If you’re an avid Agatha Christie fan, you’ll notice the rough sketches and maps that the author adds to recreate the murder scenes. The courtyard, bedrooms, and living room are all mapped to help the reader visually reconstruct the happenings of the ominous day. The author is also content, knowing that the readers are in step with her as she takes them along the journey to solve the mystery.
Though not as fascinating as Agatha’s maps, customer journey maps benefit every organization two-fold. Firstly, they help companies understand customer needs and user behavior better. Secondly, they help companies align their internal teams to deliver exceptional customer experience.
Customer journey maps are the outcome of rigorous journey mapping exercises that companies undertake to bridge the gap between customer expectations and actual customer experience. Customer journey mapping is a type of user experience mapping —commonly referred to as UX mapping—which is centered around a specific persona.
Unlike other UX mapping methods such as empathy mapping or service blueprinting that are mapped from either the customer’s or organization’s perspective, customer journey maps outline both customer behavior and opportunities for organizations to work on. This helps in improving internal employee alignment as well as the overall customer experience.
Customer journey maps focus on a specific customer’s interaction with a product or service. – Nielsen Norman Group
While you might have seen e-Commerce or B2B SaaS product journey mappings as common examples of customer journey maps, we bring you seven customer journey map examples across different industries to help you realize the benefits of journey mapping for complex businesses.
But first, do you know the core elements of a customer journey map that make it a valuable asset for your business? Read on.
What should an actionable customer journey map include?
27% of UX practitioners1 agree that a customer journey map is successful only when it leads to action. Understanding customer needs, emotions, and behavior should translate to a solid plan that is built on the opportunities identified and assigned to respective teams with metrics to execute the next steps.
Actionable customer journey maps,
1. Have well-defined personas and customized journey stages
Personas are the foundation on which a customer journey map is developed. The more focussed and detailed your customer personas are, the easier it is to identify their goals and actions.
Besides personas, phases in the customer journey also have to be drawn based on the business scenarios rather than the generic awareness to retention journey stages. For instance, a SaaS company might have stages like initial usage, value realization, and expansion within their onboarding journey mapping.
2. Include all possible user channels and touchpoints
The omnichannel buyers of today use about three to four channels to interact with brands, including websites, apps, and social media. Your journey map has to factor in all these interactions across these channels and identify all possible customer touchpoints to have a holistic view of the customer experience.
3. Record both logical and emotional states of customers
Both logical reasoning and emotions play an important role in purchase decisions and product usage. Customers may be contemplating value vs. pricing or looking at online reviews to lessen their fears regarding your product or service. It’s vital to spot what a customer feels, thinks, and does at every stage of the customer journey.
4. Identify opportunities and insights at every stage
Once you have the customer data mapped out, it’s time to ask the right questions and derive user insights that’ll help you chart the way forward. For example, if you notice lower purchase rates via mobile, there’s an opportunity for you to optimize your site to be more mobile-friendly.
5. Assign ownership to internal teams for each phase of the customer journey
A key outcome of any customer journey map is for employees to realize their role in influencing the overall customer experience and align themselves to your company’s vision of delivering superior CX. When you assign internal ownership, every team member is sure of the phase they have an impact on and work towards enhancing the experience in the particular phase(s), cumulatively elevating the overall customer journey.
6. Include KPIs and metrics for individual journey stages
Measuring the impact of both the current and future state of your customer journey mapping requires metrics and KPIs to be captured for every phase. For instance, if you’ve identified an opportunity to improve your support response speed, metrics like first contact resolution and average response time will help you access your existing state and how much you can improve.
Related resource: A detailed guide to customer journey mapping
Now that we have a grasp of the key elements of a customer journey map, let’s look at some journey mapping examples.
#1 E-commerce customer journey map example
E-commerce customer journey mapping begins by first identifying which part of the entire journey you want to break down and map. Pick the use case or scenario you want to map by identifying your goals for the mapping process. If you want to give a hassle-free returns and exchange experience, choose the scenario after purchase and break it down into smaller phases—tries the product, decides to exchange, chooses product variant, exchange delivery, receives the exchanged product.
This example is taken from the popular Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) tool – UXPressia, and you can view the detailed experience map along with many other e-Commerce and retail customer journey map templates here.
#2 Healthcare: Patient journey mapping example
Healthcare practitioners and hospital administrators can deliver better patient care and support when they understand the emotions and questions patients face during different phases of their journey.
When facing an illness, patients may check with family and friends for a good healthcare center, read online reviews, and book an appointment. Their on-site care may begin with creating or verifying health records, assessing vital parameters, and the doctor’s consultation. Medication, therapy, and follow-ups continue as post-appointment procedures.
Mapping the patient journey helps align internal hospital admin processes and be your patient’s preferred health partner.
You can access this patient journey mapping example along with other journey map examples and a simple CJM template built by us here.
#3 B2B SaaS product journey map example
The overall B2B SaaS product journey can be summarized as seen in the below map. However, you can break the journey into smaller use cases such as onboarding, customer support, value realization, or controlling churn rate to further grasp user behavior and goals in each phase.
Note how the example has barriers or pain points called out as a separate element in the user journey map. Identifying barriers from the customer’s shoes also helps in finding gaps within your product that you can rectify by modifying or adding new features to your product roadmap.
#4 Support journey mapping example for logistics
The logistics function is highly collaborative, involving suppliers, distributors, third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and last-mile delivery partners. This journey map example demonstrates to a logistics provider the user goals, actions, and touchpoints as a customer awaits the safe delivery of their ordered items. The emotions recorded at every stage help gauge customer satisfaction and find ways to improve customer retention.
Knowing the journey, the logistics provider can offer good customer service by giving prompt updates and accurate information regarding the delivery to their customers.
The above example was created on UXPressia, and you can find reusable templates for various scenarios within the free version of their app.
#5 Education: Online learning customer journey map example
This customer journey map is a detailed breakdown of the online learning experience, beginning from a student’s search for online courses to enrollment, assessment, and accreditation.
The map is split as ‘Current state’ vs. ‘Future state’ to help e-learning businesses envision the ideal learning experience that they want to offer their customers.
The above online learning journey map template is available for free on the top CJM tool – Smaply, with other mapping examples.
#6 Customer journey map example for a restaurant
The restaurant customer journey map example shared below covers the journey of a consumer placing an order via a restaurant’s mobile app. It captures the customer’s thoughts, actions, and feelings before, during, and after ordering food.
Opportunities and insights are also identified at every step of the journey. Since restaurants thrive on user reviews, sharing customer feedback and reviews online is a major phase of the customer mapping process.
This example is picked from the online infographic maker – Venngage, which has templates and resources to build customer journey maps as well.
#7 Online travel agency customer journey mapping example
Travel and tourism sector is heavily dependent on crafting memorable experiences for business and leisure travelers. The COVID-19 crisis has wreaked havoc on the travel industry, and as the sector bounces back, Evelyn Zhang from Travelport2—a software solutions provider for the travel industry—shares this traveler journey map for the new normal that Online Travel Agencies(OTAs) can refer to.
By taking a full view of the traveler journey and creating your own journey map, you will see immense potential to grow conversions at every step. – Evelyn Zhang, Senior Product Manager, Travelport
Ready to brainstorm and create your own customer journey map?
The examples and templates presented in this post depict different mapping use cases across industries. We hope the journey map examples shared here serve as an inspiration for you to start your company’s customer journey mapping process.
So what are you waiting for? Gather your team and start creating your customer journey map. We’ve got you covered with a free journey map template.
Download CJM Template
Source:
1. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-ux-practitioners/
2. https://www.travelport.com/our-views/re-drawing-the-map
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