Customer journey mapping is a way to visually show how customers interact with your brand, product, or service throughout their buying journey. It helps you understand their emotions, actions, and pain points at every step. By doing this, you can see where they struggle, what needs are not being met, and where you can make improvements.
This process is powerful because it gives your team a shared view of the customer’s experience. Instead of guessing what customers want, you can actually see it laid out in a clear journey. This not only improves customer satisfaction but also helps your business grow by reducing friction and creating better experiences.
Below, we’ll walk through the steps of creating a customer journey map, what tools you need, and how to use it to improve your customer experience.
Why Use Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer journey mapping is especially useful if your team struggles with:
- Shared understanding – getting everyone on the same page about what customers really experience.
- Customer centricity – making sure decisions are truly focused on customers.
- Proof of concept – showing how changes in the customer journey can lead to better results.
By walking in the customer’s shoes, you uncover insights that you wouldn’t normally see from an internal point of view.
Materials You’ll Need
- Whiteboard or online whiteboard tool (e.g., Whiteboards.io)
- Sticky notes or a digital alternative
- Markers or digital pens
- Timer to keep the session moving
- Templates (such as Confluence templates) to organize the results
Step 1: Define the Scope (15 minutes)
The first step is to decide what you want to map. A customer journey map works best when you focus on one persona, one scenario, and one goal.
For example, instead of mapping “all customer interactions,” focus on one specific journey, like how a new customer signs up for your product or how they complete their first order.
Tip: If you haven’t created detailed customer personas yet, consider doing that first based on real customer interviews and data. But don’t get stuck waiting for everything to be perfect—sometimes it’s better to start mapping and refine later.
Step 2: Set the Stage (5 minutes)
Before starting the exercise, make sure your group understands the persona you’re focusing on and the goal driving their journey.
Share background information ahead of time (like interview notes or research). Even better, invite team members to attend customer interviews so they hear directly from real customers.
Example:
- Persona: Alana, a project manager.
- Goal: Find a tool for her team to share knowledge without wasting time on endless emails.
- Scope: Map Alana’s experience from the moment she clicks “Try Confluence” until she decides whether or not to buy it.
Step 3: Build a Backstory (10 minutes)
Next, create a backstory for your persona to explain why they’re on this journey. Ask:
- What are their pain points?
- What are they looking for in a solution?
- What outcomes do they want?
Write answers on sticky notes and group them together.
Example for Alana:
- Pain point: Team’s knowledge is scattered and hard to access.
- Requirements: Needs a structured way to share information
- Goal: Reduce wasted time and keep her team focused.
- Big picture: Improve team efficiency.
This backstory ensures everyone is working from the customer’s perspective instead of their own.
Step 4: Map Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions (30–60 minutes)
Now it’s time to walk through the customer’s journey step by step. Start with the first action your persona takes and continue plotting every action, decision, or question they might face.
Use color coding for clarity: one color for actions, another for decisions, another for emotions, etc.
Include the channels they use at each stage (website, email, phone, social media, etc.). You can even divide the map into:
- Frontstage: What the customer sees and experiences.
- Backstage: The systems and processes running in the background.
The goal here is to build empathy and a shared understanding—not to design solutions yet.
Step 5: Identify Pain Points (10–30 minutes)
Go back over the map and note where customers might feel frustrated, confused, or blocked.
Ask questions like:
- Does this step cause delays or errors?
- Does it create extra work for the customer?
- Could it cause them to abandon the process completely?
By documenting pain points, you uncover the most important areas to improve.
Step 6: Track Customer Emotions (15 minutes, optional)
Adding a sentiment line under the journey map shows how customer emotions rise and fall at each step.
- Sharp drops: Show big frustrations.
- Sawtooth patterns: Too many ups and downs may leave customers exhausted.
- Troughs: Indicate key opportunities for improvement.
- Peaks: Highlight moments where you can delight the customer even more.
This emotional layer helps you prioritize improvements that have the biggest impact.
Step 7: Analyze the Big Picture (15 minutes)
Stand back and look at the entire map as a group. Ask:
- Where is the biggest confusion or frustration?
- Which steps take too long or feel unnecessary?
- Are there unmet needs that the customer expresses?
- Can the journey be simplified (e.g., reducing seven steps to three)?
Discuss opportunities for improvement and then use customer data to prioritize which changes will have the most impact.
Final Thoughts
Customer journey mapping is one of the most effective ways to put your customers at the center of your business. By focusing on one persona and one journey, you gain clear insights into how they think, feel, and act—and where they struggle.
This process helps you:
- Build empathy across your team.
- Identify pain points and unmet needs.
- Create opportunities to simplify and improve the experience.
- Align your product or service with what customers truly want.
In short, journey mapping allows you to design experiences that reduce friction, delight customers, and build stronger relationships.
