Customer journey map · User research · UX
How to create a customer journey map, from draft to first fix
By T. Krause
A customer journey map built only from what your team believes shows you your own assumptions. Here is how to make one that survives contact with customers, followed through a made-up team from one person and one goal to a first fix.
To create a customer journey map, choose one customer and one goal, then write the stages of that journey across the top. Under each stage, fill in what the customer does, thinks and feels, drafting from what your team already knows. Check the draft by talking to customers, correct it, and mark the lowest point in the Feeling row. In the last row, write what you could change, starting with that low point.
Nielsen Norman Group, or NN/g, defines a journey map in Journey Mapping 101 as "a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal". The checking step is the one to protect. Until you've spoken to customers, the map only records what your team thinks is happening.
We make Prompt Board, and our user journey map template opens on the map you'll see below, with stages across the top and four rows beneath. We use "customer journey map" and "user journey map" for the same board in this guide.
Answer two questions first
NN/g's article on the journey-mapping process says to agree on these before any mapping starts: "Whose experience will I map? What experience, or journey, will I depict?"
The answers should name a person and a situation.
- Too broad: "our customers using the product"
- Better: "new customers in their first week"
- Best: "a team lead who needs a shared board for Friday's retro and hopes it's free"
The last one tells you where the journey starts and when it has finished. It also includes an expectation, which NN/g treats as part of the scenario. NN/g advises "one point of view per map". If a second kind of customer goes through a different journey, give them a second map.
One map, from draft to fix
Everything in this section is invented: Dana, the whiteboard start-up, its support tickets, the six interviews and every note. The tool on this map is a made-up product, and none of this is a finding about Prompt Board.
The draft from what the team knew
A start-up's team of three wants to know where new customers give up. Before speaking to any customers, they read their support tickets and sales notes, then fill in the board in an hour. NN/g calls this first pass a hypothesis map and warns: "This is a draft, and it needs to be validated against external research."
Their actor is Dana, a team lead, and their stages are Discover, Sign up, First use, Habit and Recommend.
What six interviews changed
They talk to six team leads who tried the tool in the past month. When budget or time is short, NN/g says "a small sample size" of 6 to 8 participants "is enough to get started". Each interview walks through the person's real first week. These three notes changed.
| Stage and row | Team's draft | After interviews |
|---|---|---|
| Sign up, Feeling | Excited to try it | Wary of another tool |
| First use, Thinking | How do I invite my team? | Where are the templates? |
| Habit, Doing | Stays active after day 7 | Opens the board in every standup |
The third change shows the test we'd apply to every note in the first three rows. Could the customer have said or written this about their own week? Nobody describes their week as "stays active after day 7". That's the team's own metric, and it says nothing about what Dana does. "Opens the board in every standup" is something Dana would recognise.
The corrected map
Each stage below gives the Doing note, then the Thinking note as Dana's own question, then the Feeling note.
- Discover. Searches for a Miro alternative. "Is this free for my team?" Curious.
- Sign up. Signs up with work email. "Do I need a card?" Wary of another tool.
- First use. Creates a retro board. "Where are the templates?" Relieved it is fast.
- Habit. Opens the board in every standup. "Can my client view it?" Confident.
- Recommend. Shares the link in Slack. "Would my old team use it?" Proud of the find.
NN/g says these mindset notes are "ideally" customer verbatims from research, and it plots emotion as a line across the stages. On the board, draw that line with the pen through the Feeling row. Dana's line starts level, drops at Sign up, rises at First use and stays up.
From the low point to one fix
The Opportunities row is the only one that's about the company. Everything your team might build goes there and stays out of the first three rows.
| Stage | Opportunity |
|---|---|
| Discover | Clear price on the landing page |
| Sign up | No card at sign-up |
| First use | Template picker on first board |
| Habit | Weekly recap email |
| Recommend | Referral link on share |
NN/g suggests asking "Who owns what change?" of each opportunity. The low point is at Sign up, and Dana's question there is "Do I need a card?", so the team starts there. One developer takes the card field out of sign-up. Before the change ships, another person records what share of people who open the sign-up form finish it, so they'll have a figure to compare it with afterwards.
The other four opportunities stay on the map. They've been written down, and nobody has agreed to do them yet.
The five steps at small-team size
NN/g's process has five phases, written with a whole organisation in mind. Here's how we'd run them with three to five people, and the timings are our suggestion.
- Agree the scope and who's involved. Answer the two questions above and invite anyone who could act on the result, such as a person from support or sales. Half an hour.
- Collect what you already know. NN/g suggests "Call-center or customer-support logs" among other sources. Add sales notes and analytics. An afternoon.
- Draw the hypothesis map. Fill in the board together and mark the notes nobody can back up. One hour.
- Talk to customers. Choose people who recently went through this journey, and ask about what they did rather than what they'd like. A week or two.
- Correct the map and pick one change. Go through it together with your interview notes open. NN/g says a "sticky-note, or virtual-whiteboard" version may be enough for a small team. One hour.
Setting your own stages
Our template's five stages suit a product someone tries and keeps using, and they're easy to rename. NN/g says "The stages will vary from scenario to scenario" and gives examples, such as "discover, try, buy, use, seek support" for buying speakers online.
Name each stage for what the customer is trying to do, in words they'd use. "Compare prices" works, and "consideration phase" doesn't. You've got the right number when each stage has something different in its Doing row. If two stages have the same note, merge them.
When a journey map is the wrong board
NN/g says journey maps are "best for scenarios that involve a sequence of events". Without a clear beginning and end, another format may fit better.
| Your question | Better board |
|---|---|
| What's going on in this person's head? | Empathy map |
| Who are we building for? | User persona |
| What should we build, and in which release? | User story map |
| Which screens does someone click through? | User flow |
They also work in sequence. An empathy map or a persona can give the journey map its actor, and a story map can plan what you'll build from the opportunities.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a customer journey map and a user journey map?
The format is the same. We use both names for one board. Choose the word your team already uses for the people in question.
How many stages should a customer journey map have?
There's no fixed number. Our template has five, and the right count depends on the journey. Merge any stages that have the same notes.
Can you create a journey map without research?
You can create a draft. NN/g calls this a hypothesis map and says it still needs to be checked against customer research. Label it as a draft until you've done that, so nobody mistakes the team's guesses for findings.
What is the difference between a journey map and an experience map?
NN/g says to "Think of an experience map as a parent to a journey map". An experience map covers a general human experience, and a journey map follows one kind of customer through one product or service.
What is the difference between a journey map and a service blueprint?
A journey map stays with the customer's view. NN/g describes a service blueprint as a "part two" that shows what happens inside the business to support each stage.
Map your own customer
Write one person and one goal at the top. Open the user journey map template, rename the stages if you need to, and fill in the rows with your team in one hour. Then book your interviews before you start on any fixes. If the map hasn't changed afterwards, check whether you asked about what customers really did.