A customer journey map is a helpful tool for B2B companies that want to manage long sales cycles, improve how they work with different stakeholders, and provide value at every step of the buying process. By understanding common problems via journey mapping and improving every interaction, your business can achieve real results like higher conversion rates and stronger customer loyalty.

In this guide:

• What is a customer journey map?

• What should a customer journey map include?

• Benefits of a customer journey map

• How to create a customer journey map

• Improving your customer journey map

• Helpful resources for customer journey mapping

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map shows the steps your customer goes through when interacting with your company. It tells a visual story that helps you understand how customers experience your business, showing each step they take along the way.

Most maps are built like a timeline, showing events in order. However, real customer journeys often don’t happen in a straight line. People might use more than one channel—such as buying both online and in-store—at the same time, depending on what’s available.

Types of Customer Journey Maps

A customer journey map gives an overview of all the ways a customer interacts with your brand, starting with the first moment they hear about you. While maps can look different depending on your needs, here are four common types:

• Current state: Shows how customers currently interact with your product or service. It helps you find areas that may be frustrating for customers.

• Day in the life: Describes what your potential customer’s day looks like, even when they aren’t using your product. It helps uncover needs that your product might solve.

• Future state: Shows what the ideal customer experience would look like. This is helpful when launching new products or entering new markets.

• Service blueprint: Adds more details to one of the maps above by showing what tools, people, and systems are needed to support each step. It helps you understand how your business supports the journey behind the scenes.

What Should a Customer Journey Map Include?

Since customer journeys are often not in a straight line, a good map should include:

• Customer touchpoints: All the ways a customer interacts with your brand, both directly and indirectly.

• Moments of truth: Key events that can change how a customer feels about your brand.

• Pain points: Problems or frustrations that customers face, like delays or hard-to-use websites.

• Desired actions: What you hope the customer will do, such as make a purchase or read an article.

• Completed actions: What the customer actually does, which lets you see how well their journey matches your goals.

When you include all these pieces, you get a full picture that helps you make better business decisions.

Benefits of a Customer Journey Map

Understanding your customers’ experience is key to staying ahead in a changing world. Research shows that nearly 80% of companies that use journey maps become more focused on their customers.

Here are some key benefits:

• Better insights: Understand customer behavior and improve how you market and sell.

• More engagement: Create useful content that attracts and keeps attention.

• Higher loyalty: Customers who are happy with their experience are more likely to return.

• Improved touchpoints: Fix low-performing or confusing interactions.

• Customer-first mindset: Stay focused on what customers want and need.

• New customers: Use what you learn to reach out to new types of customers.

• Team alignment: Get different departments on the same page by visualizing the whole journey.

• Measure success: Track how well your investments in customer experience are paying off.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

There are 10 steps to creating a strong customer journey map:

1. Set clear goals: Know what you want to achieve and which customer group you’re focusing on.
2. Do your research: Collect data from surveys, analytics, interviews, and more.
3. Create customer personas: Build or update detailed customer profiles based on what you’ve learned.
4. Pick your focus: Choose one key persona to base the map on.
5. List all touchpoints: Write down all the ways customers come into contact with your brand.
6. Map the current journey: Show how customers currently move through the process.
7. Map the ideal journey: Imagine the best possible path you’d like customers to take.
8. Review resources: Check what people, tools, and budget are needed to support the improved journey.
9. Walk the journey yourself: Try going through the steps as if you were the customer to spot weak points.
10. Make improvements: Update your journey based on what you’ve learned to meet customer expectations.

Example: A B2B Workflow Automation Company

Let’s look at a company that provides workflow tools for mid-sized IT departments. Here’s how they followed the steps:

• Set clear goals: They wanted to improve how many leads turned into sales, especially by fixing issues in the sales process.

• Do your research: They looked at CRM data, feedback, and interviews. Many customers dropped off after the second follow-up email, mostly due to a lack of clear ROI examples.

• Create personas: They focused on the IT director persona, who needed proof of value and didn’t have much time.

• Pick your focus: They centered the map on IT directors, as they are the main decision makers.

• List all touchpoints: They tracked emails, webinars, demo requests, sales calls, and post-demo materials.

• Map the current journey: They noticed weak follow-ups and content that didn’t fit the customer’s needs.

• Map the ideal journey: They added personalized emails, ROI calculators, an easier demo form, and better follow-up materials.

• Review resources: They needed a content writer and upgrades to their CRM system.

• Walk the journey: Team members acted as customers to spot gaps, such as unclear demo steps.

• Make improvements: They improved emails, gave better ROI info during demos, and added reminders for follow-ups.

Improving Your Customer Journey Map

Journey maps should grow and change with your business. They aren’t something you make once and forget.

Here’s how to keep your map effective:

• Review often: Update the map as your products or customers change.

• Track results: Watch numbers like customer retention, conversion rates, and satisfaction scores.

• Listen to feedback: Get input from both customers and your team.

• Use tools: Software can help you automate and personalize the customer experience.

• Run tests: Try different paths to see where things break down and adjust as needed.

Customer Journey Map Resources

While journey mapping can seem complex, it becomes easier when you follow the steps and break the process into smaller tasks.

Using the right tools can help you track and understand how customers interact with your brand across different channels. The more you automate and analyze customer behavior, the easier it becomes to improve your journey map and build a better experience for everyone.