How to Create a Customer Journey Map: Template & Guide
A customer journey map is a visual overview of how customers experience your business across multiple touchpoints.

Here's how to get started.

Customer journey mapping in 2 and 1/2 days.

How to create a customer journey map that improves customer success.

Last updated.

There's a common saying that you can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes—and that's exactly what customer journey maps do: they help you put yourself in different customers' shoes and understand your business from their point of view.

Why should you do it?

How should you do it?

Find the answers in this guide, which we wrote after interviewing 10+ customer journey experts who shared methodologies, dos and don'ts, and pro tips with us.

This chapter gets you started with the basics of customer journey mapping, with instructions and templates to create your first customer journey map in 2 and ½ days , in later chapters, we'll take deeper dives into customer journey analytics, workshops, and examples.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual overview of how customers interact with and experience your website, products, or business across multiple touchpoints .

By visualizing the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers experience, a customer journey map helps you better understand them and identify the pain points they encounter.

Mapping the customer journey: narrow vs.

wide focus.

A customer journey map can have a very narrow focus and only look at a few, specific steps of the customer experience (for example, a product-to-purchase flow on a website), or it can take into account all the touchpoints, online and offline, someone goes through before and after doing business with you.

Each version has its advantages: A CJM with a narrow focus will allow you to zero in on an issue and go into incredible problem-solving depth.

A CJM with a wide focus will give you a broader, holistic understanding of how customers experience your business.

A customer journey map example from Airbnb, starting when a user needs to book accommodation and ending after their stay in an Airbnb property.

A customer journey map example for a theatre company that investigates a theatergoer's journey from booking a ticket online to attending a show.

Regardless of their focus, the best customer journey maps have one thing in common: they are created with real customer data you collect and analyze .

The insight is usually organized into a map (hence the name), diagram, or flowchart during a group workshop, and is later shared across the entire business so everyone gets a clear and comprehensive overview of a customer's journey.

4 benefits of customer journey mapping for YOUR business.

In 2020, it's almost a given that great customer experience gives a competitive advantage—and that's also the subject of plenty of articles and books (including our own complete online guide to CX).

But just how you are supposed to deliver on the concept and create wow-worthy experiences is often left unsaid, implied, or glossed over.

Customer journey maps help you find answers to this "How?" question.

They are a concrete way to work towards creating a great experience, as they enable teams to: Visualize customer motivations, drivers, and pain points.

Create cross-team alignment around the business.

Remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership.

Make improvements and convert more visitors into customers.

We've done a lot of customer journey work here at Hotjar, so we know that the above is true—but don't just take our word for it: all the people we interviewed for this guide confirmed the benefits of journey mapping.

Below is what they shared with us (PS: if you're sold already, you can skip straight to the 'how do I create a customer journey map' section).

1.

Visualize customer motivations, drivers, and pain points.

It's one thing to present your entire team with charts, graphs, and trends about your customers, and quite another to put the same team in front of ONE map that highlights what customers are thinking, wanting, and doing at each specific step of their journey.

I did my first customer journey map at Made.com within the first three months of joining the company.

I was trying to map the journey to understand where the pain points were.

For example, people who want to buy a sofa from us will be coming back to the site 8+ times over several weeks before making a purchase.

In that time, they may also visit a showroom.

So now I look at that journey, at a customer's motivation for going to the website versus a physical store, and I need to make sure that the experience in the showroom complements what they're doing on-site, and vice-versa, and that it all kind of comes together.

The map helps in seeing that journey progress right up to the time someone becomes a customer.

Word cross connect hack