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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

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Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

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The customer journey — definition, stages, and benefits

Businesses need to understand their customers to increase engagement, sales, and retention. But building an understanding with your customers isn’t easy.

The customer journey is the road a person takes to convert, but this journey isn’t always obvious to business owners. Understanding every step of that journey is key to business success. After reading this article, you’ll understand the customer journey better and how to use it to improve the customer experience while achieving your business goals.

This post will discuss:

• What a customer journey is

Customer journey stages

Benefits of knowing the customer journey.

• What a customer journey map is

How to create a customer journey map

Use the customer journey map to optimize the customer experience, what is a customer journey.

The customer journey is a series of steps — starting with brand awareness before a person is even a customer — that leads to a purchase and eventual customer loyalty. Businesses use the customer journey to better understand their customers’ experience, with the goal of optimizing that experience at every touchpoint.

Giving customers a positive customer experience is important for getting customers to trust a business, so optimizing the customer journey has never mattered more. By mastering the customer journey, you can design customer experiences that will lead to better customer relationships, loyalty, and long-term retention .

Customer journey vs. the buyer journey

The stages of the customer’s journey are different from the stages of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey follows the customer experience from initial awareness of a brand to buying a product. The customer journey extends beyond the purchase and follows how customers interact with your product and how they share it with others.

Every lead goes through several stages to become a loyal customer. The better this experience is for customers at each stage, the more likely your leads are to stick around.

Ensure that your marketing, sales, and customer service teams optimize for these five stages of the customer journey:

1. Awareness

In the awareness phase, your target audience is just becoming aware of your brand and products. They need information or a solution to a problem, so they search for that information via social media and search engines.

For example, if someone searches on Google for pens for left-handed people, their customer journey begins when they’re first aware of your brand’s left-handed pen.

At this stage, potential customers learn about your business via web content, social media, influencers, and even their friends and family. However, this isn’t the time for hard sells. Customers are simply gathering information at this stage, so you should focus first on answering their questions and building trust.

2. Consideration

In the consideration phase, customers begin to consider your brand as a solution to their problem. They’re comparing your products to other businesses and alternative solutions, so you need to give these shoppers a reason to stick around.

Consideration-stage customers want to see product features that lean heavily toward solving problems and content that doesn’t necessarily push a sale. At this stage, businesses need to position their solution as a better alternative. For example, a nutrition coaching app might create content explaining the differences between using the app and working with an in-person nutritionist — while subtly promoting the benefits of choosing the app.

3. Purchase

The purchase stage is also called the decision stage because at this stage customers are ready to make a buying decision. Keep in mind that their decision might be to go with a competing solution, so purchase-stage buyers won’t always convert to your brand.

As a business, it’s your job to persuade shoppers at this stage to buy from you. Provide information on pricing, share comparison guides to showcase why you’re the superior option, and set up abandoned cart email sequences.

4. Retention

The customer journey doesn’t end once a shopper makes their first purchase. Once you’ve converted a customer, you need to focus on keeping them around and driving repeat business. Sourcing new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing clients, so this strategy can help you cut down on marketing costs and increase profits.

The key to the retention stage is to maintain positive, engaging relationships between your brand and its customers. Try strategies like regular email outreach, coupons and sales, or exclusive communities to encourage customer loyalty.

5. Advocacy

In the advocacy stage, customers are so delighted with your products and services that they spread the word to their friends and family. This goes a step beyond retention because the customer is actively encouraging other people to make purchases.

Customer journeys don’t have a distinct end because brands should always aim to please even their most loyal customers. In the advocacy stage of the customer journey, you can offer referral bonuses, loyalty programs, and special deals for your most active customers to encourage further advocacy.

Being aware of the customer journey helps shed more light on your target audience’s expectations and needs. In fact, 80% of companies compete primarily on customer experience. This means optimizing the customer journey will not only encourage your current customers to remain loyal but will also make you more competitive in acquiring new business.

More specifically, acknowledging the customer journey can help you:

• Understand customer behavior. Classifying every action your customers take will help you figure out why they do what they do. When you understand a shopper’s “why,” you’re better positioned to support their needs.
• Identify touchpoints to reach the customer. Many businesses invest in multichannel marketing, but not all of these touchpoints are valuable. By focusing on the customer journey, you’ll learn which of these channels are the most effective for generating sales. This helps businesses save time and money by focusing on only the most effective channels.
• Analyze the stumbling blocks in products or services. If leads frequently bail before buying, that could be a sign that something is wrong with your product or buying experience. Being conscious of the customer journey can help you fix issues with your products or services before they become a more expensive problem.
• Support your marketing efforts. Marketing requires a deep familiarity with your target audience. Documenting the customer journey makes it easier for your marketing team to meet shoppers’ expectations and solve their pain points.
• Increase customer engagement. Seeing the customer journey helps your business target the most relevant audience for your product or service. Plus, it improves the customer experience and increases engagement. In fact, 29.6% of customers will refuse to embrace branded digital channels if they have a poor experience, so increasing positive customer touchpoints has never been more important.
• Achieve more conversions. Mapping your customers’ journey can help you increase conversions by tailoring and personalizing your approach and messages to give your audience exactly what they want.
• Generate more ROI. You need to see a tangible return on your marketing efforts. Fortunately, investing in the customer journey improves ROI across the board. For example, brands with a good customer experience can increase revenue by 2–7% .
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Today, 94% of customers say a positive experience motivates them to make future purchases. Optimizing the customer journey helps you meet shopper expectations, which increases satisfaction and loyalty.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every step your customer takes from being a lead to eventually becoming an advocate for your brand. The goal of customer journey mapping is to simplify the complex process of how customers interact with your brand at every stage of their journey.

Businesses shouldn’t use a rigid, one-size-fits-all customer journey map. Instead, they should plan flexible, individual types of customer journeys — whether they’re based on a certain demographic or on individual customer personas. To design the most effective customer journey map, your brand needs to understand a customer’s:

• Actions. Learn which actions your customer takes at every stage. Look for common patterns. For example, you might see that consideration-stage shoppers commonly look for reviews.
• Motivations. Customer intent matters. A person’s motivations change at every stage of the customer journey, and your map needs to account for that. Include visual representation of the shopper’s motivations at each stage. At the awareness stage, their motivation might be to gather information to solve their problem. At the purchase stage, it might be to get the lowest price possible.
• Questions. Brands can take customers’ common questions at every stage of the customer journey and reverse-engineer them into useful content. For example, shoppers at the consideration stage might ask, “What’s the difference between a DIY car wash and hiring a professional detailer?” You can offer content that answers their question while subtly promoting your car detailing business.
• Pain points. Everybody has a problem that they’re trying to solve, whether by just gathering intel or by purchasing products. Recognizing your leads’ pain points will help you craft proactive, helpful marketing campaigns that solve their biggest problems.

Customer journey touchpoints

Every stage of the customer journey should also include touchpoints. Customer touchpoints are the series of interactions with your brand — such as an ad on Facebook, an email, or a website chatbot — that occur at the various stages of the customer journey across multiple channels. A customer’s actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will differ at each stage and at each touchpoint.

For example, a customer searching for a fishing rod and reading posts about how they’re made will have very different motivations and questions from when later comparing specs and trying to stay within budget. Likewise, that same customer will have different pain points when calling customer service after buying a particular rod.

It might sound like more work, but mapping the entire customer journey helps businesses create a better customer experience throughout the entire lifecycle of a customer’s interaction with your brand.

Before jumping into the steps of how to create the customer journey map, first be clear that your customer journey map needs to illustrate the following:

• Customer journey stages. Ensure that your customer journey map includes every stage of the customer journey. Don’t just focus on the stages approaching the purchase — focus on the retention and advocacy stages as well.
• Touchpoints. Log the most common touchpoints customers have at every stage. For example, awareness-stage touchpoints might include your blog, social media, or search engines. Consideration-stage touchpoints could include reviews or demo videos on YouTube. You don’t need to list all potential touchpoints. Only list the most common or relevant touchpoints at each stage.
• The full customer experience. Customers’ actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will change at every stage — and every touchpoint — during the customer journey. Ensure your customer journey map touches on the full experience for each touchpoint.
• Your brand’s solutions. Finally, the customer journey map needs to include a branded solution for each stage and touchpoint. This doesn’t necessarily mean paid products. For example, awareness-stage buyers aren’t ready to make a purchase, so your brand’s solution at this stage might be a piece of gated content. With these necessary elements in mind, creating an effective customer journey map is a simple three-step process.

1. Create buyer personas

A buyer persona is a fictitious representation of your target audience. It’s a helpful internal tool that businesses use to better understand their audience’s background, assumptions, pain points, and needs. Each persona differs in terms of actions, motivations, questions, and pain points, which is why businesses need to create buyer personas before they map the customer journey.

To create a buyer persona, you will need to:

• Gather and analyze customer data. Collect information on your customers through analytics, surveys, and market research.
• Segment customers into specific buying groups. Categorize customers into buying groups based on shared characteristics — such as demographics or location. This will give you multiple customer segments to choose from.
• Build the personas. Select the segment you want to target and build a persona for that segment. At a minimum, the buyer persona needs to define the customers’ basic traits, such as their personal background, as well as their motivations and pain points.

For example, ClearVoice created a buyer persona called “John The Marketing Manager.” The in-depth persona details the target customer’s pain points, pet peeves, and potential reactions to help ClearVoice marketers create more customer-focused experiences.

2. List the touchpoints at each customer journey stage

Now that you’ve created your buyer personas, you need to sketch out each of the five stages of the customer journey and then list all of the potential touchpoints each buyer persona has with your brand at every one of these five stages. This includes listing the most common marketing channels where customers can interact with you. Remember, touchpoints differ by stage, so it’s critical to list which touchpoints happen at every stage so you can optimize your approach for every buyer persona.

Every customer’s experience is different, but these touchpoints most commonly line up with each stage of the customer journey:

• Awareness. Advertising, social media, company blog, referrals from friends and family, how-to videos, streaming ads, and brand activation events.
• Consideration. Email, sales calls, SMS, landing pages, and reviews.
• Purchase. Live chat, chatbots, cart abandonment emails, retargeting ads, and product print inserts.
• Retention. Thank you emails, product walkthroughs, sales follow-ups, and online communities.
• Advocacy. Surveys, loyalty programs, and in-person events.

Leave no stone unturned. Logging the most relevant touchpoints at each stage eliminates blind spots and ensures your brand is there for its customers, wherever they choose to connect with you.

3. Map the customer experience at each touchpoint

Now that you’ve defined each touchpoint at every stage of the customer journey, it’s time to detail the exact experience you need to create for each touchpoint. Every touchpoint needs to consider the customer’s:

• Actions. Describe how the customer got to this touchpoint and what they’re going to do now that they’re here.
• Motivations. Specify how the customer feels at this moment. Are they frustrated, confused, curious, or excited? Explain why they feel this way.
• Questions. Every customer has questions. Anticipate the questions someone at this stage and touchpoint would have — and how your brand can answer those questions.
• Pain points. Define the problem the customer has — and how you can solve that problem at this stage. For example, imagine you sell women’s dress shoes. You’re focusing on the buyer persona of a 36-year-old Canadian woman who works in human resources. Her touchpoints might include clicking on your Facebook ad, exploring your online shop, but then abandoning her cart. After receiving a coupon from you, she finally buys. Later, she decides to exchange the shoes for a different color. After the exchange, she leaves a review. Note how she acts at each of these touchpoints and detail her likely pain points, motivations, and questions, for each scenario. Note on the map where you intend to respond to the customer’s motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions. If you can create custom-tailored solutions for every stage of the funnel, that’s even better.

A positive customer experience is the direct result of offering customers personalized, relevant, or meaningful content and other brand interactions. By mapping your customers’ motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions, you’ll find opportunities to improve the customer experience. When you truly address their deepest needs, you’ll increase engagement and generate more positive reviews.

Follow these strategies to improve the customer experience with your customer journey map:

• Prioritize objectives. Identify the stages of the customer journey where your brand has the strongest presence and take advantage of those points. For example, if leads at the consideration stage frequently subscribe to your YouTube channel, that gives you more opportunities to connect with loyal followers.
• Use an omnichannel approach to engage customers. Omnichannel marketing allows businesses to gather information and create a more holistic view of the customer journey. This allows you to personalize the customer experience on another level entirely. Use an omnichannel analytics solution that allows you to capture and analyze the true cross-channel experience.
• Personalize interactions at every stage. The goal of mapping the customer journey is to create more personalized, helpful experiences for your audience at every stage and touchpoint. For example, with the right data you can personalize the retail shopping experience and customer’s website experience.
• Cultivate a mutually trusting relationship. When consumer trust is low, brands have to work even harder to earn their customers’ trust. Back up your marketing promises with good customer service, personalized incentives, and loyalty programs.

Getting started with customer journeys

Customer journeys are complicated in an omnichannel environment, but mapping these journeys can help businesses better understand their customers. Customer journey maps help you deliver the exact experience your customers expect from your business while increasing engagement and sales.

When you’re ready to get started, trace the interactions your customers have at each stage of their journey with your brand. Adobe Customer Journey Analytics — a service built on Adobe Experience Platform — can break down, filter, and query years’ worth of data and combine it from every channel into a single interface. Real-time, omnichannel analysis and visualization let companies make better decisions with a holistic view of their business and the context behind every customer action.

Learn more about Customer Journey Analytics by watching the overview video .

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/introducing-adobes-customer-journey-maturity-model

https://business.adobe.com/blog/how-to/create-customer-journey-maps

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map

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The definitive 8-step customer journey mapping process

In business, as in life, it's the customer's journey that makes the company's destination worth all the trouble. No customer wants to jump through several different hoops to get to your product: they want it fast and they want it now.

Following certain customer journey mapping stages helps you improve your user's experience (UX) to create a product they love interacting with, ensures you stay ahead of key workflow tasks, and keeps stakeholders aligned. But a misaligned map can derail your plans—leading to dissatisfied users who don’t stick around long enough to convert or become loyal customers.

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This article walks you through the eight key stages of great customer journey mapping, and shows you how to adapt each to your unique business and product to optimize the customer experience from start to finish. 

Learn how customers interact with your product and website

Hotjar's Observe and Ask tools let you go ‘behind the scenes’ to understand your users’ product experiences and improve their customer journey.

An 8-step process for effective customer journey mapping

A customer journey map is a visualization of every point of interaction a user has with your company and product.

Mapping out the customer journey gives you insights into your buyers’ behavior to help you make changes that improve your website and the user flow between touchpoints. This helps you increase online sales and turn users into loyal customers and brand advocates.

Follow these eight proven steps to understand—and enhance—the customer experience.

Note: every business is distinct, so be sure to adapt these steps to your particular user and business needs. 

1. Define your purpose

The first step to creating a successful customer journey map is to define your product's vision or purpose. Without a clear purpose, your actions will be misguided and you won’t know what you want users to achieve during their journey on your website, product page, or web app. 

To define your purpose, consider your company’s mission statement and incorporate your specific user pain points as much as possible. 

Make your purpose specific to your company’s needs and goals—for example, the purpose of an ecommerce brand looking to help users navigate several different products and make multiple purchases will differ from that of a SaaS company selling subscriptions for one core product.

2. Make sure your team is aligned and roles are clear

Cross-functional collaboration is essential when mapping out your brand's or product’s user journey. Get insights from different teams within your organization to find out exactly how users engage with key touchpoints to derive a holistic sense of the user experience (UX), which will help you improve every aspect of the customer experience.

Lisa Schuck , marketing lead at Airship , emphasizes the importance of keeping “anybody that has a touchpoint with a customer” involved. She advises teams to “figure out how to align your external marketing and sales with your internal operations and service.”

Although sales, product, and marketing departments are often the key players in customer journey mapping, also involve your operations and design teams that are responsible for creating the user flow. 

If you have a SaaS company, for example, marketing creatives, sales teams, product owners and designers, and your customer experience department all need to participate in the process. Clearly define who’s responsible for different aspects of the map, and regularly check in to make sure your final map isn’t missing any important perspectives.

Pro tip: use Hotjar's Highlights feature to collect and organize key product experience (PX) insights and data on user behavior from teams across your organization to help you build your customer journey map. Then use Hotjar’s Slack integration to quickly share learnings with your relevant stakeholders to get buy-in and ensure everyone is aligned.

Hotjar’s Slack integration Slack lets teams discuss insights in the moment, so they’re up to date with critical issues 

3. Create user personas

Once you’ve defined your purpose and involved all relevant stakeholders, it’s time to design your user personas . Use resources like UXPressia and HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool to help you design various product personas . 

Create a range of user personas to understand what each type of buyer needs to curate a journey that’s easy and enjoyable for every customer. This is an important early step in the customer journey mapping process—because if you don’t understand your users, you won’t be able to fully comprehend how they interact with your brand to better it.

Create user personas for all your product’s possible buyers—for example, to map out a B2B customer journey for a company in the hospitality business means developing personas for a range of different customers, from large chain hotel managers to small vacation rental owners. 

4. Understand your user goals

Once you’ve designed your user personas, it’s time to define their jobs to be done . What do your users hope to accomplish when they search for your product or service? What do they want to do when they click on your website? Address and answer these questions to build a deep understanding of your users’ goals and pain points to inform your customer journey.

In a SaaS customer journey , perhaps users are looking for helpful comparisons of product features on your website, or want to easily sign up for a trial account in the hopes that your product will solve their problems. But you won’t know until you ask . 

Once you have users or test users, get direct insights from them with Hotjar's Feedback tools and Surveys to ask buyers exactly what their goals are as they browse different pages of your website or interact with product features.

Since user goals are at the center of your customer journey map, define them early on—but keep speaking to your users throughout the entire process to make sure you’re up to date with their needs.

5. Identify customer touchpoints

After you understand your users and what their goals are, it’s time to identify the ways they interact with your company and your product. 

"Touchpoints are the moments the customer interacts with your brand, be it through social media channels, your product, or customer support. The quality of these experiences affects the overall customer experience, which is why it’s important to be aware of them. Consider what happens before, during, and after a customer makes a purchase or uses your product."

Key customer journey touchpoints for a website or product include your homepage, landing pages, product pages, CTA buttons, sign-up forms, social media accounts, and paid ads. 

Collaboration is key to identifying touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey. Include insights from different teams and stakeholders —your marketing and sales teams will have a strong understanding of the touchpoints involved pre-purchase, while the customer experience department can shed light on post-purchase touchpoints. 

Post-purchase touchpoints can help turn users into loyal customers and even advocates for your brand. 

In the words of Lisa Schuck, "When you create a raving fan, or a brand advocate, who goes out and tells the world how wonderful you are, you get social credibility and validity. It’s becoming more and more important to have advocates."

Pro tip : speak with your users regularly to get direct voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights on what they love and what frustrates them on their journey. Place Hotjar Feedback widgets and Surveys at key website touchpoints like your homepage and landing pages to get valuable user insights on what you can improve. Use Hotjar’s survey templates to get inspiration for your survey questions. 

An example of an on-site Hotjar Survey

6. Map out the customer journey

Once your user and product research are complete and all roles are distributed, it’s time to map out the full customer journey.

First, map out an overarching customer journey by putting your key touchpoints in order and identifying how your various user personas interact with them. Then, home in on the details, looking at how customers engage with specific aspects of your website, product, or social media accounts. 

Breaking down the mapping process into smaller phases will ensure you don’t miss any key interactions. 

Here’s how an ecommerce brand could lay out general touchpoints, then narrow each down into more specific actions:

Pro tip : it’s helpful to think of the user journey in terms of different functions when mapping it out, like:

Connect: how are buyers connecting with your brand?

Attract: how are you convincing them to convert?

Serve: how are you serving customers when they want to purchase?

Retain: how are you promoting brand advocacy and customer retention ?

7. Test the customer journey

Once you’ve mapped out the customer journey, it’s time to take it for a spin. You can’t understand how your users move through customer touchpoints unless you test out the user flow yourself. 

Start with an informational Google search, then visit your website, check out your social media pages, and simulate the purchase process. This will help you get a better sense of how users interact with each touchpoint and how easy it is to move between them. 

Be sure to try out the journey from the standpoint of every relevant user persona. For an enterprise software company, this could mean looking at how decision-makers move through the user flow vs. the employees who’ll use your software day to day. 

By walking through the customer journey yourself, you can identify issues and difficulties that users may have to address them proactively. 

Try out the user flow with test users to get a realistic perspective of the user experience. Be sure to use focus groups that represent every one of your user personas. 

8. Use continuous research to refine your map 

Continuously map out, analyze, and evaluate the customer journey by observing users and getting their feedback. Hotjar Heatmaps and Recordings help you understand how your users are experiencing the customer journey on your website: create heatmaps to see whether users are clicking on CTAs or key buttons, and watch recordings to find out how they navigate once they reach your homepage.

Then, use Google Analytics to get an overview of your website traffic and understand how customers from different channels move through the user journey. 

Finally, once you have these combined user insights, use them to make changes on your website and create a user journey that is more intuitive and enjoyable.

Pitfalls to avoid during the customer journey mapping stages

Jamie Irwin , director & search marketing expert at Straight Up Search , says companies should avoid these three common mistakes when mapping out the customer journey:

Don't map out the entire customer journey at once

Don't forget about the ‘hidden journeys’

Don't make assumptions about customer behavior

To sidestep these common pitfalls: 

Start by mapping out the overall journey, and only drill down into more detail once you have a broader, higher-level overview of the customer journey

Factor in every way that customers interact with your brand, even the ones you don’t have as much visibility on, like ‘dark social’ communications about your brand shared in private channels. Talk to your users to find out what they’ve heard about your brand outside of public channels , and use sticky share buttons to keep track of when your content’s shared through email or social media messengers.

Take a data-informed approach: don’t assume you already know your users —test out your hypotheses with real users and qualitative and quantitative data. 

Follow proven steps to successfully map out the customer journey 

Take the time to understand your business goals and users, involve the right teams, and test frequently to consistently improve your customer journey and make the decisions that will help you map out an experience that will get you happy and loyal customers.

FAQs about customer journey mapping stages

What is the purpose of customer journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping helps you visualize how users interact with your business and product, from the moment they find it until long after they make their first purchase. 

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to gain insights into the buyer's journey to create a more enjoyable, streamlined, and intuitive experience for your customers.

What are the benefits of following a customer journey mapping process?

The main benefits of a customer journey mapping process are: : 

Building on tried-and-tested processes

Not missing any key steps

Considering all buyer personas

Keeping all relevant stakeholders involved

Creating a valuable customer journey map 

Improving user experience

What happens if you don’t follow key steps in customer journey mapping?

If you don’t follow key steps when mapping out the customer journey, your map likely won’t give you the insights you need to enhance the experience users have with your most important touchpoints —like your homepage, landing pages, CTAs, and product pages. 

This can result in high bounce rates, low conversion, and unsatisfied users who fail to become loyal customers.

CJM benefits

Previous chapter

CJM touchpoints

Next chapter

The Complete Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (With Examples)

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How to create a customer journey map

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 8 min

How to Make a Customer Journey Map

• Conduct persona research
• Define customer touchpoints
• Map current states
• Map future states

Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple’s one-of-a-kind customer experience, said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

Nowadays, a clear vision and strategy for customer interactions is no longer an optional “nice-to-have”—it’s essential. As you refine your customer experience, a customer journey map is one of the most powerful ways to understand your current state and future state.

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the process your customers go through in interacting with your business, such as an experience on the website, a brick and mortar experience, a service, a product, or a mix of those things.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. These visuals tell a story about how a customer moves through each phase of interaction and experiences each phase. Your customer journey map should include touchpoints and moments of truth, but also potential customer feelings, such as frustration or confusion, and any actions you want the customer to take.

Customer journey maps are often based on a timeline of events, such as a customer’s first visit on your website and the way they progress towards their first in-product experience, then purchase, onboarding emails, cancellation, etc. 

Your customer journey maps may need to be tailored to your business or product, but the best way to identify and refine these phases is to actually talk to your customers. Research your target audiences to understand how they make decisions, decide to purchase, etc. Without an essential understanding of your customers and their needs, a customer map will not lead you to success. But, a well-constructed and researched customer journey map can give you the insights to drastically improve your business’s customer experience.

The benefits of customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for uncovering insights into your customer experience, driving business goals, and building resilience in a changing market. In a 2022 report, Hanover Research found that 94% of businesses said their customer journey maps help them develop new products and services to match customer needs. Another 91% said their maps drove sales. 

But understanding a customer’s journey across your entire organization does so much more than increase your revenue. It enables you to discover how to be consistent when it comes to providing a positive customer experience and retaining customer loyalty. 

This was especially evident in recent years as top of improving marketing, customer journey maps emerged as a valuable way to understand evolving buyer behavior. In fact, 1 in 3 businesses used customer journey maps to help them navigate the changing landscape during the pandemic.

When done correctly, customer journey mapping helps to:

• Increase customer engagement through channel optimization.
• Identify and optimize moments of truth in the CX.
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints.
• Shift from a company to a customer-focused perspective.
• Break down silos between departments and close interdepartmental gaps.
• Target specific customer personas with marketing campaigns relevant to their identity.
• Understand the circumstances that may have produced irregularities in existing quantitative data.
• Assign ownership of various customer touchpoints to increase employee accountability.
• Make it possible to assess the ROI of future UX/CX investments.

Following the process outlined above, customer mapping can put your organization on a new trajectory of success. Yet, according to Hanover Research, only 47% of companies currently have a process in place for mapping customer journeys. Making the investment to map your customer journey and solidify that process as part of your company’s DNA can result in significant advantages in your competitive landscape, making your solution the go-to option that customers love.

Customer journey maps can become complicated unless you keep them focused. Although you may target multiple personas, choose just one persona and one customer scenario to research and visualize at a time. If you aren’t sure what your personas or scenarios might be, gather some colleagues and try an  affinity diagram in Lucidchart to generate ideas.

1. Set goals

Without a goal, it will be difficult to determine whether your customer journey map will translate to a tangible impact on your customers and your business. You will likely need to identify existing—and future—buyers so you can set goals specifically for those audiences at each stage of their experience.

Consider gathering the key stakeholders within your company—many of whom likely touch different points of the customer experience. To set a logical and attainable goal, cross-functional teamwork is essential. Gather unique perspectives and insights about each part of the existing customer journey and where improvements are needed, and how those improvements will be measured.

Pro Tip : If you don’t already have them in place, create buyer personas to help you focus your customer journey map on the specific types of buyers you’re optimizing for.

2. Conduct persona research

Flesh out as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is based on. Depending on the maturity of your business, you may only have a handful of records, reports, or other pre-existing data about the target persona. You can compile your preliminary findings to draft what you think the customer journey may look like. However, the most insightful data you can collect is from real customers or prospective customers—those who have actually interacted with your brand. Gather meaningful customer data in any of the following ways:

• Conduct interviews.
• Talk to employees who regularly interact with customers.
• Email a survey to existing users.
• Scour customer support and complaint logs.
• Pull clips from recorded call center conversations.
• Monitor discussions about your company that occur on social media.
• Leverage web analytics.
• Gather Net Promoter Score (NPS) data.

Look for information that references:

• How customers initially found your brand
• When/if customers purchase or cancel
• How easy or difficult they found your website to use
• What problems your brand did or didn’t solve

Collecting both qualitative and quantitative information throughout your research process ensures your business makes data-driven decisions based on the voice of real customers. To assist when conducting persona research, use one of our user persona templates .

Discover more ways to understand the Voice of the Customer

3. Define customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints make up the majority of your customer journey map. They are how and where customers interact with and experience your brand. As you research and plot your touchpoints, be sure to include information addressing elements of action, emotion, and potential challenges. 

The number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map will depend on the type of business. For example, a customer’s journey with a SaaS company will be inherently different than that of a coffee shop experience. Simply choose the touchpoints which accurately reflect a customer’s journey with your brand.

After you define your touchpoints, you can then start arranging them on your customer journey map.

4. Map the current state

Create what you believe is your as-is state of the customer journey, the current customer experience. Use a visual workspace like Lucidchart, and start organizing your data and touchpoints. Prioritize the right content over aesthetics. Invite input from the stakeholders and build your customer journey map collaboratively to ensure accuracy. 

Again, there is no “correct” way to format your customer journey map, but for each phase along the journey timeline, include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned ownership of a touchpoint (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Then, customize your diagram design with images, color, and shape variation to better visualize the different actions, emotions, transitions, etc. at a glance.

Mapping your current state will also help you start to identify gaps or red flags in the experience. Collaborators can comment directly on different parts of your diagram in Lucidchart, so it’s clear exactly where there’s room for improvement.

5. Map future states

Now that you’ve visualized the current state of the customer journey, your map will probably show some gaps in your CX, information overlap, poor transitions between stages, and significant pain points or obstacles for customers.

Use hotspots and layers in Lucidchart to easily map out potential solutions and quickly compare the current state of the customer journey with the ideal future state. Present your findings company-wide to bring everyone up to speed on the areas that need to be improved, with a clear roadmap for expected change and how their roles will play a part in improving the customer journey.

Customer journey map templates

You have all the right information for a customer journey map, but it can be difficult to know exactly how to start arranging the information in a digestible, visually appealing way. These customer journey mapping examples can help you get started and gain some inspiration about what—and how much—to include and where.

Don’t let the possibility of a bad customer journey keep you up at night. Know the current state of the customer journey with you business, and make the changes you need to attract and keep customers happy.

Customer journey mapping is easy with Lucidchart.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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The Essential Guide to The Customer Journey and Lifecycle

Customer lifecycles—like the lives of their customers—are messy.

Life in the modern world is messy. As consumers, we’re constantly bombarded with messaging from companies and brands, and our path to purchasing and using products and services is more complicated than ever. So, it should come as no surprise that in this day and age, there’s really no such thing as a neat and tidy sales funnel. Customer lifecycles—like the lives of their customers—are messy.

Still, while it would be impossible to present a single customer lifecycle model that applies to every single business out there, experts have settled on a handful of basic phases that are common to the majority of companies, as explained in  this American Express OPEN Forum article : reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

Phase 1: Reach

This phase (also commonly called “discovery” or “awareness”) is where the clock starts and the customer lifecycle officially begins. Well, sort of officially. After all, it’s tough to know exactly when a customer experiences his or her first contact with your business or your brand. In fact, it might be tough for the customer himself or herself to recognize that touch point.

Tracking Reach

Still, from a marketing perspective, it’s important to track those touch points as accurately as possible. That way, you can figure out which marketing and advertising efforts—both print and digital—are most effective in driving brand awareness and reach. By reviewing those metrics, you can get a good idea of the types of campaigns that give you the most bang for your buck—and thus, are worth your continued investment.

Here are a few ideas for measuring reach, adapted from  this article :

• Identify the most common search terms that are bringing people to your website for the first time.
• Monitor visitor data (i.e., new website visitors and returning website visitors).
• Keep a pulse on social analytics (especially new followers or other first-time user interactions) and online reviews.
• Poll trade show and event attendees (i.e., ask them if they had heard of you before).
• Analyze pay-per-click (PPC) and AdWords data.
• Survey both current customers and prospects on how they heard about you.

Phase 2: Acquisition

Once you’re on a prospect’s radar, it’s time to actually initiate contact. Your mission: to turn your marketing contacts into leads—which, as  this TechTarget page  explains, are potential sales contacts. More specifically, a lead is “an individual or organization that expresses an interest in your goods or services.”

So, how do you turn someone who is simply aware of your brand or product into a potential buyer? In the most basic sense, it’s about interaction and engagement. This can happen via phone call, email, or other targeted online messaging. But remember, it’s not just about making contact; rather, it’s about making the right kind of contact at the right frequency. Gone are the days of indiscriminate email blasting. Modern consumers have to fight their way through a constant barrage of marketing communication, and if your brand’s approach is too aggressive—or if you overwhelm your contacts with messaging—you run the risk that they’ll turn and run in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, if you neglect your potential customers during this stage—or if you provide them with messaging or other resources that don’t hold their attention—then you also could end up pushing them away. In other words, it’s a balancing act.

To overcome these challenges, it’s important to know your audience. Tailor your messaging to  specific buyer personas . Ask yourself:

• What interests them?
• What motivates them?
• What are their goals?
• What are their pain points?
• Where do they go for information?

Use these questions—and their answers—as the basis of your communications. After all, if you can deliver your audience something of value—before they even become your actual customers—then they’ll be more likely to continue engaging with your business.

Furthermore, by taking a more personalized, targeted approach to messaging, you’ll avoid wasting time and energy attracting customers who aren’t a good fit for your company or your product. Sure, it’s exciting to see your lead database grow—and the more potential buyers you have now, the more actual customers you’ll have later, right? Well, sort of. Here’s the catch, as explained in  this Sixteen Ventures article : “If you don’t attract, seek out, and acquire the right customers, not only will you have a harder time (they’ll be less profitable, harder to deal with or please, etc.), they’ll have a harder time.” In other words, while you might have a higher rate of lead generation, you’ll have a lower rate of customer success—and in the long run, that’ll cost you dearly.

Tracking Acquisition

This phase of the customer journey is a little more trackable in terms of concrete data, as it’s relatively easy to define the point at which a contact becomes a lead. It’s also the stage that often gets the most attention from marketers trying to quantify the success of their efforts. “Marketers have traditionally been focused on the front-end of the customer lifecycle, specifically, brand awareness and lead generation,” states  this CIO article . “Their job was to fill the funnel for sales people to convert into revenue.”

As  this KISSmetrics article  explains, there are two types of acquisition metrics you’ll want to consider: those that tell about the “what” and those that tell you about the “who.” More specifically:

• “What” analytics tools allow you to do things like “track traffic, view sources and referrals, set up event and goal tracking,” the article states. Perhaps the most common tool for tracking these data points: Google Analytics.
• “Who” analytics tools, on the other hand, help you answer questions like, “Who is viewing your website? What did they do before and after they signed up? How is your site being used?” the article continues.

Ideally, you’ll incorporate both types of metrics into your acquisition-tracking strategy. But, deciding on the specific data points you want to track is easier said than done. And, as KISSmetrics advises, “You…need to be sure you’re monitoring the right metrics because, rest assured, you can’t monitor them all.”

To figure out which metrics are right for you, start by clearly defining your goals. In this case, as KISSmetrics suggests, the goal is relatively simple: acquiring customers. From there, work backwards to build a funnel. “Maybe the top of the funnel is an email submission. From there, an email is sent about a free trial offer. Finally, the free trial users will convert to paying customers,” the article explains.

Now, come up with three core metrics for each of those three funnel stages. Two examples: the number of people who provide their email addresses and the percentage who convert to paying customers. “For each of your selected metrics, be sure you can demonstrate how that number impacts the goal at that stage of the funnel,” the article continues. That means you should steer clear of so-called “vanity” metrics like social fans and followers, as they don’t have any real value with respect to your defined funnel.

Furthermore, keep in mind that in this day and age, measuring marketing performance doesn’t stop at the point when a contact becomes a lead or a lead becomes a  qualified lead —at least not for those companies looking to rise above the competition in an increasingly crowded marketplace. As  CIO  goes on to point out, “…average performers spend more time and budget on front-end awareness and acquisition activities, such as volume of leads generated and the number of inquiries generated…In contrast, top performers and the companies they work for take a more holistic view of the customer. Their metrics for success are response rates, sales accepted leads and sales qualified leads, not merely lead generation.”

Phase 3: Conversion

This is where the rubber meets the road. In other words, you win the sale and the prospect becomes a customer. The key to success in this phase is focusing on selling the relationship—not just the product. Buyers—especially those interested in B2B SaaS solutions—are looking for companies that will act as their partners, not merely their suppliers.

Tracking Conversion

At the most basic level, conversion happens when a customer actually remits payment to begin using your product or service. On that note, as  Sixteen Ventures  points out, it’s important “that you have a way to collect payment from the customer, in a way that is congruent with their preferred method of payment.”

One of the most important sales conversion metrics is conversion rate, which tells you what percentage of leads actually ended up turning into customers. As illustrated  here , the basic formula for conversion rate is:

Conversion Rate = (Total Number of Sales ÷ Total Number of Leads) X 100

For example, if you made 30 sales last year out of the 100 leads you generated over the same time period, your conversion rate would be 30%.

You can also track your conversion rate with respect to other marketing metrics—website traffic, for example. If you wanted to find out the percentage of your web visitors who ended up purchasing your product, you could do so using the following equation:

Conversion Rate = (Total Number of Sales ÷ Total Number of Unique Visitors) X 100

Obviously, your conversion rate isn’t going to be 100%. You’re going to lose some sales. And at that point, the customer lifecycle for those prospects will come to an end. But that doesn’t mean you should immediately seal their files and lock them away forever. Instead, look at lost sales as learning opportunities. Ask:

• What ultimately caused the prospect to say “no” instead of “yes?”
• Was it a mistake at the sales level?
• Did you do something to alienate the buyer?
• Was your product poorly suited to the prospect?
• Was the prospect misinformed about the product?

These are all questions you should be asking—and answering—each time you miss a shot. Furthermore, you should be tracking and storing this information so you can use it to inform future sales and marketing efforts and strategies.

Phase 4: Retention

Okay, you’ve scored the touchdown (i.e., made the sale). But, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve won the game. After all, the customer truly holds the power; chances are, there are a lot of other options out there, and in the modern marketplace, it’s easier than ever for customers to jump ship or walk out your back door, never to return. That’s why, as mentioned in the section above, it’s so crucial that you form a strong partnership with each customer.

In reality, the retention phase includes several smaller phases, some of which are ongoing:

The onboarding process begins immediately after purchase. Your goal is to get your customers up and running as soon as possible. But that doesn’t mean handing them the keys and turning them loose right off the bat. After all, if they attempt to use your product with no guidance or training, they probably won’t be successful, and that will lead to frustration—which in turn, could lead them to regret their purchase down the road.

Instead, you should create a checklist of all the items (i.e., milestones) that your customers must complete in order to use your product successfully from the first time they put the key in the ignition. At minimum, that list should include:

• Migrating the customer from his or her previous system to your system (if applicable)
• Ensuring the customer’s technical setup meets your requirements
• Training the customer to use your product through self-guided learning systems, live and/or virtual training sessions, knowledge base materials, and/or consultative phone calls

While this checklist should help form the basis for your onboarding program, be careful not to let it completely dictate your approach. After all, successful onboarding isn’t just about crossing to-dos off of a list; you should be working toward an overarching goal (i.e., empowering the customer to use your product to its fullest potential).

To measure the effectiveness of your onboarding program—and identify opportunities for improvement—you should be collecting and tracking a few different data points. According to  this article , these may include:

• days to onboard a new client
• days to achieve key milestones
• number of customer interactions during onboarding process

Compare the averages for these metrics over time to determine whether you’re improving, highlight areas where adjustments may be necessary, and measure the effectiveness of any such adjustments.

Finally, don’t stop at merely collecting data. To really get a feel for how you’re doing, you’ve got to get real, live feedback from your audience. “Getting qualitative feedback from your customers can uncover holes in your program and help guide you to make better decisions that data points may not be able to uncover,” the above-cited article continues.

Remember, onboarding is your customers’ first real experience with your product and your company, and the impression you make during the onboarding process will stick with them—and influence their satisfaction level—for the rest of the customer lifecycle.

Once a customer has completed the onboarding process and has begun using your product, it’s absolutely critical that you keep the lines of communication open in case the customer has any problems, questions, or concerns. This is especially true during the first 90 days, because if the customer does not immediately begin to see value in your product, then he or she will be much more likely to ultimately leave you. “This is a critical phase of the customer lifecycle…either you engage them here (what that means is 100% dependent upon the customer in the context of what they’re trying to—or would like to—achieve with your product) or you lose them forever,”  Sixteen Ventures  explains.

This is where churn rate comes into the picture. Simply put, your churn rate tells you how many existing customers you’re losing—and how fast they’re leaving you. Companies that fall victim to the ill effects of churn often are those that put all of their focus and energy into closing new deals, and then disappearing the moment the customer hands over his or her money.

Unfortunately, support—even during the initial 90-day period—often is provided on a reactive, rather than proactive, basis. Instead, companies should shift to an introductory support model organized around known milestones that are clearly laid out for the customer. “Rather than waiting for your customers and users to get lost and feel anxious about what to do next—or how to do it—you should build a proactive approach to Functional Support into your lifecycle messaging (ideally pegged to activity),”  Sixteen Ventures  writes.

And that spirit of proactive support shouldn’t fade when a customer hits the 90-day mark. Instead, companies should monitor their data to look for patterns that might indicate a customer is having trouble—or could potentially have trouble at some point in the future. That way, you can intervene before those issues negatively impact customer experience.

Still, even with a proactive approach to customer support and customer success, it would be impossible to anticipate customer problems and needs 100% of the time. So, you must provide your customers with an easy means of obtaining on-demand support so you can correct problems promptly and get back to delivering value to those customers as quickly as possible. On that front, there are a  few items  you should be tracking to ensure you provide the best support experience possible:

• Total volume by channel. This will help you maintain appropriate staffing levels and determine a strategy for using various channels appropriately in order to optimize customer experience. For example,  Wistia  removed the phone number for its support line from its website because based on research the company conducted, customers obtained a better experience when they submitted support tickets via email rather than via phone.
• Response time. Most customers expect to hear back from a company’s support department within a few hours of submitting a request or ticket, but at the very least, you should be tracking your 24-hour response rate. Taking longer than a day to respond to a ticket will severely impact customer happiness.
• First contact resolution rate. The fewer interactions it takes to resolve a customer’s problem, the more satisfied that customer will be. You should be shooting to resolve a customer’s issue the first time he or she contacts your support department.
• Help delay and abandonment rates. Once a customer makes live contact with you (e.g., via online chat or phone), how long must that customer wait for assistance. If it’s longer than five minutes, you could be in  trouble . And if a large percentage of customers are abandoning those interactions before they’ve received the help they need, you could be in even bigger trouble.
• Moments of delight. It’s important to celebrate your triumphant moments. It’s even more important to dissect those moments in the interest of achieving even more of them. After all, satisfied customers are the building blocks of word-of-mouth referrals and positive reputation. So, each time one of your support representatives reports a “wow” moment, be sure to record the factors leading up to that success. Then, incorporate that information into continued employee training.

One of the reasons support is so crucial during the first 90 days after sale is that this is the period during which the customer should successfully adopt your product. What does that mean? It means the product becomes integral to the customer’s daily activities and operations.

Within 90 days—a full financial quarter—the customer should see clear value in your product. But if the customer doesn’t fully adopt the product, then he or she probably won’t see those results. And in the absence of results (i.e., return on investment), there’s no incentive for the customer to continue using your product (i.e., renew his or her subscription).

Thus, as explained in the section above, you should  monitor adoption  by tracking customer use, activity, and progress toward defined milestones. To get a feel for the specific data points you should be tracking, start by digging into your churn data. Pinpoint those customers who have left you because they didn’t get enough value from your product. Why weren’t they seeing value? Could you have done something to change that?

As for tracking usage for current customers, obviously the easiest place to start is capturing login information (if your customers must log in to use your product). After all, if a customer isn’t logging in very often, they aren’t even getting a chance to experience ROI.

Next, take a look at which product features the customer is using most often. Are they primarily basic features—which tend to deliver less value? Or are they the more in-depth, “sticky” features—the ones whose functions are much more difficult to replace? The answers to these questions should help define your customer success initiatives during the customer adoption phase.

When it comes to tracking usage, there are two main ways to capture this data:

• Feeding in-app usage data for users, companies, and time periods to a database or data warehouse.
• Using tracking codes on your web pages to track page views and actions (i.e., clicking certain links or buttons).

Remember, though, that isolated metrics aren’t super useful when it comes to formulating strategy. Rather, you should focus on usage trends. In other words, don’t just look at the usage data for a single week; also compare that data to that gathered over the last 30 weeks.

The only way to ensure your customers are happy and successful is to continually engage with them. This includes monitoring their satisfaction through:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys,
• customer health/happiness indices,
• customer advisory boards, and
• customer outreach initiatives.

Getting the most out of your engagement efforts means harnessing the combined power of technology and human interaction. After all, technology might be able to pinpoint areas of opportunity, but it alone cannot ensure your company continues to deliver value.

To do that—and thus, keep your customers—you have to continue nurturing them long after conversion and onboarding. Specifically, you must:

• build and maintain good relationships
• initiate contact at the right times
• anticipate issues before they affect your customers’ feelings toward you, and
• upsell and cross-sell when you see the potential for a particular feature or product to add even more value for a certain customer.

Your  customer engagement management  efforts should build off of those you initiated during the adoption phase. Even after the initial 90-day period, you should continue monitoring usage and behavior patterns and use that data to execute on the bullet points listed above. As  this article  explains, “…consolidating this information and identifying trends is crucial…to measure [customer] progress and take strategic action to help drive future revenue and reduce churn.” Furthermore, “Monitoring social networks using sentiment analysis to mine social networks, gives visibility to the company’s reputation at the macro level.”

Once you’ve collected and analyzed that data, you can use the results to create targeted messaging to users through in-app messages, live chat, emails, or phone calls. “In all cases, the company must prioritize efforts to provide excellent content so the messages are most valuable to the user,” the above-cited article continues.

You should be engaging with your customers across the entire spectrum of the customer lifecycle. However, keep in mind that the elements of engagement will change as the customer progresses through his or her lifecycle. In other words, you won’t—or at least, you shouldn’t—engage with your one-week-old customers the same way you engage with your one-year-old customers.

Many companies view upselling and cross-selling opportunities as a means of extracting as much revenue as possible from each customer. But that mode of operation isn’t sustainable in the long run. Why? Because if you upsell and cross-sell with reckless abandon, you can’t be sure you’re actually providing additional value to the customer. And if you’re not, your customers will catch on—and when they do, boom: all trust is lost. It won’t be long before those customers walk out the back door.

Instead, you should approach expansion with a goal of helping your customers extract as much value out of your product as possible. And as  Sixteen Ventures  explains, “The way that we do that is to create a customer experience that delivers increasing amounts of value over time, creating a natural growth in base-product use, a logical expansion into additional functionality, and where appropriate, adoption of adjacent products from your company.”

Again, as discussed in the previous section, this means using data to launch intelligent expansion efforts—ones that truly will deliver value.

Phase 5: Loyalty

In a perfect world, every single customer you acquire would make it to this stage. At this point, the customer is not only satisfied with your product, but also delighted. He or she is a brand ambassador: someone who sings your praises via online and in-person reviews, recommendations, or testimonials—all of which are extremely powerful when it comes to attracting more customers: “Social Proof is amazingly powerful…when your Ideal Customer prospects see others like them using and succeeding with your product, there’s a level of validation that trumps just about everything else you say or promise,”  Sixteen Ventures explains .

Tracking Loyalty

In addition to keeping an eye on customer reviews and ratings, you can track loyalty using retention measures such as churn rate and renewal. If you’ve done everything right, those renewals should really be non-events; in other words, you should continue getting the same revenue—or, if you’ve implemented a successful expansion strategy, even more revenue—as time goes on.

Additionally, you can get a pulse on customer loyalty by creating a referral program and tracking its use. For example, you could provide program participants with unique sign-up pages where they send their referrals. When done right, these types of programs can produce great results—especially if you offer some type of reward or incentive to one or both parties.

If you don’t yet have the resources to maintain such a program, you could simply include a field in your regular sign-up form where new customers can enter the name of their referral source. Finally, be sure to have your sales team record referral information in your CRM.

Whew—that was quite the epic saga. If this whole customer journey thing has you feeling a bit overwhelmed, don’t worry. In customer lifecycles—as in life—the best approach is to take it one day (and one phase) at a time. Plus, while it might be tough to take a data-driven approach to life—that is, of course, unless you track all of your daily activities as data points—customer lifecycles are ripe for data collection and analysis. So, let the data science be your guide. Implement systems and software to measure and track customer success, and watch your base of engaged, loyal customers grow.

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How to manage your customer lifecycle from the customer's perspective, how to map the customer journey with engagement models, customer lifecycle management.

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How to Create a Customer Journey Map (& Convert MORE at Each Step)

Last updated on

Deana Weinheimer

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Are you wanting to learn how to create a customer journey map while converting along the way?

A customer journey is a path your website visitors take from discovering your site to becoming a paying customer. Unfortunately, the journey isn’t always linear, so it’s important to personalize your customer journey to best suit your business and your target audience.

But before we get into how to create a customer journey map, let’s look at 3 different stages of the customer journey.

3 Stages of the Customer Journey Map

To understand how to tailor your lead generation campaigns to every prospect, you first need to know the 3 main stages of the customer journey.

These stages are often referred to as Awareness, Evaluation, and Conversion (or Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel).

The Awareness stage is when the prospect knows they have a problem, but doesn’t yet know that you exist or that you can help them solve that problem.

The Evaluation stage is when the prospect is aware that you exist and that you have a solution to their problem, but they are still evaluating other possible solutions.

The Conversion stage is when the prospect is almost ready to buy your solution, but they may still have a few questions or objections to overcome first.

OK, now that you know what the 3 stages of the customer journey are, let’s take a look at how to actually capture email leads during each stage…

1. The Awareness Stage

During this first stage, the prospect is just becoming aware of your brand and what you have to offer. They may know that they have a problem or a need, but they aren’t yet aware of what the specific solution is, or that you have that solution.

Your Goal: Aside from capturing their email address, your goal at the Awareness stage is to move the prospect from Awareness to Evaluation by introducing them to your brand, making them aware of the solution to their problem, and introducing them to your solution (your product).

2. The Evaluation Stage

At the Evaluation stage, your prospect understands the solution to their problem and is aware of your brand/offer. However, they are still evaluating their options (and likely looking at your competitors).

Your Goal: Aside from capturing their email, your goal is to move the prospect from Evaluation to Conversion by giving them a quick win which proves that you are the authority they need to pay attention to. You may also have the goal of acquiring initial customers during this stage.

3. The Conversion Stage

At the Conversion Stage, your prospect is aware that your product provides the solution they seek, but they haven’t quite made the decision to buy yet.

Your Goal: Aside from capturing any leads who haven’t yet opted in to your email list, your goal at this stage is to maximize immediate customer value. You’ll do this by helping them overcome any objections to the sale, and giving them the extra “nudge” they need to buy right now . You may also have the goal of retaining existing customers and increasing buyer frequency/boosting conversions on your cross-sells and upsells.

[Case Study] Creating a Customer Journey that Converts

Admit it! Each user is different. And you don’t know what each of your website visitor wanted and which stage of customer journey they’re in.

If only there’s a tool that identifies which customer stage each of your website visitors are in… and delivers a personalized experience to each one of them based on their customer stage.

Oh, wait there is such a tool! It’s called OptinMonster !

And by creating a personalized customer journey for each stage with OptinMonster, Human Food Bar , a niche website focused on energy and nutrition bars, has increased conversions at each step!

Here’s what they achieved by creating a customer journey.

• In the awareness stage, they increased email subscribers by 80%
• Average time on site up 18% and bounce rate down 7%
• In the conversion stage, they made $17,000 average profit per seasonal sale
• Website retention rate up 35%

Want to know EXACTLY how they achieved it? Let’s take a look…

When you visit the Human Food Bar site for the first time, you’re met with this welcome popup:

It only displays to new visitors and instantly offers a 75% discount on Gundry MD products.

But not everybody is interested in buying products right away. That means people may be in the awareness stage and they’ll need a little bit more convincing before they evaluate your product and convert into customers.

If the visitor isn’t interested in buying products just yet, the “Human Food Bar” website draws visitors attention to getting a free toolkit that’s packed with recipes, meals, and more.

This strategy helps cater to 2 separate audiences and intentions who are in the different stages (awareness and evaluation) in their customer journey.

And between the 2 campaigns, Human Food Bar gets 1,800+ new email signups every month .

Now, let’s take a look at how to create a customer journey map and convert users into subscribers and customers.

Step 1: Create a Lead Magnet for YOUR Target Audience

We’ve already explained that your goal at the Awareness stage is to move the prospect from Awareness to Evaluation by introducing them to your brand, making them aware of the solution to their problem, and introducing them to your solution (your product). And capturing their email address is the first step to do so.

Most people are generally not willing to part with their email address unless there is something in it for them.

So, how do you entice a potential lead? By offering up a lead magnet.

Lead magnets are free resources that attract your target audience to complete your call to action. This is usually in exchange for their email address or other contact information.

Remember: Awareness-stage prospects don’t know you very well yet. In fact, they didn’t even know you existed just a few moments ago. So you’ll want to use the most polite optin forms possible when asking them to join your email list.

For the messaging on your Awareness optin form, focus on the pain points that your prospects are currently experiencing.

• Solve a problem your customers have
• Be specific to that problem
• Quick to digest
• Be instantly accessible (capitalize on people’s need for instant gratification)
• Demonstrates your expertise (this will help convert them from a lead to a customer down the road)

Step 2: Offer Lead Magnets Targeting Awareness Stage

So you may be wondering, how do you actually target these different optin forms and lead magnets specifically to prospects in the Awareness stage?

To identify who your Awareness-stage prospects are, you need to understand where they are coming from.

Awareness-stage prospects usually find you through…

• Search engines – by typing in a question related to their problem
• Social media – they saw a post that someone shared about your content
• Referrals – other websites linking to you
• Paid ads – any ad campaign that you are targeting to cold traffic

Most of these people arriving at your website for the first time are landing on one of your blog posts. That means you need to have Awareness-stage offers on your blog.

Not having your offers in the right places can turn off visitors and can tank your conversion rates.

You may be wondering how you can make sure your lead magnets are getting in the right places on your website and in front of the right people. Well, that’s where a tool like OptinMonster comes in:

OptinMonster is the world’s #1 lead generation tool. It allows you to easily create optin campaigns to distribute your lead magnets in a highly targeted way in just a few minutes.

You’ve likely seen optin campaigns before. They are popups, floating bars, gamified wheels, and other parts of a website where visitors can enter their information, usually in exchange for a freebie.

OptinMonster takes this all a step further, letting you customize your campaigns to appear precisely when you want your visitors to see them. These rules help you create an even more personalized customer journey.

We recommend that you always include a scroll box, a sidebar form and an exit-intent popup on all of your blog posts (at the minimum). On your most popular blog posts, you can boost optins even more with a content upgrade .

In addition to targeting prospects on your blog posts, you can also target them based on where they came from using referrer detection or specific URL parameters (e.g. ?utm_campaign=my-campaign ).

So for example, if you have an ad campaign that is being targeted to cold traffic, you could detect those visitors with your specific campaign parameter, and then display your Awareness-stage optin form to those visitors.

Step 3: Identify and Convert Users in Evaluation Stage

While some prospects in the Evaluation phase have already opted in to your email list, you will also have some who are following you but have not yet opted in.

Evaluation-stage prospects also visit particular pages on your site besides just your blog, such as your…

• Opt-in Landing Pages
• Start Here Page ( here’s an example from our other site, WPBeginner)
• Resource Pages ( here’s another example from WPBeginner)

Visits to these pages indicate that the prospect is no longer a complete stranger to your brand. Rather, they want to get to know you better and learn more things from you.

What all of this means is that you can target Evaluation-stage prospects either by the traffic source (e.g. via a specific URL parameter) or by the specific pages that they are viewing.

And don’t forget– you can also target your most engaged Evaluation-stage prospects based on the number of pageviews and convert them into customers right away! For example, you could target visitors who have viewed at least 4 or more pages on your site…

..and then present them with a low-dollar offer or a coupon inside a timed lightbox popup.

(For more details, check out our tutorial on converting engaged visitors into buyers .)

Step 4. Identify and Convert Users in Conversion Stage

Don’t assume that someone has already opted in to your email list just because they are in the Conversion stage!

Especially if your brand has already established a lot of awareness in your market, you will have prospects who are already thinking about buying but haven’t given you their email address yet. Maybe they were referred to you by someone, or they’ve read reviews about you on another site.

You definitely do not want to lose these hot leads.

Good lead magnets at the Conversion stage include…

• Case studies
• Free catalog
• …more bottom of funnel lead magnet ideas here

Conversion Optin Types:

To capture leads at the Conversion stage of the customer journey, use…

• Highly noticeable floating bars
• Countdown timers
• Timed popups + eye-catching animations
• Exit-intent popups

You should be getting more aggressive here because you can, and should .

These prospects are actively looking to buy your product. If you don’t keep their attention and push for the sale, you may lose them forever, simply because they decided to just come back another day (and never actually got around to it). Or, they ended up going with your competitor because their messaging was stronger than yours.

For your opt-in messaging at the Conversion stage, focus on proof and urgency. For example, “ 300,000+ websites already use OptinMonster to get more email subscribers. Don’t get left behind!” or, “Get 10% Off OptinMonster (only 3 hours left!) “.

Conversion Targeting:

Prospects in the Conversion stage come to your website through…

• Search engines – by typing in conversion-intent queries such as “[your product] reviews”, “[your product] coupon”, or “buy [your product]”
• Social media – by clicking on a post regarding a sale, or other promotion
• Referrals – clicking through from another blog reviewing your product
• Paid ads – retargeting ads
• Direct traffic – people who clicked on a link inside a promotional email, or typed your URL into the browser directly

To target these prospects, you can either display optin forms to visitors based on where they came from (a specific email link, a specific ad campaign, referrer domain, etc.), or based on the page they are currently viewing.

In addition to targeting visitors from specific email marketing or retargeting ad campaigns, we highly recommend that you add urgency to all pages with conversion-intent using a floating bar + countdown timer . You can use this to optimize your pricing page , feature pages, and any other pages or blog posts where you have high sales conversions.

We have implemented this on several of our own web properties with astonishing results, which is why we rolled out the Countdown theme for our customers.

With OptinMonster’s Countdown theme, you can customize the timer to each visitor, so every visitor will see a different countdown that is tailored specifically to them.

All you have to do is set the Countdown Type to “Dynamic”, and set the length of your timer.

Converting at Each Stage With a Customer Journey Map

In this map, we showed you the 3 main stages of the customer journey (Awareness, Evaluation, and Conversion) and how to acquire leads at each stage.

We also showed you how to maximize the value of your prospects by moving them from one stage of your sales funnel to the next.

Once you’ve converted your website visitors into email subscribers, the next step is to nurture these leads with email marketing…

Here are few resources that would be helpful to you in the next step:

• What Is Email Automation? (+31 Tools to Transform Your Business)
• How to Create an Effective Email Autoresponder Series
• How To Create An Email Newsletter in 3 EASY Steps

Now it’s your turn. Follow the roadmap above and install OptinMonster to capture high-quality leads throughout the customer journey .

Disclosure : Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

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Oct 5, 2020

How To Create A Customer Journey Map

• Digital Strategy

It goes without saying that a cohesive customer journey is absolutely critical for success. These marketers understand how a customer or user journey map can streamline processes and provide customers with a consistent experience with a brand. Ideally, a customer journey map transforms the online customer journey into a visually accessible method for digital marketers to use to their advantage.

To streamline your customer experience and be consistently available to consumers throughout their online experience, read on to uncover how you can create a best-in-class customer journey map for your own brand.

What Is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a “visual representation of every experience your customers have with you.” Throughout their experience with your brand, a customer will most likely engage or be reminded of your brand on multiple platforms, in varying ways. A customer journey map helps your brand deliver a streamlined narrative of a customer’s experience throughout the online sales funnel.

Although it may seem that the journey from first interaction through to a sale is quite simple, it is anything but. A customer is bombarded with countless advertisements, newsletters, and competitive content on a daily basis. This makes their journey with your brand complicated, and a well-rounded customer journey map is your solution to making that experience easier.

Customers can interact with your brand in countless ways in the modern digital landscape.  Some examples include :

• Reading a branded blog post
• Accessing your website from search engine platform
• Following your brand on varying social media channels

By creating a clear visualization of every possible way a customer can interact and contact your brand, a customer journey map can help you keep customers engaged while you increase conversions and revenue.

Why Create a Customer Journey Map?

With so much of the journey taking place digitally, it’s vital that digital marketers understand exactly where customers are interacting with your brand while providing accessible, high-quality content on a regular basis.

With an effective customer journey map, digital marketers will gain a better understanding of how their customers interact with their business while accessing helpful insight into what channels are most effective for converting leads into prospects, and prospects into loyal customers.

Gone are the days when products were traditionally marketed by boasting specific features. Modern buyers are interested in the brand as a whole, how they personally engage with them, and most importantly, how the offering can solve a problem they are facing. A streamlined customer journey map will help clarify how digital marketers can most effectively provide prospects with this information and keep them engaged and dedicated to completing a purchase.

Get Started with the Customer Journey Map

Now that you understand what a customer journey map is and how it can take your digital marketing efforts to the next level, let’s jump into how to map out the online journey. Your customer’s journey is complex, so the job of the map is to make it as focused and simple as possible.

Step 1: Use your sales funnel to define the buying process

Ideally, your brand will already have an online sales funnel developed that demonstrates how leads move through your content and marketing strategies to eventually complete a purchase. This information will provide you with a guideline as to how many potential touchpoints a customer has with your brand and content, and how each interaction feeds into the next.

Step 2: Think like a customer

Regardless of the massive increase in customer data, it’s tough to truly think like a customer. Each prospect is a unique human with different needs, emotions, personalities, responsibilities, and so on. So how can you, as a digital marketer, understand how your customers are making choices to eventually reach the end of your sales funnel and purchase your product or service?

Although you won’t be able to fully predict a prospect’s next steps, you can align their goals with varying stages of your sales funnel, while moving through the process yourself. Track these steps as you go through a variety of touchpoints and combinations of choices. If you come across a section of your buying journey that doesn’t feel like a natural next step, take note, and optimize this step to make the customer journey more logical and straightforward.

If you really want to optimize your customer journey, review transcripts of support calls and emails to track where a purchase process went wrong and work to fix these issues before moving onto the next step.

Step 3: Develop the touchpoints of customer interaction

Simply stated, a touchpoint is any digital place at which a customer can access information about your brand or engage with your website. In turn, each touchpoint is also critical for interaction and conversion on the business end of things.

Many of these touchpoints will have been tracked in the second step of this process. However, now is the time to plot these touchpoints logically. For example, a customer “liking” a social media post counts as one touchpoint, while clicking through to a link from that social media post is another. Group these touchpoints into logical areas, such as “social media touchpoints” and “web page touchpoints.”

Step 4: Implement your customer journey map and conduct research

First things first, though: create a visually-appealing customer journey map that is accessible for all necessary team members. A graphic designer can help compile your findings and touchpoints in a visual sequence that is understandable, logical, and beautiful.

Now that you’ve identified each possible touchpoint, grouped them into logical areas sequences, and developed an accessible customer journey map, it’s time to implement your new findings and see how they work digitally.

Platforms like Google Analytics will be of immense help if you’re looking to see where buyers are dropping out of the customer journey on a regular basis. If you notice patterns such as a lack of click-throughs from newsletters or customer abandonment just before the purchase is completed, analyze these touchpoints and make necessary improvements.

Targeted prospects want their journey to be as simple as possible, so including too many touchpoints in their buying process may not keep them engaged the entire way through. While reviewing your customer journey map, make sure that the journey is easy enough to keep them taking the ideal logical steps while providing the personalized and educational content they need to stay engaged.

Step 5: Regularly optimize your customer journey map

Like most aspects of a digital marketing strategy, your online customer journey will change frequently as technology develops and new digital platforms are introduced into the buying cycle. By taking the time to regularly review how your customers are moving through your buying cycle, you can identify gaps and develop processes to streamline the customer experience.

According to a 2016 report, the  Aberdeen Group’s Customer Journey Mapping: Lead the Way to Advocacy , organizations experienced a 16.8% decrease in the size of the sales cycle when a user journey map is developed, implemented, and maintained successfully. Although the process of creating a customer journey map can be a timely endeavor for digital marketers, it provides unparalleled value for both your brand and your customers.

Offering prospects a streamlined and enjoyable online experience will help to keep them engaged while you drive sales forward. When you understand your customers’ needs and preferences, you can increase your own productivity by focusing your digital marketing developments on the touchpoints that need most help. Enable yourself to create consistent customer experiences that align your digital marketing strategies with the high-quality digital content that your customers have come to expect from your best-in-class organization.

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Customer Journey

The customer journey consists of actions your customers take before and after they make a purchase. It should be part of your overall marketing strategy to improve lead generation and enable more effective marketing. By understanding the different actions your customers take before and after a conversion, you can start brainstorming new marketing tactics to improve the customer experience and keep them coming back for more.

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Think of a customer journey as a detailed map that shows the full experience a customer has with your business. It lets you see every interaction they have with your company, even before and after they engage. By first understanding the customer journey , it will be easier to define your goals and use our automation tool to create the overall marketing experience you want to provide.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey outlines the different steps your customers take to become customers. Without the customer journey, your marketing funnel couldn’t exist. A marketing funnel helps you market your products and services to customers based on where they are in their customer journey. For example, someone researching products is at the top of the marketing funnel or at the very beginning stages of their journey.

Ultimately, a customer journey map tells a story about how customers interact with your brand, including how they first discovered your business to whether or not they’ll make a repeat purchase. The journey lays out different interactions someone could have with your brand, although not every customer needs to use all those touch points before converting.

While not all customer journeys are the same, you can use your website and marketing efforts to easily guide customers through the journey by taking them through different touchpoints.

What are the phases of a customer journey?

Knowing the customer journey definition is only the beginning; now you must learn the different stages involved. A customer journey is made up of phases , which are the distinct stages a customer passes through as they’re guided to take specific actions. The phases you include will depend on your business goals.

Do you want a user to adopt a new app you’ve released? Are you looking to get inactive newsletter subscribers to read your emails? Is your aim to turn occasional shoppers into regular, loyal customers? All these marketing paths require a strategy for getting your customers from point A to point B.

Most customer journeys will usually account for these phases:

This is how someone discovers your company, usually through a search engine or your paid advertising efforts. Let’s say your new future customer sees an ad for your latest line of ‘I Have the World’s Okayest Cat’ mugs, and they click through to your website to learn more about the brand and product. Now your business is stored in their memory.

Acquisition

Congrats! You can now call that new future customer an actual customer, because they loved the ‘I Have the World’s Okayest Cat’ mugs you released so much that they bought one. Not only that, they also signed up for your email list through a form on your site so they can be the first to learn about any new merchandise.

Now that you’ve acquired a new customer, you can send them a series of emails to make them feel welcome, showcase other stuff in your store they might be interested in, and help them understand when and how they might expect to hear from you in the future.

This refers to how you can get customers to regularly use your product or service, shop at your store, or read your content. Consider using email, social media, in-product messages, and personalization to make your customers’ experience more enjoyable.

Make your customers so happy that they’ll recommend your brand to others. This is probably one of the best ways to get new customers.

Once you’ve established the phases of a customer journey, you can plan the touchpoints you’ll use to connect with customers at the right moments.

Advantages of a customer journey map

Customer journey maps are useful marketing tools that can help you better understand your target audience and use that information to lead them down a path to conversion. All businesses can benefit from having a customer journey map, so whether you’re doing B2B marketing or building an e-commerce brand, it’s good to know how customers interact with your company.

A few other advantages of a customer journey map include:

• Understand consumer behavior . Understanding how users interact with your brand can help you comprehend their motivations.
• Identify touchpoints . Identifying the different interactions customers have with your brand before making a purchase can help you create more effective marketing campaigns.
• Support your marketing efforts . Learning as much as you can about your customers can improve marketing performance by allowing you to shorten the customer journey and increase conversions.
• Improve the customer experience . With customer data, you can improve customers' experiences with your brand, making them more likely to convert.
• Predict how customers will behave . Customer journey maps help you predict what customers will do next, allowing you to market to them no matter where they are in the funnel.
• Boost customer loyalty and engagement . By creating a path for your customers and providing great experiences, you can keep customers coming back for more. This makes customer journey mapping an essential customer retention strategy .

How to build a customer journey map

Building a customer journey map is easy, and it’s an effective way to learn more about your customers.

To build your own customer journey map, follow the steps below.

• Determine your business goals . You’ll need to determine your goals before establishing the touchpoints for your customer journey map. Goals can include converting more qualified leads into customers, increasing brand awareness, and so on.
• Understand your customers . Gather data on your customers to learn about their behavior and uncover new ways to market to them.
• List opportunities for communication . Consider all the different ways you can communicate with customers, including social media and email marketing.
• Test your customer journey . Pretend you’re the customer and test your journey to see how you can make it easy for customers to convert after their initial touchpoint with your business.
• Refine customer journey map if necessary . Refine your customer journey map when there are changes to your business. Breaking down the map into stages can help you meet your customers’ needs no matter where they are in their journeys.

How does marketing automation benefit the customer journey?

Marketing automation uses technologies that eliminate the need for you to send one-off emails or set up other marketing efforts every time you need to connect with customers. Basically, you set up an automation to execute your strategy the way you want, and it’ll do the marketing work for you.

Since automations are usually powered by if-then logic, they adapt to match the individual paths your customers take.

For example, before making a purchase people might read your website, consider what product they want, sleep on it, and eventually go back to buy. This wandering route is different for everyone. With automation, you can automatically send an email during the consideration stage of their journey, reminding them of the products they were interested in and encouraging them to finalize the purchase.

Here are a few ways automation can help you build lasting relationships by connecting with customers at each step of their journey with your business.

Connect with new fans

When someone expresses interest in what you have to offer and enters their email address in a subscriber pop-up form on your site, you can send them a welcome email to introduce yourself—and give them a reason to stick around. You can also provide information about how often they’ll receive marketing correspondence from your business.

Sell more stuff

When that contact starts to move toward a purchase, such as putting something in their cart without checking out, you can set it up so they receive an abandoned cart email from you.

Meanwhile, you can send occasional reminders to prospects that haven't interacted with you in a while. Retargeting ads and emails, for example, remind people about the great stuff they saw on your site. Chances are, at least some of them are still interested and will take action if you reach out.

Cultivates a trusting 2-way relationship

When you deliver relevant content to your customers , you show them that you care about them. The more you target your communications, the more they will trust you to keep providing high-quality products or services . You can even use automation to send coupons or other discounts to people that meet certain criteria for loyalty or spending.

Increase open and click rates

Build automated workflows to send relevant messages based on how your customers interact with your brand.

What is a Customer Journey in Mailchimp?

In Mailchimp, a Customer Journey is a marketing automation tool that lets you visually map dynamic, automated marketing paths for your customers. Depending on the phases you want customers to pass through—discovery, acquisition, retention, etc.—you can choose the starting points and other unique interactions to engage your customers every step of the way.

Any marketing or purchasing paths that you want to use your data to create can be mapped out with the Customer Journey Builder, which allows you to target specific users and focus on what will get them to move from one point to another.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at the welcome journey that people will enter when they sign up to receive your marketing. You’re probably familiar with welcome emails and have heard us talk about their value a bunch. The concept of a welcome journey is the same: greeting new contacts and introducing them to your brand.

A journey should include emails, but it also differs from an automated welcome email in 2 key ways:

• People don’t just trigger an email once they’ve met the criteria of your starting points. They’re added to and start a path that’s customized for them.
• You can plan what actions you want new customers to take throughout this journey and where you want them to end up.

Adding the right mix of rules and actions—including branching points and email—to a journey map can put new subscribers on the path to becoming loyal users and customers. Branching points help make the journeys you build for your customers more dynamic and adaptable, taking customers down If/Else paths based on specific behaviors.

You can also use a Customer Journey to tag new contacts based on insights that are important to your business. This will allow you to track customer interests and send more relevant marketing content later.

Ways to use automated Customer Journeys

Of course your needs for setting up automated Customer Journeys will vary based on how your business functions and scales, but there are a few key workflows that can help any small business build and maintain relationships with their customers.

Create Customer Journeys to:

Greet new customers & introduce your brand

First, you need to onboard new people who start following your brand. A great first impression is key to establishing a long-lasting relationship. Begin with an email that thanks people for signing up and provides the information they need to know. Show customers you care about getting to know them by sending a survey to discover what they’re interested in, so you can customize your marketing to fit their needs. You can also use this journey to measure how often your contacts want to hear from you and when they’re most likely to engage.

Reunite shoppers with their carts

Research shows that 69% of e-commerce shoppers abandon their carts before checking out. If you don’t have an abandoned cart automation setup, you’re missing out on a lot of easy sales. Shoppers who have left a cart have already expressed interest in your brand; they just need a nudge back to your store to finish buying. With a journey, not only can you set up an automated email to send when someone abandons a shopping cart, but you can use the flow to highlight other stuff you sell and keep customers coming back.

Re-engage customers who have lost interest

There are several ways you can win back inactive customers—it just depends on what type of engagement is most important for your business goals. You can set up a journey that customers will start when a specific amount of time has passed since they last bought something from your store, or you can target customers who haven’t opened any of your last 5 email campaigns. From there, you can decide what interactions will get these customers to fall in love with your brand again.

Ask for product reviews or feedback on your service

When someone buys a product, that’s the perfect time to reach out and make a connection. Get their thoughts on the order and shipping process. Check in on how they’re liking their purchase. And don’t forget to include a coupon for other stuff in your store they’re sure to love.

Organize your contacts based on their interests and levels of engagement

Use a Customer Journey to help manage your audience based on insights that are important to your business. Make behind-the-scenes changes—like adding and removing tags—that'll help you send relevant messages and create more meaningful interactions.

Find success with customer journeys

Customer journeys are an important marketing tool to communicate effectively with your customers and lead them down a path to conversion. The easier your customer journey is to follow, and the more touch points you take advantage of, the better experience you can provide. Even after your customers have converted, deliver ongoing support and communication to retain them and promote brand loyalty.

Visualizing your customer journey is simple with Mailchimp. Using our Customer Journey Builder , you can start to learn more about your customers’ behavior and write a sales email that converts no matter where they are in the buying process.

Lead Generation

B2b lead generation: customer journey map.

Business to business lead generation is one of the most essential parts of the sales cycle. Utilizing all resources at your disposal will help generate and convert your leads into sales. A crucial part of successful lead generation is the customer journey map.

Not only will customer journey mapping help contribute to successful lead management, but it will also help to improve your overall customer experience. B2B companies rely on customer experience for conversion rates. These strategies will help increase these rates, as well as contribute to customer satisfaction.

Overall, the successful implementation of these strategies and maps will create strong relationships with customers. This will also improve your marketing focus and accomplish your business goals. This article will cover the best practices for B2B lead generation.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

Table of Contents

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Distinguishing Between B2B and B2C Customers

There are two major types of business models, Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C). While both of these are centered around sales, each includes different customer journey stages.

In short, B2C companies sell directly to consumers, while B2B companies sell to other businesses. While it seems like B2C would involve more direct interaction with people, B2B sales often involve multiple people throughout the sales cycle. It is important to remember you are not selling to the company, but rather the people who work there.Because of these differences, the customer journey maps for B2B and B2C businesses follow separate outlines. For B2B companies, the buying cycle can take 1-3 months and 80% of these cycles include up to six people.

The Basics of a Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer cycle from start to finish. This strategy takes into account the entirety of a customer, including pains, emotional needs, and actions. By mapping out all of these factors, B2B companies are able to better understand their target demographic and create meaningful relationships with their leads.

The ideal customer journey map looks at the complete lifecycle from the introduction to any post-sale support services, including the engagement that occurs in between. While each one will look different for unique leads, there are a few customer journey mapping tools all will include based on universal experiences.

Common Elements for Customer Journey Maps

Persona: A profile of the brand and its client groups.

Touchpoints: All possible client interactions with your brand. These may include advertising, social media, direct communication, and purchases.

Moments of truth: Information regarding which touchpoints impact a customer.

Performance Indicators: Anything that evaluates how customers are responding to touchpoints.

Visuals: Typically, this is either a linear or cyclical illustration of the customer cycle.

Creating The Customer Journey Map

Once you understand the concept of the map, you can begin creating for each of your customers. Begin with the prep work and go through the process one step at a time. These maps won’t seem like a huge undertaking if you have a plan of attack.

Set your objective. Determine what you want to get out of the map to make sure you are including the correct information. Clear objectives will guarantee that the map is beneficial to your sales process.

Next, define the persona and determine the touchpoints. These parts will be crucial in generating your B2B leads. Finish mapping by identifying the performance indicators. Choose ways to best identify how the customer is interacting with your brand and learn about creating sales urgency .

What is Lead Management?

Before you can start successfully using your customer journey maps, understanding lead management will ensure the conversion of leads to sales. Simply put, lead management is the process of managing throughout the buying journey.

The Lead Management Cycle

Lead management goes through five major steps to help create conversions.

The Lead capture: determining leads and preparing them for the cycle

Lead qualification: scoring the lead to find out how sales-ready it is

The Lead nurturing: helping push leads from expressing interest to purchasing

Lead routing: handing off the leads that are sales-ready

Lead reporting: closing the gap between marketing and sales

Important Elements of B2B Lead Management

B2B sales involve a lot of moving parts. It is important to keep track of everything in the beginning stages to have a high conversion rate later on in the cycle.

Lead management involves identifying the people in the process, including your internal team and the contacts of your leads. Determine your internal processes as well. Make sure to decide upon a centralized lead qualification process, as well as have passive marketing content ready for the early stages.Avoid the common mistakes where lead management can fall short. For example, don’t pass off qualified leads unless they meet all of the agreed-upon criteria. Use cross-marketing for all of your lead nurturing. Make sure to view your lead management through the customer lens.

Using Your Customer Journey Maps

Creating the map is the first step to making the most out of this sales strategy. Ideally, you will have a customer journey map for each lead. The main objective of this strategy is to properly nurture your leads to convert into sales, as well as improve the overall customer experience.

These should help with introductions, creating brand awareness, and successful education of your product to leads.

Introduction to Your Lead and Starting a Conversation

Using your gathered information, plan the introduction of your brand to the lead. This is the first part of your customer’s journey with your brand, and first impressions really matter. Determine the best first touch and be sure to document all of the following interactions.

From this point, the goal will be to build your relationship while allowing passive content (social media and paid advertising) to further educate the lead about your product.

This tactic successfully combines your customer journey map with your brand’s marketing strategy. It’s been found that laying out this plan can increase marketing to sales conversions by 25% .

Getting to Know Your Lead

Once the conversation has begun, the customer journey map plays a role in better understanding the target customer. The data collected by your map provides crucial insights into how your customer behaves and the motivations behind their actions.

To move from a lead to a qualified lead, multiple touches must happen. By being able to place these touchpoints into a specific section on the map, you can begin to see underlying needs and patterns within the customer.

This data is important for providing an excellent customer service experience. Imagine, you’re able to have an in-depth understanding of your lead’s actions. This allows you to predict their movements, choose the best times to reach out, and provide solutions to problems for them.

Customer satisfaction is key to having repeat purchases. Being able to identify the needs of a lead and provide solutions with your product will help create a meaningful relationship that benefits both sides.

Collecting Data and Measuring Conversions

Customer journey maps do more than just provide the framework for your actions. These plans allow you to collect data and analyze it to continually improve your sales process.

These maps allow you to track the channels incoming leads originate in. By having this information, your company is able to see which tactics are worth focusing on and which areas need improvement to create engagement.

Data also allows you to trace the path each lead took before converting to a qualified lead. You will be able to see if they responded to a LinkedIn message, interacted with an Instagram post, or visited your website through a search.

By including these paths as they occur in your map, you can begin to understand the customer and utilize this information to best generate new leads . Keeping track of this data allows you to keep an eye on changing trends, so you can shift your focus to channels that provide the most engagement.

Generating New Leads and Discovering Generation Channels

A completed customer journey map provides a clear view of all the possible generation channels. Usually, undiscovered generation channels may get passed over or lumped together with existing ones. By having this map, you won’t miss any opportunities to generate leads.

Along with discovering new channels, these maps may help you generate new leads by providing new touches. All of this can be measured through your data, so you can fully understand what is the best way to create conversions and grow your customer base.

The Importance of the Customer Journey Map

Overall, this strategy should play a prominent role in B2B sales, account based selling , and marketing strategy. From the initial prep work and research of a lead to closing the deal, this map will be there to guide and collect data.Start as soon as you capture a lead, and continue using the map throughout the customer journey stages. This will ensure that your leads are following the path to conversion.

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Lead Generation 101: Each Stage of the Customer Journey

Lead generation is a no-brainer for companies like you who are continuously scaling your reach. After all, you are a business; generating leads means more clients and customers. 

But what exactly is lead generation? And how do you generate qualified leads with a high lifetime value?  

By adopting a customer-centric approach and employing dynamic strategies that transform your ideal target audience into high-quality leads that convert repeatedly. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, a robust lead generation strategy is essential, and sometimes it’s best to go back to the basics.

If you need help understanding the customer journey cycle, look no further. After reading today’s blog post, you will understand each stage of the customer journey so you can spark interest, collect data, nurture leads , convert, engage, rinse, and repeat.

Each Phase of the Traditional Marketing Journey

The traditional sales funnel is a systematic approach to generating leads. It includes three phases and stops shortly after a lead converts. But before creating a customer journey, have an ICP (ideal customer profile) in place to ensure your funnel attracts and retains as many high-quality leads as possible. 

1. Top of the Funnel | TOFU | ATTRACT | exploration and education 

This is the awareness and attraction phase of the customer journey. You want to cast a wide net in this stage, but you also want to ensure that the fruits of your labor generate leads that enter and continue down the funnel. Demand generation sparks interest by introducing prospects to the top of the funnel through content like social media posts, landing pages, blogs, and videos. Lean into paid search and strengthen your SEO with broad match keywords to make your products, goods, or services easy to find.

2. Middle Funnel | MOFU | NURTURE | decision making

Not all leads who enter the funnel are ready to convert. In fact, most leads need a little TLC (tender love and care) before making a decision. Nurture your leads through personalized content that makes their decision-making easier. At this stage, you need to analyze which leads have higher scores and are more likely to convert. Consider automating your lead scoring with tech like Adlucent Index™ and tap into automation like Performance Max to process first-party data and seamlessly segment your content to each lead.

3. Lower Funnel | LOFU | CONVERT | purchase

You’ve done the hard work of attracting prospects, creating leads, and nurturing them; now they are ready to convert. Make the buying journey as easy as possible for leads and analyze what worked and what didn’t so that you have a feedback loop that can continuously inform your lead-generation efforts.

What is the Bow Tie Funnel?

While there is no denying that companies have a bottom line, it’s vital to remember that leads are humans who don’t like being just another number. And while tempting to pat yourself on the back and call it done, dropping converted leads from your efforts is a big mistake.

That’s why the bow tie funnel, with its human-centered approach, might be worth your while. When you turn the traditional marketing funnel on its side and extend the customer journey, you form the bow-tie funnel. A funnel that is customer-centric, omnichannel, nonlinear, and extends beyond the first point of purchase – ensuring qualified leads with a high lifetime value.

But how do brands take advantage of new buyer relationships and continue to nurture them? Through constant iteration, automation, and segmentation.

How do I Extend the Life Time Value of Leads?

Retention is just as important as lead generation. If done correctly, leads can re-enter the funnel on an endless loop creating a happy symbiotic relationship between consumers and businesses. So make sure to lean into these three phases of the customer journey after conversion to extend the lifetime value of your leads:

After a customer makes a purchase, they enter the adopt stage. To solidify their decision, businesses can send a post-purchase survey to thank them for their purchase and gather insights on their decision-making process. A thank you email can also be sent to reaffirm their choice and provide additional value.

Customers who remain loyal to a brand enter the loyalty stage. Businesses can tailor offers that resonate with loyal customers and encourage them to “level up.” For instance, if a customer purchased an entry-level subscription service, put them in an email nurture campaign that encourages them to level up.

3. ADVOCATE

Advocates are highly valuable for businesses as they become word-of-mouth marketers for the brand. At this stage, businesses should continue providing value to their customers to maintain a positive relationship. Sharing client stories and testimonials can also help in building trust with potential leads. By nurturing advocates, businesses can ensure a steady stream of leads entering the funnel through referrals.

If you search the web for “marketing funnel,” “lead generation funnel,” “customer journey,” etc., you will find infinite iterations of the customer journey. If you are reading this blog, there is no doubt you see the value in testing, tweaking, and adjusting your funnel according to your brand’s KPIs and business goals. And, odds are, your lead generation journey might look slightly different from ours and others – which is exactly how it should be.

Your brand has unique customers with unique acquisition challenges. And who knows their audience better than you? At Adlucent, we get to know our clients’ needs to help create custom-tailored solutions so you can tap into complex data and generate leads with high lifetime value. A true combination of human ingenuity and machine learning. Interesting in partnering with us? Reach out today .

Eden Pierson

Eden is a content manager with a wide range of experience in the marketing space. From B2B advertising, branding, and retail marketing, she is passionate about curating content that resonates with target audiences.

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• Latest Contact Center Technology Trends 

Contact center trends are constantly evolving. Customers crave a seamless omnichannel experience and consistent service across phone, email, chat, and social media.  

They expect a personalized journey at every touchpoint. But a surprising gap persists: a recent study revealed that overall customer satisfaction hovers around 78% , mirroring customer expectations.  

This suggests that even with omnichannel support, businesses are missing the mark. Let’s explore the trends that are transforming how businesses connect with customers and exceed expectations, driving loyalty and satisfaction. 

Top 6 Contact Center Technology Trends Reshaping the Service Industry 

Here are the latest trends and technologies contact centers are actively adopting. 

1. Omnichannel communication 

Customers today expect to connect with businesses on their preferred channels – phone calls, emails, live chat, social media, and even messaging apps.  Omnichannel contact centers provide a seamless experience regardless of the chosen channel.  

For instance, Emirates, Dubai’s leading airline, leverages an omnichannel approach to allow customers to seamlessly switch between a live chat with a customer service agent to request a flight change through their mobile app . 

Omnichannel platforms offer a centralized view of all customer interactions. This allows agents to access customer history and relevant information quickly, enabling them to resolve inquiries faster and more efficiently. It’s a significant differentiator, attracting and retaining customers in a crowded marketplace. 

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

Did you know that 73% of buyers prefer live chat to ask questions and maintain a communication channel? AI is revolutionizing contact centers by automating tasks, enhancing self-service capabilities, and providing real-time support. 

Chatbots in live chat can handle basic inquiries, answer frequently asked questions, and even schedule appointments, freeing up agents for more complex interactions. Below is an example of the chatbots used by Amazon to streamline communications: 

Chatbots can greet customers by name, tailor responses to specific needs, and even suggest relevant products or services based on past purchase history. Additionally, AI can be used to proactively reach out to customers with solutions before issues arise, boosting satisfaction and loyalty. 

It can act as a valuable support tool, providing agents with real-time information, suggesting knowledge base articles, and even recommending upselling or cross-selling opportunities. Additionally, AI can be used to analyze agent performance and identify areas for training and development, ultimately leading to a more skilled and efficient workforce.

3. The rise of emotion AI 

Beyond streamlining tasks, a unique trend within AI is the rise of Emotion AI. This technology analyzes customer sentiment through voice intonation and text analysis. 

This helps agents to identify frustrated or confused customers and tailor their communication style to de-escalate situations and provide a more empathetic experience. It can analyze voice intonations, speech patterns, and even written text to identify emotions like frustration, anger, confusion, or satisfaction. 

This valuable data can then be used to develop targeted training programs and coaching initiatives, ultimately leading to a more skilled and emotionally intelligent workforce. By understanding customer emotions, agents can provide a more personalized and empathetic experience. 

As the technology continues to develop, we can expect even more sophisticated applications, potentially allowing for real-time emotional sentiment analysis across all communication channels, from phone calls to chat interactions. 

4. Cloud-based solutions

Cloud technology offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for contact centers. Businesses can easily scale their operations up or down based on demand and access cutting-edge technology without significant upfront investments. This can be particularly beneficial for growing businesses in the UAE, like a young FinTech startup, that need a scalable and adaptable contact center solution. 

Additionally, cloud providers handle system maintenance and updates, freeing up your IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. This is particularly beneficial for smaller businesses with limited IT resources. Cloud-based contact centers are growing massively and are estimated to reach a market size of  $82.43 billion by 2030 . 

Many cloud-based contact center solutions offer seamless integration with existing CRM,  marketing automation , and business intelligence tools. This centralized data empowers agents with a holistic view of the customer, enabling them to deliver more personalized and efficient service. 

5. Customer journey analytics 

By tracking customer interactions across all touchpoints, businesses gain valuable insights into the customer journey. This data can be used to identify pain points, optimize processes, and personalize future interactions for a more engaging customer experience . 

For instance,  Bose was quick to catch up with innovation and yielded a 34% increase in customer satisfaction (Y-O-Y). Below is an overview of what they changed and how it helped: 

By analyzing past interactions and customer data, businesses can tailor future interactions to individual needs. This involves using customer names in greetings, recommending relevant products or services based on purchase history, or proactively reaching out to address potential issues before they arise. 

6. The rise of the collaborative contact center 

Modern contact centers break down departmental silos and foster collaboration between agents and other departments within a business. This ensures that customer inquiries are handled efficiently and effectively, regardless of the specific issue.  

The collaborative approach ensures customers receive efficient and effective resolutions to their inquiries, regardless of their complexity or the specific department involved. It also ensures everyone has access to the most up-to-date information and resources, allowing them to provide consistent and accurate support to customers. 

Why Should You Care About Contact Center Tech Trends?

The contact center is often the frontline of your customer experience. It’s where customer satisfaction is forged, brand loyalty is built, and purchasing decisions can be swayed. In today’s competitive landscape, where customer experience reigns supreme, embracing the latest contact center technology trends isn’t just an option – it’s a necessity.  

Here’s how knowing these trends can benefit your business: 

1. Enhanced customer satisfaction 

Implementing the latest innovations, such as conversational AI and automation software, can streamline communication, personalize interactions, and offer a seamless omnichannel experience.  

This translates to happier customers, higher retention rates, and a stronger brand reputation. 

2. Improved agent efficiency and productivity 

New technologies like chatbots and live chat software can streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and equip agents with the resources they need to resolve issues faster and more efficiently. 

This frees up valuable time for agents to focus on complex inquiries and provide a more personalized touch. 

3. Reduced operational costs 

Many contact center trends revolve around automation and streamlining processes. 

Minimizing the need for manual tasks and human error can lead to significant cost savings. Gartner has predicted that by 2026, agent interactions will be automated, with one in every 10 agents using AI . 

4. Data-driven decision making 

Advanced analytics tools provide valuable insights into customer behavior, identify areas for improvement, and track the success of your customer service initiatives. This empowers you to make data-driven decisions that optimize your contact center operations and enhance the overall customer experience. 

5. Competitive advantage 

By staying at the forefront of contact center technology, you gain a significant edge over competitors who are slow to adapt. This allows you to deliver a superior customer experience that fosters loyalty and drives business growth. 

Watch this webinar to learn how customer experiences can be enhanced with the use of technology and AI-based software. 

Conclusion-Investing in Your Contact Center’s Future 

By staying updated on the latest contact center technology trends and implementing the right solutions, you can transform your customer service operations. This will not only lead to happier customers but also increase brand loyalty and business growth. 

Ready to take your contact center to the next level? Explore solutions in our cloud-based contact center platform- LeadSquared , which offers robust features like omnichannel support, AI-powered tools, and comprehensive analytics. Get a demo today! 

Nidhi is a content writer/editor at LeadSquared. She works closely with sales professionals and senior management to bring their outlook into her write-ups. Connect with her on LinkedIn or write to her at [email protected].

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11 episodes

Welcome to Epochal Growth, the podcast dedicated to transforming the way we lead by embodying the change we seek. Embracing the belief that we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for, our mission is to empower leaders to create impactful and lasting transformations in their organizations. Hosted by industry expert Sarah Caminiti, each episode brings together visionary leaders and change-makers to explore the profound impact of inclusive and intentional leadership. Through engaging conversations and insightful discussions, we reveal how these approaches can revolutionize businesses and drive innovation. At Epochal Growth, we are passionate about showcasing the transformative power of intentional actions and inclusive practices. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur, an aspiring leader, or someone passionate about business transformation, our podcast provides valuable insights and practical advice to help you lead differently and inspire growth. Join us on this journey to unlock the potential for transformative business success. Tune in to Epochal Growth and start being the change you seek in leadership.

Epochal Growth | Empowering Leaders to Create Transformative Change Sarah Caminiti

• 5.0 • 1 Rating
• JUL 11, 2024

Stepping Back and Stepping Up with Jenn Southan

When you think of your career journey, does it look anything like you thought it would 5, 10, even 20 years ago? Get ready to be inspired by the remarkable journey of Jenn Southan, Senior Director of Customer Support at Olo, in her podcast debut. Jenn takes us through her transformative five-year tenure at Olo, marked by navigating the tumultuous waters of a global pandemic, the excitement of a company going public, and the complexities of multiple acquisitions. Discover how she transiti...

• JUL 3, 2024

Growth Sparker with Ricardo Araújo

How do cultural differences and individual motivations shape our impact in a global and remote work environment? In Episode 10 of Epochal Growth, host Sarah Caminiti sits down with Ricardo Araújo to explore these themes and more. Ricardo shares his journey of launching a coding course to tackle unemployment in Portugal, resulting in thousands of new jobs. The conversation highlights the importance of creating safe spaces, empowering others, and thinking big to make a positive difference.Ricar...

• JUL 1, 2024

The Art of Being Dead Inside Part 2 with Stephanie Lundberg

Can anger be useful? In Part 2 of "The Art of Being Dead Inside," host Sarah Caminiti and Stephanie Lundberg continue to explore why the emotions CX leaders feel are so intense an what companies are doing to set themselves apart.Sarah and Stephanie discuss the unique challenges support professionals face, including navigating complex situations and bridging gaps between departments. They emphasize the need for organizations to value and listen to support professionals' insights, and the frust...

• JUN 25, 2024

The Art of Being Dead Inside, part one, with Stephanie Lundberg

What happens when vulnerability and connection take center stage in customer support? In Episode 8 of Epochal Growth, host Sarah Caminiti sits down with Stephanie Lundberg, founder of The Support Human newsletter and Bad Job Bingo, to discuss her journey into customer support and the critical role of empathy in the industry. Stephanie shares insights into the emotional challenges of support work, highlighting the need for professionals to be attuned to the emotional states of both customers a...

• JUN 18, 2024

Advocating for Success with Srajan Bhagat

Are you mindful of the impact your choices have on your business and team? In Episode 7 of Epochal Growth, "Advocating for Success," host Sarah Caminiti engages with Srajan Bhagat to explore how being thoughtful about what we put into the world can transform business dynamics. They discuss the power of conscious decision-making, the significance of advocating for what’s right, and how asking the tough questions, even when the answers aren't what we hoped for, can profoundly shape company cult...

• 1 hr 12 min
• JUN 12, 2024

Customer-Centricity Through Journey Mapping with Ben McCormack

How can customer journey mapping transform your business strategy? In Episode 6 of Epochal Growth, host Sarah Caminiti sits down with Ben McCormack, currently a fractional executive at Boldr and a seasoned customer experience professional. Ben and Sarah take a closer look at the world of customer journey mapping and its critical role in driving customer-centricity within organizations.Ben shares the possibilities when you focus on cross-functional collaboration and aligning teams around...

• © 2024 Epochal Growth

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