Customer Journey Mapping

Walking in Their Shoes

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, we built customer personas that bring research data to life as memorable characters. Journey maps take those personas on a trip through your entire customer experience—revealing every moment of delight and frustration.

A persona tells you who your customer is. A journey map tells you what their experience is like. Together, they form the most powerful pair of tools in customer research—personas provide the “who,” and journey maps provide the “what happens to them.”

By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:

• Build a customer journey map from awareness to advocacy
• Identify moments of truth and emotional high/low points
• Use AI to create and analyze journey maps efficiently

The Journey Map Framework

A journey map has five horizontal lanes that run across all stages of the customer experience:

The Five Lanes

The Stages (Customizable)

Most B2C journeys follow this flow:

1. Awareness — Customer realizes they have a problem or need
2. Consideration — Customer researches solutions and evaluates options
3. Purchase — Customer decides to buy and completes the transaction
4. Onboarding — Customer sets up and starts using the product
5. Regular Use — Customer integrates the product into their life
6. Support — Customer encounters an issue and seeks help
7. Renewal/Advocacy — Customer decides to continue (or leave) and may recommend to others

✅ Quick Check: Think about the last product you bought. Can you identify these stages in your own experience? Where did you feel frustrated?

Building Your Journey Map

Step 1: Choose Your Persona

Pick one persona from Lesson 5. Each persona may have a different journey—start with your most important customer segment.

Step 2: Map the Stages

Define the stages relevant to your business. Not every business has every stage.

Step 3: Fill in Each Lane

For each stage, document actions, thoughts, emotions, and touchpoints. Use your interview data (Lesson 4) and survey results (Lesson 3) as sources.

Step 4: Draw the Emotion Line

Rate customer satisfaction at each stage on a scale of 1-5. Connect the dots. The dips are your biggest opportunities.

How AI Helps

“I run an online subscription box for pet supplies. My primary persona is ‘Sarah the Busy Pet Mom’—a working professional who wants convenient, high-quality supplies for her dog. Create a complete customer journey map from awareness through 6-month renewal. For each stage include: actions, thoughts, emotions (1-5 scale), touchpoints, and pain points.”

Moments of Truth

Within any journey, certain touchpoints matter more than others. These are moments of truth—interactions that disproportionately shape customer perception.

Common Moments of Truth

How to Identify Moments of Truth

Look for:

• The biggest emotional dips on your journey map (frustration peaks)
• Stages where you lose the most customers (churn points)
• Touchpoints that generate the most support tickets
• Moments that generate the most positive reviews or referrals

How AI Helps

“Based on this customer journey map: [paste or describe your map], identify the top 3 moments of truth. For each, explain why it’s critical, what could go wrong, what a great experience looks like, and one specific improvement I could make.”

Analyzing Journey Maps for Opportunities

Finding Gaps

Compare the expected experience (what customers hope for) with the actual experience (what they get). Every gap is an opportunity.

Prioritizing Improvements

Not all gaps are equally important. Prioritize by:

1. Impact on retention (does this gap cause people to leave?)
2. Frequency (how many customers hit this pain point?)
3. Fix difficulty (quick wins vs. major overhauls)

How AI Helps

“Here’s my current customer journey map with pain points marked: [describe]. Prioritize the pain points by: (1) likely impact on customer retention, (2) frequency of occurrence, and (3) difficulty to fix. Create a 3-month improvement roadmap starting with quick wins.”

From Map to Action

A journey map is only valuable if it drives change. Here’s how to use it:

Share it widely. Post it where teams can see it. Reference it in meetings.

Assign ownership. Each pain point or moment of truth needs an owner responsible for improvement.

Measure changes. After fixing a gap, check whether customer satisfaction improves at that stage (survey, support tickets, retention data).

Update regularly. Journey maps should evolve as your product and customer experience change.

Try It Yourself

Create a journey map with AI:

“Create a customer journey map for my business: [describe business, product, and primary persona]. Include 6-7 stages with:

• Customer actions at each stage
• Their thoughts and emotions (1-5 satisfaction scale)
• Touchpoints (where they interact with us)
• Pain points (what frustrates them)
• Opportunities (how we could improve)

Draw the emotion line and highlight the top 3 moments of truth.”

Key Takeaways

• Journey maps visualize the complete customer experience across every stage and touchpoint
• The five lanes (stages, actions, thoughts, emotions, touchpoints) capture the full picture
• Moments of truth are critical touchpoints where loyalty is won or lost—focus here first
• Gap analysis between expected and actual experience reveals improvement opportunities
• AI helps create, analyze, and prioritize journey map insights rapidly

Up Next

In Lesson 7: Competitive Analysis, we’ll look outside your business and analyze what competitors are doing. Understanding the competitive landscape helps you position your product, find market gaps, and build compelling differentiation.