Customer Journey Mapping Guide

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THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
MAPPING
Your Guide To Designing Exceptional Customer Experience

An Introduction To Customer
Journey Mapping
Brands have lost control of the paths, or journeys, that consumers follow to choose when and how they
purchase and who they will purchase from.

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si
ui

t io

h
nP

Conv
ers
ion

ase
Prospect

Ph
as
e

Touch-points have exploded to extend well beyond the marketing department and with them the points of
friction for a consumer and risk of defection to a competitor have also intensified. The journeys are increasingly
fluid, personal and less predictable with Marketing departments struggling to adapt; acquisition and conversion
are seen as distinct activities from nurturing and building loyalty.
Customer Journey Mapping is an increasingly important process for understanding consumers and their
attitudes, needs and pains across their interaction or potential interaction with your business.
Done well, it gives marketers the foundations to design and communicate customer-centric products and
services, alleviate moments of pain and deliver better customer experiences.

Suspect

Customer
Advocate

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on P

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Customer Journey Mapping is a process that you can’t aﬀord to ignore. Read on to equip yourself with a
framework to really understand how you can deliver remarkable customer experience.

Within this framework we will explain techniques to get closer to customer needs and provide hints, tips and
typical pitfalls to make your Customer Journey Mapping as eﬀective as possible.

Nurture
Loop

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This Guide aims to move beyond the jargon and provide a simple framework for building and embedding
Customer Journey Mapping with your organisation.

Buy More

ra ti

The commercial rationale is compelling: better customer experience mean more loyal customers and better
customer lifetime value.

Attract
Loop

Repeat

Touchpoints

Enjoy
Starter

Lapser

Reactivation Phase

Conversion Phase

Your Guide

Page

What’s Customer Journey
Mapping?

Getting The Basics Right

The Critical Role Of
Customer Personas

The 3 U’s Of Good
Customer Journey Mapping

What Role Does Data Play?

Page

From Theory To Practice

8 Pitfalls To Avoid

Conclusion

05
12

13
|

What’s Customer Journey
Mapping & Why Is It
Important?

Customer journey mapping should be the backbone of your
CRM process but for many marketers it can feel a bit nebulous
and it's diﬃcult to know where to start.
This Guide will provide you with a complete view of what a
customer journey is, how you can map it and why we think it's
such an important thing to get right.

Conv
ers
ion

se
Prospect

Customer journey mapping is the process of documenting this:
capturing the journey as it is now and specifying how you want
it to look in the future. It provides the basis for understanding
your customers, their needs and expectations and then
specifying the marketing activities that you want to undertake
and the processes and resources that you need to make them
happen.

Ph
as
e

Ac
q

In today's hyper-connected world it is very likely that consumers
will become your customers through a multitude of touchpoints, both online and oﬄine, and may well churn or go through
periods of inactivity during their relationship with you.

Suspect

•

To set your marketing objectives through identifying
where most value is being gained or lost and setting your
strategy and business case accordingly;

•

To maximise the lifetime value of a customer by only
investing in acquisition channels that recruit customers
who could become 'good' and mitigating the risk of
customers lapsing;

•

To get buy-in from the wider business to support and
deliver better customer experience;

•

To set the marketing KPIs that will give you direction on
whether your marketing is working.

What's A Customer Journey?
A customer journey is the path that consumers take to
becoming a customer and (hopefully) becoming a regular,
recurring customer for your business.

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Having a robust map of the customer journey therefore supports
your ability to close the loop on your marketing, by helping you:

Where To Start?
The most important thing is to recognise that you need to map
your customer journey.
Then it's a case of breaking things down so that you can keep
them manageable and make a start.
On the next page we will introduce a framework to map your
customer journey and, just as importantly, start to turn it into a
tool that supports your marketing.

Customer
Advocate

Why Is It So Important?

P h a se

Attract
Loop
Buy More

e ra

t io n

Nurture
Loop

n
Co

s id

C om

es
petitor Pressur

Repeat

Touchpoints

Enjoy
Starter

Lapser

Reactivation Phase

Conversion Phase

There has been an explosion of consumer touch-points across
their lifecycle with your brand.
From someone researching potential solutions to a given
problem to a customer purchasing a new product, there are a
plethora of touch-points - some of which you will have control
over (for example, the messages and navigation on your
website) and others that you will have no control over (such as
review sites, blogs and competitor promotions).
And even for the touch-points that your brand can control, some
may well not be within your direct control.
|

Getting The Basics Right
This is the framework that we advocate using.
Generically the customer journey can be broken into 4 phases:
•

Attract – how consumers become aware that they have a need,
research possible solutions and identify you as a potential provider;

•

Convert – how consumers then identify themselves to you and move
to a conversion (typically the point at which they commit financially to
you);

•

Nurture – the early stages of the customer relationship where you will
want to ensure good service delivery and that you meet expectations;

•

Keep – the process of customers enjoying and benefiting from your
service and starting to become interested in additional services.

In turn each phase should be broken into a series of stages.
As we explain on page 6, your mapping of the customer journey
shouldn’t be just a flow diagram of a customer’s interactions with your
brand; it is critical that you start to build layers under each phase of the
customer journey.
When considering the phases it can be helpful to think about the desired
response - the actions that you want the customer to take next, why and
what role do you play in facilitating that process.

1. Marketing goals
& objectives

2. Customer needs

Attract

Customer drivers

Contact rules

KPIs

Data

Customer jobs

Behavioural triggers

Data strategy

Customer gains
Evidence

Prioritisation
Compliance

Results mapping
Measure discovery & feasibility
Dashboard architecture

Data audit
Data governance

Measurement &
monitoring

Roles & responsibilities
Skills

Convert
Nurture
Keep

3. Contact
strategy

Customer barriers

Channels

Customer pains
Pain severity

Channel selection
Attribution
Optimisation

Value propositions
Gain creators
Pain relievers
Products, services, solutions

Oﬀers & content
Segmentation
Push vs pull

Business case
Cost/benefit analysis
Justification

4. Performance

5. Making it all
happen

People

Test & learn
Tuning

Governance & ownership

Processes
Roadmap
Programme management
Supplier management

Technology
Requirements specification
Solution selection

The framework should be populated for each customer segment or
product area depending on your marketing objectives and plan.

So let’s work through each layer and explain what you need to do.

The 5 Layers Of Great
Customer Journey
Mapping

The following 5 themes should be layers within
your customer journey mapping.
It’s important that you work through these layers
sequentially and in the order that they are listed
below.
Layer 1 - Customer Needs
Always start with the customer.
At every stage in the customer journey you should
consider 3 things to ensure that you are taking a
customer-centric approach:

1. Customer Needs
2. Marketing Objectives
3. Contact Strategy
4. Performance Measurement
5. Enablers

•

Customer Drivers - what your prospects or
customers want, why and what are the benefits
are for the customer?

•

Customer Barriers - are there specific pain
points at key stages of the customer journey and
how serious is the pain? Understanding pain
severity will help you to identify your key
moments of truth.

•

Your Value Proposition – how do you create
benefit for your customers and do you relieve
their pains or add to it? Be honest and think about
the products, services and solutions that you oﬀer
and promote across the customer journey.

This should all be evidence-based. If there are gaps in
your knowledge then capture and try to fill them at
this stage; if it's going to take a while to get the
answers then capture the requirements and plan them
as a project while you progress with the next steps.

Layer 2 - Marketing Objectives
So now you have a customer journey map complete
with a sound understanding of your customers'
needs.

•

Business Case – to quantify the value that
you expect your contact strategy to contribute
to your customers and your business

Layer 4 - Performance Measurement

The next step is to overlay your marketing objectives
and goals.

This is essential to monitoring your customer journey
and the impact of your marketing.

Are you trying to acquire and convert new customers
or to retain and reactivate lost ones?

In part this is about setting the right KPIs and targets.
But it’s also about testing and learning so you are
continuously optimising.

Layer 3 - Contact Strategy
With your customer needs defined and a focus on the
stage of the customer journey that meets your
objectives you are in a position to start designing your
contact strategy.

Layer 5 - Enablers
At this point, your focus should be on execution and
there are 4 components to this:
•

Data – how you will obtain, share, apply and
maintain the data that you need to deliver
your customer journey framework;

Contact Rules – the triggers and business
that ensure you are communicating with the
right customers at the right time in their
individual journeys and that you have the right
governance in place;

•

People – the roles, responsibilities and
ownership needed to deliver and optimise the
framework;

•

Process – the roadmap you will manage to
deliver the programme of activities;

•

Communication Channels – what channels
you will use and how you will select them;

•

Technology – specifying the requirements
and selecting and technical solutions that you
need.

•

Oﬀers and Content – that you will make
available to specific customers or segments;

The 4 components of your contact strategy should
be:
•

The Critical Role Of
Personas

As we have said, you should always start with the customer.
Persona development is the first step in the customer journey
mapping process. It equips you with a robust understanding
of who you are mapping the journey for and keeps you
focused on the customer.

pain points of diﬀerent customers;
• Designing personas can be used for research, for marketing
strategy, communications planning, data requirements and
analytics – all key components of good customer journey
mapping.
When developing your personas, be aware that:

Personas are a tool for building customer-centric services and
products and they play a pivotal role in customer journey
mapping.
However, there is always a risk that they become pen portraits
or customer segments – these are valuable marketing tools
(and also play a later role in customer journey mapping) but
they are very diﬀerent to personas.
We define a persona as:
An archetype of your customer groups that focuses on
every interaction with the brand and helps you develop
better insights to enhance services, products and
communications.
Personas are just a tool but are a powerful way to:
• Communicate knowledge about your customers;
• Understand the activities, interests, influencers, goals and

• Personas aren’t customer segments. Personas focus on
the motivations, behaviours, needs and pains of your
customers and prospects. These are the attributes that will
help you design better services. Segments are a tool to
support strategic marketing planning, personalised
communications and marketing campaigns;
• You can’t make personas up. They are evidence-based
and data-driven. Personas typically use research and data
profiling and you should also leverage the internal
knowledge of customer-facing resources.
• Personas should be a translation of consumer goals. By
‘goals’ we mean the customer’s motivations and what they
are trying to achieve. Implicit within these goals will be the
interactions that customers have and want and the pains
that they encounter;
• Persona development is not a quantitative process.
Qualitative and experiential analysis should be the
foundation that provide deep insights and better focus on
customer goals. This doesn’t mean that you have to
commission new or lengthy research – it may well be that
they insight already exists within your organisation.
You can download our free persona template here.

The 3 U’s Of Good
Customer Journeys

1. Useful

2. Usable

3. Used

Make your journey map useful and personal to your customers.

This is really a question of formatting.

You need to think about your internal audience and how you
make your map useful to them.

Your map should be totally customer-centric with a laser focus on
your customers and how you deliver useful and personally
relevant experiences, now and in the future.

A lot of the mapping process may take place on a whiteboard but
it’s easy to end up with something that is messy, confused and
open to interpretation.

This will allow you to concentrate on your customer needs, their
pain points and your value proposition.

This is a good place to start but ensure that you allow time to
design and format the journey so that it is readily understandable
and can be used by your wider audience.
Consider breaking your map down by:
•

Journey stage. Typical stages will include Attract, Convert,
Nurture and Keep and you can then sub-divide within.

•

Persona. The journey will look very different for the
customers you are mapping it for. Design and documenting it
for one will make your output significantly more usable.

•

Product. As with personas, the journey and internal audience
can be very different depending on the product.

This requires a focus on who your audience is, their sphere of
influence and why the customer journey should be important to
them.
Don’t map your customer journey in a silo. Engage some of your
audience and get them to help you develop it.
Then think about the governance and ownership of the journey.
Ultimately, who owns the relationship with your customers?

The Role Of Data

As we have seen, research and staﬀ knowledge are critical
inputs into the process but so is your data.
Here are five roles that your data and customer journey analysis
should play in your mapping process.

It's also worth measuring engagement levels and the triggers at
each touchpoint - were they something that you pushed or that
the customer pulled? And did the customer actually engage (for
example, receiving an email has a very diﬀerent level of
engagement to opening and clicking an email link)?

Role 1 – Who Are You Mapping The Journey For?

Role 4 – Identifying Barriers & Pain Points

The customer or prospect should be absolutely central to
mapping the customer journey and it's highly unlikely that there
will be a vanilla version of the journey that applies to all
customers.

Mapping the journey is one thing but understanding the
'Moments Of Truth' and your value proposition for diﬀerent
consumers at these points is where you start to get value from
the process.

Your data should play a key role in getting close to the profile of
your customers and inform the development of customer
personas.

There are two types of moment of truth:
•

Moments of Pain - the times when customer expectations
are low or when things go wrong (when you don't deliver the
service expected).

And when it comes to thinking about a contact strategy to
support the journey then segmentation will play a significant
role.

•

Moments of Glory - the times when your brand exceeds
expectations or relieves a key customer pain point.

Role 2 – What Stage Of The Journey Are You Focusing On?
Mapping the entire journey should be your ultimate aim but think
about your marketing objectives and where you should start.
A sound understanding of your performance should be derived
from your data analysis and the metrics that you have in place.
If your focus is on customer acquisition and onboarding then
take these specific phases and start here. Conversely start with
nurturing if your focus is more on retention and activation.
Role 3 – Touchpoint Mapping And Optimisation
Of course, your data will inform the interactions (touchpoints)
that a customer has with your brand and their sequence. Think
of your touchpoints in terms of your content and oﬀers,
transactions and the channels that are used.

Data analysis will help you uncover these moments, quantify
their occurrence and their impact (on future customer behaviour,
on costs to service).
Role 5 – Building The Business Case For Change
Your mapping process will inevitably identify risks and
opportunities. If your data has played the four roles above then it
should be straightforward for you to build a business case to
change the status quo.
Your data should allow you to quantify the impact (benefit) of
making changes by understanding the volume of customers
aﬀected and the likely change in their behaviour (in terms of
frequency and spend) as well the costs that you will incur (the
volumes of oﬀers, messages and development that you will have
to provide).

Connecting Theory To
Practice
Choose Lifecycle
stage

Break Lifecycle
stage into steps

Enter Value
Proposition

Specify
Segmentation

Customer Journey Stage

Identified each Step of
the Customer Journey
Stage

Gain Creators, Pain
Relievers

Map personas to
customer segments

Select relevant products and
services

Analyse existing data and
identify segments within
personas.

A contact strategy is a core component of any customer marketing programme it's where you design, build and govern how you will deliver personally relevant
communications to your customers across the customer journey.
A contact strategy specifies how you will contact and communicate with your
customers and prospects. Its purpose is to deliver the right message at the right time to
a customer. And it should include how you will measure and optimise these
communications over time.
Your contact strategy should be a direct consequence of your marketing strategy and
marketing objectives.

Channel Selection

Qualification

Define Business
Process

Specify
Communications

What channel(s) will you
use?

Define type of
communication

Understand if planning
for core or test comms

Email, SMS, DM,
Calls, Push etc

Campaign, event or trigger?

Capture your contact
rules and suppression
criteria

Are you offering incentives,
rewards or core (content)
benefits?

With lots of communication channels, customer segments and ever-changing, more
complicated customer journeys, it can be a daunting strategy to develop.
Follow these 8 steps to simplify your approach and build a contact strategy that will
have a measurable eﬀect on customer experience.

8 Pitfalls To Avoid

Too often customer journey mapping can become an academic exercise or produces a deliverable
that is diﬃcult to get internal agreement on.
Eight pitfalls can typically aﬀect customer journey projects.
By being aware of the potential pitfalls you can ensure that you don’t fall into the same traps.

Not Enough Detail

Too Much Detail

Only 1 Journey
Phase

Spontaneous &
Subjective

It’s easy to build a 1-dimensional map but make it too
simplistic and it’s unlikely to help you.

It’s a balancing act however. Too much detail and you
will spend forever trying to complete the project.

It’s tempting but risky to focus on only one phase of
the customer journey.

Consider splitting the journey by customer segment
and/or product.

Be pragmatic. Focus on your objectives, how you will
use your map and build so that it’s fit for purpose.

Customer experience is a continuum and it’s a
mistake to not take an holistic view. A good customer
journey map will help you optimise the whole of your
marketing.

Getting a team in a room with a whiteboard can be a
useful steps. But don’t base you work on ‘memarketing’ or supposition.
Leverage the data and insight that already exists
within your business.

It’s Just A Map

Being Exclusive

Only Marketing
Touchpoints

So What?

Don’t be content with just creating a map.

All marketing should be considered in your mapping.
Your customers touch or interact with your brand
through multiple channels and your mapping must
reflect this.

Equally, your customers won’t distinguish between
function silos – their relationship is with your brand
regardless of whether the journey phase is owned by
customer service, marketing or operations.

Avoid an academic exercise.

At every stage, think about your objectives (the
outcome you want), the desired response (the action
you want the customer to take) and blockers (what
could get in the way). This will give you a practical
tool.

Focus on your marketing objectives and what you
want to do differently and then start the process. Not
vice versa.

Everyone is in the marketing department now.

Conclusion

Customer experience is the only diﬀerentiator that brands now
have and those that are able to deliver something remarkable
will have a significant competitive advantage.
Customer experience is the only diﬀerentiator that brands now
have and those that are able to deliver something remarkable
will have a significant competitive advantage.

Just as importantly, you should now be able to understand and
articulate what this means for you – from the contact strategy
that will support your customers to the data and processes that
you need to enable and measure the impact of what you are
doing – and some of the pitfalls to avoid.
Start simple, perhaps with one persona or product, and build
your experience of Customer Journey Mapping.

Customer Journey Mapping is a key step in this process.
You should now have a sound understanding of what Customer
Journey Mapping is and why it is some important. From a
simple framework built around the customer, you now know how
to think about consumer’s needs, pain and expectations at each
touchpoint in the journey.

For support or any questions please get in touch with us
projects@conduithub.com or sign-up for a free marketing
assessment where we will help you work out where to get
started.

Learn More

conduithub.com
@conduithub

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