity and product offerings. Generally, one map per key persona or customer segment is effective. This approach ensures that your strategies are tailored to meet distinct customer needs.

V. Who uses customer journey maps? 

Marketing teams, product managers, UX designers, and customer service departments use customer journey maps. They help understand and improve the customer experience by: 

• Identifying customer pain points
• Visualizing the paths customers take
• Optimizing interactions across different stages of the customer lifecycle

VI. What is the customer journey map in design thinking?

In design thinking, a customer journey map visually represents a user’s interactions with a product or service over time. It highlights their needs, emotions, pain points, and satisfaction moments. This tool lets you understand and empathize with users which is a core principle of design thinking. When used effectively, it bridges gaps between design thinking and marketing.

Related resources

Exciting Updates to Funnelytics Plans

Sales Funnel vs. Customer Journey: What are the Differences?

Cracking the Code: Funnel Reporting for Marketers

The Customer Lifecycle Journey: What it is and How to Use it to Create Repeat Customers

Start your free trial.

Unleash the full potential of Funnelytics with a 14-day trial, no strings attached. Gain full access to the features that will propel your growth to new heights.

In this day and age where consumers have an abundance of choices, closing a sale isn’t enough to build a

The 80/20 of Online Course Funnels

Do you sell online courses? Would you like to make more money from your current leads and website traffic? Then

The 6 Essential Funnels to Sell Any Product or Service Online

Looking to build a funnel to sell your product or service but don’t know where to start? We’ve hacked 100’s

Seeing is believing.

Try funnelytics for free.

Sign up for your free 14-day trial today and experience all the benefits Funnelytics will bring to your business first-hand. No contracts. No commitments. Just full-on customer journey insights. 

© Funnelytics Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get a tour of Funnelytics

Prep for your call

Touchpoints and channels in customer journey mapping

Touchpoints and channels are crucial elements of any customer journey, but they tend to get mixed up when it comes to actual mapping. Read on to find out a practical way to distinguish between touchpoints and channels.

First, let’s dive into these two definitions, then find the difference between them and settle this issue once and for all.

• 1 What is a customer journey touchpoint?
• 2 Channels in customer journey maps
• 3 The difference between touchpoints and channels
• 4.1 Strategies and examples from various businesses
• 5.1 Touchpoint optimizations strategies:
• 6 Visualizing touchpoints and channels in UXPressia

What is a customer journey touchpoint?

Let’s first take a look at touchpoints. A touchpoint is a moment in time when an interaction happens between a customer and your product, service, or business in general. 

The examples include situations that happen on the website, through marketing, personal interactions, or a phone call. If customers find out something about your product, sign up for a newsletter, buy something, or give feedback, they do this by "touching" your business. And that's why they're called touchpoints. 🙂

Our main goal when mapping a customer journey is to find and map out all the possible touchpoints. The touchpoint with the less favorable experience defines the overall level of customer satisfaction at the end of the entire journey. 

Mapping all the possible touchpoints sounds great, but doing that can be challenging. So, is there any well-tried number to take as a starting point for a customer journey map?

We’d go with 5–7. And it’s the minimum because you will definitely find more physical and digital touchpoints once you start analyzing your business.

Here are a few customer journey touchpoint examples:

• Getting a product demo;
• Getting help and support;
• Checking out;
• Booking a table;
• Giving feedback about one's experience;
• Collecting information about a product or service;
• Doing a warranty return;
• Signing up for an online service.

Channels in customer journey maps

Unlike touchpoints, channels are a medium of communication between a business and its customers. It is the environment where touchpoints occur. 

For example, it’s a corporate website or the phone the customer uses when calling customer support . Some channels are interactive, they can give your customer a response, e.g., live chat , phone calls, social network. 

Others are not, e.g., billboards and flyers. Channels can be offline (brick-and-mortar store, an ad at an airport) and digital or online (a website or a mobile app).

A few examples of channels:

• Skype call;
• Online advertisement;
• Call center;
• Face-to-face communication;
• Mobile app;
• Social networks;
• Talking to friends.

The difference between touchpoints and channels

In essence, you can think of the difference between channels and touchpoints in the following way. A touchpoint happens when a customer has a certain need. For example, they want to learn more about a service, make a payment, or arrive at a hotel to stay for a few nights. And they're looking for ways to satisfy this need. So, a channel is a means a business provides to meet this customer need.

And while one and the same touchpoint might happen across different channels, some channels support only a specific set of touchpoints.

For instance, a customer can pay for the order (touchpoint) through the website, via bank payment, or by handing cash to the delivery man. At the same time, customers can use their smartphone to access the website to pay for the chosen item, order delivery, and give a phone call to the support team.

Note: not every channel can provide good support for a certain touchpoint. For example, you're trying to send emails, whereas your customers may prefer calls, but according to GlobalCallForwarding , 57% of customers ranked call support as their first and most comfortable preference for communication. 

If you don't have enough resources to support all of your channels, it's better to focus on the ones you can support to keep customer experience consistent across all the stages. So remember that when (re)designing your customer journeys.

To learn more about customer journey mapping or polish your mapping skills, be sure to check out the UXPressia Academy course .

How to improve your customer journey touchpoints?

Improving and optimizing buyer journey touchpoints is crucial for enhancing the overall customer experience and fostering customer loyalty.

Strategies and examples from various businesses

• Understand customer needs and expectations

Conduct surveys and interviews or analyze customer feedback to understand customers’ pain points and expectations. Let’s take an Airbnb as an example. This platform regularly collects feedback from hosts and guests to enhance its platform and user experience.

• Personalization

Amazon uses data analytics to personalize recommendations based on customer browsing and purchasing history. This personalization enhances the shopping experience and increases the likelihood of repeat business.

• Seamless multichannel experience;

Starbucks allows customers to order and pay through its mobile app, providing a seamless transition from online to in-store experience. This approach not only saves time for customers but also encourages app usage and loyalty.

• Consistent branding

Coca-Cola maintains consistent branding across all touchpoints, from its social media presence to packaging design. This consistency helps reinforce the brand image and creates a unified customer experience.

• User-friendly website and mobile app design

Apple’s website and mobile app design focus on simplicity and intuitiveness. The clean interface and straightforward navigation contribute to a positive user experience.

• Proactive customer support

Zappos definitely stands out among similar online stores as it is known for its exceptional customer service . They go beyond customer expectations by offering free shipping and returns, as well as providing 24/7 customer support, ensuring a positive touchpoint experience for customers in need of assistance.

• Social media engagement

Wendy's, a fast-food chain, uses humor and engages with customers on social media platforms. This approach humanizes the brand and creates a positive emotional connection with customers.

• Streamlined checkout process

Shopify simplifies the checkout process for online retailers, reducing friction in the purchasing journey. The platform allows easy customization and integration of payment gateways, optimizing the end-to-end transaction experience.

• Loyalty programs

Sephora's Beauty Insider program offers personalized rewards, early access to products, and exclusive events. This encourages repeat purchases and loyalty by providing added value to customers.

• Post-purchase follow-up

Etsy sends follow-up emails asking customers to review their purchases. This not only helps gather valuable feedback but also reinforces the customer's connection with the brand.

• Gamification

Nike's Run Club app incorporates gamification elements, such as challenges and rewards, to motivate users to stay active. This makes the fitness journey more engaging and enjoyable.

• Augmented reality experiences;

IKEA's AR app lets customers visualize furniture in their homes before making a purchase. This technology enhances the online shopping experience and reduces the likelihood of returns.

By incorporating these strategies and learning from successful examples, businesses can enhance their customer journey touchpoints, providing a more satisfying and memorable experience.

How to optimize the number of buyer journey touchpoints?

Optimizing the number of customer journey touchpoints involves streamlining interactions to create a more efficient and effective experience. Need some bright ideas on how to do that? Leverage other companies' experience.

Touchpoint optimizations strategies:

• Use CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot to consolidate customer data across various touchpoints. Using them ensures a unified view of customer interactions, helping businesses avoid redundant customer journey touchpoints and provide a more coherent experience.
• Consider using an SSO solution like the one provided by Google. You may have used Google’s SSO by yourself, for instance, to create an account on some website. As a result, there’s a smaller number of customer touchpoints required for authentication, streamlining the user experience.
• Dropbox has an interactive Help Center that dynamically adapts based on user queries. This makes customers less dependent on support and eliminates the need to contact support by providing instant answers to common questions.
• Netflix uses predictive analytics to recommend content based on user preferences, reducing the need for users to search extensively for what they want to watch.
• Workflow automation tools like Zapier and Make can connect various apps and automate repetitive tasks, minimizing multiple touchpoints in processes like data entry or lead nurturing.

• Shopify integrates with various payment gateways, shipping providers, and inventory management systems, consolidating e-commerce touchpoints and providing a seamless end-to-end experience for both businesses and customers.
• HubSpot's progressive profiling allows businesses to collect additional customer information gradually over time. Instead of bombarding customers with lengthy forms, this approach minimizes initial touchpoints and enhances the user experience.
• Google Analytics offers cross-channel attribution models, helping businesses understand the impact of each marketing channel on the customer journey. Having these insights allows for a more strategic allocation of resources, reducing unnecessary touchpoints.
• Many websites use chatbots for instant customer support. For example, the chatbot on the website of a travel agency can assist users with booking queries, reducing the need for customers to call or email.
• AT&T provides a self-service portal where customers can manage their accounts, pay bills, and troubleshoot common issues. This makes clients less reliant on customer service touchpoints for routine tasks.

• Airlines like Delta use X (former Twitter) and Facebook for customer support. Integrating social media as a customer service channel reduces the need for customers to switch to a different platform to resolve issues.

By leveraging these strategies, businesses can minimize unnecessary touchpoints, making customer journeys more efficient and enjoyable. 

It's also crucial to regularly assess and refine touchpoints based on customer feedback and emerging technologies.

Visualizing touchpoints and channels in UXPressia

Now, when it comes to actually placing channels and touchpoints on a customer journey map, you can do it in a few ways by using our CJM tool .

First off, there’s a Processes and Channels section with over 160 channels for different domains to choose from.

You can also have separate sections for touchpoints and channels, where you can easily add them to your map. 

As for touchpoints, once you set up them in your Team Library , you can reuse them in different projects:

Add as many touchpoints per stage as seems necessary. The result may look like this:

Pro tip: On the touchpoint page, you can add not only touchpoint-related information but also channels associated with this specific touchpoint.

In the channels section, you can add background icons and describe them in plain text if you want.

By the way, you can also visualize touchpoints and channels associated with your persona right in the Persona Online tool . Here is what it can look like:

And that’s all there is to it. Hopefully, these two key concepts of customer journey mapping are a little clearer to you now, and you will easily tell them apart when creating your journey maps.

Ready to visualize your customer touchpoints and channels?

GO TO UXPRESSIA

Related posts

Rate this post

This was insightful. I finally get the difference between customer journey touchpoints and channels, but still have a question about applying that to personas. Should I add all channels they generally use even if my company is not present there?

We’re happy that you found the article useful, Alice! The channel section of your persona should have all their mediums of communication and research, including the ones that are yet to be covered by your company. You can then look into closing the gaps to:

a) be present where your customers expect to find you, b) reach out to them through the channels that they prefer.

Send us an email

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 Experience
• Marketing Disciplines

Grow your brand with customer-centric marketing

How a sentiment score improves your brand strategy

• Customer Care

How to build customer relationships with social media

Omnichannel customer experience: exploring seamless customer journeys

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

Salesforce is closed for new business in your area.

• Customer Pain Points
• Guide to Product Launches
• How to Improve Customer Experience
• Industry Analysis Templates
• Lead Generation Vs Demand Generation
• Marketing Plan vs Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Planning Process
• Marketing Roadmap
• Marketing Strategy vs Tactics
• Mastering Demand Generation Strategy
• Mastering Lead Generation Process
• Net Promoter Score
• SOAR Analysis
• Understanding Demand Management
• What is BCG Matrix
• What is Customer Segmentation
• Content Marketing Plan
• Customer Journey Maps
• Visualizing Buyer Personas
• Improving Customer Support Processes
• Guide to Viral Videos
• Marketing Mix
• Ansoff Matrix
• BCG Matrix Template
• Brand Wheel
• Agile Templates
• Chore Chart Templates
• Cost Management Techniques
• Dependency Mapping
• Efficiency vs Effectiveness
• Event Planning
• Expense Report Templates
• How to Create a Gantt Chart
• Improving Project Estimation Accuracy
• Power Influence Grid
• Progress Report
• Project Evaluation
• Project Management Methodologies
• Project Management Metrics
• Project Portfolio Management
• Proof of Concept Templates
• Punch List Templates
• Requirement Gathering Process
• Requirements Traceability Matrix
• Resource Scheduling
• Roles and Responsibilities Template
• Setting Sprint Goals
• Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix
• Stakeholder Engagement Model
• Stakeholder Identification
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Stakeholder-theory
• Team Alignment Map
• Team Charter
• Templates for Managers
• What is Project Baseline
• Work Log Templates
• Workback Schedule
• Workload Management
• Assumption Mapping
• Work Breakdown Structures
• Agile Team Structure
• Avoding Scope Creep
• Cross-Functional Flowcharts
• Precision VS Accuracy
• Scrum-Spike
• User Story Guide
• Creating Project Charters
• Guide to Team Communication
• How to Prioritize Tasks
• Mastering RAID Logs
• Overcoming Analysis Paralysis
• Understanding RACI Model
• Achieving Big Hairy Audacious Goals
• Critical Success Factors
• Deadline Management
• Eisenhower Matrix Guide
• Guide to Multi Project Management
• Procure-to-Pay Best Practices
• Procurement Management Plan Template to Boost Project Success
• Project Execution and Change Management
• Project Management Success Factors
• Project Plan and Schedule Templates
• Resource Planning Templates for Smooth Project Execution
• Risk Management and Quality Management Plan Templates
• Risk Management in Software Engineering
• Setting and Achieving Stretch Goals
• Stage Gate Process
• Stakeholder Management Planning
• Understanding the S-Curve
• Visualizing Your To-Do List
• 30-60-90 Day Plan
• Work Plan Template
• Weekly Planner Template
• Task Analysis Examples
• Cross-Functional Flowcharts for Planning
• Inventory Management Tecniques
• Inventory Templates
• Six Sigma DMAIC Method
• Visual Process Improvement
• Value Stream Mapping
• Creating a Workflow
• Fibonacci Scale Template
• Supply Chain Diagram
• Kaizen Method
• Procurement Process Flow Chart
• Guide to State Diagrams
• UML Activity Diagrams
• Class Diagrams & their Relationships
• Visualize flowcharts for software
• Wire-Frame Benefits
• Applications of UML
• Selecting UML Diagrams
• Create Sequence Diagrams Online
• Activity Diagram Tool
• Archimate Tool
• Class Diagram Tool
• Cladograms vs Phylogenetic Trees
• Comic Strip Ideas
• Graphic Organizers
• How to Make a Comic Strip
• How to Read Cladograms
• What are Cladograms
• Social Work Assessment Tools
• Using KWL Charts to Boost Learning
• Editable Timeline Templates
• Kinship Diagram Guide
• Power of Visual Documentation
• Graphic Organizers for Teachers & Students
• Visual Documentation Techniques
• Visual Tool for Visual Documentation
• Concept Maps in Science
• Conducting a Thematic Analysis
• Vision board for students
• Visualizing a Dichotomous Key
• 5 W's Chart
• Circular Flow Diagram Maker
• Cladogram Maker
• Comic Strip Maker
• Course Design Template
• AI Buyer Persona
• AI Data Visualization
• AI Diagrams
• AI Project Management
• AI SWOT Analysis
• Best AI Templates
• Brainstorming AI
• Pros & Cons of AI
• AI for Business Strategy
• Using AI for Business Plan
• AI for HR Teams
• BPMN Symbols
• BPMN vs UML
• Business Analysis Techniques
• Business Process Analysis
• Business Process Modeling
• Capacity Planning Guide
• Case Management Process
• How to Avoid Bottlenecks in Processes
• Innovation Management Process
• Project vs Process
• Solve Customer Problems
• Spaghetti Diagram
• Startup Templates
• Streamline Purchase Order Process
• What is BPMN
• Approval Process
• Employee Exit Process
• Iterative Process
• Process Documentation
• Process Improvement Ideas
• Risk Assessment Process
• Tiger Teams
• Work Instruction Templates
• Workflow Vs. Process
• Process Mapping
• Business Process Reengineering
• Meddic Sales Process
• SIPOC Diagram
• What is Business Process Management
• Process Mapping Software
• Business Analysis Tool
• Business Capability Map
• Decision Making Tools and Techniques
• Operating Model Canvas
• FAB Analysis Guide
• Mobile App Planning
• Product Development Guide
• Product Roadmap
• Timeline Diagrams
• Visualize User Flow
• Sequence Diagrams
• Flowchart Maker
• Online Class Diagram Tool
• Organizational Chart Maker
• Mind Map Maker
• Retro Software
• Agile Project Charter
• Critical Path Software
• Action Board
• Brainstorming Guide
• Brainstorming Tools
• Business Vision Board
• Concept Map Note Taking
• Concept Map vs Mind Map
• Digital Vision Board
• How to Create a Vision Board
• Travel Vision Board
• Types of Concept Maps
• Vision Board for Kids
• Visual Tools for Brainstorming
• Wedding Mood Board
• Wedding Vision Board
• What is a Vision Board
• Brainstorming Content Ideas
• Brainstorming in Business
• Brainstorming Questions
• Brainstorming Rules
• Brainstorming Techniques
• Brainstorming Workshop
• Design Thinking and Brainstorming
• Divergent vs Convergent Thinking
• Group Brainstorming Strategies
• Group Creativity
• How to Make Virtual Brainstorming Fun and Effective
• Ideation Techniques
• Improving Brainstorming
• Marketing Brainstorming
• Plot Diagrams
• Rapid Brainstorming
• Reverse Brainstorming Challenges
• Reverse vs. Traditional Brainstorming
• What Comes After Brainstorming
• Flowchart Guide
• Spider Diagram Guide
• 5 Whys Template
• Assumption Grid Template
• Vision Board Maker
• Brainstorming Templates
• Brainwriting Template
• Innovation Techniques
• 50 Business Diagrams
• Brand Positioning in Marketing
• Business Model Canvas
• Catwoe Analysis
• Certainities, Suppositions & Doubts
• Change Control Process
• Change Management Process
• Cynefin Framework
• DACI Framework
• Decision Making Framework
• Decision Making Model
• Decision Making Techniques
• Decision Matrix
• Digital Customer Journey
• Group Decision Making
• Hedgehog Concept
• Johari Window
• Macro Environmental Analysis
• NOISE Analysis
• Product Portfolio
• Profit & Loss Templates
• RAPID Framework
• Scenario Planning
• Second Order Thinking
• SPACE Analysis
• Stakeholder Communication Plan
• Strategic Vs Tactical Planning
• Strategy vs Plan
• What are Tree Diagrams
• Winning Brand Strategy
• Work Management Systems
• Balanced Scorecard
• Developing Action Plans
• Guide to setting OKRS
• How to Write a Memo
• Improve Productivity & Efficiency
• Mastering Task Analysis
• Mastering Task Batching
• Monthly Budget Templates
• Program Planning
• Top Down Vs. Bottom Up
• Weekly Schedule Templates
• Cash Cow Matrix
• Decision Tree Guide
• Kaizen Principles
• Opportunity Mapping
• Strategic-Goals
• Strategy Mapping
• Strategy vs Tactics
• T Chart Guide
• Business Continuity Plan
• Developing Your MVP
• Experience Mapping Guide
• Incident Management
• Needs Assessment Process
• Perceptual Maps
• Position Maps
• Product Development From Ideation to Launch
• Value-Proposition-Canvas
• Visualizing Competitive Landscape
• Communication Plan
• Graphic Organizer Creator
• Fault Tree Software
• Bowman's Strategy Clock Template
• Decision Matrix Template
• Communities of Practice
• Goal Setting for 2024
• Meeting Templates
• Meetings Participation
• Microsoft Teams Brainstorming
• Retrospective Guide
• Skip Level Meetings
• Visual Documentation Guide
• Visual Note Taking
• Weekly Meetings
• Affinity Diagrams
• Business Plan Presentation
• Post-Mortem Meetings
• Team Building Activities
• WBS Templates
• Online Whiteboard Tool
• Communications Plan Template
• Idea Board Online
• Meeting Minutes Template
• Genograms in Social Work Practice
• Conceptual Framework
• How to Conduct a Genogram Interview
• How to Make a Genogram
• Genogram Questions
• Genograms in Client Counseling
• Phylogenetic Trees
• Understanding Ecomaps
• Visual Research Data Analysis Methods
• House of Quality Template
• Customer Problem Statement Template
• Competitive Analysis Template
• Creating Operations Manual
• Knowledge Base
• Folder Structure Diagram
• Online Checklist Maker
• Lean Canvas Template
• Instructional Design Examples
• Genogram Maker
• Work From Home Guide
• Strategic Planning
• Employee Engagement Action Plan
• Huddle Board
• One-on-One Meeting Template
• Story Map Graphic Organizers
• Introduction to Your Workspace
• Managing Workspaces and Folders
• Adding Text
• Collaborative Content Management
• Creating and Editing Tables
• Adding Notes
• Introduction to Diagramming
• Using Shapes
• Using Freehand Tool
• Adding Images to the Canvas
• Accessing the Contextual Toolbar
• Using Connectors
• Working with Tables
• Working with Templates
• Working with Frames
• Using Notes
• Access Controls
• Exporting a Workspace
• Real-Time Collaboration
• Notifications
• Using Creately VIZ
• Meet Creately VIZ
• Unleashing the Power of Collaborative Brainstorming
• Uncovering the potential of Retros for all teams
• Collaborative Apps in Microsoft Teams
• Hiring a Great Fit for Your Team
• Project Management Made Easy
• Cross-Corporate Information Radiators
• Creately 4.0 - Product Walkthrough
• What's New

What are Customer Journey Touchpoints and How to Identify Them

Identifying and effectively mapping customer journey touchpoints are crucial steps in enhancing the customer experience and fostering brand loyalty. By understanding every interaction a customer has with your brand, you can create a seamless and personalized journey that not only meets but exceeds their expectations.

In this guide we will look at what are customer journey touchpoints, how to identify and improve them.

What are Customer Journey Touchpoints?

Customer journey touchpoints are the various points of interaction between a customer and your brand throughout their journey. These interactions can occur through multiple channels such as social media, website visits, emails, customer service calls, or in-store experiences. At each touchpoint, customers form impressions, gather information, and evaluate their experiences, ultimately impacting their perception of your brand and influencing their decision-making process.

Each touchpoint is an opportunity to delight, inform, and build trust with your customers. By ensuring consistency, relevance, and excellence across these interactions, you can create a cohesive and memorable customer journey that fosters loyalty and drives positive outcomes for your brand.

Types and roles of customer journey touchpoints

There are various types of touchpoints that customers encounter throughout their journey with a brand.

• Digital touchpoints : These include interactions through your website, mobile apps, or social media platforms. For instance, the ease of navigation on your website can leave a lasting impression on a customer’s perception of your brand.
• Physical touchpoints : These are the tangible interactions customers have with your brand, such as product packaging or in-store experiences.
• Human interactions : Personal interactions, whether they are in-person or over the phone, significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty.

How to Identify Customer Journey Touchpoints

Identifying customer touchpoints is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle to see the full picture of how customers interact with your brand. Here’s how to identify these touchpoints:

1. Map out the customer journey

Start by visualizing the journey your customers take when they interact with your brand.

• Visualize the customer journey from awareness to post-purchase.
• Break it down into stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase.
• Understand each phase’s significance in the customer experience.
• Identify key touchpoints where customers interact with your brand.
• Use insights to enhance the customer experience and drive positive outcomes.

To learn more about how to create a customer journey map refer to our comprehensive guide; Customer Journey Map: Definition with Examples . And get a head start on visualizing customer journeys with these customer journey map templates .

• Ready to use
• Fully customizable template
• Get Started in seconds

2. List potential touchpoints

Think about all the places and ways customers might come into contact with your brand during each stage of the journey. This could include your website, social media profiles, physical stores (if applicable), emails, advertisements, customer service interactions, and more.

3. Review existing data

Take a look at the data you already have. Analyze website analytics, social media engagement metrics, email open rates, and any other relevant data points to see where customers are currently interacting with your brand.

4. Seek customer feedback

Reach out to your customers directly to gather insights. Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to understand their experiences and learn about touchpoints that may not be immediately obvious. Ask questions about how they discovered your brand, what influenced their purchase decisions, and how they felt about the overall experience.

5. Walk through the customer journey

Put yourself in your customers' shoes and experience the journey firsthand. Go through the process of finding information about your products or services, making a purchase, and interacting with customer support if needed. Take note of every touchpoint you encounter along the way.

6. Collaborate across departments

Work together with colleagues from different departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product development. Each team may have unique insights into customer touchpoints based on their interactions with customers in their respective areas.

7. Document your findings

Create a comprehensive list or map of all the customer touchpoints you’ve identified. Organize them by stage of the customer journey and channel of interaction. This document will serve as a valuable reference point for understanding the customer experience and identifying areas for improvement.

8. Regularly review and update

Customer touchpoints may evolve over time as technology changes, customer preferences shift, or new channels emerge. Make it a priority to regularly review and update your understanding of touchpoints to make sure that your strategies remain relevant and effective.

Why is it Important to Understand Customer Journey Touchpoints?

Understanding touchpoints is crucial because they provide invaluable insights into the customer experience. Here are a few benefits of identifying customer touchpoints.

• Improved customer experience : Understanding touchpoints ensures businesses can tailor experiences to meet customer needs and preferences, leading to greater satisfaction and loyalty.
• Spotting pain points : Identifying touchpoints helps businesses find areas where customers might encounter difficulties or friction, allowing for improvements to enhance satisfaction. To learn more about customer pain points refer to the guide on “Customer pain points”
• Efficient resource allocation : Knowing where customers interact with the brand enables businesses to focus resources on high-impact touchpoints, maximizing return on investment.
• Competitive advantage : Delivering exceptional experiences through optimized touchpoints sets businesses apart from competitors and strengthens their position in the market.
• Improved customer retention : Creating smoother, more enjoyable experiences increases the likelihood of customers returning, fostering long-term relationships and driving business growth.

Examples of Customer Touchpoints

Let’s dive into examples of customer touchpoints at various stages of the customer journey to better understand them.

Customer touchpoints on the path to purchase

Before a customer makes a purchase, they embark on a journey of discovery and consideration. This journey involves encountering various touchpoints that shape their perceptions and influence their decisions. Understanding these touchpoints is crucial for businesses to effectively engage with potential customers and guide them towards making a purchase.

• Social media ads : Targeted ads on platforms like Facebook or Instagram introduce customers to your brand.
• Search engine results : When customers search for products or solutions online, they encounter search engine results pages (SERPs) that feature organic and paid listings.
• Blog posts : Informative blog content addresses customer pain points and provides solutions, driving awareness.
• Influencer endorsements : Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand exposes your products to their followers.
• Online forums : Participating in relevant online communities allows you to engage with potential customers and answer their questions.
• Webinars or workshops : Hosting educational events establishes your expertise and introduces your brand to new audiences.
• Email marketing campaigns : Email newsletters, promotional offers, and product updates keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage engagement from potential customers.

Customer touchpoints during purchase

The moment a customer decides to make a purchase is a critical juncture in their journey. At this stage, businesses have the opportunity to create a seamless and enjoyable buying experience that encourages customers to complete their transaction.

• Product pages : Detailed product descriptions, high-quality images, and customer reviews on product pages provide customers with essential information and reassurance.
• Checkout process : A seamless checkout experience, including multiple payment options, guest checkout, and security assurances, ensures a frictionless purchase.
• Customer support : Providing responsive and helpful customer support during the purchase process reassures customers and resolves any questions or concerns they may have.
• Cross-selling and upselling : Recommending related or complementary products during the checkout process encourages customers to add additional items to their purchase.

Customer touchpoints after purchase

The post-purchase phase is an essential part of the customer journey, where businesses have the opportunity to build lasting relationships and encourage repeat purchases. By providing excellent post-purchase support and engaging customers with valuable content and offers, businesses can enhance satisfaction and loyalty.

• Order confirmation : Immediately after a purchase, customers receive order confirmation emails or messages that confirm the transaction and provide essential information, such as order details and tracking numbers.
• Shipping notifications : Providing regular updates on the status of customers' orders, including shipping notifications and tracking information, keeps customers informed and engaged.
• Product usage guides : Offering instructional guides, tutorials, or how-to videos that help customers get the most out of their purchases enhances satisfaction and encourages product adoption.
• Follow-up surveys : Sending post-purchase surveys or feedback requests solicits valuable insights from customers about their purchase experience.
• Reorder reminders : Sending personalized reorder reminders or product recommendations based on customers' purchase history and preferences encourages repeat purchases.

Touchpoints in customer service

Customer service plays a crucial role in the overall customer experience, influencing satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. By providing responsive, helpful, and personalized support across various touchpoints, businesses can address customer inquiries, resolve issues, and exceed expectations.

• Phone support : Offering toll-free customer service hotlines allows customers to speak with a representative directly for assistance with inquiries, issues, or product support.
• Live chat : Providing live chat support on your website allows customers to engage with a representative in real-time for quick assistance or answers to questions.
• Email support : Responding promptly and professionally to customer inquiries, complaints, or feedback via email demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction.
• Social media engagement : Monitoring and responding to customer inquiries, comments, or messages on social media platforms demonstrates your responsiveness and accessibility.
• Self-service resources : Offering self-service resources such as knowledge bases, FAQs, or help centers empowers customers to find answers to common questions or issues independently.

Tips for Mapping and Improving Customer Journey Touchpoints

Follow these best practices and tips to create a customer journey that delights and engages your audience at every touchpoint.

Start with the end in mind

Begin by defining your objective for mapping customer touch points. Whether it’s improving customer satisfaction, increasing conversions, or enhancing brand loyalty, clarifying your goals will guide your mapping process.

Identify customer personas

Understand your target audience by creating detailed customer personas . Consider demographics, preferences, behaviors, and pain points to ensure your touchpoint map accurately reflects the needs of different customer segments.

Take a holistic approach

Look at the entire customer journey from end to end rather than focusing on individual touchpoints in isolation. This holistic perspective allows you to understand how touchpoints interact with each other and how they collectively impact the overall customer experience.

Be data-driven

Utilize data and analytics to inform your decision-making process. Analyze customer behavior, website metrics, social media engagement, and customer feedback to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.

Prioritize key touchpoints

While it’s essential to consider all touchpoints, focus on optimizing the key touchpoints that have the most significant impact on the customer experience and business outcomes. This could include touchpoints that influence purchase decisions, drive customer satisfaction, or impact retention rates.

Personalize the experience

Tailor the customer experience to individual preferences and behaviors whenever possible. Use data-driven personalization techniques to deliver relevant content, offers, and recommendations at each touchpoint, making customers feel valued and understood.

In conclusion, understanding customer journey touchpoints is indispensable for building strong relationships with your audience and delivering exceptional experiences. By identifying, optimizing, and strategizing around these touchpoints, you can foster customer loyalty, drive conversions, and differentiate your brand in a competitive marketplace.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

More Related Articles

Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

Service Design Show

Make Business Human

What are Touchpoints and how to use them in a Customer Journey Map

​Okay great, you want to create a customer journey map. Not just any customer journey map...

A journey map that's actually going to help you create a better experience for customers and value for your organisation.

To craft this map you want to know how to map touchpoints the right way.

Touchpoints are the moments where your customers interact with your organisation. For example when your customer calls you with a question, looks for information on your website or steps into building.

Now you might be tempted to base your journey map on these touchpoints. This seemingly makes a lot of sense as you know when a customer interacts with you. You have evidence of this.

Touchpoints aren't customer centric

A lot of people who craft their first journey maps this way where touchpoints are the leading aspect. But there are really big problem with this approach.

The problem is that when you only map touchpoints you're still taking an inside out perspective.

You're projecting your internal processes on your customers. You're still not really stepping into the shoes of your customers.

So even after you've invested your time, love and energy into crafting this map you're still going to miss key moments in the journey that are truly matter to your customer.

At best you're going to end up with a disappointing map that doesn't give you any valuable insights... At worst you're going to make the wrong decisions based on this journey map.

And all this just because you've used touchpoints in the wrong way.

But fortunately there's quite an easy fix to this.

How to use touchpoints the right way

As mentioned earlier touchpoints are the moments of interaction between you and your customers. This interaction always happens through an interface or channel.

Channels are things like your staff, your website, your social media accounts, etc.

So now let's take a look at a customer journey map where touchpoints are the leading element.

A journey map solely based on touchpoints (click to enlarge)

When you see this journey map there's really nothing wrong with it at first glance.

The journey makes complete sense right? But it's missing something.

In the practical guide to customer journey mapping ( coming soon ) we explain that journey maps should always be based on customer activities and situations.

So let's revise this journey map and look at the difference.

A journey map based on customer activities and situations (click to enlarge)

​As you can see this map reflects much more closely how your customer actually experiences the journey.

Yes, touchpoints are still an important part of this journey map but they aren't leading anymore.

There are many moments in the journey where your customer isn't interacting with your organisation. And those are exactly the moments that you want to uncover as they give a lot of insights on how you can improve the overall experience.

For example in our going to the zoo journey you might want to look into ways how you can make the ride to the zoo already part of the experience. This might help increase the upfront excitement and reduce stress at the cash registers.

Here is how you easily spot the mistake

How do you know a journey map is purely based on touchpoints? There are two strong indicators that usually give it away:

• The journey map is missing a customer activities and situations lane completely.
• If there is a customer activities and situations lane, every activity is a moment of interaction with the organisation.

So the next time you see a customer journey map keep this in mind and see if you can spot this mistake.

The important next step

Now that you know how and when to use touchpoints the right way, the journey maps you're going to create are going to be more valuable. You're going to find better insights quicker into how you can actually improve the customer experience.

Your most important job now becomes uncovering those hidden customer activities and situations.

If you want to learn how to do that in an effective way, check out the Customer Journey Mapping Essentials Masterclass next.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Customer Touchpoint Map Template

Design the best experience from your customer’s point of view with the Customer Touchpoint Map Template. Identify opportunities and gain a competitive advantage.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the Customer Touchpoint Map Template

The customer touchpoint map template is a tool that helps you define your customer journey map. UX designers, researchers, and marketers can use this template to identify all the customer touchpoints of your product or brand, flagging which ones are in good order and which ones need improvement.

What is a customer touchpoint map?

A customer touchpoint map is where you can map all your customer’s interactions and touchpoints with your brand or product. It’s a practical and efficient way to see the whole journey, including what needs improvement and what’s been working well.

The customer touchpoint map helps you bring more detail to your customer journey map , where you go more in-depth on how your customer thinks and feels about your brand throughout their journey. A basic CJM includes a specific persona, the steps beginning-to-end of the customer experience, and the potential emotional highs and lows. Both templates are complementary.

Benefits of using a customer touchpoint map

Many teams can benefit from the customer touchpoint map, including designers, developers, and business managers. Here are a few things that will you find out when you build your own customer touchpoint map:

Anticipate multiple customer pathways

Each customer won’t have an identical user journey, so one of the advantages of customer touchpoint mapping is that you can plot out multiple pathways through your product.

By understanding the different ways customers can discover and use your product, you can better anticipate their priorities and what causes churn.

Understand the customer’s perspective

One of the major reasons businesses use customer touchpoint maps is to get a more incisive understanding of how the customer experiences their product. Mapping out customer journeys helps explain why customers make the choices they do and what is most aspect of your product is most valuable to them.

Inform updates and new features

Anytime you want to update your product or add new features, you’ll want to bring in the customer’s perspective. By helping you hone in on the steps and features that are most important to a customer, you can better understand which updates will benefit them the most.

Target customer personas more closely

Customer touchpoint mapping gives you a better understanding of your different buyer personas. Armed with this understanding, you can create different pathways for different personas and provide a more personalized experience.

Improve customer service

Finally, by helping you understand customer needs, customer touchpoint mapping will help you identify at which points in the journey customers need the most help and then target your customer support efforts towards those parts.

When to use the customer touchpoint map template

Customer touchpoint maps are most commonly used by businesses to understand the customer’s actions better, but there are numerous situations when customer touchpoint mapping can be useful.

Visualize the customer experience

Customer touchpoint maps help businesses visualize the customer journey and understand the steps a customer takes through the product. It also allows you to focus on your customer's journey's most influential channels and touchpoints.

Once you can see all phases, you can see where you’re failing to meet their expectations and make improvements to build a better user experience.

Solve a specific problem

Many teams use customer touchpoint mapping as a tool to solve a specific problem. For example, if you’re experiencing churn, it can help you see where your customer might encounter a roadblock that drives them to part ways with your brand.

Improve mission alignment

Suppose you’re having a hard time aligning cross-functionally. In that case, it can be useful to get the teams together to collaborate on creating a customer touchpoint map and ensure you’re putting the customer first.

Create your own customer touchpoint map

Whether you’re a veteran of customer touchpoint mapping or new to the technique, Miro makes it easy to build your own. Get started by selecting the customer touchpoint map template, then take the following steps:

1. Set a timeline

Identify each phase of your customer journey and add it to a linear timeline, including also all your communication channels.

2. Identify each customer touchpoint as an end-to-end journey

Add each customer's interaction with your brand, product, or service. A good way to organize the touchpoints is to think about the buying phases: before, purchase, and after purchase.

3. Analyze the interactions

Write down the positive and negative aspects of each touchpoint, according to your customer’s point of view.

What about your product exceeded your customer’s expectations? Where did it fall short?

4. Iterate and improve

After setting up your customer touchpoint map, see how it helps you develop your customer journey map. As your product and brand evolve, you can continuously iterate and improve your customer touchpoint map as you see fit.

What’s the difference between a customer touchpoint map and a journey map?

The customer touchpoint map gathers information about the channels you communicate, your customer needs when in contact with your product or brand, and your buying phases. The customer touchpoint mapping can be helpful when building a customer journey map, which gives you a greater overview of your customer’s pain points experiences and a detailed description of their personas.

Get started with this template right now.

Service Blueprint by Sahar Naderi

Works best for:.

Research & Design

Designed with usability in mind, this template features an intuitive layout that makes it easy to map out your service process from start to finish.

Goals-based Roadmap

Roadmap, Planning, Mapping

The Goals-based Roadmap template enables teams to set clear objectives and chart a course for achieving them. By defining specific goals and milestones, teams can track progress and adapt their strategies accordingly. This template fosters accountability and transparency, ensuring that everyone is working towards common objectives. With a focus on outcomes, teams can prioritize initiatives that drive the greatest impact and value.

5 Whys Template

Design Thinking, Operations, Mapping

Ready to get to the root of the problem? There’s no simpler way to do it than the 5 Whys technique. You’ll start with a simple question: Why did the problem happen? Then you’ll keep asking, up to four more times, until the answer becomes clear and you can work toward a solution. And Miro’s features enhance the approach: You can ask team members questions in chat or @mention them in comments, and use color-coded sticky notes to call out issues that are central to the problem at hand.

Sprint Planning Template

Agile, Sprint Planning

The Sprint Planning Template is a useful tool for agile teams to organize and conduct sprint planning sessions. It enhances team collaboration and communication by providing a clear visual layout of sprint goals, tasks, and timelines. The interactive design ensures team alignment toward sprint objectives, leading to effective teamwork. The template is a central hub for planning, discussion, and decision-making, creating a collaborative and productive environment.

Job Map Template

Design, Desk Research, Mapping

Want to truly understand your consumers’ mindset? Take a look at things from their perspective — by identifying the “jobs” they need to accomplish and exploring what would make them “hire” or “fire” a product or service like yours. Ideal for UX researchers, job mapping is a staged process that gives you that POV by breaking the “jobs” down step by step, so you can ultimately offer something unique, useful, and different from your competitors. This template makes it easy to create a detailed, comprehensive job map.

Purple Sector Empathy Map

Market Research, Research & Design

Purple Sector Empathy Map is an innovative tool for exploring user experiences. By visualizing users' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, you can create more engaging and user-friendly products. Ideal for teams focused on user experience.

• Revenue Operations
• CRM Strategy
• Account Based Marketing
• Demand Generation
• Inbound Sales & Marketing
• Paid Advertising
• Content & SEO
• Graphic Design
• HubSpot Migration
• HubSpot Implementation
• Custom Integration
• Website Redesign
• Strategic Workshops
• Professional Services
• Case Studies
• Web Portfolio
• Design Portfolio
• HubSpot's Top Partner
• Technology Partners
• All-New Report 2023 State of HubSpot Access Now
• Get in Touch
• Request a Quote

• Resource Library

How to Map Customer Journey Touchpoints to Improve Customer Experience

For a business to be successful, it needs customers who stick around — and with increasing levels of competition with other products and services, customer retention is harder than ever.

To enable the most sustainable growth, you don’t want your customers to just view you as a commodity. You want them to see you as an extension of their business, as something vital they cannot operate without.

Having a product or service that provides value and progresses them toward their goal is one aspect of developing that kind of relationship, but the experience you create through your delivery is equally important.

Mapping out your customer journey and monitoring how clients progress through it can help you maximize customer experience.

1. Align on Your Framework

Your customer journey framework ensures that key stakeholders have a shared understanding of what aspects of customer experience you’re monitoring and measuring in your customer journey map.

Aligning on your framework includes:

• Defining touchpoints and how you’ll measure them
• Defining your customer journey lifecycle stages
• Identifying what quantitative and qualitative data points are significant

Touchpoints

A touchpoint is an engagement between your customer and your company. They can consist of an email, a call, a follow-up communication, a chatbot conversation, a support ticket, an update via a project management tool, etc. Use of your product or service and visits to your website can also be considered touchpoints, but you should have a way to differentiate non-human engagements from the human ones.

In addition to tracking what occurred, mapping touchpoints also needs to involve tracking the impact of that engagement. Was it reactive or proactive? Positive or negative? Did it mark a progression or regression in the customer experience ?

Qualitative and quantitative data

For the sake of customer journey mapping, qualitative data points will include measures of sentiment and volatility, along with details about the customer like their persona and ICP . Quantitative data points are the numerical measurements of how you're helping progress them toward their goals, like their KPIs. 

These data points will help you segment your customer base because the indicators of a successful journey will differ depending on the customers’ needs, level of engagement with your company and maturity.

Customer journey maps tend to be linear: they’re typically presented as a timeline with touchpoints being recorded chronologically. This format is used because you want the maps to be as simple as possible so they can be leveraged easily by your customer-facing employees.

However, the customer journey isn’t linear. Customers will not necessarily move chronologically from one lifecycle stage to the next, and there will always be progressions and regressions. 

So, as you’re establishing your framework, you also need to consider how you will account for those ups and downs. For example, you could map experience on a vertical axis instead of just visualizing touchpoints on a timeline.

2. Understand Current State

Once your organization defines how you want to map your customer journey touchpoints, the next step is to compile example journeys representing key segments of your customer base so you can gain an understanding of what customers are experiencing.

• How are customers flowing through your journey? 
• Where are they experiencing value and where are they experiencing a value gap?
• Where are they entering and where are they exiting? 
• Why are they entering and why are they exiting?

The goal of this is to get a baseline for significant points and to identify quick wins for enhancement. 

To best understand everything that’s occurring in the customer journey, it can be beneficial to break the experience into arcs.

Within their end-to-end journey, a customer might have several micro-journeys. As their company grows and evolves, they’ll have different goals and different needs. Measuring these arcs, or micro-journeys, allows your team to meet your customer where they are at each stage through their journey.

3. Determine What the Ideal Journey Looks Like

The goal of customer journey mapping is to enhance experience across the lifecycle and increase customer lifetime length. In order to understand how to improve what you have, you need to know what you’re working toward. 

Define what the best-case customer journey looks like for each customer segment .

If everything goes right in a customer journey, what are the touchpoints that occur? What needs to happen for you to provide a personalized customer experience?

4. Bridge Current State to Ideal State

Compare the current state of your customer journey to the ideal state, and conduct a gap analysis to identify what’s missing between the two. Then create a roadmap for short-term, mid-term and long-term enhancements to improve the journey. 

• Are there periods without any touchpoints? 
• Are you seeing the wrong type of touchpoints occurring at key stages in the journey?
• Where can you add positive touchpoints in order to set the customer up for success later in the journey? 
• What areas are most likely to introduce friction?

Operationalize around the weak points, and work to gradually shift the customer journeys you’re creating to be more similar to the ideal journey while still accounting for the individual needs of each customer.

The Takeaway

The goal of customer journey mapping is to understand how your current state compares to your ideal state so you can start delivering on the best possible experience for your customers.

To benefit from customer journey mapping, you can’t just document what you want the journey to look like. Nor can you just create a cool-looking visualization of how your journey currently operates. You need both perspectives.

By mapping out both journey states, you will establish a roadmap to enhance your end-to-end journey and drive customer satisfaction .

Dylan Berno

Dylan is a former Client Success Manager at New Breed. He specializes in problem solving and creative strategy to ensure clients and organizations achieve their desired outcomes.

Other posts you might be interested in

Ready to jumpstart your acquisition, retention and expansion efforts?

• UX Audit (Heuristic Evaluation)
• UX Consulting
• UX Optimization
• UX Content Writing
• Website Design Packages
• Mobile App Design
• Responsive Web Design
• Website Design
• Web App Design
• SEO Content Writing
• Widespread (Electrical Supplier)
• (302) 223 4432
• Let’s Talk

What is a User Journey Map in UX?

Introduction to UX Journey Mapping

Definition and purpose.

UX journey mapping is a strategic exercise aimed at creating a holistic view of the customer experience by outlining every touchpoint and interaction a customer has with a brand. This visualization helps designers, stakeholders, and team members understand and address the needs, challenges, and opportunities within the customer experience. The purpose of UX journey mapping is not merely to document, but to foster a deep empathy towards the users, enabling teams to design more intuitive and user-centered products and services. Through this comprehensive overview, organizations gain invaluable insights into customer motivations, behaviors, and pain points, which can then be leveraged to enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, business outcomes.

Journey mapping begins with the compilation of data from various sources including market research, user research, and analytics. This information forms the backbone of the journey map, detailing the user’s actions, emotions, and mindset throughout their interaction with the product or service. The exercise of mapping out these interactions encourages a shift from a business-centric to a customer-centric perspective, ensuring that user experience design decisions are grounded in real user needs and preferences rather than assumptions.

The Importance of Journey Maps in UX Design

Journey maps are vital in UX design as they provide a bird’s-eye view of the user experience, highlighting how customers interact with a product or service across multiple channels and touchpoints. This panoramic perspective is critical in identifying friction points that may hinder customer engagement and satisfaction. Moreover, journey maps serve as a shared language among cross-functional teams, facilitating better communication and alignment on the goals and vision of the user experience.

The significance of journey maps extends beyond problem identification; they are pivotal in uncovering hidden opportunities for innovation and improvement. By understanding the customer journey in its entirety, companies can anticipate user needs and craft experiences that exceed expectations, thereby fostering a strong emotional connection with the brand. This connection is the key to building a loyal customer base and achieving competitive advantage in the market.

Components of a Successful Journey Map

Identifying your user persona.

A user persona is a semi-fictional character that represents a segment of your target audience, crafted based on user research and data. Personas are crucial for journey mapping as they ensure the map reflects the experiences of real users rather than hypothetical ones. Each persona should include demographic information, goals, motivations, and pain points, providing a comprehensive profile that guides the mapping process.

Mapping Out User Scenarios and Expectations

User scenarios and expectations set the stage for the journey map, outlining the sequence of actions a user takes to achieve a goal. These scenarios are grounded in user research and feedback, ensuring they accurately represent the tasks and objectives users are trying to accomplish. By mapping these out, designers can visualize the path users take, from initial awareness to final action, and identify potential barriers to completion.

Key Elements of Journey Maps: Actions, Mindsets, and Emotions

The heart of a journey map lies in its ability to depict the user’s actions, mindsets, and emotions at each touchpoint. This triad offers a comprehensive view of the user experience, combining what users do, think, and feel. Actions refer to the steps users take, mindsets to their attitudes and expectations, and emotions to their responses to the interaction. Highlighting these elements in the journey map enables teams to empathize with users and tailor experiences to meet their needs.

Creating Your Journey Map

Steps to build an effective journey map.

The process of building a journey map starts with gathering comprehensive user data through methods like interviews, surveys, and usability testing. This data is then synthesized into a coherent narrative that represents the typical user journey. The mapping process involves several key steps:

• Define the scope and objectives of the journey map.
• Identify user personas to focus on.
• Outline key stages and touchpoints in the user journey.
• Detail actions, thoughts, and emotions for each stage.
• Visualize the journey through diagrams or software tools, making it accessible and understandable for all stakeholders.

Tools and Techniques for Journey Mapping

Several tools and techniques facilitate the journey mapping process, ranging from simple pen and paper to advanced software applications. Digital tools like UX mapping software enable dynamic visualization and easy updates, while traditional methods offer simplicity and tangibility. The choice of tool depends on the complexity of the journey and the preferences of the team. Regardless of the method, the aim is to create a clear, actionable map that guides the design and optimization of the user experience.

Analyzing and Utilizing Journey Maps

Identifying pain points and opportunities.

Analyzing a journey map involves looking for patterns and anomalies that indicate pain points or opportunities for enhancement. Pain points are moments of friction or dissatisfaction that detract from the customer experience, while opportunities are areas where improvements can significantly impact satisfaction and engagement. This analysis should be grounded in empathy, considering the emotional journey of the customer as well as the practical aspects of their experience.

Implementing Insights to Enhance User Experience

The ultimate goal of journey mapping is to apply the insights gained to improve the user experience. This may involve redesigning touchpoints, streamlining processes, or introducing new features that address users’ needs more effectively. Implementation should be strategic, prioritizing changes that will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and business objectives. Continuous testing and iteration are essential to ensure that modifications truly enhance the user experience.

Advanced Concepts in Journey Mapping

Journey map variations and their applications.

Journey maps can take various forms, each suited to different aspects of the user experience. For example, service blueprints provide a more detailed view of the service delivery process, including backend actions and interactions that support the customer journey. Other variations focus on specific aspects of the experience, such as emotional journey maps that highlight users’ feelings throughout their interaction with a product or service. Choosing the right type of journey map depends on the specific goals and needs of the project.

Integrating Journey Maps into Broader UX Strategy

Journey maps are most effective when integrated into a broader UX strategy. They should inform and be informed by other UX research and design activities, ensuring a cohesive understanding of the user experience. This integration enables a more strategic approach to design and development, where decisions are made with a comprehensive view of the user’s journey, rather than in isolation. The ultimate aim is to create a seamless, engaging user experience that meets users’ needs and exceeds their expectations at every touchpoint.

In conclusion, UX journey mapping is a powerful tool for understanding and improving the customer experience. By visualizing the journey from the customer’s perspective, organizations can identify pain points, uncover opportunities, and design experiences that truly resonate with their users. The journey map is not an end in itself but a means to a more empathetic, user-centered design approach that fosters loyalty, satisfaction, and business success.

Build your perfect SEO campaign with

Build your perfect SEO campaign with. Build your.

RELATED ARTICLES

Frequently asked questions.

The stages of the UX user journey typically include Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. These stages represent the user’s journey from becoming aware of a product or service to becoming a loyal customer and advocate for the brand.

A UX experience map is a visualization that represents the overall experience a user has with a product or service, encompassing all touchpoints and channels. Unlike journey maps, which focus on specific tasks or interactions, experience maps provide a broader view of the user’s relationship with the brand, capturing emotions, motivations, and barriers across different contexts.

To conduct user journey mapping, follow these steps:

• Define the goals of the mapping exercise and the target persona.
• Gather data through user research to understand the persona’s needs, goals, and behaviors.
• Map out the key touchpoints and stages in the user’s journey with the product or service.
• Identify the user’s actions, thoughts, and emotions at each touchpoint.
• Analyze the map to identify pain points, opportunities for improvement, and moments of delight.
• Prioritize and implement changes based on insights gained from the journey map.

Creating a journey map in design thinking involves several steps:

• Empathize: Conduct research to understand the user’s needs, pain points, and the context of their interactions with the product or service.
• Define: Clearly articulate the user’s problem or need that the journey map will address.
• Ideate: Brainstorm the stages, touchpoints, and experiences that comprise the user’s journey.
• Prototype: Visualize the journey map, detailing the user’s actions, emotions, and challenges at each stage.
• Test: Share the journey map with stakeholders and users to gather feedback and refine your understanding. Design thinking emphasizes a user-centered approach, ensuring that the journey map reflects real user experiences and drives meaningful improvements.

Get more knowledagble

9 minutes read

Successful UX Design: In-Depth Guide to Innovative User Research Methods

11 minutes read

What Is the Role of CSS in Web Design

How to Improve User Experience on a Website

8 minutes read

Usability Analysis and UX Design: A Comprehensive Guide

10 minutes read

Streamlining Agile UX Design: The Only Approach

The Impact of User Experience Design on SEO Performance

Optimize Interaction Design for Excellence in User Experience

The ultimate guide to web development.

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimise digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered straight to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Meet the operating system for experience management

• Free Account
• Product Demos
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Employee Exit Interviews
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Artificial Intelligence
• Market Research
• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO
• Experience Management
• Customer Journey Mapping
• Customer Journey Touchpoints

See how CustomerXM works

Understanding customer journey touchpoints.

9 min read When you’re looking to improve sales and build your brand, it’s important to think like your customer: to understand and be mindful of them at every step of their journey with you. Here’s how to get a better understanding with customer journey mapping.

What is a customer touchpoint?

Customer touchpoints are the various moments at which a customer will directly, or indirectly, come into contact with your brand. These touchpoints make up the  customer journey , and are key to influencing the  customer experience .

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey describes all the customer touchpoints a potential customer has before, during, and after their purchase.

They include those aspects of the journey directly influenced by your organisation as well as those influenced or controlled by third parties. This is an important distinction as, while you may not be responsible for a particular part of the journey, it still affects the experience your customer has.

Why is understanding customer touchpoints important?

It’s impossible to improve the customer experience if you don’t know the moments that they go through to make that experience. These moments – the touchpoints in which the customer interacts with the brand – define the experience that customers have.

Multiple touchpoints create a journey. If brands are to successfully influence the customer – to buy, renew or recommend to a family, friend or coworker – then the experience in the moments that matter needs to meet their needs.

By knowing and understanding how customers feel during these touchpoints, brands can focus on improving certain, and often small, aspects to the experience, rather than having to rethink the journey as a whole.

This helps brands to create a tailored approach, instead of having to adopt a one-size-fits-all mindset.

See how Qualtrics can help you optimise the customer journey

Identifying your customer touchpoints

Before  – how did they find out about you? Your customer may find out about you through adverts, billboards, social media, online reviews, or good old-fashioned word of mouth.

During  – which channels and what did they do? This is your point of sale (POS). It could be your website, branch, store, or delivery. Customers may interact with sales assistants and call centres.

After  – what happens after the sale? These include invoicing, queries, returns, product support, product or service lifetime, newsletters, and  customer feedback surveys

Once you understand and map every touchpoint in your customer journey and collect feedback from each, you will be able to spot ‘pain points’ along the way or areas that need improving.

Examples of customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints, as mentioned above, are the moments in which a customer will come into contact, or engage, with a brand. This might be before, during, or after completing a purchase or using a service.

These examples include direct contact – where the brand is involved in this interaction, and indirect – where it involves third parties.

Examples include :

• Advertising (inc. digital, out of home, print)
• Social media
• Welcome/thank you emails
• Physical stores
• Customer service (cashier, contact center, sales rep)
• Product reviews
• Subscription renewals
• Influencer recommendations
• Peer reviews
• Point of sale
• Customer onboarding
• Physical and digital events

How customer touchpoints work

Let’s take an example here – a customer looking to take out a mortgage. The customer touchpoints in our example below.

• Your customer has seen an advert for an attractive interest rate and their brother recommended your mortgage.Your online mortgage calculator said the repayments were affordable, so the customer has a helpful face-to-face meeting in a branch, and goes home to fill out the online application form.
• They instantly receive an email with a decision in principle, telling them it has been accepted, inviting them to complete the full application.
• The customer takes a few days to fill out the application and receives an ‘application received’ message.
• Some of the information was missing, so a contact center agent calls them to explain what information they need to provide.
• Finally, the mortgage is agreed and the customer receives a letter with a binding mortgage offer.
• Once the customer has then gone through the house buying process, had their surveys carried out and confirmed their exchange date, they receive final confirmation of the mortgage including direct debit details, terms and conditions, etc. The process is now complete.

So that’s a total of 11 touchpoints – and for many home buyers there will be much more back and forth too – up to the point of purchase.

Following completion, there may be more, like annual or monthly statements or interactions with the customer if they want to increase or decrease how much they pay each month.

Turning your touchpoints into a journey

Customer touchpoints, together, form a journey. This is the process, or order, in which a customer might directly or indirectly interact with your brand. Customers take multiple different journeys with a brand, influenced in different ways.

There is not a single linear journey that every customer will take.

After all, this is why integrated marketing campaigns exist, to meet the needs of different  target audiences . However, understanding these different journeys is important in order to be able to improve the experience of each journey, and of each target audience.

This is called customer journey mapping. It provides an overview of every way in which a customer might interact with your brand. It covers how they:

• Research the product/service/brand
• Use the product
• Seek customer service support
• Express their displeasure
• Recommend the product

Then, when something isn’t working or could be improved then it’s possible to look at the process visually and come up with solutions to make it better for customers.

What to fix and where?

On the face of it, you might have a  satisfied customer . They may give high  NPS  or  CSAT  scores as they now have their mortgage and a lovely new home.

But how many other customers started the application form, gave up filling it in because it was too complicated and went to another provider? Or received a mortgage in principle only for the full application to be rejected?

This is where journey mapping is essential. By gathering feedback at each touchpoint, you can start to understand how each one contributes to the overall experience. Was there a stage that was particularly difficult? Where did the service they received fail to match up to their expectations?

Being able to pinpoint specific pain points along the customer journey means that you can step in and make improvements at the moments that matter.

Using customer experience data and mapping it back to specific touchpoints is how you start to understand the key moments that influence customer behavior.

By analysing this feedback side by side with your core CX metrics , you’re able to identify the improvements that will have the biggest impact on your customers and their overall experience as well as the impact on organisation metrics like win rates, sales, and customer lifetime value .

An action-orientated approach to customer touchpoints

Understanding how your customers interact with your brand throughout the customer journey is vital, but it will only prove effective if you take action on the insights that you uncover. For example, if it becomes clear that the onboarding process is damaging the customer experience, then action needs to be taken to rectify that.

Related resources

Customer Journey

Customer Journey Mapping Workshop 3 min read

Customer journey mapping tools 14 min read, customer journey mapping 14 min read, the complete guide to customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer’s journey 16 min read, customer journey analytics 13 min read, request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

How to improve the B2B buyer journey

Marketers often compare the buyer journey to ‘the hero’s journey’ - a classical narrative structure, full of danger and peril, that’s been used by almost every storytelling culture since the Ancient Greeks. Some people might consider this melodramatic, but if Gartner research is anything to go by, your B2B buyer would probably agree with the marketers - 77% of buyers described their last purchase experience as extremely complex or difficult.

Unfortunately, for B2B buyers, not every fellowship (or buying team) gets a happy ending. It's often reported that 95% of buying groups say they have to revisit their purchase decisions at least once.

Sales professionals looking for a co-writing credit on this tale need to do everything they can to help buyers achieve their aim with the minimum of friction (or dragons). In this article, we’ll explore why B2B buyers have such a hard time and how we can remove drama from the B2B buyer journey.

Key takeaways

• B2B buyer journeys have become much more complicated, and most buyers wish they were simpler.
• Mapping out buyer journeys will provide great insights to power your buyer enablement strategies.
• Customizable and responsive sales collateral allows you to tailor your approach to reduce friction and wasted time in the buyer journey.

What is the B2B buyer journey?

The B2B buyer journey is exactly what it sounds like - a period of time during which a company becomes aware of a need, identifies a product or service to meet that need, reviews various options, and makes a purchase.

The B2B buyer journey is not the same thing as your sales cycle . The buyer journey can be well underway and several chapters deep before the buyer has even heard of you. That’s why the concept of the buyer journey is as relevant to marketing as it is to sales.

Importance of the B2B buyer journey

If you’re hoping to make sales, the buyer journey is very important to your efforts - especially if your team employs a consultative selling methodology such as MEDDIC , Challenger, or target account selling.

If you want to help the buyer solve their problem, you need to understand how the buyer views their problem. For B2B sales, this is often more complicated than it sounds. B2B buying groups typically involve six to ten stakeholders, each with their own perspective, expectations, knowledge base, requirements from your solution, etc. (As classic stories go, it’s more ‘Crime and Punishment’ than ‘Hungry Caterpillar’).

Stages of the buyer’s journey

It’s important to note that the complexity of B2B buying journeys makes a typical step-by-step breakdown almost meaningless. While there are distinct stages (hopefully ending with a purchase), there are so many moving parts that it’s probably better to think of them as modes rather than stages.

Problems can be misdiagnosed, eventually causing the buyer to return to square one. A lack of awareness of available solutions and benefits early on in the process can completely change the purchase context halfway through. Changes in the buying team can result in unexpected new directions.

As we’ll see shortly, the main purpose of defining the journey stages is to give us a frame of reference when we map out specific buyer journeys for our prospects and products. While the stages are too general on their own, they can help us track the evolution of a deal and understand the ebbs, flows, and thought processes of the stakeholders involved.

We tend to use the 6sense framework as a neat and comprehensive overview of the stages of the B2B buyer journey.

Business as usual

As befits a sales concept that also applies to marketing strategies, the first stage is effectively neutral—the buyer may or may not be aware of their problem, and their journey has yet to begin. At this stage, there are still opportunities for outbound sales activity.

Now, the buyer knows there’s a problem - but they haven’t defined it fully yet. An investigation of some kind has begun, in order to understand and identify the problem.

Consideration

The problem is generally understood, and affected stakeholders are informed. The buyer (or buying team) now actively researches solutions and draws up a list of all available options.

A course of action has been chosen, and the decision-making process is initiated. A shortlist of potential vendors is drawn up and assessed.

The buyer commits to the vendor of their choice, purchasing and implementing the solution.

How the B2B buyer journey has changed over time

From the rise of the internet to COVID-19 and beyond, the acceleration of societal and economic change is reflected at every turn by changes in the B2B buyer journey.

Bigger buying teams

The average number of stakeholders in a B2B buying team has risen considerably over the past ten years. This makes it even harder to build consensus, create sales collateral that provides information relevant to the individual stakeholder, and schedule meetings and demos (increasing the length of the sales cycle).

Buyer journeys aren’t linear anymore

In addition to the increased complexity of interaction caused by the larger buying teams, omnichannel content marketing means that much of the information that a seller would share as part of a measured sequence or playbook is already out there for the taking.

Buyers might come to the sales process having absorbed a great deal of information about your product - but with little understanding of how it applies to their use case.

Greater scrutiny

Changing business practices have meant that many companies now put contracts out to tender more often - 77% of companies surveyed reported that they re-tendered their major enterprise deals every two years. The tender process has become increasingly intensive, too, and companies are under greater pressure to demonstrate their competitive differences.

Seller-free buying experiences

The content-marketing-led shift towards informing and educating the buyer means that buyers are empowered to conduct their own research, draw their own conclusions, and decide what they want. This reduces their reliance on sales professionals and sales teams as a source of knowledge.

While the role of sales professionals as trusted advisors in complex sales processes is mostly insulated from this change, the impact on the role of sales professionals in transactional selling models is considerable.

Greater emphasis on values and purpose

As shifting attitudes towards the climate crisis and other societal issues lead companies to place greater emphasis on their social values and ESG policies, B2B buyer journeys have evolved accordingly. 42% of UK companies have already switched suppliers or business partners at least once because their provider didn’t have adequate ESG credentials and commitments.

Mapping the B2B buyer journey

Is mapping out in detail your buyers' journey a fiendishly complicated job? Yes. Is it even worth doing? Yes, absolutely.

As we mentioned earlier, understanding your buyer’s problems is vital to communicating effectively, identifying their pain points, and closing the deal. The mapping process can also uncover recurring patterns in how your various accounts operate and let you make iterative improvements to your sales processes , finding the best way to enable the buyer at every stage.

Here are some pointers to help you create a consistently repeatable buyer journey mapping process.

Create buyer personas

Using your existing customer base as a reference, create detailed personas for the different types of individuals you most commonly encounter in buying groups. Think about their job titles and roles, how often they’ll need to use your solution directly, responsibilities, technical understanding, and priorities.

Company goals vs individual goals

The company goals are usually clearly defined, and they are visible to everyone in a ‘vision-mission-values’ statement or similar document.

The different types of buyers will (presumably) share these goals. However, they’ll support different goals to a greater or lesser degree, depending on their role. They might also have different personal goals they aim to achieve within their professional context.

Create an actual map

This can be a challenge - as we’ve said, the journey is rarely linear and often complex. Using the broad stages of the buyer journey, try and create a representation that allows you to account for:

• Different personas at different stages
• Journeys that move back and forth between the different stages
• Different touchpoints and communication channels used

Use qualitative and quantitative data to enhance your map

Drawing on your analytics, sales conversations , and buyer feedback transcripts, add as much relevant detail as you can to your map. Use the data to answer these questions.

• Where are the bottlenecks and pain points?
• Are there any recurring issues? Do deals often get lost around the same place?
• Is there anything you can automate or streamline using buyer enablement tools ?
• Are there missed opportunities to add value or upsell?

Use buyer analytics to shape your sales strategy

Uncover how buyers are engaging with your sales assets at crucial stages of the deal

Four tips for sales teams to help B2B buyers on their journey

If you want to provide better support for your prospective buyers as they wind their way through their journey to purchase, it is essential that you craft a solid Buyer enablement strategy. While this term has been used in recent years as a use case for sales tools , it also needs to be considered in a broader sense - as a way of building stronger relationships and creating a better customer experience .

Here are four ways you can make the B2B buyer journey easier.

1. coach your buyers through the process.

In consultative selling, you and your buyer are on the same side, trying to achieve the same outcome—solving the buyer's problem or alleviating some type of business pain.

Your role in this process is to provide expert insight, help them weigh available options, and provide sales collateral and messaging that’s easily shared and personalized to the needs of individual stakeholders.

In simpler terms, show them what it looks like to win with your solution.

2. Show that you respect your buyer’s time

This is one of the most important tenets of buyer enablement. Shortening the sales cycle and saving time is a priority for both sellers and buyers.

Every meeting that can be safely ditched, every repeated question that can be avoided, and every process that can be rendered as a simple self-serve website interaction will improve the long-term relationship and make a sale more likely.

Take this a step further by anticipating the needs of your buyer so they have everything they need at their fingertips and don't need to wait for you to provide it.

3. Align your sales process with the buyer journey

Sometimes, less is more. Just because you can have all the touchpoints and free resources in the world available to your buyer doesn’t mean you should. Too much information or an overly aggressive approach can overwhelm and alienate your buyer if it’s implemented at the wrong stage of the sales process .

Learn the journey they’ve taken, respect the knowledge they already have, and tell them what they need to know - when they need to know it.

Qwilr is the modern way to sell

Increase deal velocity, get buyer insights from content, and give reps more time to sell

4. Put the buyer’s needs first - even if that means no sale

As any Game of Thrones fan will tell you, a bad ending can be worse than no ending at all. Not every bad lead can be neatly disqualified at the first hurdle - one of the downsides of consultative selling is that the time and money you invest in each prospect doesn’t always bring a return.

If your product is starting to seem like a bad fit, do the right thing and guide your buyer to a better solution. You might not get the sale, but the respectful and authentic approach may pay dividends.

How can Qwilr help with the B2B buyer journey?

Personalization is the key to enabling the complex needs of B2B buyers. You need to be prepared to meet your buyer anywhere along their journey and ensure that you’re not wasting their time with irrelevant information.

Buyer enablement tools need to be instantly customizable so they can address the evolving needs of these diverse buyers on their nonlinear journeys. That’s why Qwilr is the perfect choice for consultative sellers looking to switch up their sales collateral at a moment’s notice.

Find out if Qwilr can give your sales team a satisfying finale on their journey to perfect sales collateral and proposals ( proposal templates and software), with a 14-day free trial .

About the author

Dan Lever | Brand Consultant and Copywriter

Dan Lever is an experienced brand consultant and copywriter. He brings over 7 years experience in marketing and sales development, across a range of industries including B2B SaaS, third sector and higher education.

Frequently asked questions

What is the future of the b2b buying journey.

B2B buyers desire simpler buying journeys - and research shows that 70-80% of buyers prefer a remote selling or digital self-serve purchasing experience.

What is B2B customer journey mapping?

B2B buyer journey mapping is the process of developing an overview of how your buyers become aware of their needs and seek your product or service as the answer to those needs. A good B2B buyer journey map will include the perspectives of multiple stakeholders, touchpoints used, and qualitative and quantitative data about friction, pain points, and any recurring issues.

What is a B2B buying group?

A B2B buying group is a committee of individual colleagues or stakeholders tasked with researching the best product or service to meet a business's needs. The buying group usually comprises individuals who can provide expert perspectives and ensure that the chosen solution satisfies all relevant requirements.

Related articles

• All articles
• Sales management
• Sales techniques
• Sales enablement
• Customer success
• Product updates