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Insights · Journey mapping

What an end-to-end customer journey map should actually include

By BREME · Updated

In short

A useful end-to-end journey map follows one type of customer through one goal, from the first moment they notice a need to the point they stay, leave or come back. It shows what they do, think and feel at each stage, every channel they touch, where teams hand them over, who owns each part, and which few moments matter most. Everything on it should come from research, not from the org chart.

Who this is for: CX leads, operations managers, practice managers and executives in membership bodies, multi-site clinics, professional services firms and growing e-commerce or subscription brands where several teams touch the customer.

Start with one customer and one goal

The most common reason a journey map goes nowhere is that it tries to show everyone doing everything. It becomes a wall of sticky notes that nobody can read and nobody can act on.

Nielsen Norman Group recommends a single point of view per map, usually matching a persona, so the map tells one clear story. It also says maps that do not align to a business goal will not result in applicable insight. We agree on both counts, and we write the two things at the top of the map before anything else goes on the wall.

So before you book the workshop, name the customer and name the goal. Not "members" but "a new member in their first year who joined for the professional development". Not "the customer experience" but "why first-year renewals are lower than we want". If you have three customer types, you probably need three maps, and it is fine to start with the one that matters most to the business right now.

Map the whole journey, not just the part you run

End to end means the journey starts before the customer has heard of you and finishes after the transaction you care about. Most maps start at the enquiry form and stop at the invoice, because that is where the organisation's processes start and stop. Customers do not experience it that way.

The NSW Government's digital service toolkit describes a journey map as a visual of how a user interacts with a service to achieve a goal, and it lists channels such as website, app, call centre and shopfront. That point about channels matters. A real journey moves between a search, a phone call, an email, a waiting room and a letter, often in the same week.

We usually lay out the phases along the top in the customer's language, something like:

  • Noticing a need: the moment something prompts them to look.
  • Looking around: searching, asking people, comparing options.
  • Deciding and joining: the enquiry, the booking, the sign-up, the payment.
  • Getting started: the first days or weeks, where expectations meet reality.
  • The middle: the long stretch of ordinary service, where most of the relationship actually lives.
  • Renewing, returning or leaving: the decision point, and what happens after it.

The layers every map needs

Under each phase, the map needs a consistent set of rows. Nielsen Norman Group lists actor, scenario, phases, actions, mindsets, emotions, touchpoints and channels, insights, opportunities and ownership. The NSW toolkit adds the user's background, expectations and pain points. Put together, this is the set we use:

  • What the customer is doing: the actual steps, in plain words, including the ones that happen away from you, like asking a colleague or reading reviews.
  • What they are thinking: the questions in their head at that point. "Is this the right one for me?" "Did they get my form?"
  • How they feel: a simple line that rises and falls across the journey. This is the row that changes minds in the room.
  • Touchpoints and channels: every place they meet you, and how. Website, phone, email, text, front desk, invoice, renewal letter.
  • Pain points: where they get stuck, wait, repeat themselves or give up.
  • Handovers: every point where the customer passes from one team, system or person to another.
  • Owner: the name of the team or role responsible for that part of the experience.
  • Opportunities: what could be better, written as a problem worth solving, not yet as a solution.

The two rows most maps leave out

Handovers and ownership are the rows we see missing most often, and they are where the useful findings usually sit.

A handover is any moment the customer leaves one part of your organisation and enters another. Sales to onboarding. Reception to clinician. Customer service to accounts. The customer experiences one organisation. Internally, it is two teams with two systems and often two different ideas of what was promised. Marking every handover with a symbol on the map makes the gaps visible in a way no process document does.

Ownership is the row that turns a map from a picture into a plan. Nielsen Norman Group notes that without ownership, no one is empowered to make changes. In our experience, the moments with no clear owner are very often the same moments with the most pain. That is not a coincidence. When nobody owns a step, nobody notices it getting worse.

If the room cannot agree who owns a stage, write "nobody" on the map. That single word often does more than the rest of the workshop.

Build it from evidence, not opinion

A journey map built only by staff in a meeting room is a map of what staff believe. It is useful as a starting hypothesis and nothing more.

The NSW toolkit is direct about this: base your map on evidence from real user research. It suggests using quantitative data for what users do and qualitative research for how they think and feel. Nielsen Norman Group makes the same point, recommending you gather existing research first and then fill the gaps with qualitative research, because numbers can support the story but cannot build it alone.

You do not need a big research program to do this well. A practical mix for most organisations:

  • Eight to twelve conversations with real customers, including some who left.
  • A read through recent complaints, emails and call notes, looking for repeated phrases.
  • Time with frontline staff, who hear the problems first and are rarely asked.
  • The data you already have: drop-off points, renewal rates, response times, repeat contacts.
  • Walking the journey yourself, as a customer would, start to finish.

Mark the moments that matter

A full map can have forty or fifty touchpoints. They are not equal. Some are routine and nobody remembers them. A few shape whether the customer trusts you, tells others about you or comes back.

Once the map is filled in, we ask the room to mark no more than five moments that matter most. These are usually where emotion peaks or drops sharply, where a promise is made or tested, or where a handover happens at a stressful time. The first week after joining. The first bill. The first time something goes wrong.

This is where strategy starts. You cannot fix fifty things at once, and you should not try. You can decide to be very good at five.

Current state first, then the future

The NSW toolkit advises starting with a current-state map to find pain points, gaps and opportunities, then building a future-state map to show how the journey could work after improvements. We follow the same order.

It is tempting to skip straight to the ideal journey, because it is more fun and less uncomfortable. But a future-state map drawn without an honest current state tends to describe the journey leadership wishes it had, and it hides the handovers and gaps that will break it.

When the current state is agreed, the future state becomes a short list of changes at the moments that matter, each with an owner. When the map needs to show what has to change behind the scenes to make that work, that is the job of a service blueprint, which Nielsen Norman Group describes as a companion to the journey map that extends it inward to the people, processes and systems behind each customer action.

Keep it alive after the workshop

Nielsen Norman Group observes that the mapping process is often more valuable than the final artefact, and recommends treating the map as a living document referred to in meetings rather than a static graphic. That matches what we see. The people who were in the room understand the customer differently afterwards. The poster on the wall fades.

To keep a map working, give it an owner, review it on a regular rhythm, and update it when new research comes in. Bring it to the meetings where decisions about the customer are made. If a proposed change does not connect to a moment on the map, ask why it is a priority.

Sources

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