The customer experience is more crucial than ever. According to a survey conducted by Dynata, 82% of respondents expect retailers to accommodate their preferences and meet their expectations.

How can you use the customer-centric philosophy of “the customer is always right” to drive long-term business growth? It all starts with understanding your customer, their pain points, and their experience during their path to purchase.

Creating a customer journey map is a powerful tool to help make a more emotional connection with your customers and improve the overall customer experience. This article will walk you through creating a customer journey map using a complementary customer journey template.

Grab your template, follow along, and let’s dive right in. 

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual guide that shows how real customers interact with your brand at every critical touchpoint. It explains their thinking and feeling and how you can improve their experience. It shows their emotions and experiences on their way to making a purchase, whether through your website, email, social media, or store.

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The buyer’s journey is a well-known concept in marketing. It describes the stages a buyer goes through when deciding whether to purchase a product or service. Customer journey maps help you understand how to improve the experience you offer customers at different points in the buyer’s journey. 

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According to many marketing experts, there are five* stages of the buyer’s journey:

1. Awareness: The customer isn’t aware of your product yet.
2. Consideration: The customer has heard about your product but is still researching it to see if it’s right for them.
3. Decision: The customer has decided that your product solves what they need.
4. Service: The customer connects with your customer service team for guidance on learning the new product features.
5. Retention: The customer approves of your product or service and makes repeat purchases over time.

*Some marketers whittle this list down to three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

Why is a customer journey map important?

In today’s world, there are many things that our customers expect from you. They want a solution to their problem, a personalized experience, and the option to easily contact you with any questions or concerns.

To meet these expectations, you need to think carefully about the customer journey: the path a customer takes from the first time they hear about your brand through their final interaction. Luckily, there is Customer Success Software for small businesses, allowing them to track customer interactions, identify pain points, and ensure that customers have a positive experience at every touchpoint.

Understanding this process is important because it allows you to focus on improving user experience over time by making small tweaks here and there based on what works best for them at each stage along their journey.

A customer journey map helps you:

• Understand their pain points, expectations, and needs about your product or service.
• Identify areas where customers are unsatisfied and provide opportunities for making changes. 

Whether your business is B2C or B2B, a customer journey map will become essential to your customer service and training toolkits. 

Below is an excellent example of a B2B customer journey map. It addresses expectations, common questions, and ways to overcome objections in a constructive, helpful way. By preparing for and taking steps to enhance the customer experience, you can not only increase conversions but also improve customer loyalty long-term.

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How to make your own customer journey map

A customer journey map shows your customer’s path from awareness to retention. To help save you time, we’ve provided this free customer journey template.

Step 1: Pain points

Customer pain points are a marketer’s best friend. These are the problems your customers are dying to solve, and it’s your job to show how your brand can help solve them. Identifying pain points is the most applicable to the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey.

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Step 2: Desires 

Desire is an emotional response that draws people towards a solution. It’s what makes them want to solve their problem and why they’ll choose your brand over a competitor’s. 

As you create your customer journey map, think about how you can create desires for your customers at each stage of their journey with your brand or product.

Ask specific questions to people interested in your products or services to see if they match your buyer personas. This way, you know what kind of solution to provide for their needs.

For example, HelloRache offers three types of virtual healthcare assistants. Before they talk to a potential customer, the customer fills out a form that specifies which type of assistance they need. This streamlines the process and avoids unnecessary delays and transfers.

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Now HelloRache has the information they need to help pitch the best solutions to the customer during the sales call, improving the customer experience and conversion rates. 

Step 3: Touchpoints

A customer touchpoint is any point where customers interact with your brand. It could be a phone call, an email, or even visiting your website.

Each customer touchpoint has a purpose: to help get your customer closer to their goal. Is it helping them learn more about your products? Is it encouraging them to buy something? Is it reminding them why they need your product? When evaluating your customer touchpoints, it’s essential to consider various factors, including the efficiency of your contact center. A contact center comparison can help assess how well each touchpoint, such as phone calls and emails, contributes to achieving your customer’s goals. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your contact center services can reveal opportunities for improvement in your overall customer journey map.

If you think about keeping these questions in mind, you’ll be able to identify where there are gaps or opportunities for improvement in your customer journey map.

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Step 4: Expectations

You can’t create a map unless you understand what your customers expect. You need to know the gap between what they expect and what they get. In other words, expectations are what customers think will happen when interacting with your brand.

Expectations help guide behavior and decision-making, so understanding them is vital for building an effective customer journey map. The goal of this step is to:

• Understand your customers’ interactions with you from start to finish.
• Gather information about the various touch points in those interactions.

Step 5: Actions

In this step, you’ll define the customer action which takes them to the next step in their journey. Here is where your research comes into play.

Each step in a customer journey map represents a touch point between you and your customer. As such, you need to understand what happens after each interaction with them (or at least what should happen).

• Awareness: Read a blog post
• Consideration: Compare product features
• Decision: Make a purchase
• Service: Provide a product review
• Retention: Make a repeat purchase

Step 6: Experience and emotions

Think about how your customers feel at each stage of the customer journey. When does their experience start? What happens when it goes well? When does it go badly? What emotions are involved in the journey from beginning to end?

Imagine yourself as a customer: what would you be thinking, feeling, and experiencing at each step along the way? How might this compare to other life experiences involving similar steps but different results (e.g., buying something online vs. going into a store)? 

Think about how you feel when you reach your goal or fail to reach it — what emotions do these evoke in you, and why do they affect you so differently?

Consider how price sensitivity, product availability, and quality issues influence feelings. Will they make people happy or unhappy with their final purchase decision?

Holger Sindbaek, the founder of World of Card Games, says, “Understanding and catering to the emotional journey of our players is a game-changer. It’s not just about winning or losing a game, it’s about the thrill, the anticipation, the joy, and sometimes, the frustration. We strive to make every interaction with our platform an experience that resonates with them, making them feel understood and appreciated.”

Step 7: Business goal

Each stage of the sales funnel aligns with a different business goal.

Take American Trucks as an example. If their main goal is to sell truck accessories, they should start by generating customer interest in their products through relevant and engaging content on their social media channels. 

Then, as the customer moves towards the consideration stage of the journey, they’re curious about the accessories that can improve the functionality of their truck. A video that shows a product comparison of F-150 lift kits is an excellent way to drive the viewer into the decision stage. 

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With that example in mind, here are some popular business goals for each stage:

• Awareness: Create awareness and draw interest
• Consideration: Increase website visits
• Decision: Increase conversion rates
• Service: Improve customer reviews
• Retention: Improve retention rates

Step 8: Key performance indicator (KPI)

Establishing clear goals and metrics is important so everyone who reads or uses your customer journey mapping can measure success with a common metric.

• Awareness: Number of people reached
• Consideration: Number of new website visitors
• Decision: Conversion rate, total sales
• Service: Customer reviews
• Retention: Retention rate

To ensure your customer journey map produces the desired results, consider using KPI dashboard software to track metrics and see how you progress toward your goals.

Step 9: Teams involved

Now that you’ve completed the customer journey map, it’s time to assign the appropriate team to help implement your business goals and track performance.

• Awareness: Marketing
• Consideration: Marketing
• Decision: Sales
• Service: Customer service
• Retention: Customer Success

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this assignment. For example, sales and marketing teams can work together in the consideration and decision stages. The key here is to test a few variations and stick to what works best.

Conclusion

The great thing about customer journey maps is that they are simple to create and use. You don’t need special software or expensive equipment — all you need is this simple customer journey map template paired with the nine easy-to-follow steps we highlighted in this post.

Give it a try for yourself, and let us know how it goes!