What is a customer journey map? + How to create one

Most product teams have a general sense of how customers move through their experience. But without a clear picture of what’s happening at each step, it’s easy to fall back on assumptions.

Customer journey mapping turns that intuition into something concrete. It gives you a visual picture of every step a customer takes with your brand, the emotions driving them, and the points where they get stuck.

Read on to learn:

• What a customer journey map is and what’s included
• The stages of the customer journey
• The types of customer journey maps
• How to create a customer journey map
• Why journey mapping is important
• Customer journey map examples

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual overview of the steps users take when interacting with your brand. It charts the touchpoints your customer goes through, helping you pinpoint where their user experience could be better.

For instance, a food delivery company may use a customer journey map to outline the process a user takes when ordering a meal on its app. Mapping each stage from browsing to delivery tracking surfaces pain points like long wait times, and helps the team act on them.

You’ll often hear customer journey and buyer journey used interchangeably, but they cover different ground. The buyer journey ends at purchase. The customer journey is everything that comes before and after.

What’s included in a customer journey map?

A customer journey map includes the following components:

• User personas. These represent your ideal customer segments, giving you insights into their motivations and needs.
• Stages. Every journey map outlines the phases a customer goes through, from initial discovery to post-purchase interactions.
• Touchpoints. Every interaction—direct or indirect—between a user and your brand is a touchpoint. Think beyond the screen, from your app and social feeds to support tickets and word of mouth.
• Pain points. These are the friction and frustrations that stall a user’s progress. Mapping them reveals exactly where the customer experience is breaking down and where your design needs to pivot.
• Actions, thoughts, and feelings. These are the “what,” “why,” and “how” of the user experience. By mapping specific behaviors (like checking out) against internal emotions (like anxiety over shipping), you connect what users do to why they do it.
• Opportunities and learnings. These are key insights from your map. It’s where you identify design gaps and refine your strategy based on a deeper understanding of user behavior.

Pro tip: Focus on pain points when mapping a current state to fix existing problems, but prioritize feelings and actions when mapping a future state to design entirely new visions.

The five stages of the customer journey

Here’s what each stage of the customer journey looks like:

1. Awareness. The customer recognizes a need or problem and starts looking for answers. At this stage, they’re mostly educating themselves through search engines or social media.
2. Consideration. The customer narrows down their options, evaluating your offering against the competition. Comparison guides, case studies, and product webinars are common touchpoints here, helping them validate whether you’re the right fit.
3. Decision. The customer is ready to commit. They want the path to purchase, so touchpoints like pricing pages and checkout flows matter more than ever.
4. Retention. The focus shifts to onboarding and helping the customer get value from your product quickly. A well-timed welcome email or a responsive support chat can make a big difference here.
5. Loyalty. The customer becomes a vocal advocate for your brand. They stay connected through loyalty programs and community spaces, and their word-of-mouth referrals often bring in your best new customers.

Types of customer journey maps

The type of customer journey map you build depends on what you’re trying to learn. That might mean understanding how customers experience your product today, designing a better future state, or uncovering needs you haven’t yet addressed.

Type 1: Current state 

The current state map is the most common type and a good starting point for most teams. It captures how customers experience your product or service right now, including where they get stuck and why.

Use this type when you want to identify obstacles in an existing experience or decide what to prioritize next. If you’re mapping a B2B customer journey, this is usually the best place to start, because it surfaces friction points across a longer sales cycle.

Type 2: Future state

A future state map visualizes the ideal journey a customer would take if everything worked the way you intended. It gives your team a shared vision to design toward before building begins. Use it when you’re planning something new, like a product launch or an expansion into a new audience segment.

Type 3: Day in the life

A day-in-the-life map zooms out beyond your product to capture what a customer’s broader daily routine looks like. It includes their habits and frustrations, regardless of whether your brand is part of the picture yet. This one works best when you want to understand where your product could fit into a customer’s life.

Type 4: Service blueprint

A service blueprint is the most operationally detailed type of journey map. It maps both the customer-facing experience and the internal processes that support it. Service blueprints are most useful for larger organizations looking to improve end-to-end operations, where a breakdown in one internal process can quietly degrade the customer experience.

How to create a customer journey map

Your customer journey map doesn’t have to be elaborate to be effective. Follow these five steps to outline your customer journey map

Step 1: Start with a goal

Define the specific goal you hope to achieve, whether it’s solving a problem or exploring an opportunity. What do you need to know about your users to improve the customer experience? Is there a customer behavior you’re trying to understand, like abandoning a full shopping cart? Or are you looking for ways to win customers on TikTok? Or new ways to personalize the customer experience and encourage repeat business?

Once you’ve set your goal, identify the customer segment you’re targeting. This will help you focus your efforts and make sure your journey map resonates with their experiences.

Step 2: Collect customer insights

Gather any relevant customer data to understand where key touchpoints and actions fall within the journey. Website and app analytics can help track behaviors like cart abandonment, while social media polls might reveal customer habits and preferences.

Because customers interact with brands through multiple channels, consider adding user interviews to the mix. Hearing customers describe their experiences directly helps you understand what’s working and what’s not.

Step 3: Develop customer personas

Different customers have different needs and behaviors, so it’s important to build personas before you start mapping. Think of personas as the characters moving through your journey, each making different decisions and experiencing the process in their own way.

Start by outlining common customer behaviors, then refine each persona with research into their goals and the drivers of their decisions. User testing can help you pressure-test your assumptions and make sure each persona reflects a real segment of your audience.

Step 4: Plot their journeys

Now turn your research into something visual. Plot the customer’s path from initial awareness to long-term advocacy. In FigJam, you can use stickers to highlight friction points and cursor chat to discuss diverging paths in real time. Netflix’s team found that mapping a complex, multi-platform user journey in FigJam made it easier to track dependencies and work through the early stages of a project without losing the thread.

As you map touchpoints, layer in the persona’s thoughts and feelings alongside their actions. This way, your whole team is working from the same understanding of the customer experience.

Step 5: Identify opportunities

Based on your insights, identify areas to improve the customer experience. Ask yourself these questions:

• What common pain points or obstacles do customers encounter, and how can you eliminate them?
• Are there any customer needs you should address?
• Can you add touchpoints at each stage to create more personalized experiences that drive engagement and conversions?
• How can you reward customers to encourage loyalty?
• Are your marketing and sales strategies tailored to address customer needs and pain points at the right stage of their journey?

Analyzing your journey map gives you a foundation for an action plan—one that aligns with your initial goal and strengthens customer loyalty.

Benefits of a customer journey map

Here are some ways customer journey maps can benefit your business:

• Improves the customer experience. Understanding your customers’ expectations leads to more personalized interactions, tailored to each customer segment.
• Boosts customer retention. A customer journey map helps you spot the moments where your brand can stand out, turning potential pain points into better experiences. 
• Drives change. Journey maps include data-driven insights that highlight areas for improvement, making it easier to get stakeholder buy-in and implement meaningful changes.
• Promotes collaboration. Customer journey maps build a shared understanding across teams, so everyone’s working toward consistent, cohesive experiences.
• Sparks new ideas. Mapping customers’ feelings and behaviors helps identify unmet needs, so you can brainstorm ways to improve and inform future decisions.

Customer journey map examples

Customer journey maps look different depending on the product and what you’re trying to learn. Here are a few examples of what they can look like in practice, across different stages and use cases.

Example 1: Food delivery app

Take a food delivery app looking to improve the experience for users searching for quick meal options. Here’s what a customer journey map might look like at the consideration stage:

• Customer persona: Bill, a busy (and hungry) working professional
• User goals: Find food options quickly, and compare prices and delivery times
• Touchpoints: Restaurant pages, search bar, and reviews
• Actions: Browse options, read reviews and ratings, and save options for later
• Feelings and thoughts: Hungry, impatient, and skeptical about food quality
• Pain points: Limited food options and delivery times not displayed in search results
• Opportunities: Provide more filter options to improve searchability, include delivery times in search results, sort by the fastest delivery times, and offer curated recommendations based on past searches or restaurant saves

The consideration stage is critical for keeping customers engaged and preventing them from exploring competitors. Improving search and filters helps users find their ideal meal faster, making it less likely they’ll abandon the app altogether.

Example 2: Project management platform

Here’s what a customer journey map might look like for an online clothing app focused on building stronger customer loyalty.

The customer has made their purchase and has just received their items. During the retention stage, your map might uncover the following:

• Customer persona: Alex, a returning customer
• User goals: Receive product on time and share a review via app or social media
• Touchpoints: Delivery email, reviews page, and social media
• Actions: Wears product, leaves product review, and returns items if needed
• Feelings and thoughts: Excited about the new item, satisfied with the purchase, and disappointed that the order didn’t come in time for their event
• Pain points: Shipping delays and product quality issues
• Opportunities: Real-time order tracking and updates, free returns, discounts for returning customers, and personalized recommendations based on past purchases

Even returning customers run into frustrating moments. This example highlights opportunities to recover from those situations and turn them into chances to strengthen the relationship.

Start customer journey mapping with FigJam

The real value of a customer journey map shows up when your whole team is looking at the same picture and asking the same questions. With Figma, you’ve got the tools to build that picture together, from early discovery through design and delivery.

Here’s how:

• Start with FigJam’s customer journey map template to map out user paths and identify areas for improvement.
• Prototype new ideas in Figma Design once you’ve identified opportunities, bringing touchpoints and interactions to life.
• Validate concepts quickly with Figma Make by generating functional prototypes directly from your journey map insights.
• Present findings to stakeholders in Figma Slides to build alignment around the customer experience improvements your team wants to make.