A Comprehensive Guide to Customer Journey Mapping and Analytics

Understanding and analyzing your customer behavior is not easy. This is where customer journey maps come into the picture. However, having a customer journey map doesn't mean that you are delivering on expectations. You can always refine the mapping and make it even better. 

How can you make your customer journey map better? What are the important things that you need to add to make the difference and leverage the untapped potential it offers? 

What is customer journey? 

The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand or product as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service. 

What is a customer journey map? 

Customer journey mapping basically means identifying and visualizing the customer journey when interacting with a brand, product, or service. It involves identifying the various touchpoints, interactions, and different experiences that a customer has with a brand or product, from initial awareness to post-purchase evaluation. 

The primary goal of customer journey mapping is to gain insights into customer behavior, identify pain points, and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Organizations can leverage these customer journey maps and make their businesses completely customer-centric. 

What data is necessary for customer journey mapping? 

When I create a customer journey map, I prioritize real, actionable data over assumptions. This includes both solicited data—information customers provide when asked—and unsolicited data, which offers a window into their actual behavior. 

Solicited data: Customer surveys and interviews 

Asking customers directly through surveys or interviews often reveals key insights into their experiences, pain points, and how they interact with the product. This is a form of solicited data because it’s information I actively request. 

Tools such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and even social media polls help uncover how customers truly feel about their journey with us. 

Here are a few practical ways to gather this type of feedback: 

• Use post-purchase surveys to identify what worked well or where friction occurred in the buying process. 
• Conduct 1:1 interviews to dig deeper into the motivations behind a customer’s decisions. 
• Speak with individuals who didn’t convert to understand their reasons for dropping off. 

While incredibly useful, this data type isn’t without its limits. It depends on customers being honest and open—something that may skew toward positivity, especially during direct conversations. Also, it typically represents just one part of the journey and may not give a complete picture. 

Unsolicited data 

Unsolicited data is typically quantitative and based on behavior rather than feedback. 

This refers to data customers generate without being prompted. Some valuable examples include: 

• Website behavior: page views, navigation paths, bounce rates, and cart abandonment insights. 
• Email engagement: open rates, click-throughs, and follow-up actions like phone calls. 
• Social media mentions and reviews: public feedback helps highlight both frustrations and delights. 
• Operational metrics: internal indicators such as support ticket wait times or delivery delays that reflect overall service quality. 

For example, if users frequently abandon carts at the payment stage, it may point to technical issues like long load times or limited payment options that are causing friction. 

Important components of a customer journey map 

Let us see the most important components of a customer journey map: 

Touchpoints 

Customers interact with a brand multiple times and may be on different platforms. Touchpoints usually refer to the record of all these interactions that a customer has with a brand, such as a website visit, social media engagement, customer service call, in-store visit, or email communication. 

Customer personas  

These are fictional representations of different types of customers who interact with the brand. Customer personas help to understand the different needs, behaviors, and preferences of the customers. 

Emotions 

Emotions play a crucial role in the customer journey. Identifying the emotions that customers experience at each touchpoint helps to understand their needs, wants, and expectations. 

Pain points 

These are the points in the customer journey where customers experience difficulty, frustration, or dissatisfaction. Identifying pain points helps to understand the areas that need improvement. 

Opportunities 

Opportunities refer to the areas where a brand can improve the customer experience or delight the customer. Identifying opportunities prioritizes actions that can improve the customer journey. 

Channels 

Channels are the different mediums through which customers interact with the brand. Identifying the channels used by customers helps optimize the customer journey for each channel. 

Metrics  

Metrics are the quantitative measures that help to evaluate the effectiveness of the customer journey. Metrics can include customer satisfaction scores, conversion rates, and customer retention rates. 

Steps for creating a customer journey map 

Here are the steps to create a customer journey map: 

1. Use customer journey map templates 

Why build a customer journey map from scratch when templates are readily available? HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates are a time-saver. They cover everything from a buyer’s journey to a day in a customer’s life and lead nurturing scenarios. 

These templates proved valuable for teams in sales, marketing, and customer support, enabling them to better understand buyer personas. As a result, there was a notable enhancement in both product development and customer experience. 

2. Set clear objectives for the map 

Before beginning a customer journey map, it's essential to clarify the purpose behind its creation. 

• What goals is the map aiming to achieve? 
• Who is the target audience? 
• Which experience does it reflect? 

If a buyer persona hasn’t been developed yet, it's worthwhile to create one. A buyer persona is a fictional profile encompassing the demographics and psychographics of the typical customer. This approach helps maintain focus on the correct audience during the mapping process. 

3. Profile your personas and define their goals 

This stage benefits greatly from in-depth research. Access to customer journey analytics is especially helpful, and HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool offers a solid starting point for those just beginning. 

Questionnaires and user testing serve as invaluable tools for collecting feedback. However, it’s crucial to engage only with real customers or prospects — individuals who have interacted with the business or intend to. Feedback from the right audience yields the most actionable insights. 

Some key questions include: 

• How did the customer hear about the company? 
• What initially attracted them to the website? 
• What goals do they aim to accomplish with the business? 
• How long do they typically stay on the website? 
• Have they made a purchase? What was the deciding factor? 
• Have they ever decided not to make a purchase after browsing? Why? 
• How easy is the site to navigate (rated on a scale of 1 to 10)? 
• Was customer support needed, and how effective was it? 
• What additional support could ease the process? 

4. Highlight your target customer personas 

After gathering sufficient data, the focus should narrow to one or two primary customer personas. 

A customer journey map is most effective when it reflects the journey of a specific customer. Including too many personas risks diluting the unique experiences of each. 

Starting with the most common persona and identifying their typical engagement route is recommended. A marketing dashboard can help compare and determine the best-fitting persona. Any others can always be mapped out later. 

5. List out all touchpoints 

The process begins with listing every touchpoint where customers engage with the brand. 

Each interaction — no matter how minor — shapes customer perception. For instance, seeing a display ad or encountering a 404 error both count as meaningful touchpoints. 

It’s important to recognize that a brand is more than its website. It includes social media, emails, ads, customer service, and more. Mapping these out uncovers opportunities for improving the customer experience. 

Once the list is complete, patterns often emerge. A low number of touchpoints may suggest premature exits. A high number could indicate an overly complex user path. 

Touchpoints also span beyond the business’s own domain — Google searches, third-party reviews, and social media mentions contribute significantly. Tools like Google Analytics can show where the actual traffic originates, helping isolate the most impactful touchpoints. 

At HubSpot, workshops involving cross-functional teams helped identify these critical moments. Mapping them visually — even with simple sticky notes — exposed inconsistencies in communication and service. 

Key touchpoints to consider: 

• Customer actions 
  Track every customer interaction: keyword searches, email clicks, product page scrolls. A comprehensive list enables the identification of overly complex steps, which, when streamlined, often improve conversion rates. 
• Customer emotions & motivations 
  Customer actions stem from emotional triggers. Pain points typically drive decisions. Understanding these emotions allows for the delivery of timely and relevant content. 
• Customer obstacles & pain points 
  Identifying friction in the journey is crucial. High shipping costs, for instance, might cause cart abandonment. Sometimes the barriers are subtle, requiring dedicated sales tools or support content like FAQ pages to resolve them. 

6. Determine the resources you have and the ones you’ll need 

Evaluating the customer journey map provides clarity on existing resources and highlights missing ones. For example, if follow-up capabilities are weak, investing in customer service tools may be necessary. 

Underutilized touchpoints also offer areas for growth. A unified marketing platform can help maximize the potential of these interactions. Including resource planning in the map enables better forecasting and eases stakeholder buy-in. 

7. Take the customer journey yourself 

A journey map isn’t truly complete until the customer path has been experienced firsthand. This hands-on approach often reveals subtle friction points that data might overlook. 

Steps might include: 

• Searching for the product or a competitor’s product 
• Signing up for the email list 
• Navigating the site or app with fresh eyes 
• Contacting support 

This exercise offers deeper context to complement analytics. For example, while high bounce rates may point to an issue, walking through the site could uncover slow load times or confusing navigation. 

8. Analyze your results 

A customer journey map is only the beginning. The insights gained from analysis are where the real value lies. 

Key questions to explore include: 

• Are visitors converting? 
• Are customer needs met at every stage? 
• Which touchpoints perform best (and worst)? 
• Where is friction occurring? 

Analyzing these elements helps uncover areas for improvement and confirms whether the business is truly delivering value. It also allows for testing assumptions while remaining open to surprising insights. 

9. Update your map over time 

As data reveals clearer insights, it's important to make adjustments. This could include adding more targeted calls-to-action or clarifying product descriptions. 

Every update — big or small — plays a part in addressing customer pain points. With the journey map as a reference, these refinements remain aligned with customer needs and drive continuous improvement. 

What's included in a customer journey map? 

Here’s what is included in a customer journey map: 

1. The buying process 

When mapping a customer’s buying process, it’s essential to gather data from multiple sources — such as prospecting tools, CMS platforms, and behavioral analytics — to gain a comprehensive understanding of how individuals progress from initial contact to final purchase. 

There's no need to dive too deep into the specifics. The journey can be grouped into three broad stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. 

Valuable data points to examine include: 

• Website visits 
• Social media engagement 
• Customer service interactions 
• Purchase history 
• Survey feedback 

Together, these insights provide a clearer view of how customers engage with a brand across various touchpoints. 

2. Emotions 

Every customer embarks on their journey in search of a solution, and that journey is often laced with emotion — from excitement and curiosity to worry or frustration. Mapping these emotional states is key to understanding when and where the experience can break down — and how to fix it. 

At HubSpot, for instance, emojis are used on journey maps to visually represent potential emotions experienced at different stages of the customer journey. 

Though it may seem unusual, analyzing customer sentiment through data is quite common. Key sources include: 

• NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys 
• Online reviews 
• Social media monitoring 
• Customer interviews and focus groups 
• Customer support interactions 

Understanding emotional responses allows for more empathetic and effective touchpoint design. 

3. User actions 

Tracking customer actions at each journey stage helps identify their intent and level of engagement. For example, in the awareness phase, a user might download an ebook or sign up for a webinar. 

Typical data points used for mapping these actions include: 

• Page views 
• CTA (call-to-action) clicks 
• Email open rates 
• Email list signups 
• Ebook or content downloads 

Mapping these behaviors helps teams see how customers interact with brand content and how they transition from one stage to the next. 

4. User research 

This aspect outlines the research customers conduct before making decisions. During the awareness stage, they are often searching for solutions or comparing options. This presents a critical opportunity for brands to appear in their research and offer relevant answers before competitors do. 

Key areas to analyze include: 

• Search engine queries 
• Chatbot queries and interactions on the website 
• Competitor research and comparisons 
• Social media engagement 
• Customer review platforms 

These insights ensure the brand is visible when the audience is actively exploring their options. 

5. Solutions 

Once insights are gathered, the next step involves brainstorming actionable solutions to create a smoother customer journey. The goal is to eliminate friction and enhance satisfaction, helping customers reach their goals with minimal resistance. 

To support this, businesses can leverage tools such as: 

• Customer feedback platforms 
• Behavior analytics tools 
• AI-powered chatbots and automated support systems 

By making strategic improvements based on real data and customer behavior, brands can ensure a more seamless and rewarding journey for every customer. 

Types of customer journey maps  

There are four primary types of customer journey maps, each offering distinct advantages. 

To move a business from point A (the decision to prioritize customer journeys) to point B (having a fully developed journey map), a critical step involves identifying the specific customer mindset to be mapped. 

This decision plays a pivotal role in selecting the most appropriate template. It’s essential to choose the one that aligns best with the company’s goals and context. 

1. Current state customer journey map 

This is the most commonly used type of customer journey map. It illustrates the actions, thoughts, and emotions that customers currently experience while interacting with the business. 

Current state maps are ideal for ongoing optimization of the customer experience, offering clear visibility into what’s happening in real time and highlighting areas for improvement. 

2. Day in the life customer journey map 

This type of map captures a broader view, visualizing the customer’s daily actions, thoughts, and emotions whether or not they involve the business directly. 

It provides a more holistic understanding of customer behavior, helping identify real-life pain points and unmet needs. This approach is particularly useful when the goal is to uncover new opportunities or develop market expansion strategies that anticipate customer demands before they become explicit. 

3. Future state customer journey map 

Future state journey maps envision how customers will interact with the business in the future including their anticipated actions, emotions, and thoughts. 

These maps are built on insights from current customer experiences and are used to chart a path forward. They serve best when illustrating a brand’s future vision and setting long-term, strategic objectives. 

4. Service blueprint customer journey map 

A service blueprint begins with a simplified version of one of the previous map types. It then incorporates the internal elements such as people, processes, technologies, and policies  that are responsible for delivering the customer experience. 

This type of map is highly effective in uncovering the root causes of challenges within the current journey or identifying the internal changes required to support a future-state journey. It bridges the gap between customer experience and operational execution. 

Customer journey mapping best practices 

Here are the best practices for customer journey mapping: 

1. Set a goal for the journey map 

Start by identifying the purpose behind the journey map. It could be to enhance the buying experience, launch a new product, or streamline a specific touchpoint. Defining this goal early helps maintain focus and prevents scope creep during what can be a complex, large-scale project. 

2. Survey customers to understand their buying journey 

There is often a gap between internal assumptions and the actual experiences customers face. To close this gap, direct input from customers is essential. Gathering firsthand feedback provides a more accurate and insightful view into the real customer journey. 

3. Ask customer service representatives about frequently asked questions 

Customers may not always articulate their pain points clearly, but frontline support teams often recognize patterns and recurring concerns. By consulting customer service representatives, organizations can translate these customer challenges into actionable business insights. 

4. Consider customer journey mapping for each buyer persona 

Every customer is different. Demographics, psychographics, and tenure with the brand all influence behavior and decision-making. That is why journey maps should be customized for each core persona to ensure the map reflects their unique experiences and expectations. 

5. Review and update each journey map after major product changes 

Customer behavior shifts with every change in a product or service. Even minor modifications, such as adding a new form field, can introduce friction. Regularly reviewing and updating journey maps before and after product updates ensures the map stays accurate and actionable. 

6. Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams 

Making the journey map available across departments encourages broader collaboration and feedback. This shared visibility ensures alignment around the customer experience and allows all teams to contribute to and benefit from the insights it provides. 

9 ways to elaborate customer journey mapping 

Here are nine ways to curate customer journey mapping and ensure that you are leveraging it to the fullest. 

1. Filter personas 

Persona play a very important role in defining customer journey. When these personas are refined and properly filtered, it becomes simple for both marketing and sales teams to approach the customer and persuade them. But a small mistake in these personas can have a huge impact on the interactions and throw a negative light on your organization. 

So, it is very important to have accurate personas. Apart from collecting basic details like the age, gender, location, marital status, and earnings of the households, you should also know details like the mode of communication they prefer, products that they have purchased in your niche, what type of content formats they tend to show interest on, etc. 

2. Identify the touchpoints 

As mentioned above in the components, touchpoints refer to the interactions that a customer has with your brand. Always make sure to document every touchpoint. Apart from the buying stage, pre-sale and post-sale engagement with customers is equally important for a company. 

Having detailed documentation related to the interactions will give you insights into what can be changed, how you can smoothen customer experience and various other details. 

3. Create different customer journey maps 

Every one of your customers is different and comes with a unique perspective of their own. There is no-one-size-fits-all theory when it comes to customer journey mapping. Companies need to put themselves in the customer's shoes and create multiple scenarios and maps accordingly. This will give them a clear idea of what to do when a customer gets stuck in the middle of a journey. 

Let us take an example of an eCommerce brand that is facing a high cart abandonment rate. There can be a multitude of reasons for this, like complex order placing formats, interaction speed, etc. Having a map for each of these scenarios will simplify the customer journey. 

Being specific and having a pre-defined solution for multiple scenarios is the peak of personalization, and it ensures great customer satisfaction as well. 

4. Overlay data 

Most companies are sitting on a gold mine called data without leveraging it to the fullest. This data comes from all areas of the business, as in a prospective lead visiting your website, scrolling through your social media pages, or contacting you via WhatsApp to place an order. When you overlay all of this data, you will get a bird-eye's view of how customers are interacting with your company on different fronts. 

The data can be analytical or anecdotal; make sure to have everything in one place. 

5. Identify the gaps 

Gaps basically mean the points that prompt your customers to take their business elsewhere. The points that you are lacking and need to check on. A customer map should take different types of gaps into account and have a clear idea of what to do to prevent customers from moving elsewhere. 

These gaps can occur when you shift that customer from one department to another or make them travel from one platform to another, etc. These gaps can have a huge impact on the customer journey and make you lose one. 

6. Get enterprise-wide buy-in 

Customer journey mapping isn't something that happens between marketing and sales teams alone. You need to make sure that everyone, right from the decision-makers to support teams know about these journey maps. 

Keeping a customer at the center of an organization and ensuring that they are provided with relevant support and a smooth journey all the time isn't something that only sales and marketing teams do. So, having everyone on board with customer journey maps will certainly smoothen things out. 

7. Align with sales 

Sales teams are the front runners when it comes to customer interactions, and they know the hiccups and bottlenecks. They have invaluable information about what customers need to hear before they make the final purchase decision. 

All of this information can help marketing teams to curate their strategies. Sellers and marketers have a myriad of ways to communicate, and it is important for them to stay on the same page when it comes to customer persuasion. 

8. Develop KPIs 

When the topic is about KPIs, the first and foremost thing that every company thinks about is revenue. Yes, at the end of the day, revenue is the most important thing for every business. But, apart from that, there are some other KPIs that can impact your revenue. It can be bounce rate, CTR, conversion rate, cart abandonment rate in eCommerce, etc. 

Ensuring that these metrics are measured from time to time will help priortize the customer journey. 

9. Adapt and change 

Do not settle on the customer journey maps that you have created and work around them for years. Remember that customer behavior, interests, and everything changes. Spend good time analyzing the customer behavior and their patterns and understand what changes you can incorporate into the map. 

What are customers saying about their experience with your brand, and how can you compare it with the testimonials from the past six months to one year? Understanding how customers are evolving with your brand will give you an idea of what you need to do. Remember that the customer journey isn't just about the touchpoints. There are so many other things associated with it. 

Conclusion 

Understanding customer behavior, tracking their interactions, and mapping their journey isn't just about collecting data it's about utilizing those insights needed to deliver an exceptional buying experience. When you truly know where your customers come from and what they need, guiding them from awareness to purchase and eventually to loyalty becomes seamless. 

That’s where Loyalife stands out by transforming traditional loyalty programs into powerful journey-mapping tools. Here's how Loyalife helps businesses align loyalty and analytics to enhance the entire customer experience: 

1. Create rich, trackable touchpoints 

Loyalife structures key engagement moments such as points earned on purchases, reward redemptions, tier upgrades, referrals, and gamified actions like reviews and shares into clear, measurable touchpoints. These help businesses identify exactly where customers are engaging and how. 

2. Enable deeper customer segmentation 

Loyalife captures loyalty-driven behavioral data that goes beyond basic demographics. Brands can easily segment high-value vs. at-risk users and identify brand advocates early in the journey — making persona-based journey maps far more accurate and actionable. 

3. Capture both behavioral and emotional data 

Loyalife blends behavioral metrics (like reward preferences or unprompted actions) with solicited emotional feedback (via integrated NPS and CSAT surveys). This combination uncovers the “why” behind every interaction, making journey mapping smarter and more human. 

4. Reveal drop-off points and friction 

By analyzing reward engagement patterns, Loyalife pinpoints exactly where customers disengage — such as abandoning after earning points but not redeeming, or exiting due to complex reward structures. These insights help reduce friction and boost retention. 

5. Support predictive journey modeling 

Loyalife’s data engine enables businesses to forecast behavior, anticipate churn, and trigger proactive engagement. Predictive insights help marketers evolve journey maps dynamically instead of relying on static assumptions. 

6. Fuel post-purchase and retention journeys 

Beyond conversions, Loyalife powers repeat purchases, post-sale engagement, and emotional loyalty with exclusive offers and personalized rewards. This extends the customer journey and deepens long-term relationships.