Create a customer journey map

Outcome

One customer journey map for one persona and one scenario. It has stages named in the customer's words, and rows for actions, thoughts, emotions and opportunities. Every cell traces to a participant or is marked as an assumption. The two or three worst moments are marked, and each has an opportunity with an owner.

When to use it

• A team needs to see where one specific journey breaks down, for example getting a refund or setting up an account.
• The journey crosses channels, such as search, email, the product and a support call, and nobody sees the whole path.
• You can name the roadmap decision the map should inform.

When not to use it

• You want to describe a general human activity before you have a product. Make an experience map instead.
• The problem is in the internal handoffs and systems behind each step. Make a service blueprint, which extends the map into what staff and systems do.
• Nobody can say what the map would have to show for the plan to change. A slide summarising what the team already believes is cheaper.

Before you start

• A persona. The map needs one person as its subject. If you do not have one, create a user persona first or name the segment in one sentence.
• A scenario. One goal, such as getting a refund on a damaged order, not "using the product".
• Research. Eight to twelve interviews or session recordings of people who recently completed the scenario, plus any analytics showing where people leave.
• Time. About a week, with a second person for the clustering step.
• The template. Open the Journey Map Template in Figma or print the PDF.

Steps

Step 1: Write the persona, the scenario and the decision

Write one sentence naming whose journey this is and what they are trying to do. Below it, write the decision the map should inform. If you cannot name a decision, stop here.

You should now have: a written persona, scenario and decision at the top of the map.

Step 2: Collect the raw sequences

Interview or observe eight to twelve people who recently completed the scenario. Ask them to go through what they did in order, in their own words, including what happened outside your product. Keep quotes verbatim.

You should now have: one ordered sequence of steps per participant, with quotes attached.

Step 3: Derive the stages

Write every step on its own card. Group the cards by what the person was trying to accomplish, not by which team owns the screen. Name each group in the customer's words. Stop when the groups no longer merge cleanly. Four to seven stages is the usual range.

You should now have: four to seven stages, named in the customer's language, in order.

Step 4: Fill the action and thought rows

Under each stage, write what people did as concrete verbs, such as searches for the return policy. Write what they were trying to work out, using the quotes from Step 2 where you have them. Mark any cell that no participant supports.

You should now have: action and thought rows filled for every stage, with assumptions marked.

Step 5: Draw the emotion line

Plot how the participants felt at each stage, from what you saw and heard: hesitation, a complaint, relief. Mark the lowest points and the end of the journey, since people remember those most.

You should now have: an emotion line with the lowest points and the ending marked.

Step 6: Get the map attacked

Show the draft to someone from support and one engineer. Ask them which cells are wrong. Support usually corrects the emotion line; engineering usually corrects the actions. Change the map where they show evidence.

You should now have: a map corrected by people who see the journey from other sides.

Step 7: Cut it to the moments you will act on

Pick the two or three worst moments. For each, write an opportunity, how big it is and who owns it. Answer the decision from Step 1 under the map.

You should now have: two or three marked moments, each with an opportunity and an owner, and the decision answered.

Worked example

An online furniture shop. The decision: should the next quarter go into the returns flow or into delivery tracking?

1. Persona and scenario: a first-time buyer getting a refund for a table that arrived damaged.
2. Ten recent returners are interviewed. Most of them started outside the shop, searching "furniture store damaged delivery refund".
3. The cards group into five stages: finding out it is damaged, working out who to contact, proving the damage, waiting for a collection date, checking the refund arrived.
4. In proving the damage, people photograph the table, cannot attach the photos to the web form, and email them separately. One participant says: "I sent the photos three times because nobody confirmed they got them."
5. The emotion line drops lowest at proving the damage and stays low through waiting for a collection date. The ending, checking the refund arrived, is neutral.
6. Support confirms the photo problem and adds that a third of returns calls are about collection dates. Engineering corrects one action: the form does accept photos, but only under 2 MB, which phone photos rarely are.
7. The two worst moments are proving the damage and waiting for collection. The team answers the decision: returns flow first, starting with photo upload and a confirmed collection date.

Checklist

• The map names one persona, one scenario and the decision it informs.
• The stages came from the research and use the customer's words.
• The map covers channels outside the product where the research found them.
• Every cell traces to a participant or is marked as an assumption.
• Someone from support and an engineer have corrected the draft.
• The two or three worst moments each have an opportunity and an owner.
• The decision is answered under the map.

Common mistakes

• Borrowing the stages from a marketing funnel. Awareness, Consideration, Purchase describe the business's pipeline. Derive the stages from what people did.
• Mapping "our users". A map that averages different people describes a journey nobody takes.
• Inventing the emotion line. Draw it from what you observed, or mark it as an assumption.
• Dropping the opportunities row. Without it the map describes problems and assigns nothing.
• Forgetting which cells were guesses. An unmarked assumption gets quoted later as evidence.

Related

• Journey Map Template: the stage and row layout you fill in, in Figma or as a PDF.
• Create a user persona: the person whose journey you map.
• Create an empathy map: one moment in detail, as input to the thoughts row.
• Peak-End Rule: why the lowest point and the ending of a journey weigh most.
• Customer Journey Mapping 101: what a journey map is for and how it differs from a blueprint.