Diagnose & Map method guide
Customer Journey Map
Customer Journey Map structures stages, touchpoints, goals, emotions, frictions and opportunities.
Beginner-friendly guide · 4 min read
What Customer Journey Map does
Customer Journey Map structures stages, touchpoints, goals, emotions, frictions and opportunities.
A customer journey map follows a customer as they try to achieve a goal across time and touchpoints. It connects what the customer does, thinks and experiences with evidence about friction and value.
The journey is not the company process drawn from the inside. It should represent a defined customer segment and situation, including interactions controlled by partners, customers or the wider environment.
Customer-experience research treats journeys as sequences of touchpoints that may be controlled by the firm, partners, customers or the wider environment. The map should therefore connect experience evidence to action.[1]
Stages run from left to right. Evidence, emotion and friction sit beneath each stage.
InnovationFlow explanatory schematic, synthesised from the method sources[1].
Understand the method
The parts in plain language
Stages and goals
Divide the journey into meaningful stages based on changes in the customer’s goal or situation, not internal department boundaries.[1]
Illustrative example
Recognise a problem, explore options, justify investment, implement, use and renew.
Touchpoints and experience
Record interactions, channels, questions, emotions and practical outcomes at each stage. Distinguish observed evidence from team assumptions.[1]
Illustrative example
A buyer struggles to compare savings claims during investment approval.
Moments and opportunities
Identify moments that disproportionately affect trust, progress or value. Turn observed friction into opportunity hypotheses rather than jumping straight to features.[1]
Illustrative example
A credible pre-purchase assessment could reduce uncertainty before a long approval process.
When to use it
- When teams are discussing features without a shared customer context.
- Before offer design, positioning, funnel or service-improvement work.
A practical workflow
- 1
Define the customer segment, goal, journey boundary and evidence source.
- 2
Map stages, touchpoints, customer goals and emotional or practical outcomes.
- 3
Add frictions, evidence gaps and opportunity hypotheses.
- 4
Route important moments into offer design, assumptions, funnel or roadmap work.
Fictional worked example
Example: buying an efficiency service
This example is illustrative rather than a reported case. A facilities manager seeks approval and implements a factory energy service.
Observation:Claims from providers are difficult to compare.
Implication:Offer a transparent assessment method and evidence.
Observation:Finance needs a credible payback case.
Implication:Provide scenario ranges and assumptions, not one optimistic figure.
Observation:Operations fears disruption.
Implication:Design a staged installation and clear local support.
From analysis to decision
How to interpret the result
- 1Keep different segments or goals in separate journeys.
- 2Mark what was observed, inferred and still unknown.
- 3Route frictions into customer-value, assumption, funnel and roadmap work.
The interpretation guidance is an InnovationFlow synthesis of[1].
What a useful output looks like
Common pitfalls
- Do not present internal guesses as customer evidence.
- Different segments may need different journeys.
References and method basis
- [1]Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C. (2016). Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 69-96. Source ↗Peer-reviewed research
This guide synthesises the named sources into practical questions for strategy and innovation work. It does not claim that using a tool by itself produces a successful decision.