Customer

Journey Map
How to Create a Customer Journey Map
for Your Business

FREE EBOOK CREATED BY

Table of Contents

Dictionary .......................... ........................................................... 3

Welcome to Your Customer Journey Guide! ................................. 5

What is Customer Journey Mapping? .......................................... 7

How to Create a Customer Journey Map ...................................... 9

Have You Heard about Empathy Mapping? ................................. 20

Customer Experience, Journey Map & Customer Feedback .......... 24

Can You Define a Perfect Journey Map? ....................................... 27

Your Customer Journey Map is Created. What’s Next? .................. 31

Wrapping Up [ + Bonus Checklist ] ................................................ 39

Templates .................................................................................... 44
Customer Journey Map Template ............................................. 44
Personas Template .................................................................. 45
Empathy Canvas ..................................................................... 46
Opportunities vs. Pain Points Canvas ....................................... 47
Dictionary
Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score is a metric used to evaluate how easy
customers thought it was to get a resolution to their recent
contact. It usually relates to the following statement: „Company XY“
made it easy for me to handle my issue.

Customer Experience
Customer experience refers to how customers perceive a brand or
company. The customer‘s relationship with the company is based
on all the interactions they had with the brand.

User Experience (UX)

User experience refers to the overall experience a user has while
interacting with a product or service, including how easy it is to
use and how enjoyable the experience is.

Customer Journey
A customer‘ journey describes the customer experience from the
moment they first interact with a company through the point of
purchase and beyond.

Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map represents a visual storyline of every
interaction a customer has with a service or product.

User Journey Map

A more detailed part of the customer journey map that illustrates a
specific interaction or task within a product or service.

Customer Loyalty
An ongoing emotional relationship between you and your
customer is reflected in a customer‘s willingness to repeatedly
purchase from you over your competitors.

3
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is a metric that measures customers‘
feelings regarding a recent interaction. One of the most popular
questions related to CSAT is: „How nice was my reply?“ or „How
would you rate our service?“

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a metric specifically developed to measure customer loyalty,
judging by a customer’s likelihood to recommend a product to
others. The NPS survey is specifically centered around the question:
“How likely is it that you would recommend Company to a friend or
colleague?”

Usability Testing
It is a method of evaluating the user experience (UX) of your digital
product (website, app, etc.) by asking users to complete specific
tasks and watching them do it.

Pain Points
In a business context, pain points refer to a problem the customer
has while interacting with your product or services. In other words,
pain points are critical brand touchpoints of the customer’s journey.

Buyer / Customer Personas

are fictional representations of your best customers, based on
information about them and their preferences.

Touchpoints
are points of contact or engagement between a business and its
customers.

4
CHAPTER 1

Welcome
to Your Customer
Journey Guide!

Back to the table of contents

Imagine a company that has a great product. Its teams invest a lot
of effort into providing the best services. The online business has
everything that a modern online tool should have - a visually appealing
and functional website, a generous marketing budget, effective
processes, and deep data analysis.

They follow all recommended trends and do quite well in terms of

numbers & statistics. However, the results aren‘t what they expected at
the end of the day. Sounds familiar, doesn‘t it?

When you feel like you know everything about customers, don‘t forget
the most important thing. Get to know your visitors on the deepest
level - through a customer journey map!

6
CHAPTER 2

What Is Customer
Journey Mapping?

Back to the table of contents

Let’s start with the basics. In its simplest form, it’s a visual storyline that
maps the customer’s experience from the very first contact throughout
every touchpoint of engagement. It’s like interacting with your live
chat team and into a (hopefully) long-lasting relationship. On a deeper
level, this map also focuses on the emotions, motivations, goals, and
questions people have as they move through the buyer’s journey.

Like buyer personas, they’re a collective story or flow built around your
target customer’s experience. It allows you and your team to walk
in their shoes and truly understand where they’re coming from as a
buyer.

Understanding these insights will make it a lot easier to give your

customers what they actually want and need vs. what you think they
should want and need. Because at the end of the day, that will turn
new customers into a long-term relationship with your company.

Customer Journey Map vs. User Journey Map

You may often hear terms like customer journey and user journey
used interchangeably when describing one or the other. While we
can argue that a user is not always a customer, in the context of
mapping out their actions, it doesn’t really matter which term you
choose.

However, it’s important to understand the difference between

these two types of maps. While a customer journey map focuses
on the overall experience of a customer with a brand, a user
journey map focuses on a specific interaction or task within a
product or service (for example, a company website).

To better understand the differences, see examples of user journey

maps.

8
CHAPTER 3

How to create
a customer journey
map.

Back to the table of contents

Understand Who Your Customer Is

Of 11,000 people surveyed by Edelman’s Consumer Marketing Study,

51% of people felt brands were missing the mark when it comes to their
needs. And only a mere 10% said that brands are paying attention to
this.

There’s a crucial difference between thinking you know your customers’

perspective and understanding it. This is where the beginning of the
research takes place.

Creating a good customer journey is one of the

best ways to ensure your sales funnel converts well
and maintains a high ROI.

Start with the Buyer’s Persona

If you don’t know who your customer is and are making guesses there,
that’s going to be the first priority. A customer journey mapped out for
an imaginary or wishful customer is next to useless. So, if you haven’t

10
already, get your buyer personas in place. Also, get to know what types
of people are interacting with your business.

This can be done with a mixture of qualitative and quantitative

research. Some examples are talking with your customer-facing teams
and gaining their insight on interactions. Also digging into customer
analytics to better understand segmentation and interviewing current
customers past and present.

The way your business engages with the people that

fall under their different customer personas will prove the
mapping process’s effectiveness.

Jump to buyer’ persona template

11
Customer Segment Examples

• Gender / Age
• Demographic Segment (e.g. seniors, youth )
• Geographical Segment (e.g. urban, rural, within 10 minutes
of a store)
• Financial Segment (e.g. high income, low income)
• Lifestage (e.g. buying a new home, having a baby, retiring)
• Channel Preference (e.g. retail, online, phone, chat)
• Technical vs. non-technical user

Other information that helps you create an image of your potential

customer:

• Work / Home life

• Habits
• Beliefs
• Activities / Hobbies

Buyer persona Persona Name Persona Description

Title, Age
TEMPLATE

Demographics: Hobbies: Challenges:

Background: Common objections:

Interests:

Goals: Major fears:

12
Steps for Creating a Customer Journey Map

1. Set Your Goals

Before doing anything else, it’s essential to understand your exact

intentions in creating a customer journey map. Otherwise, your
efforts won’t have any meaningful direction, and your journey map
won’t do much to help you.

A practical customer journey map has a realistic, clearly defined

purpose, such as

• Reducing cart abandonment.

• Identify and reduce customer frustration.
• Increasing average purchase value.
• Creating more repeat buyers (AKA increasing customer loyalty).

Concrete goals like these make your customer journey map an

actionable tool to improve customer satisfaction.

2. Obtain Customer Data

Now, it’s time to research your average customer and understand

what makes them tick. This will provide your firm with the
information needed to accurately map out a typical customer
experience. The easiest way to do this is through surveys or tracking
tools. It will ensure you get feedback from people interested in your
product rather than random people.

What Kind of Tools Can You Use?

• Website tracking tools such as Google Analytics - A web

analytics tool you can use to track and analyze the performance
of your website or app.

13
 • User research tools like UXtweak - User research tools help to
collect information about your customers’ needs, wants, pain
points, and expectations.

• Heatmaps like HotJar - Hotjar provides product experience

insights. It helps you to understand how users behave on your
site and what they need.

• Customer feedback surveys as Nicereply - It enables you to

collect immediate feedback from your customers through
one-click CSAT, NPS, and CES surveys.

Make sure to give that step your full attention, as user research
should be the foundation of your customer journey map. The
insights collected during this step will allow you to create an
accurate customer journey map that is backed by data, not just
your assumptions.

3. Identify Customers’ Touchpoints

Touchpoint mapping starts by identifying all customer touchpoints.

You must conduct thorough research to know where or how
customers interact with your business.

Keep in mind that different customers have different journeys. For

example, one customer may know about your brand from an ad
while another may hear about you from a friend. Therefore, you
must be thorough to ensure no touchpoint is overlooked.

Customer Touchpoints Can Be Categorized Into Three Broad

Categories:

• Pre-purchase touchpoints – The pre-purchase touchpoints

occur before a prospect converts into a customer. Before
purchasing, consider the research customers do on platforms

14
 like Yelp, G2, and social media. Some prospects may go through
directory listings and reach out to your customer reps.

• Purchase touchpoints – Purchase interactions happen when

a prospective customer is in the process of buying from your
business. These interactions typically take place on your website.
For example, they could be on landing pages, product pages,
checkout pages, etc. It can also be an in-person interaction if you
have a brick-and-mortar store.

• Post-purchase touchpoints – Finally, you have the post-

purchase interactions that take place when a customer has
already bought something from your business. Too many brands
make the mistake of ignoring these interactions. If you want a
fully-optimized customer journey that boosts customer lifetime
value and brand affinity, you must pay attention to the post-
purchase touchpoints.

How exactly are you supposed to identify the touchpoints in your

customers’ journeys? There are various ways to go about it:

• First, you could put yourself in the customer’s shoes. How

and where would you interact with your brand if you were the
customer? That should give you several touchpoints.

• Second, you can create a customer persona using the data

in your customer database. The buyer persona will help you
understand your customers better, which will give you ideas
of how or where they may interact with your business. How to
create a buyer persona we discuss in the next chapter.

• The third strategy is pretty straightforward: you can run a

customer survey. Put the survey on your website and socials,
or distribute it to your email subscribers. Ask the prospects or
customers how they heard about your company and usually
interact with your brand.

15
4. Start Customer Journey Mapping

Map the Customer Interactions

The next step involves putting all the touchpoints identified in a

logical sequence. You want to map the interactions so that you
can see how someone could go from being a prospect to a loyal
customer. The map usually has four steps as described below:

Word of Mouth
Blog Post
Online
Registration
Word
Direct Social of Mouth
Online Ad Email Networks

Awarness Consideration Purchase Retention Advocacy

Brochure Reviews
Press Event
Release Event Evaluation
Site
Online Community
Main Website
Magazine
Article

Brand Awareness – Prospects at his stage are learning about your

brand’s existence. Therefore, the interactions could come through
ads, social media marketing campaigns, blogging, SEO, content
marketing, word of mouth, and other channels.

Consideration – Prospects at this stage want to know why they

should consider your products. They may also be looking at
comparisons between you and your competitors. Prospects at
this stage are likely to go through customer reviews on Google My
Business and third-party sites like Yelp, G2, etc. They may also visit
your website, request product demos, and attend your company’s
webinars.

16
Purchasing – The prospects are now sold on your product. They’re
hence visiting your product pages or brick-and-mortar stores. The
interactions will occur in the checkout process or with the sales reps
in your store.

Repeat Customers – This stage covers all customers returning

to your business for more orders. Of course, you want as many
customers as possible to come back. That means you need to
deliver a great customer experience which touchpoint mapping will
help you achieve. Moreover, you need to invest in customer loyalty
programs, write valuable email sequences that educate customers,
and create a solid social media strategy that boosts interactions.
You can also build a community for your customers by setting up a
discord or social media group.

Customer journey maps will always vary based

on various factors. For example, if you’re utilizing
both offline and online advertising, your map will
look different froma business using online ads
alone.

It’s also possible to have more than one map within the business.
Remember, different buyers can take different journeys. So, make
sure to create all possible touchpoint maps, especially the most
significant ones that lead to a purchase and repeat business.

Mapping the Present State

It’s time to begin mapping your current customer experience. Aided

by the input of your colleagues, identify all the touchpoints, pain
points, actions, and channels that define your average customer’s
experience as it exists presently.

17
 Free Customer Journey Map Template

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4

This is a sample text. This is a sample text. This is a sample text. This is a sample text.
Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This
Needs & is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert
Expectations your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here.

Touchpoint Touchpoint

Touchpoint Touchpoint
Touchpoint
Touchpoint
Touchpoint Touchpoint Touchpoint Touchpoint

Touchpoint
Touchpoint
Touchpoint
Touchpoint

This is a sample text. This is a sample text. This is a sample text. This is a sample text.
Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This Insert your text here. This
is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert is a sample text. Insert
Voice of your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here.
Customer

Mapping the Ideal State

Knowing how the typical customer journey looks now, you can map
out a future, ideal state according to your previously-defined goal.
Once complete, your entire organization will have a blueprint they
can use to improve their respective departments, resulting in an
awesome wave of overall improvement.

Expectations:

John Doe Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed vel velit vel velit
dapibus aliquam. Maecenas sagittis, sem sed varius tristique, odio dui tempor
dolor, vel ullamcorper ligula risus vel orci.

Step 2. Fill out the Customer Journey steps

Awareness Consideration Acquisition Service Loyalty

Step 3. Plot out high’s and lows touch point along Customer’s Journey

Touchpoints

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum

18
 With a customer journey mapping, you’ll be
able to understand and identify opportunities to
help make interacting with your brand easy and
enjoyable.

5. Validate the Customer Journey

The last step of creating a customer journey map is to validate all

the work you’ve done so far. A customer journey map should be
based on real interaction with a product or service. That’s why after
creating one you need to validate how realistic it is by once again
testing with your real customers.

Conduct a usability test of your product or prototype and see if

users’ interactions with it correspond to what you’ve described in
your journey map. Pinpoint points of friction and inconsistencies,
eliminate them, and use this data to inform your design solutions.
You can conduct online usability tests on finished websites or web
apps using a website testing tool or even better, start testing early
on prototypes with the prototype testing tool.

It’s crucial to continuously update your customer journey map

based on new data and feedback to ensure it accurately reflects
the customer experience over time. Your customers and the way
they interact with your product may change with the addition of
new features, acquiring new habits, etc. Regular testing is key to
maintaining an accurate customer journey map and living up to
customer’s expectations with great UX.

19
CHAPTER 4

Have You Heard

about Empathy
Mapping?

Back to the table of contents

Empathy mapping (or customer experience mapping) comes in
here as a critical tool for ensuring your teams focus entirely on the
customer in the way they carry out their responsibilities. This customer-
centric approach helps businesses to uncover all the parts of their
customers’ situation in the right context. Leveraging a customer
empathy map will lead to designing higher-value solutions that have a
more profound impact on them.

In today’s ultra-digitized business environment, digital products,

and services like your website or mobile app are a cornerstone for
cultivating the ideal customer experience.

Empathy understands someone else’s situation

the way they see it.

The Empathy Map Canvas

The traditional format of the empathy map contains four quadrants

that help to glean and categorize critical customer information.

But the version created by Dave Gray and canvas design extraordinaire,
Alex Osterwalder, is probably the best empathy map canvas available
today. It goes into much richer detail about the customer’s context,
experience, influences, and needs.

Quadrant 1. Seeks to accurately identify the ideal customer by

discovering their particular situation and their role in said situation.

Quadrant 2. This quadrant is dedicated to what the customer needs

to do differently to arrest their situation. This question is answered in
terms of the jobs they need to get done, the decisions they need to
make, and how to measure their success.

21
 Empathy Map Canvas TEMPLATE

1. WHO are we empathizing with? 2. What do they need to DO?

Who is the person we want to understand? What do they need to do differently?
What is the situation they are in? What jobs do they want or need to get done?
What us their role in the situation? What decisions do they need to make?
How will we know they were successful?

7.
What do they
THINK and FEEL?
6. What do they HEAR? PAINS GAINS
3. What do they SEE?
What do they see in the marketplace?
What are theu hearing others say? What are their fears, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet?
What do they see in their immediate environment?
What are they hearing from friends? frustrations and anxieties Lorem ipsum sit amet?
What do they see others saying and doing?
What are they hearing from colleagues?
What are they wathcing and reading?
What are they hearing …….. ?

What other thoughts

and feelings might
motivate their behavior?

5. What do they DO? 4. What do they SAY?

What do they do today?
What have we heard them say?
What behavior have we observed?
What can we imagine them saying?
What can we imagine their doing?

Quadrant 3. This quadrant focuses on how the customer sees their

immediate environment and the marketplace in general. It also
includes looking into what influenced them: what they are watching,
reading, and the words and actions of people who have their attention.

Quadrant 4. Owing to the previous quadrant, this one focused on what

the customer says and what they could say.

Quadrant 5. Here, the mapping process is concerned with what the

customer is currently doing, their discernible behavior pattern, and,
consequently, what they could do.

Quadrant 6. This one bears a slight resemblance to the third quadrant.

It seeks to identify what the customer hears from others, especially
those in their immediate circle, like friends, family, and colleagues. It
also seeks to distinguish which of this information is first-hand and
which is second-hand information.

Quadrant 7. This, the last quadrant, pits the customer’s pains against
his gains. It seeks to discover his fears, frustrations, and anxieties, but
also his wants, needs, hopes, and dreams.

22
This canvas is critical to the way your empathy mapping will look. It
gives essential texture to the building of your audience persona, and
you interpret their user journey from beginning to end.

23
CHAPTER 5

Customer
Experience,
Journey Map &
Customer Feedback

Back to the table of contents

A customer journey map is incredibly useful when it comes to
providing companies with deeper insights into the customer
experience.

Chances are you’ve already got a fairly robust customer feedback

system within your company—you’re paying attention to CSAT, and
you’ve got a thumb on the pulse of your customer effort score.

But there’s probably still more that you could be doing. Customers
may not always feel compelled to offer their true and valuable insights
about what they are being asked, or might not even be driven to
answer at all. It’s important to make sure you ask at exactly the right
time.

How a Customer Journey Map Drives

Customer Feedback

That being said, it can be difficult to determine where and when the
best places to ask are. For example, you may find that you’ve been
sending three surveys back-to-back to customers within their first
month of using your product—yikes! That’s a surefire way to tank
your survey response rates and frustrate your customers. A customer

25
journey map helps you uncover situations like that and start to move
towards remedying them.

Not only that, but you’re also able to see where you might be able
to implement the feedback that comes through your surveys more
directly.

For example, if you know that you send a survey out to every
customer on their three-month anniversary of purchasing, taking
a deep dive into what kind of insights you receive there can help to
improve the first 90 days of customer onboarding. Taking what you
learn and directly applying it to where it’s needed will be directly
impactful on how your customers actually relate to your product.
So, great! Now we know that customer journey maps are incredibly
useful when it comes to providing companies with deeper insights.
Now it‘s your time to leverage them.

Customer journey maps are timelines that

highlight key customer experiences.

26
CHAPTER 6

Can You Define

a Perfect Journey
Map?

Back to the table of contents

Rather than treating your customer journey map like a static resource
or a museum piece, treat it as an active, living example of what your
team is doing.

While customer journey mapping is super helpful and can lend a ton
of transparency to your customer experience, it will never be the end-
all-be-all to understanding your customers. That’s right: your customer
journey map will never be perfect. But it‘s your goal to keep an eye on
the relevance of the map and optimize it!

The perfect customer journey map, despite what people may say,
doesn’t exist, because there is no definitive state for your journey
map to remain in. It will never be “finished,” but should instead be a
constantly shifting, changing creation. Let’s dig deeper into why that is.

Customers are Ever-Changing

You don’t want your customers to stay the same. You might think that
you do, but if your customers remained the same and their needs
never evolved, there would be no expansion opportunities for your
product. People pay you more because their strategy evolves and
changes—otherwise they would never need to upgrade.

Just remember: When things change and your customers’ sentiments

shift, that also means that your journey map will be out of date. It will
be time, once again, to get that puppy up to snuff!

Your Product Should not Remain Static

The teams need to always be building. Your product needs to always

be changing. In fact, according to Brendan from Wistia, there are three
pillars that your product team should always be working on:
Shiny aspects are the new, exciting features that move the state of the
market forward.

28
Base are features that your core customers will get excited about (e.g.
organization, simplified workflows), and scale is the reliability and
speed with which your application functions.

In order to have a healthy product, you need to be working on each

of those three things equally. A customer journey map helps you to
prioritize which of those are most important and which aspects of
them have the most direct impact on your customer experience.

Don’t View It in a Vacuum

Would you look at a single CSAT rating and base all of your success
as a support team on it? Probably not. We all know that it’s better to
compare metrics to each other and find correlations, rather than just
assume that one is the source of truth.

In its nature, a customer journey map is

effectively a visual representation across a swatch
of customer experience metrics.

29
Ideally, it should represent metrics such as Customer Satisfaction,
Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score, and customer sentiment
overlayed across common actions customers need to take to be
successful with your product. Just the act of realizing that some of the
metrics are out of date and updating them moves your journey map
towards a more perfect version of itself.

Your journey map may be out of date and imperfect, but it can still be
super-insightful when viewed alongside foreign metrics.

Nothing Is Ever Perfect

Spoiler alert: if you’re doing things right, your work and company will
be changing enough that nothing will ever be perfect.

That’s a good thing! An imperfect, out-of-date journey map indicates

a thriving, driven, quick-moving company. That being said, it doesn’t
mean that you shouldn’t still be working your darndest to get to a place
where your customer journey map feels as close to perfect as possible.

30
CHAPTER 7

Your Customer
Journey Map is
Created. What’s
Next?

Back to the table of contents

Now that you‘ve defined touchpoints and mapped out your
customers’ journey, you know where business opportunities,
threats, and frictions lie. So next, you’ll learn how your company’s
different departments can use this data to drive KPIs higher.

I. Executive Departments

Only a well-informed executive team can move a company forward.

And at the core of every decision must be an intimate knowledge of
the brand’s customer journey.

Worryingly, only 41% of organizations have a “deep understanding” of

their customer journey. This ignorance results in a cascade of errors,
damaging the business in all departments.

Your executive department must understand your customers’

awareness, consideration, and decision stages. In any industry,
successful brands have executives who know their customer journey
from beginning to end.

In a Nutshell

• Understand customer awareness, consideration, and decision

stages as a whole
• Guide the entire company with this knowledge
• Ensure a seamless customer transition between each
department

II. Product Departments

Your product department is the backbone of your brand‘s customer

journey. The buyer journey starts with products that meet consumer
needs—and your product department makes that happen.

32
For your production department, the awareness stage is the most
important part of the customer journey. When you know what your
target market thinks and feels, you can create products that solve
their problems effectively.

Imagine you‘re a keyboard maker, and your target market struggles

with pain thanks to a lack of wrist support. These prospects are
looking for any keyboard with a wrist mount in the awareness stage.
Knowing this, your product team builds keyboards with wrist
mounts. But before leads start rolling in, the marketing department
must do its work.

In a Nutshell

• Fully understand your brand’s awareness stage

• Understand what your customers think and feel at this stage
• Create products that solve real problems people have

33
III. Marketing Departments

Your marketing department is the first contact customers make

with your brand.

It makes customers aware of your product and convinces them it

solves their problems. So it has to know every step of your customer
journey and use that data to move the lead toward the decision
stage.

Returning to the keyboard example, your marketing department

needs to make wrist pain sufferers aware of your product. To do this,
they could target keywords like “keyboard wrist discomfort” with
PPC ads to landing pages and SEO blog posts.

On your landing pages, they should pitch your keyboard as a

solution with testimonials as social proof. And for the blog, they
should provide value-first content, explaining how to solve wrist pain
and subtly pitching your keyboard as a solution.

Having clicked through to your product page, the lead’s entered

the consideration stage. Your marketing team’s job now is to ease
customer concerns and move them to the decision stage.

34
 Product page viewers aren‘t sure the wrist mount will help with the
pain. In response, your marketing department structures the copy,
images, and social proof proving your wrist mount works.

Your marketers follow the See, Think, Do & Care framework by

tailoring pages to the exact stage of your prospects‘ journey.
Targeted content is vital for moving prospects from one stage to the
next.

With their concerns relieved, prospects move to the decision stage

where the sales department takes over.

In a Nutshell

• Understand your brand’s consideration stage

• Create awareness content (PPC landing pages, SEO blog
content, etc.)
• Follow the See, Think, Do & Care to create content tailored
towards their thoughts and actions in this stage
• Feature social proof to foster trust in your products and services

IV. Sales Departments

During the decision stage, your sales department directly moves the
customer to a purchase. By understanding
the customer journey, your sales team
can both passively and actively
address common concerns
and friction points.
In our scenario, your
sales team passively
increases sales by
featuring user reviews

35
describing how the keyboard relieves typing pain. They also ensure
the checkout process is flawless and shoppers know their info is safe.

To actively increase sales, they have a knowledgeable support team

available at all times via live chat, email, and phone. They’ll answer
questions directly from customers, providing thoughtful responses
to each inquiry.

If successful, these efforts will convince the customer to buy the

keyboard. But the journey doesn‘t end there—we’ve just entered the
post-sale stage.

In a Nutshell

• Understand your brand’s decision stage

• Frame content to build trust and move prospects across the
finish line
• Make it easy for prospects to contact your brand with questions
• Ensure checkout is easy and trustworthy (feature security
badges, like SSL)

36
V. Customer Service Departments

The post-sale stage is your chance to wow customers and earns their
loyalty. As the central contact point for questions and concerns, your
customer service department is central to this stage.

Imagine your customers often email after placing an order, asking

when their package will ship.

Whenever orders are placed, you can respond by sending a

preemptive email with an order number, delivery estimate, and
contact number. You could even make it an upsell by offering them
a discount if they add something before shipping.

In a Nutshell

• Have multiple channels ready to receive questions (email, live

chat, phone, etc.)
• Train agents to have answers to all common questions
• Feature upsell opportunities, like faster shipping and additional
items at a discount

37
Takeaways for All Departments

Moving between departments like sales and customer service, often

leads to lost customers. Your company needs to weave journey data
into every department to avoid the friction resulting in customer
churn.

38
CHAPTER 8

Wrapping Up

Back to the table of contents

The examples above demonstrate how data about your customers
play an important role in every stage of the customer journey. The
logic behind any measuring is very simple - you cannot improve what
you do not measure. This is only one of the reasons why you should
start with it. How can feedback surveys help you with that?

Use Surveys to Understand Customers Better

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys measure how satisfied

customers are with your products, services, or experiences. By helping
you understand your customers‘ experience at each stage, they help
you optimize your entire customer journey.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty. These are

key to understanding the post-sale stage and your ability to keep
customers coming back.

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how difficult it is for customers

to resolve problems, make returns, or finish purchases. This measures
how difficult it is for customers to move between each stage of the
journey.

40
Back up your decisions with user research data

To better empathize with your customers and get to know their main
pain points, wants, and needs there are various research methods
available to you:

Session Recording can help you learn more about user’s interactions
with your product, discover where they click, scroll and where they get
frustrated.

Unmoderated Testing shows you how easy it is for the customers to

complete specific tasks and actions within your product.

Card Sorting gives insight into how users perceive your product’s
navigational structure.

41
Combining Metrics for Empowering the Results

All of the mentioned metrics are powerful, but the real magic comes
when you know how to combine them properly. Combining these
surveys and enhancing them with other user research methods
provides a game-changing perspective into your entire customer
journey. Discover how to do it by reading the articles below:

Recommended Blog Posts:

• Measure Your Customer Loyalty by Combining NPS

and CSAT Score
• How To Use NPS Feedback To Reduce Customer Effort
• Which is More Insightful? NPS or CSAT?
• How to Combine CSAT With Other KPIs for the Bigger Picture
• Content Pie #4: Overview of Nicereply’s CSAT Survey Scales
[Pros and Cons]
• Questions for Usability Testing
• User Journey Map Tools

42
Bonus Checklist

You’ve already learned everything important about creating a

customer journey and customer journey mapping. Now it’s time for
making your TO-DO list! Knowing what your future steps look like
makes the work easier. Print out the checklist and make sure you don’t
miss any steps while creating your customer journey.

Create customer personas

Understand the customer’s life-cycle
Map the current state
Identify pain points
Create an ideal state
Remove the friction points
Prioritize your tasks
Update your map (regularly)

43
Templates

Customer Journey Map Templates

Expectations:

John Doe Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed vel velit vel velit
dapibus aliquam. Maecenas sagittis, sem sed varius tristique, odio dui tempor
dolor, vel ullamcorper ligula risus vel orci.

Step 2. Fill out the Customer Journey steps

Awareness Consideration Acquisition Service Loyalty

Step 3. Plot out high’s and lows touch point along Customer’s Journey

Touchpoints

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum

Persona Name
persona description, title, age.

Journey goal

Journey
Step

Feeling

Thought

Internal
ownership
What measures should
be taken in this step
from the service side?

Back to the table of contents

44
Buyer Persona Templates

Demographic
Persona Name Channels

Buying Roles
Goals

Bio
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed
Content Solutions
vel velit vel velit dapibus aliquam.
Maecenas sagittis, sem sed varius
tristique, odio dui tempor dolor, vel
ullamcorper ligula risus vel orci.

Buyer persona Persona Name Persona Description

Title, Age
TEMPLATE

Demographics: Hobbies: Challenges:

Background: Common objections:

Interests:

Goals: Major fears:

45
 Jane Doe 50% male/female
I want to create beautiful,
26-34
Work in Company, a book publishing studio,
$50k-$70k
creative marketing campaigns.
as a Mid-level marketing manager

Personal insights Top 3 problems Top goals More discovery Common objections

Jane is a dedicated and ambitious Role in the Purchase Process:

marketing manager who is
Must work with colleagues to push
passionate about her work. She is
forward the process.
a resident of a bustling city and
enjoys the vibrant culture and
diverse communities it offers.
What is their motivation to Common Alternatives:

City: London buy your product now? Canva, Kontentino

Personality type: Extroverted
Desire to improve her productivity
(Curious, Adventurous) Top 3 Triggers
and work efficiency. She wants to
Key Benefits:
find a solution that can help her
Watering Holes: Allows multi-platform organization,
manage her workload better and
(concerts/art exhibits/ increase her overall job unlimited posts
networking events) performance.
LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Behance What problems do they face
that you do not help solve?
What topics open them up
Key Events:
and get them talking? Jane is looking for a solution to her
Web Summit, Coachella, SXSW, TED financial planning concerns, but my
Talks, Social Media Week She is passionate about discussing
product does not directly address
industry trends, new technologies,
that particular issue. She may also
and creative marketing strategies.
Buzzwords: face personal relationship or
She also enjoys sharing her travel
“Innovation”, “Marketing Trends”, health-related problems, which are
experiences and cultural
“Creative marketing” not related to my product.
discoveries.

The Empathy Map Canvas

Empathy Map Canvas TEMPLATE

1. WHO are we empathizing with? 2. What do they need to DO?

Who is the person we want to understand? What do they need to do differently?
What is the situation they are in? What jobs do they want or need to get done?
What us their role in the situation? What decisions do they need to make?
How will we know they were successful?

7.
What do they
THINK and FEEL?
6. What do they HEAR? PAINS GAINS
3. What do they SEE?
What do they see in the marketplace?
What are theu hearing others say? What are their fears, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet?
What do they see in their immediate environment?
What are they hearing from friends? frustrations and anxieties Lorem ipsum sit amet?
What do they see others saying and doing?
What are they hearing from colleagues?
What are they wathcing and reading?
What are they hearing …….. ?

What other thoughts

and feelings might
motivate their behavior?

5. What do they DO? 4. What do they SAY?

What do they do today?
What have we heard them say?
What behavior have we observed?
What can we imagine them saying?
What can we imagine their doing?

46
Opportunities vs. Pain Points canvas

Actions
Experience
Opportunities
Pain Points

Back to the table of contents

47