Customer experience mapping is a strategic tool to visualize and understand the customer journey across various touchpoints with a brand or product. Designers use it to identify pain points and chances for improvement and to create seamless and delightful customer experiences. By mapping out the entire customer journey, designers can gain insights into customer needs, emotions and behaviors, and design products and services that better meet customer expectations.
CEO of Experience Dynamics, Frank Spillers explains techniques to help improve customer experience and a brand’s return on investment (ROI):
In an ever-evolving digital landscape, the concept of customer experience mapping (CX mapping) is a critical tool in user experience design (UX design). This strategic approach is something that helps brands and design team members to visualize every stage of the journey which customers take. And these stages start with users’ initial awareness and engagement—up to their post-purchase interactions as customers. When UX designers and researchers make a customer experience map, they can find key touchpoints and understand customer emotions. What’s more—and another vital point—is that they can find areas that need improvement in the overall customer experience.
Most importantly of all, a CX map is a visual aid to help design teams. By mapping customer experiences, designers have a critical instrument to help them clearly interpret customer behaviors and see what gives customers satisfaction. They can then direct their design efforts beyond it and optimize the overall journey for existing customers and potential customers. When designers minimize their brand’s customers’ pain points and succeed at delighting them, they can optimize positive experiences for many types of customers, boost the conversion rate—and boost the overall success of a brand.
These maps can chart many experiences.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
What are the Key Components of CX Mapping?
Customer personas: These are detailed representations of typical buyers. Designers can make these sorts of customer profiles from user research and data—which help brands understand and cater to their target audience.
Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains personas in this video:
Customer touchpoints: These are the various points of interaction between the customer and the brand—and they include websites, customer service and social media platforms.
Here are some examples of customer touchpoints: interaction spots with a brand rather than channels, which are planned points of interaction.
© Rosenfeld Media, Fair Use
Customer journey stages: This component breaks down the customer's path into distinct phases—phases like discovery, consideration, purchase and advocacy.
Emotional triggers and pain points: When designers identify emotional highs and lows throughout the customer journey, it’s something that helps them understand what drives customer decisions and loyalty.
Feedback loops: Continuous collection of customer feedback is crucial to help refine and adapt products or services so that the brand’s able to better meet customer needs.
A typical customer experience mapping example could involve something like a customer's interaction with an e-commerce website. A design team might create a customer experience map in design thinking, or another UX design process, to reflect this experience. The map would detail the customer's journey from the moment they learn about the site, through browsing products, then making a purchase, and post-purchase interactions such as customer support and follow-up emails. Designers would analyze each stage to understand customer thoughts, feelings, actions and the overall satisfaction level. They can then find areas to improve the customer experience.
This Starbucks Experience Map features customer touchpoints and interactions when customers visit a Starbucks store.
© Gleb Smolich, Fair Use
When designers work to create CX maps, they can achieve all of these:
Designers can really get a bird's eye view of the customer's journey—and find deep insights into user needs at every single touchpoint. This comprehensive perspective is a crucial thing for them to develop empathy with users—and it lets designers feel and understand the customer's experiences and challenges. When designers step into their users’ shoes, they can find out what the emotional highs and lows are like along the journey.
See why empathy is such a vital item to help shape user-friendly designs that resonate on a personal level:
The data that designers get—and collect—from customer experience mapping enables them to make informed design decisions. This strategic approach is something that brings key areas where interventions are necessary to the surface. Designers can prioritize modifications that really give a boost to user interaction. For instance, if a map reveals that customers feel frustrated during the checkout process—designers can streamline this step to lower the friction and bring abandonment rates down. This targeted improvement doesn’t just optimize the user experience—it boosts the overall effectiveness of the design, too.
Ultimately, the goal of any UX design initiative is to increase customer satisfaction levels—to the point of really delighting them. And if designers understand and see how to address customers’ specific needs and pain points, they’ll be able to craft experiences that aren’t merely enjoyable but highly effective in meeting user expectations, too. Improved customer satisfaction is a major plus—as it leads to increased loyalty, more positive reviews and higher retention rates. They’re all critical metrics for the success of any brand that offers a product or service.
It’s important to expand the lens beyond just the UX and consider the CX, and further marketplace realities.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
Designers also create customer journey maps in their design processes. The differences between customer experience mapping and customer journey mapping are in:
Customer experience mapping (CX mapping) and customer journey mapping (CJ mapping) often appear similar. Still, they do serve distinct roles. CX mapping offers a holistic view—one that encompasses all the possible interactions that a customer might have with a brand. This broad perspective is something that includes every touchpoint, channel and emotional experience—and it runs from initial awareness all the way to the loyalty phase. The aim of it is to give a comprehensive understanding of the entire customer journey—with a focus on emotional and qualitative aspects.
CJ mapping, though, is more goal-oriented and specific. It focuses on particular interactions that lead to a desired outcome, and it breaks the customer's interaction into stages—such as awareness, consideration, purchase and post-purchase. Designers examine each stage for specific goals the customer aims to achieve, which makes it crucial for understanding detailed customer experiences at each phase.
A fictitious customer journey for the persona Samantha Bonham through Rhythm Road’s learning service.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
The emotional engagement in CX mapping is profound—and that’s because it delves into the emotional highs and lows that customers experience at various touchpoints. One of these maps can find those moments of delight and frustration. What’s more, it sheds insights into how customers feel while they’re going through each interaction. This mapping is particularly concerned with emotional responses—and designers aim to enhance overall customer satisfaction levels, namely by addressing these emotional cues.
CJ mapping—conversely—while it considers emotions as being important, tends to focus more on the practical aspects of the customer's journey. It looks at how designers can really optimize each touchpoint to lead to the next, and make sure that there’s a seamless transition towards the desired outcome.
Designers use CX mapping so they can get a broad understanding of the customer's interactions with a brand. It’s beneficial for them to find strategic opportunities that run across the whole spectrum of customer interactions. And they often use such mapping to guide cross-departmental strategies that help with improvements to the overall business.
Meanwhile, the purpose of CJ mapping is—typically—to improve specific aspects in the customer journey. It’s particularly useful for organizations who want to refine their customer service approach at certain stages within the customer lifecycle. And, since it focuses on detailed stages of the customer journey, CJ mapping helps brands’ designers tailor their strategies—so they can make a more efficient, as well as enjoyable, experience for their customers. They can use customer journey map templates and other tools to chart how they go about optimizing such experiences.
Watch our video on customer journey mapping to understand more about this valuable practice:
Designers can do the following to make the best of this practice:
Identify the purpose: Designers should work out exactly why they’re creating the customer experience map. Are they doing it to improve a specific touchpoint? Or the entire customer journey?
Set objectives: Clearly outline what the aim to achieve is with the customer experience map.
Gather data: Designers should collect information about customer interactions across various touchpoints. These could be items like website visits, inquiries, purchases and customer service interactions.
Create personas: Develop customer personas to understand the different needs, motivations and pain points of the customers.
Plot touchpoints: Identify and plot all the touchpoints a customer encounters from initial awareness to post-purchase support.
Highlight emotions: Note down the emotions and expectations at each touchpoint.
Analyze data: Designers should look for patterns, pain points and areas where they can really improve the customer experience.
Prioritize issues: Find out which issues actually have the greatest impact on the customer experience.
Develop an action plan: Create a plan to address the identified issues—and make the most of the opportunities.
Monitor and iterate: Implement the improvements and continuously monitor the impact that these have on the customer experience—and then iterate the customer experience map, as needed.
Professor Alan Dix explains about emotions and usability as vital ingredients in design:
Here are some to try following:
If they’re going to create a comprehensive customer journey map, brands have got to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative methods—like interviews, field studies and diary studies—shed deep insights into customer emotions and behaviors. They show the “how” and the “why” behind customer interactions.
Quantitative methods—like surveys and website analytics—offer hard data, though, and that helps design teams understand patterns and trends across a broader customer base. It’s wise to combine these approaches—as it can ensure there’s a balanced view of the customer experience. Designers then can create more accurate and empathetic maps.
Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains the difference between qualitative and quantitative research:
A successful customer journey mapping process calls for cross-functional teams that include stakeholders to get involved. For example, these are individuals who could be from marketing, customer service and product development. This diversity is something that makes sure that the map really does reflect a holistic view of the customer experience. And teams should include individuals from various levels within the organization so they can harvest the various perspectives. A collaborative approach like this is something that helps to break down internal silos—and it promotes a unified strategy that’s focused on customer-centricity.
UX Designer and Author of Build Better Products and UX for Lean Startups, Laura Klein explains important points about cross-functional teams:
CX mapping isn’t a one-time task—it’s an ongoing process that needs regular updates for it to remain relevant. And, as customer behaviors and market conditions change, the map should evolve to reflect these changes. Brands should regularly revisit—and revise—maps, and it can help businesses stay truly in line with their customers’ needs and expectations.
This B2B customer experience map illustrates a great wealth of insights.
© Forrester Research, Fair Use
Here are some of the best software options and customer experience mapping tools to consider:
Adobe has got a comprehensive suite of tools for customer experience management—including analytics, personalization and campaign management. The Adobe Journey Optimizer is something that’s especially helpful.
© Adobe, Fair Use
Qualtrics is known for its experience management platform—and it includes tools for customer experience mapping, feedback collection and data analysis.
© Qualtrics, Fair Use
Smaply is a user-friendly tool that’s specifically designed for customer journey mapping, persona creation and stakeholder collaboration.
© Smaply, Fair Use
It's important—and crucially so—for designers and design teams to evaluate their specific business needs, budget and integration requirements. That will help them choose the best software for customer experience mapping. Each of these options offers unique features—such as customer experience map templates—to help get valuable insights into customers' journeys and how to improve overall satisfaction, and beyond.
Here are some common ones to avoid:
If brands skip the collection of customer feedback, they’ll likely miss out on the benefits of testing solutions with customers. This is an oversight that often results in products that really don’t meet customer needs effectively—and can end up translating into bad financial outcomes.
If brands get feedback too late in the development process, it’ll be hard to implement changes that are meaningful. And it’s something that can result in products that fail to satisfy customer expectations.
Without a cross-functional approach, different departments can end up working in isolation—and this can lead to a disjointed customer experience. So, it's crucial for all departments—even those that don’t directly interact with customers—to understand their impact on the customer journey.
Brands have got to remember to factor in accessibility—and inclusivity—in their design efforts, whatever insights CX mapping reveals.
Watch our video to understand more about the importance of accessibility in design:
What’s more, design teams should remember:
Businesses have got to balance the personalization of customer experiences with their obligation to protect individual data privacy—and it’s a vital point. So, it’s a must for them to understand laws like the General Data Protection Regulation. Brands face real challenges when they use analytics tools without infringing on consumer privacy. Each stage of the customer journey—going from awareness to purchase—has unique data privacy challenges. And the personalization that’s called for to enhance customer satisfaction mustn’t compromise privacy.
It’s vital for brands to integrate qualitative as well as quantitative research methods. Qualitative data—while it’s rich in detail—mightn’t always represent broader customer sentiments accurately. Quantitative data helps validate these insights and prioritize actions on the basis of what impacts customers in the greatest way. So, it’s a major plus for businesses to aim for a mixed-methods approach:
Qualitative insights: Get deep insights into customer emotions—and motivations—through interviews and field studies.
Quantitative validation: Use statistical tools to find patterns and trends that support qualitative findings.
Iterative process: Continuously refine the customer experience mapping by integrating new data and also revising the map to reflect current customer behaviors as well as customers’ preferences.
Overall, effective CX mapping helps light the pathway towards enhanced user understanding and better design decisions all around. What’s more, it lays the groundwork to build up and nuture enduring customer loyalty and advocacy. Designers can really leverage these CX maps to make interventions that are more targeted, impactful ones for their brands.
It’s a vital point to think about how these journeys aren’t merely routes that consumers travel on. They’re also the narratives that define customers’ relationships with brands—and ultimately contribute to a business's success in the digital age. When designers prove an ongoing commitment to how they understand and refine the customer experience, they can keep a sharp eye on the heart of any business—its customers—and devise the best ways to delight them.
Take our Journey Mapping course.
Watch our Master Class User Journey Mapping for Better UX with Kelly Jura, Vice-President, Brand & User Experience at ScreenPal.
Watch our Master Class How to Create Actionable User Journey Maps, also with Kelly Jura.
Consult 8 Questions CX leaders must answer before creating a customer experience map by Alaura Weaver for more details.
See How to Build Customer Experience Map + Examples by Frank Hamilton for further insights and examples.
Go to Customer Experience (CX) Mapping by Alex Cowan for further insights.
Read Experience Map vs Customer Journey Map: Choose the Right Tool for Your Business Needs by Eleken for additional important information.
See The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Customer Experience Map by Jenn Day
Consult Customer Experience Mapping: What Is It And How To Do It? by Andrew Broadbent for further information.
Try following these steps:
Define objectives: Find out what the goals for mapping the customer experience are—and be sure to understand what insights you want to collect.
Gather data: Collect data from various sources—like customer feedback, surveys, interviews and analytics. It’ll help you understand customer behaviors and pain points.
Identify customer personas: Create detailed profiles for your typical customers. They’ll guide the mapping process—as they represent different customer segments.
Outline customer stages: List the stages your customers go through—from awareness to purchase and beyond. This journey will show up the touchpoints where customers interact with your product or service.
Map touchpoints and emotions: For each stage, find touchpoints and note what emotions customers experience—you’ll see where customers face challenges or feel satisfied.
Analyze and identify gaps: Look at the map to find gaps or pain points in the customer journey. See where the experience falls short—and where you can make improvements.
Update and improve: Use the insights from the map to make improvements to the CX—and regularly update the map to reflect new data and changing customer behaviors.
And be sure to engage with real customers regularly to keep the map accurate and relevant. Use feedback loops so you can continually refine and enhance the customer experience.
Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains personas in this video:
Take our Journey Mapping course.
To map the customer experience, use these essential tools:
Customer journey mapping software: Tools like Smaply, UXPressia and Microsoft Visio are really helpful—and offer templates, drag-and-drop features and collaboration options.
Survey tools: Use platforms like SurveyMonkey or Typeform to collect customer feedback.
Analytics tools: Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics provide data on customer behavior—and you can analyze website traffic, user paths and conversion rates to get insights into the customer journey.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software: Systems like Salesforce or HubSpot help track customer interactions and get valuable data collected. CRM tools really offer a centralized view of customer information and history.
Heatmap tools: Tools like Hotjar or Crazy Egg show how users interact with your website. And they highlight areas where users click, scroll or drop off—so revealing potential issues.
User testing tools: Platforms like UserTesting and UsabilityHub let you conduct user tests and collect real-time feedback. They help spot usability issues and improve customer satisfaction.
Watch as UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains important points about usability testing:
Read our piece, Customer Journey Maps — Walking a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes.
Try following these steps:
Conduct surveys: Use tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform to ask customers about their experiences—and design questions that really focus on different stages of the customer journey.
Interview customers: Speak directly with customers to get deeper insights from them. Prepare open-ended questions—ones that encourage detailed responses about their interactions with your product or service.
Analyze customer feedback: Collect feedback from various channels—and these include social media, review sites and customer support—and look for common themes and issues that customers mention.
Use analytics tools: Use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior on your website—and analyze metrics like page views, bounce rates and conversion paths to understand how customers navigate your site.
Monitor social media: Track mentions of your brand on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram—and use social listening tools to get data together on customer sentiments and trends.
Review customer support records: Look at records from customer service interactions—and find frequent problems and areas where customers need more help.
Watch as Professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at University College London, Ann Blandford explains the benefits and potential drawbacks of user interviews:
Read our Topic Definition of User Research to understand more about this crucial activity.
A customer experience map includes these key components:
Customer personas: Create detailed profiles representing different customer segments. Each persona should include demographic information, behaviors, goals and pain points.
Customer stages: Outline the stages customers go through, from awareness to post-purchase. Common stages include discovery, consideration, purchase and loyalty.
Touchpoints: Find the points where customers actually interact with your product or service—these touchpoints are things that can include website visits, social media interactions, customer service calls and in-store visits.
Customer emotions: Note the emotions that customers feel at each touchpoint—understanding these is something that helps you spot areas for improvement—and opportunities to delight customers.
Pain points: Highlight challenges and obstacles that customers face during their journey—to address these can really improve the overall experience, and alleviate friction.
Actions and thoughts: Record what customers do—and what they think—at each stage—it’ll help you to understand their motivations and decision-making processes.
Opportunities: Identify areas where you can improve the customer experience—and use insights from the map to develop strategies to boost the customer satisfaction, and loyalty.
And be sure to regularly update the customer experience map so you reflect changes in customer behavior and feedback. Involve cross-functional teams to ensure a comprehensive view of the customer journey.
Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains personas in this video:
Take our Journey Mapping course.
Try these steps:
Make a customer journey map: Use tools like Smaply or UXPressia to outline the stages of the customer journey—and include key touchpoints where customers interact with your product or service.
Highlight pain points: Find and mark pain points at each touchpoint—and use different colors or icons to make these pain points really stand out, like red for major issues and yellow for minor ones.
Use heatmaps: Heatmap tools like Hotjar can help you visualize areas on your website where customers encounter problems—these maps show where users click, scroll or abandon the page, and so can expose potential issues.
Map emotions: Add a layer to your journey map so it captures customer emotions. Use emoticons or graphs to show how customers feel at each stage—and highlight frustration or dissatisfaction points.
Collect customer feedback: Visualize feedback from surveys, reviews and social media—and create word clouds or charts to show common themes and complaints; it’ll help you see recurring pain points clearly.
What’s more, be sure to regularly review and update visualizations so they show new data and feedback—and engage with customers directly to validate the pain points and make sure there’s accuracy.
Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains how emotion and usability are crucial factors in design:
Read our piece, Customer Journey Maps — Walking a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes.
Try following these steps:
Collect comprehensive data: Get data in from multiple sources—like surveys, interviews, analytics and customer feedback. And use diverse data to cover all aspects of the customer journey.
Involve cross-functional teams: Work with teams from different departments—such as marketing, sales, customer support and product development. Each team gives unique insights and helps create a complete map.
Validate with customers: Regularly check your map with actual customers. Conduct interviews and usability tests to confirm your findings—and make any necessary adjustments.
Update regularly: Keep your map up-to-date; incorporate new data and feedback. Customer behaviors and preferences change over time—so, be sure to revise your map periodically to maintain accuracy.
Use real-time data: Use tools that provide real-time data and analytics—it’ll ensure you really capture current trends and customer interactions accurately.
Focus on detail: Pay attention to the specific actions, emotions and pain points that customers experience at each touchpoint. Detailed mapping helps you spot subtle issues and chances for improvement.
And be sure to create a feedback loop—one where customers and employees can continuously provide insights. Use this loop to keep the map relevant and accurate.
UX Designer and Author of Build Better Products and UX for Lean Startups, Laura Klein explains important points about cross-functional teams:
Take our Journey Mapping course.
Try these steps:
Simplify the map: Create a clear and concise version of the map—and be sure to highlight key stages, touchpoints and pain points, without overwhelming details.
Use visuals: Use charts, diagrams and color coding to make the map visually appealing and easy to understand—and tools like Smaply and UXPressia can help you create professional visuals.
Tell a story: Frame the presentation as a narrative—explain the customer's journey step-by-step and be sure to emphasize their experiences and emotions at every stage.
Highlight key insights: Focus on the most important findings and insights—and show how these relate to business goals and customer satisfaction.
Provide actionable recommendations: Suggest specific actions—based on the map's insights—and explain how these can improve the customer experience and benefit the business.
Use real examples: Include quotes from customer feedback, case studies or examples—to make the data that much more relatable and impactful.
And be sure to engage stakeholders by encouraging questions and discussions—it’ll help them understand the map's value and motivates them to support recommended changes.
Take our Journey Mapping course.
Watch our Master Class Win Clients, Pitches & Approval: Present Your Designs Effectively with Todd Zaki Warfel, Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach.
Try these steps:
Find pain points: Use the map to spot areas where customers face challenges—and focus on resolving these pain points to make the overall experience better.
Enhance touchpoints: Look at each touchpoint in the customer journey—and find chances to make interactions smoother and more enjoyable.
Align teams: Share the customer experience map with all relevant teams—and be sure that everyone understands customer needs and aligns their efforts to address them.
Prioritize improvements: Use insights from the map to prioritize which changes will have the greatest impact—and focus on high-impact areas first.
Prototype solutions: Develop and test prototypes based on what identified needs and pain points turn up—and be sure to use feedback to refine these solutions.
Measure impact: After working the changes into the solution, track customer feedback and performance metrics. This data is something that can help you assess how effective your improvements are and make any further adjustments as needed.
And remember to update your customer experience map to keep it accurate—regularly. Continuously seek customer feedback to ensure your service design meets evolving needs.
Watch our Master Class Going from UX to Service Design with Frank Spillers, CEO at Experience Dynamics.
Watch as Frank Spillers explains ecosystem mapping in service design, a closely related topic to the customer experience mapping:
Try these steps:
Identify key stages: Break down the customer journey into major stages like awareness, consideration, purchase and post-purchase—and focus on critical touchpoints within these stages.
Analyze impact: Determine which touchpoints have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and business goals—and use data from customer feedback, surveys and analytics to find high-impact touchpoints.
Assess pain points: Prioritize those touchpoints where customers face the most challenges—resolve these pain points and it can lead to substantial improvements in the overall experience.
Evaluate frequency: Think about how often customers interact with each touchpoint—and frequently used touchpoints should get more attention since they affect more customers.
Align with business goals: Make sure that prioritized touchpoints are in line with your business objectives—and focus on touchpoints that drive customer loyalty, increase revenue or boost the brand’s reputation.
Involve stakeholders: Get cross-functional teams involved in the prioritization process—and collect insights from different departments to make sure there’s a comprehensive view.
And make sure you review and update your prioritization based on new data and customer feedback—regularly. This ensures your efforts remain aligned with evolving customer needs.
Read our piece, Customer Journey Maps — Walking a Mile in Your Customer’s Shoes.
Watch as UX Designer and Author of Build Better Products and UX for Lean Startups, Laura Klein explains important points about cross-functional teams:
To compare different customer segments in experience mapping, follow these steps:
Create personas: Develop detailed personas for each customer segment. Include demographic information, behaviors, goals and pain points.
Map separate journeys: Create individual journey maps for each persona. Highlight the stages, touchpoints and emotions specific to each segment.
Identify key differences: Compare the maps to identify differences in touchpoints, pain points and emotional responses. Look for unique needs and preferences for each segment.
Analyze data: Use data from surveys, feedback and analytics to validate differences between segments—and make sure your comparisons are indeed based on accurate and comprehensive data.
Highlight commonalities: Find any common touchpoints or pain points across segments—and focus on areas where improvements can really benefit multiple segments.
Customize solutions: Develop tailored strategies to address the unique needs of each segment—and make sure your solutions align with the specific characteristics and preferences that each persona has.
And be sure to update your personas and journey maps to reflect changing customer behaviors and preferences—and do it regularly. Engage with each segment to ensure your data remains relevant and accurate.
Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains important points about personas:
Take our Journey Mapping course.
Lemon, K.N.; Verhoef, P.C.; J. Mark. Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey. AMA/MSI Spec. Issue 2016, 80, 1–62.
This seminal paper provides a comprehensive overview of the customer experience and customer journey concepts. It defines and clarifies these terms, discusses their importance, plus proposes a conceptual framework for understanding and managing the customer experience. The paper’s been highly influential in shaping the field and establishing a common language and understanding.
Berman, B. (2020). Paths to Purchase: The Seven Steps of Customer Purchase Journey Mapping. Rutgers Business Review, 5(1), 85-100.
This article provides a comprehensive seven-step framework for businesses to effectively plan and implement customer journey mapping. It emphasizes how important it is to understand the decision paths and key interactions customers encounter throughout the purchase process. The seven steps outlined are: 1) developing an organizational unit to manage the mapping process, 2) mapping touchpoints and interactions, 3) identifying characteristics of effective journeys, 4) using maps to target specific markets, 5) measuring strengths and weaknesses of the customer experience, 6) quantifying benefits and costs of journey mapping, and 7) avoiding pitfalls in implementation. The article highlights the value of customer journey mapping in omnichannel marketing strategies and offers practical guidance for businesses to optimize the customer experience across multiple touchpoints and channels.
Kalbach, J. (2016). Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams. O'Reilly Media.
This comprehensive guide provides a thorough overview of customer experience mapping techniques—including customer journey maps, service blueprints and experience diagrams. It covers the entire process of creating experience maps—from research and data gathering to visualization and implementation. The book’s been influential in establishing a structured approach to customer journey mapping and promoting its value in experience design.
Stickdorn, M., Hormess, M. E., Lawrence, A., & Schneider, J. (2018). This is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World. O'Reilly Media.
This book provides a practical guide to service design, with a significant focus on customer journey mapping as a key tool. It covers various aspects of journey mapping, including research methods, visualization techniques, and implementation strategies. The book’s been influential in promoting the integration of customer journey mapping into service design processes and highlighting its importance in creating exceptional customer experiences.
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Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Experience Mapping by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
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