Understanding customer journey mapping.

A customer journey map shows how customers interact with your brand, product, or service. It helps you understand their expectations and needs, leading to better satisfaction and loyalty.

Every interaction a person has with your brand shapes their experience, from first awareness to post-purchase. This includes online and offline touchpoints, whether direct or through third parties. Analysing these interactions helps improve strategies and create a smoother experience.

Navigating a website, applying for a job, visiting a hospital—these are all customer journeys. In banking, tourism, and education, interactions define the experience. Some people use “customer journey” and “user journey” interchangeably. A user journey focuses on people actively using a product or service rather than just purchasing it.

Why Create a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map (CJM) outlines the steps a customer takes when interacting with your business. It includes touchpoints from awareness to post-purchase. It also reflects customer satisfaction at each stage.

Journey mapping helps you see processes from the customer’s perspective. It ensures their needs shape service design and innovation. More businesses now use journey maps as ongoing tools for managing customer experience.

Mapping the customer journey highlights key moments that influence decisions. It helps you fix poor onboarding, confusing websites, and weak customer support.

It identifies issues lowering satisfaction, prioritises product features, and aligns service blueprints with customer needs. New businesses use it to understand their audience before launching.

Business Impact

Companies focused on customer experience see 4-8% higher revenue growth than competitors.

81% of companies say user experience sets them apart.

96% of customers consider service a key factor in brand loyalty.

Brands excelling in experience earn 5.7 times more revenue than those that don’t.

Improving customer experience typically boosts employee engagement by 20%.

Creating a Customer Journey Map

Journey maps vary based on goals and detail. Some cover the entire omnichannel experience, while others focus on a specific step. Key elements remain the same.

Define the scope: Decide the scale and purpose of your map. A broad overview helps with research and project management. A detailed version focuses on specific steps, interactions, or challenges.

Choose a person: A journey map represents a persona—a fictional character reflecting common customer behaviours and needs. Defining personas ensures a customer-first approach and builds empathy. Comparing different personas highlights variations in experiences.

Gather data: Research is key. Use customer feedback, surveys, analytics, and market research to understand behaviours, pain points, and motivations. Combine quantitative data (conversion rates, satisfaction scores) with qualitative insights (interviews, observations) for accuracy.

Build the map: A typical journey map looks like a matrix, with steps in columns and details in rows.

Steps and touchpoints cover all customer experiences, from researching to making a purchase. Stages split the journey into phases like pre-service, service, and post-service. A restaurant journey, for example, moves from arrival to ordering, eating, payment, and leaving.

Storyboards use visuals like icons, photos, or sketches to illustrate key moments. Text descriptions highlight pain points, key insights, and improvement ideas. Communication channels ensure smooth cross-channel experiences. Emotional journeys use a scale (-2 to +2) to show satisfaction at each step. A dramatic arc graph tracks engagement levels at different moments.

Optimising Customer Journey Maps

Use data and metrics. Base decisions on quantitative insights like conversion rates and customer lifetime value, combined with qualitative feedback from interviews and observations.

Consider backstage activities. Include internal processes like logistics and IT systems that affect customer experiences. Service blueprints help visualise behind-the-scenes operations.

Create a journey management system. A journey map repository organises multiple maps, making it easier to track and improve experiences over time.

Collaborate on journey maps. Involve teams and stakeholders from customer service, IT, and sales to get well-rounded insights. Workshops with customers and employees provide valuable perspectives.

Keep journey maps relevant. Update them regularly to reflect changing customer expectations and business needs.

Use digital tools. Platforms like Smaply streamline the creation, editing, and collaboration of journey maps.

Get an Expert Opinion on Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping improves experiences by identifying pain points and refining interactions. It helps you build seamless, satisfying journeys that boost loyalty and revenue. Keeping maps updated and involving teams ensures lasting impact.

At Forum, we specialise in helping businesses like yours develop and integrate detailed customer journey maps that enhance customer interactions, improve marketing strategies, and drive engagement.

We work closely with you to create journey maps that reflect your unique audience, ensuring that your marketing, sales, and customer experience strategies align with real customer needs. Our team helps you implement journey maps across your organisation, making them a valuable tool for decision-making at every level. Beyond defining the journey, we focus on using them to craft personalised experiences that foster customer loyalty and satisfaction. We also provide training and ongoing support to ensure your team fully understands and maximises the value of personas in customer experience.

Let’s transform the way you connect with your customers. Get in touch today to discuss how we can help you build an effective customer journey map to improve your overall customer experience.