What is it?

Customer Journey Mapping is a process to create a visual map of the key events, touch points, and activities a customer experiences when interacting with your organisation.

Why is it useful?

• Helps analyse why internal processes aren’t meeting customer needs.
• Builds a shared understanding of how the customer journey currently plays out.
• Highlights both good practices and areas that create frustration for customers.

Objectives

• To create a visual representation of how a customer interacts with your service or company.
• To identify strengths, issues, and problems in the customer journey.

When would you use it?

• When customer feedback suggests your processes aren’t meeting their needs.
• When you want your team to build a shared view of the “as is” journey.
• At the early analysis stage, before designing improvements.

Resources Required

• 60 minutes
• Up to 15 participants
• Very large sheet of plain paper on the wall
• Plenty of space (remove tables and chairs)
• Coloured Post-its and pens
• Tack for sticking Post-its to the wall
• Flip chart and paper

Rules

• Allocate one swim lane per individual, department, or partner.
• Always keep the Customer as the central swim lane.

Process

1. Map the customer lane

Facilitator draws the customer swim lane horizontally across the centre of the paper.

2. Add customer events

Participants brainstorm typical customer events in chronological order.
One event per Post-it.

3. Identify stakeholders

Participants list stakeholders (departments, teams, partners) involved in handling the customer.
Facilitator adds these as swim lanes above and below the customer.

4. Allocate groups

Split participants into smaller groups.
Each group takes one stakeholder swim lane.

5. Map stakeholder activities

Groups spend 10 minutes mapping their activities around each customer event.

6. Share and align

Each group briefly (max 2 minutes) walks others through their swim lane.
Confirm the map reflects the current situation.

7. Analyse the map

As a whole group, add:

• Green flags for effective points.
• Red flags for broken points.
• Quotes for observations or examples.

8. Summarise findings

Facilitator captures insights under two headings:

• What’s working well?
• What’s not working so well?

9. Plenary discussion

Facilitator leads discussion using prompts such as:

• What does this show about stakeholder collaboration?
• What is the customer experiencing?
• Where might the customer fall through the net?
• Are there overlaps or gaps in service?
• Which activities make the biggest difference?
• How is information shared? Where are the gaps?
• How are hand-offs managed?

Secret Sauce

• Ensure all key stakeholders are represented in the room.
• Follow the session with a break, then an Action Planning session to lock in improvements.
• Use different coloured Post-its for different activity types (e.g. handoffs, assessments, referrals).
• The same process can also test the quality of a proposed or redesigned journey.