The customer journey map: stages, touchpoints, needs, feelings and owners

A customer journey map lays out the path one kind of customer takes towards a goal, stage by stage, and records what happens at each: where they meet the brand, what they need, how they feel, what the brand says and who in the organisation is responsible. It turns the abstract idea of the customer journey into a working document that shows where the experience breaks and which team can fix it.

The map draws on two lines of work. The first is the consumer decision journey, published in June 2009 by David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder and Ole Jørgen Vetvik of McKinsey: based on the decisions of almost 20,000 consumers, it replaced the narrowing funnel with four phases and a loyalty loop, and listed advertisements, news reports, conversations with family and friends and product experiences among the touchpoints that shape impressions¹. Google's research on the "messy middle" adds that buyers loop between exploring and evaluating before they decide².

The second is the touchpoint view of integration. Duncan and Moriarty argued that communication happens at the corporate and marketing levels as well as in marketing communication itself³. Lemon and Verhoef, in the Journal of Marketing in 2016, observed that customers interact with firms through myriad touchpoints in multiple channels, and that delivering a good experience requires firms to integrate several business functions and outside partners⁴. In business markets, Gartner describes buying as a set of jobs a buying group must complete⁵. As a design method, journey mapping is taught by the Nielsen Norman Group, among others⁶.

1. Choose one persona and one goal ("a café regular who wants better coffee at home"). Draw a new map for a different goal.
2. Use evidence interviews, search queries, reviews, service logs, sales notes. Mark what is assumed.
3. Write touchpoints from the customer's side ("I see a card on the counter", "I get the delivery email"). Include product, service and people, not only media.
4. Record the need and feeling at each stage; the low points matter more than the average.
5. Name the message and the owner for every touchpoint. Where two teams speak at once, check that they say the same thing.
6. List the gaps and choose the two or three to fix first.

Illustrative: a café regular joining the fictional Ourika Roasters' subscription.

• Discover a card on the counter and a barista's mention; need, better coffee at home; feeling, curious; owner, café operations.
• Consider the website and search results; need, price and how fresh "fresh" is; feeling, unsure; owner, digital team. Gap: the site does not show roast dates.
• Buy checkout; need, a simple first order; feeling, pleased; owner, e-commerce.
• Use delivery and the bag; need, it arrives when promised; feeling, frustrated when a delivery slips; owner, operations and courier. Gap: no message when a delivery is late.
• Recommend a referral email; need, something worth sharing; feeling, proud; owner, CRM.

• Mapping the organisation's process, not the customer's Channel names in the touchpoint row are a warning sign.
• Media only The delivery, the invoice and the call centre are messages too^3, 4.
• One map for every segment Different goals take different journeys.
• No owners A map without names becomes a poster.
• Assuming a straight line Buyers loop back and forth before they decide².

• McKinsey's consumer decision journey¹; Google on the messy middle².
• Duncan and Moriarty³; Lemon and Verhoef⁴; Gartner on B2B buying⁵.
• The Nielsen Norman Group on journey mapping⁶.
• On IMC Report: touchpoints and the journey.