Customer Journey Maps & what we can learn from them

Customer Journey Maps are visual narratives that depict the interactions between individuals and your brand. They enable a comprehensive comprehension of your customers while bridging the gap between your business and its buyers.

Originating from design, Customer Journey Mapping has gained a great deal of popularity, leading to an abundance of design approaches.

In this article, I share an example of a customer journey map and insights into their effectiveness and use cases.

Here's an example of a customer journey map

So what needs to go into a Customer Journey Map? Here are the essential elements…

1. Customer or User Persona

A persona is a semi-fictional representation of a group of your customers. Based on user research and data from your existing customers, a persona brings your users to life. For your map though, you just need a quick summary, leave the detail for your full user persona.

2. Phases of the customer journey

This section details the phases that the customer goes through from awareness to consideration, to purchase or download, and beyond. The specific name of your steps might vary, but generally, they’ll include something similar to the phases in the image.

3. Customer Touchpoints

This section outlines any point of contact, interaction, or information-gathering with which a customer interacts, for example, social media channels, notifications, emails, campaigns, or even in-person events.

4. Customer Emotional Journey

Customers' thoughts and feelings can give us a better understanding of what the customer is experiencing at each phase of their journey. You could include a simple emoji or a little quote here. This emotional journey tracks how customers feel during every step, so you can pinpoint how to optimise their experience and any pain points. 

5. Customer Actions

Customer Actions describe what customers are doing, or attempting to do, at each touchpoint. For example, Googling for reviews, exploring the product on the App Store, or reading an article on the website for more information.

Elements of a Customer Journey Map

Now, I use them all the time, but when might you want to create a Customer Journey Map?

👉 Working out an email flow for customers and you want to understand how they might be feeling at different times of their purchase journey. 

👉 Creating a series of comms on social, email, website and more and want to spot opportunities you might be missing, and more ways to improve the customer journey.

👉 Designing or building a product and you need to understand user pain points, needs, expectations and more. 

👉 Mapping out numerous audience segments to understand each audience's different touchpoints, needs, pain points, feelings and opportunities to improve their journeys.

The bottom line

There are hundreds of different ways to create a journey map, and people are always putting their unique spin on them (just do a Google search and you'll see many variations). 

There’s no one “right way” to create your journey map. Instead, you’ll need to decide how best to design it for your specific audience.

Think carefully about how you’ll use your map as a tool for communication.

Ask yourself:

• What information needs to be in the map?

• Is my journey map easy to scan and understand or will people feel overwhelmed when they first see it?

• How will my map be presented to stakeholders and what is the best tool and framework for the design?

🚀 Unlock the secrets of the world's best brands

Sign up to the OnlyBrands newsletter to join a 500+ community. Learn about branding, human behaviour and psychology, content design, and verbal strategy in <5 mins a week.

SIGN UP