What is a Customer Journey Map?
This is the fourth part of our Illustrated Guide to Product Development series.
Part of product development is understanding your customers. Customer Journey Mapping is the process of looking at the end-to-end series of events that make up the entire story of before your product/service, using your product/service, and after.
These maps can become quite long and involve many actors or personas. They may not even be linear. By examining these different customer journeys, it is possible to identify key use cases that your product/service needs to do incredibly well. This should include anything that is currently causing a lot of customer grief (often for no good reason), and use cases that really improve the core product offering.
There may also be some terminology shifts between sales, marketing, UX, project manager, product managers and developers. No matter the scope of the story or your phrasing, if you are thinking like a customer, that is a good thing!
Customer Journey Mapping includes looking at both Epic User Stories and Agile User Stories. Epic and Agile User Stories can and should be separated out from the complete customer journey, and considered in greater detail. Epic User Stories encompass a fairly broad story; what is the process that a purchaser goes through to want, find, and purchase your product or service? Agile User Stories are more specific to the primary users of the product or service.
Sometimes Epic and Agile Users may be one in the same, but in many cases, particularly in the corporate environment, decision makers are not necessarily the ones most actively involved with the product or service.
As you begin to get a sense of your journeys, it may make sense to create a customer journey map of where things are today, and a second of where they should be in five years in a perfect world with infinite development resources.
Customer Journey Mapping for SoLoMoFoo
As we began to dig into SoLoMoFoo, we have decided to go with a Business to Business (B2B) business model (see Choosing the Right Go-To-Market Strategy) and have done a detailed persona (Personas for Product Development) for HR Hailey since she is the decision maker who will ultimately decide to purchase SoLoMoFoo.
We will now show a customer journey map starting with an underlying problem HR Hailey has - low company morale - how she learns of SoLoMoFoo, steps to deploy in her office, and ultimately the rewards she has for doing so.
For your first customer journey map, 6-8 cells is a good length, but as you become more familiar with the process, you can add more and more steps to the journey. For example, we could have included a few cells about how the company was informed of this new initiative, or how employees were notified. Start small; get the basic ideas out onto your storyboard and make adjustments and additions over time. You can always go back to make changes, save different iterations separately, and use different layouts for different purposes.
Pro Tip: Here at Storyboard That, we like to break up some of these larger stories into multiple storyboards with a max of 12 cells to make discussion easier and more focused.
Identifying a Key Use Case / User Story to Dig Deeper Into
From HR Hailey’s perspective, a simple email was sent to Ivan and everything was magically setup. When still trying to figure out if there is a viable business problem, being vague about specific processes is fine, and even encouraged. As we continue to dig deeper into the next layer of key problems to be solved, this particular Agile User Story is pretty important as it sets the direction of some of the technical requirements and business problems.
Although this story shows a fairly clever solution to enterprise deployment by leveraging Google Apps or Microsoft Exchange, the story still remains fairly high level and does not get into the technical details of how to make this happen. This is an important concept to show enough information about a solution for understanding, but not enough to force one and only one implementation.
Impacts on Marketing and Technology
At a high level, looking at the story from HR Hailey’s perspective shows a marketing strategy of going after HR Personnel via targeted marketing content. To be successful though, there needs to be a very easy way for HR Hailey the decision maker to have IT Ivan setup and deploy SoLoMoFoo, and then the company needs to embrace it. In the next article we will ask if these are good assumptions.
Digging Deeper
To best illustrate Customer Journey Maps and user stories, we used two stories of drastically different scope and complexity. This was intentional to show that some stories involve a tremendous amount of complexity, whereas others less so. The graph below is by no means exhaustive, but is meant to illustrate that customer journeys / user stories and their matching personas make sense for a wide range of complexity illustrated. We are also included the concept of marketing on-boarding since we feel it is so critical that marketing is a part of these conversations and thinking with a customer-centric lens. This process should be iterative, collaborative, and have various levels of specificity.
For more information, read our article dedicated to User Stories.
For certain trivial activities, like changing the color of a button or packaging, a storyboard is overkill.
Now It’s Your Turn!
Depending on the scope, complexity, and information you have for your customer journeys and user stories, a number of different starter templates might help you start a journey map. You can also simply create a storyboard if a blank canvas is more your style.
Continue SBT's Illustrated Guide to Product Development
Next up, Validating Your Business Assumptions.
About Aaron Sherman
Aaron Sherman (@AaronBenSherman) is the CEO and Creator of Storyboard That (www.storyboardthat.com) – the award-winning, world leader in digital storytelling technology. Aaron founded Storyboard That in 2012 after 10 years working the full gamut of product development roles (Developer, Project Manager, Product Owner, and Long Term Strategist) across three continents (North America, Europe and Australia) to fundamentally improve how products were internally prototyped and discussed.
Aaron has spoken as a guest Lecturer to MBA students at Northeastern, and with General Assembly leading workshops on Product Development.
How Tos about How to Create a Customer Journey Map
How can teachers use customer journey mapping to improve classroom experiences?
Apply customer journey mapping to your students’ learning paths to identify key moments, challenges, and successes. Visualizing these steps helps you spot gaps and opportunities for engagement, making your lessons more targeted and effective.
Gather input from students about their learning process.
Ask students to share their experiences, roadblocks, and what excites them during a unit or project. Use quick surveys or group discussions to get honest feedback and deepen your understanding of their journey.
Map out the typical student journey for a lesson or unit.
Create a visual map showing each step students take, from introduction to assessment. Include emotions, decisions, and actions to highlight where support or enrichment is most needed.
Identify pain points and moments of success.
Spot challenging steps where students get stuck or lose motivation, as well as successful moments that drive learning forward. Mark these on your journey map to focus improvements on what matters most.
Adjust your teaching strategies based on your map.
Use insights from the journey map to tweak lesson plans, provide targeted support, and celebrate wins. Iterate regularly for continuous improvement and a more student-centered classroom.
Frequently Asked Questions about How to Create a Customer Journey Map
What is a customer journey map in product development?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the entire experience a customer has with your product or service, from before purchase to after use. It helps teams understand key interactions and identify areas to improve for a better customer experience.
How do you create a customer journey map for a new product?
To create a customer journey map, start by identifying your personas, outlining the steps they take before, during, and after using your product, and mapping out pain points and key moments. Use templates or storyboards to visualize each stage, then refine your map as you learn more.
What is the difference between Epic User Stories and Agile User Stories?
Epic User Stories cover broad, overarching journeys such as the entire buying process, while Agile User Stories focus on specific tasks or features needed by primary users. Both help guide product development, but at different levels of detail.
Why is customer journey mapping important for marketing and technology teams?
Customer journey mapping helps marketing and technology teams align their strategies, identify decision makers, and ensure seamless onboarding and deployment. It encourages a customer-centric approach that improves engagement and product adoption.
What are some tips for K-12 teachers to start using customer journey maps in lessons?
K-12 teachers can introduce customer journey maps by using simple storyboards with 6–8 cells, focusing on student or user experiences. Start small, encourage iteration, and let students visualize steps, pain points, and solutions in a process they're familiar with.
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