What is a Customer Journey Map? [Free Customer Journey Map Template Added]

Understanding Why to Create a Customer Journey Map

More than just attracting new customers, it’s crucial to know what’s making them leave your business and go somewhere else. It’s a question that keeps business leaders up at night, especially when faced with statistics like the recent survey showing that around 67% of online customers abandoned their cart in 2025. This is where a Customer Journey Map (CJM) becomes an invaluable tool.

A CJM is a powerful visual representation of your customer’s experience, from the first interaction to their last, revealing the hidden reasons behind their decisions. In this blog post, we’ll dive into what a CJM is, explore why it’s so critical for building a better business, and walk you through the practical steps to create your very own.

What is Customer Journey Map? How it Improve Customer Success?

You’ve heard about the importance of understanding your customers, but how do you actually do it?

A Customer Journey Map (CJM) is your secret weapon. It’s not just a fancy chart; it’s a visual story that puts you directly in your customer’s shoes. This map breaks down their entire experience with your brand—from the moment they first discover you to their final purchase and beyond.

By detailing the key stages of their journey and every single touchpoint along the way, you can see exactly what they’re doing, thinking, and feeling. This powerful perspective helps you pinpoint frustrating pain points and uncover exciting opportunities, ultimately allowing you to create a smoother, more enjoyable experience that keeps them coming back for more.

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping Process

Creating a Customer Journey Map offers a multitude of benefits for a business. A recent Forbes survey found that companies using a customer journey map saw a 10% increase in customer lifetime value. Most importantly, mapping the customer journey fosters empathy and a deeper understanding of your customers by putting you in their shoes. This perspective helps in identifying and resolving customer pain points, leading to a much improved customer experience.

By having a single, unified view of the customer’s journey, teams across the organization, from marketing to sales and support, can better align their efforts and work towards a common goal, breaking down internal silos. Ultimately, this collaborative, customer-centric approach helps in building stronger relationships, which leads to increased customer loyalty and long-term retention, giving your business a significant competitive advantage.

What is Included in a Customer Journey Map

A Customer Journey Map is a living document, and its effectiveness depends on including the right information. It goes beyond a simple timeline, acting as a detailed blueprint of your customer’s experience. To create a truly insightful map, you need to populate it with key elements that capture the full story.

Customer Persona

This is the “who” of the journey—the specific target customer whose experience you’re mapping. A customer persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal customer. Focusing on a single persona ensures that your map remains specific and actionable, allowing you to tailor the journey to a particular segment’s needs and motivations.

Buyer Journey Stages

These are the chronological phases of the customer’s interaction, such as Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Post-Purchase. These stages represent the key milestones a customer passes through on their way to becoming a loyal advocate. By breaking the journey into distinct phases, you can analyze the customer’s experience at a high level and identify which stage needs the most attention.

Customer Touchpoints

These are every single moment of interaction with your brand, from social media ads and website visits to customer service calls and email newsletters. Touchpoints are the specific moments where a customer engages with your company. Documenting each one helps you see where friction might be occurring and provides concrete opportunities for improvement.

Actions, Thoughts, and Emotions

This is what the customer is doing, thinking, and feeling at each touchpoint. This is the heart of the Customer Journey Map, as it’s where you gain true empathy. By capturing not just their actions but also their internal state, you can better understand their motivations and frustrations, which is crucial for delivering a better experience.

Pain Points & Opportunities

These are the frustrations your customer encounters and the potential areas where you can improve their experience. These are the key insights you gain from the mapping process. Pinpointing where customers struggle (pain points) or feel delighted (opportunities) allows you to prioritize efforts that will have the biggest positive impact on their journey.

Type of Customer Journey Map With Free User Journey Map Examples

Not all customer journeys are the same, and neither are the maps that represent them. The type of map you choose depends on your specific goals and what part of the customer’s experience you want to focus on. Here are a few common types:

• Current State Map: This is the most common type and focuses on what your customer’s experience is like right now. It’s ideal for identifying existing pain points and opportunities for quick wins.
  • Example: Mapping a customer’s frustrating experience trying to book a hotel room online, from searching to finding the perfect room, but failing due to a confusing checkout process.
• Future State Map: This map visualizes what you want the customer’s journey to be like in the future. It’s a powerful tool for setting a vision and aligning teams around new goals and initiative
  • Example – Visualizing a seamless future hotel booking process where the customer can use a new mobile app to book a room in three easy clicks and check in automatically upon arrival.
• Day in the Life Map: This map goes beyond just the customer’s interaction with your company and looks at their entire day. This approach helps you understand their broader context, goals, and how your business fits into their life.
  • Example: A map that follows a busy parent from waking up, to getting their kids ready, to running errands, highlighting the exact moment they realize they need to order groceries and how a mobile app fits into that frantic schedule.
• Service Blueprint: While closely related to the CJM, a service blueprint goes deeper, mapping the internal processes and employee actions that support the customer’s experience. It’s useful for finding disconnects between the front-stage (customer-facing) and back-stage (internal) operations.
  • Example: A blueprint for a restaurant that maps a customer’s dining experience (front-stage) alongside the actions of the waiter, the chef, and the dishwasher (back-stage) to identify where communication breaks down.
• Ecosystem Map: This high-level map provides a broad overview of all the players, channels, and third-party services involved in a customer’s journey. It helps businesses understand the complete competitive landscape and external factors that influence customer decisions.
  • Example: A map for a car buyer that shows the relationships and touchpoints with not only the car dealership, but also the bank, the insurance company, a review website, and a government DMV office.
• Empathy Map: This map focuses on a single customer persona, diving deep into what they see, hear, think, and feel. It’s a powerful tool for building a profound understanding of your customers before you even begin the journey mapping process.
  • Example: A map for a potential software user that explores their thoughts about a competitor’s complex pricing, what they hear from colleagues about the need for a better solution, and their feelings of frustration and desire for a simpler tool.

How to Build a Customer Journey Map? 

Creating a Customer Journey Map is a process that requires research, collaboration, and a willingness to see things from your customer’s point of view. Follow these steps to build a map that provides actionable insights for your business.

Step 1: Define Your Scope and Goals. Before you start mapping, you need to know why you’re doing it. What specific problem are you trying to solve? Are you looking to improve the onboarding process, reduce customer support calls, or increase conversions? Having a clear goal ensures your map remains focused and provides a measurable outcome.

Step 2: Create a Customer Persona. The heart of a successful map is a single, well-defined customer persona. Gather data from interviews, surveys, and analytics to create a detailed profile that includes their demographics, goals, pain points, and motivations. The more specific your persona is, the more actionable your map will be.

Step 3: Identify All Touchpoints. Brainstorm every single point of interaction a customer has with your brand. Think about the entire customer lifecycle, from initial awareness (social media ads, blog posts) to post-purchase support (customer service emails, billing statements). This step helps you see the complete picture of your customer’s interactions.

Step 4: Map the Journey Stages. Define the key chronological phases of the customer’s journey. Common stages include Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Service/Retention, and Advocacy. These stages provide the structural backbone for your map, allowing you to organize touchpoints and insights into a logical flow.

Step 5: Fill in the Details. This is where your map comes to life. For each touchpoint within each stage, document the customer’s:

• Actions: What are they physically doing? (e.g., “visiting the website,” “clicking a link”).
• Thoughts: What are they thinking? (e.g., “Is this a good price?” “Can I trust this brand?”).
• Emotions: How are they feeling? (e.g., excited, frustrated, confused, satisfied). Use real quotes from customer interviews or feedback to make this section authentic.

Step 6: Identify Pain Points and Opportunities. Analyze the emotions and thoughts you’ve documented. Look for areas of frustration or confusion—these are your pain points. At the same time, identify moments of delight or positive feedback to uncover opportunities for improvement or to double down on what you’re doing right.

Step 7: Visualize and Share the Map. Create a visual representation of your map using a timeline, a spreadsheet, or a dedicated tool. The visual format makes the journey easy to understand for everyone. Share the map with all relevant teams to ensure a shared understanding and a collaborative approach to solving the identified problems.

Free Customer Journey Map Template 

While you can create a customer journey map from scratch, using a pre-made template can save you a significant amount of time and effort. Here are some of the best free options available to help you get started:

Simple Customer Journey Stages Template – SlideChef

Simplify complex customer journey with this clear & visually engaging Simple Customer Journey Stages Infographic Template. Easily customize to illustrate customer flow or step-by-step guide. The clean, modern design and gradient color scheme make it easy for your audience to follow along and understand the flow of information, ensuring your message is delivered effectively.

Customer Journey Map and a User Touchpoints – SlideKit

Customer Journey Map with Touchpoints is a pre-designed framework that helps you visually map every single interaction a customer has with your brand. It organizes these specific touchpoints—such as a social media ad, a website visit, or a customer service call—within the broader chronological stages of the customer’s journey. This type of template is particularly useful for identifying where friction or opportunities exist at a granular level.

Customer Journey Map by SlideBazaar

Its a  modern PowerPoint template designed to help companies understand and improve the overall customer experience. It features four illustrated phases—inquiry, comparison, purchase, and installation—that allow you to view the journey from the customer’s perspective. The template is versatile and can be used for a variety of presentations to highlight a high-level framework of your product’s features, quality, and sales strategy.

Journey Map Template

This is a versatile slide template with a zigzag, infographic design. It is structured in four steps, making it ideal for creating a high-level roadmap of a project, business plan, or customer journey. Its flexibility allows it to be used for various timeline or planning presentations.

Final Words of Why to Use Customer Journey Mapping

A Customer Journey Map is more than just a diagram; it’s a strategic tool for cultivating a customer-centric mindset across your entire organization. By visually capturing the key stages, touchpoints, and emotions of your customers, you can build a deeper sense of empathy and uncover the hidden truths behind their decisions.

It’s a powerful way to break down internal silos, align your teams, and ultimately, create an experience that not only attracts new customers but also turns them into loyal advocates. By following the steps outlined in this post, you can begin the journey of transforming your business from the customer’s point of view.