service journey strategies

Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: August 07, 2018

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business 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.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

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Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

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SERVICE STRATEGY

The big picture on service strategy.

1. 80% of the Economy is Services Most companies ultimately thrive or die by their service strategy.

2. It's All About Customer Value If you beat competitors at the customer value game, your services will win.

3. The Customer Journey The output of any service strategy should be a killer customer journey roadmap .

4. Faster, Better, Stronger At the core of great services is an efficient and effective service operation.

A service is a customer journey that fulfills a need

Given 80% of the U.S. economy and 69% of the world economy is comprised of services, for most companies, service strategy is the core of their value proposition .

There are five main elements of a service (below). Every service starts with a customer's need. A customer journey fulfills the customer's needs, which creates customer value . A customer journey is made up of customer interactions with the stage and agents, which can include physical locations, people, digital applications, and machines. Service operations manage the customer journey. Service operations are a portfolio of processes executed by people, infrastructure, and partners .

A KILLER service CREATES BETTER CUSTOMER VALUE THAN THE COMPETITION

People purchase services to improve their lives or business. The more a service can drive the value equation by improving benefits (both rational and emotional) over price versus the competition , the more the service will retain customers and attract new customers.

Services that dramatically improve the customer value equation are the foundation for growth . If a service company is struggling, always start the turnaround with an improved service strategy.

winning services differentiate their customer journey on certain dimensions

From a customer's perspective, there are six major dimensions to a service. A service always starts with a need. The first dimension is the impact a service has on fulfilling the need. The other dimensions of service are speed & effort, consistency, professionalism, convenience, and aesthetics.

On what dimensions is your service differentiated from the competition ? Which dimensions are important to your target customer ? Deeply understanding the vital met and unmet customer needs makes it easier to prioritize the service dimensions to maximize customer value and competitive differentiation .

THE VALUE WEDGE IS A SIMPLE WAY TO FOCUS YOUR SERVICE STRATEGY

A simple shortcut to service strategy is to think about growing the customer value wedge. Focus on improving the benefits customers receive from your service, while simultaneously solving for reducing costs in the service delivery, which can either flow to profit or can be used to lower prices to customers.

As we state throughout Stratechi.com, growth comes from retaining customers and attracting new customers from competitors , and the key to this is driving better customer value than the competition, in a financially superior way .

If you want to talk about your service strategy with an experienced strategy coach, set up some time with Joe Newsum , a Mckinsey Alum, and the author of this content and website.

A SERVICE EXAMPLE - FROM POINT A TO POINT B

In a city, business travelers often find themselves needing to get from point A to point B.  There are three main transportation options for business travel - taxis, rental cars, or a ridesharing provider such as Uber or Lyft. At a high level, these options fulfill the same basic need of getting from point A to point B, yet they have very different customer journeys, stages, agents, and service operations, which drives differential customer value.

Mapping out the high-level customer journey of a taxi, car rental, and uber unfolds the experiences from a customer's perspective. Uber's mobile GPS app and network of drivers streamline the journey and eliminate many of the pain points of a taxi or car rental. Who hasn't had the excruciatingly long wait in the rental car line, or a dirty and nauseating cab ride? As you map out the effort and time involved in the different customer journeys, you can see the superior speed and effort of ridesharing versus taxis and rental cars. Moreover, in getting from point A to point B, a Deloitte report concluded that Uber was 20% cheaper than taxis with an average wait of 4.5 minutes for an Uber versus 8 minutes for a taxi.

Uber has a superior customer journey

Comparing Uber's customer journey to taxi and rental cars, utilizing the six dimensions of service, there is a strong argument that Uber comes out on top in most of the dimensions across the customer journey.

uber also has a superior cost and capital model

Not only does Uber have a superior customer journey, but also has a superior cost and capital model versus taxi and car rental companies. As you think about the stage, agents, and service operations that comprise a service, taxi companies have extensive costs and capital tied up in dispatch, taxicabs, drivers, maintenance, and management. While car rental companies are even more cost and capital-intensive with some having thousands of car rental locations and employees, hundreds of thousands of cars, car washes, websites, distribution partnerships, and lease and used car sales management. On the other hand, Uber outsources most of its costs and capital to the hundreds of thousands of drivers that already have cars and insurance. Uber's direct costs and capital are tied up in its technology infrastructure, marketing , partner & driver management, and customer service.

UBER IS TRYING TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

As a business model matures, strategic companies try to create sources of sustainable competitive advantage . There are eight sources of sustainable competitive advantage , including brand loyalty, proprietary information, innovation , scale, network effect, intellectual property, locked-up supply, and location. Uber is trying to tap into pretty much all eight sources, as described below.

• Brand Loyalty - makes it harder to switch once they have your credit card, common routes, etc. uses its simple app and the data generated to drive proprietary information.
• Proprietary Information - largest database of routes, pricing sensitivity, customer density, demand , etc.
• Scale - largest ride-sharing company attracts more drivers and customers
• Network Effect - more drivers and customers translate into quicker and more efficient pick-up and rides
• Intellectual Property - trying to lock up IP in autonomous driving
• Locked-up Supply - leasing program to lock in drivers
• Location - worldwide expansion to drive market share in the largest 1000 global cities

BY DRIVING BETTER CUSTOMER VALUE, UBER HAS DRIVEN HISTORIC GROWTH

Uber's superior service value proposition has propelled it to unprecedented growth, as Uber is the fastest company in history to hit $20 billion in gross bookings. Beyond taxis and car rental, Uber is competing against the car itself. With such simple and affordable access to an Uber, many millennials are bypassing getting a driver's license and buying a car.

Uber is strategically focused on the current game and the end-game

While Uber's current value proposition and business model are a massive success, the game will be much different in 5-10 years with autonomous self-driving vehicles. John Zimmer, Co-Founder of Lyft details the potential battle in his article "The Third Transportation Revolution" . Uber, along with Lyft, Tesla, Google, and every automaker are going to battle out the next transportation adoption curve of autonomous cars. With most cars parked 95% of the time, in a shared economy of self-driving cars, do we really need to own them?

UBER IS COMPRESSING ADOPTION CURVES

From a meta-strategic perspective, Uber's moves are intended to compress the current ride-share and future autonomous ride adoption curves , with a belief there will be a winner takes all situation.

THERE ARE TWO OUTPUTS TO A SERVICE STRATEGY

THERE ARE FOUR STEPS TO CREATING A SERVICE STRATEGY

To create a killer service strategy, you should follow the four steps above. People often get stuck on how much effort needs to go into these four steps. For some teams, a few days of deep problem solving or integrating these four steps into their governance is the right answer. For some teams, with the stakes high and the opportunities a bit nebulous, it may take a multi-month service strategy project to get to the right answer.

WITH A SERVICE PORTFOLIO THERE ARE 3 STRATEGIC OPTIONS

As you develop a service strategy, you need to determine whether to rationalize existing services, improve existing services, or develop new services.

What   improvements   will… – differentiate the service(s) from competitors? – drive better   customer value ? – create new use cases , open up new segments?

What   new services   will… – change the game? – help sell more of the current services(s)? – fill in current holes in the service portfolio?

Which services should be   eliminated   (rationalized) to… – free up resources to focus on higher-value services? – better align the business model (targets, go-to-market, org)?

Step 1: Generate Insights

To create killer service improvement ideas, you need to immerse yourself in insights about the customer journey, market, competition, and customers. As you or your team conduct various analyses, always focus on turning insights into service ideas or opportunities. Customer journey insights often focus on the experience, steps, and emotional highs and lows customers have in their service journey. Market and competitive insights create the context of the future and the necessary differentiation to beat the competition. While customer insights help prioritize the met, and unmet customer needs that a service can address.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY INSIGHTS What are the strengths and weaknesses of the service(s)? How do customers view the service journey?

Typical analyses include: - Customer Journey Mapping - Service Reviews & Metrics - Ethnography & Surveys

MARKET & COMPETITIVE INSIGHTS What are the trends and opportunities in the market, with competitors and their products , innovations, etc.?

Typical analyses and tools used include: - Porter’s 5 Forces , Adoption Curves , PESTLE Analysis , SWOT Analysis - Competitive Benchmarking - Innovation Scan - ANSOFF Matrix Analaysis

TARGET CUSTOMER INSIGHTS What are the trends and opportunities in customer segments, needs, behaviors, use cases, etc.?

Typical customer research tools include: - Customer Surveys / Polls - Ethnography - Focus Groups

Step 2: Develop Opportunities

Strong leadership teams have an evergreen list of service improvement ideas they are continuously mulling, developing, and prioritizing . When it is time to develop these opportunities, flesh out the customer use cases, innovations & features, and synthesize the details in a service snapshot.

CUSTOMER USE CASES Customer use cases identify who is going to use the service, and how and where they may use it. What new or existing use cases & needs is the service is going to address?

Typical analyses include: - Trend Analysis – Sales, Economics - Service Performance & Reviews Analysis - Brainstorming

INNOVATIONS & FEATURES Identifying innovations and prioritizing the core features is an important next step in developing a service idea. What are potential innovations and features that will create a step-function improvement in customer value and / or service cost?

Typical analyses include: - Tech & Innovation Research - Competitive Customer Journey Mapping - Analogy Brainstorming - Patent Analysis

SERVICE SNAPSHOT In the latter stages, every service idea needs a snapshot identifying the target customer and their needs, features, economics, differentiation, synergies , high-level development plan, operational implications, and overall ROI or size of opportunity. At this point validating the concept is also critical.

Typical analyses include: - Customer Surveys, Focus Groups - Concept Testing, Rapid Prototyping - ROI & Synergy Analysis

Step 3: Prioritize SERVICE Opportunities

Once you have a collection of potential new service and service improvement opportunities, the next step is to prioritize the opportunities the team will work on, given your limited resources and time. The easiest way to prioritize service opportunities is to create a decision matrix , score all of the opportunities, and then map them on a prioritization matrix. Once you map the service opportunities, get the right people in a room to debate, re-score, and finalize those ideas that make it in the top left corner or close to it on the prioritization matrix .

Step 4: Create the Service Roadmap

A well-designed and robust service roadmap will serve as the guidepost for not only service operations, but also go-to-market strategies (sales, marketing, and distribution). Creating a strong service roadmap takes both art and science in lining up milestones and development blocks in an optimal way to maximize resource productivity, synergies , and downstream dependencies. A service roadmap should always be a living document continuously reviewed and scrutinized within an organization's governance , since the ability to realize the roadmap often dictates the ultimate success or failure of a service company.

PART 2: THE "HOW" SERVICE IS DELIVERED

The second part of a service strategy is the service operations strategy. Service operations ultimately create the service journey that customers experience. Any service operations strategy is a blend of goals and core initiatives necessary to achieve the goals. The goals are often oriented to the service journey, while the initiatives can be around process, people, infrastructure, and partners.

the importance of change management

Most services involve people, who need to change their behavior as a service evolves. Behavioral change is one of the most challenging aspects of any strategy execution . The good news is there are tried and proven methodologies to help drive positive behavioral change. We have success with the change management model , which is a structured and holistic process to change management . We encourage you to utilize the change management model when creating service initiatives. You can learn about it more here .

Last thoughts on service strategy

We just went over the high-level outputs of and process to create a strong service strategy. The real magic to creating a strong service strategy is to immerse yourself and your team into the details of the customer journey & insights, market and competitive dynamics , data & analytics , ideation, use cases, sequencing, resourcing, change management, and all of the other elements it takes to create and execute a killer service strategy.

If you want to talk about your service advantage strategy with an experienced strategy coach, set up some time with Joe Newsum , a Mckinsey Alum, and the author of this content and website.

DOWNLOAD SERVICE STRATEGY WORKSHEETS & TEMPLATES

To get you started on developing a killer service strategy, download the service strategy worksheets & templates. Included in the Powerpoint: 1. Customer journey map 2. Service benchmarking template 3. Service brainstorming template 4. Service prioritization matrix 5. Service journey roadmap 6. One-page service operations strategy

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The complete guide to customer journey stages.

12 min read If you want to turn a potential customer into a lifetime one, you’ll need to get to know every step of the entire customer journey. Here’s why the secret to customer retention lies in knowing how to fine-tune your sales funnel…

What is the customer journey?

What do we actually mean when we talk about the customer journey? Well, the simplest way to think about it is by comparing it to any other journey: a destination in mind, a starting point, and steps to take along the way.

In this case, the destination is not only to make a purchase but to have a great experience with your product or service – sometimes by interacting with aftersale customer support channels – and become a loyal customer who buys again.

And, just like how you can’t arrive at your vacation resort before you’ve done you’ve found out about it, the customer journey starts with steps to do with discovery, research, understanding, and comparison, before moving on to the buying process.

“Maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20% but also lift revenue up by 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%”

– McKinsey, The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction

In short, the customer journey is the path taken by your target audience toward becoming loyal customers. So it’s really important to understand – both in terms of what each step entails and how you can improve each one to provide a maximally impressive and enjoyable experience.

Every customer journey will be different, after all, so getting to grips with the nuances of each customer journey stage is key to removing obstacles from in front of your potential and existing customers’ feet.

Free Course: Customer Journey Management & Improvement

What are the essential customer journey stages?

While many companies will put their own spin on the exact naming of the customer journey stages, the most widely-recognized naming convention is as follows:

• Consideration

These steps are often then sub-categorized into three parts:

• Sale/Purchase

It’s important to understand every part of the puzzle, so let’s look at each sub-category and stage in turn, from the awareness and consideration stage, right through to advocacy:

Customer journey: Pre-sale

In the pre-sale phase, potential customers learn about products, evaluate their needs, make comparisons, and soak up information.

Awareness stage

In the awareness stage, your potential customer becomes aware of a company, product, or service. This might be passive – in that they’re served an ad online, on TV, or when out and about – or active in that they have a need and are searching for a solution. For example, if a customer needs car insurance, they’ll begin searching for providers.

Consideration stage

In the consideration stage, the customer has been made aware of several possible solutions for their particular need and starts doing research to compare them. That might mean looking at reviews or what others are saying on social media, as well as absorbing info on product specs and features on companies’ own channels. They’re receptive to information that can help them make the best decision.

Customer journey: Sale

The sale phase is short but pivotal: it’s when the crucial decision on which option to go with has been made.

Decision stage

The customer has all the information they need on the various options available to them, and they make a purchase. This can be something that’s taken a long time to decide upon, like buying a new computer, or it can be as quick as quickly scouring the different kinds of bread available in the supermarket before picking the one they want.

Customer journey: Post-sale

Post-sale is a really important part of the puzzle because it’s where loyal customers , who come back time and again, are won or lost.

Retention stage

The retention stage of the customer journey is where you do whatever you can to help leave a lasting, positive impression on the customer, and entice them to purchase more. That means offering best-in-class customer support if they have any issues, but it also means being proactive with follow-up communications that offer personalized offers, information on new products, and rewards for loyalty.

Advocacy stage

If you nail the retention phase, you’ll have yourself a customer who not only wants to keep buying from you but will also advocate on your behalf. Here, the customer will become one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, in that they’ll actively recommend you to their friends, family, followers, and colleagues.

What’s the difference between the customer journey and the buyer’s journey?

Great question; the two are similar, but not exactly the same. The buyer’s journey is a shorter, three-step process that describes the steps taken to make a purchase. So that’s awareness , consideration, and decision . That’s where things stop, however. The buyer’s journey doesn’t take into account the strategies you’ll use to keep the customer after a purchase has been made.

Why are the customer journey stages important?

The short answer? The customer journey is what shapes your entire business. It’s the method by which you attract and inform customers, how you convince them to purchase from you, and what you do to ensure they’re left feeling positive about every interaction.

Why this matters is that the journey is, in a way, cyclical. Customers who’ve had a smooth ride all the way through their individual journeys are more likely to stay with you, and that can have a massive effect on your operational metrics.

It’s up to five times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to keep an existing customer, but even besides that: satisfied customers become loyal customers , and customer loyalty reduces churn at the same time as increasing profits .

So companies looking to really make an impact on the market need to think beyond simply attracting potential customers with impressive marketing, and more about the journey as a whole – where the retention and advocacy stages are equally important.

After all, 81% of US and UK consumers trust product advice from friends and family over brand messaging, and 59% of American consumers say that once they’re loyal to a brand, they’re loyal to it for life.

Importantly, to understand the customer journey as a whole is to understand its individual stages, recognize what works, and find things that could be improved to make it a more seamless experience. Because when you do that, you’ll be improving every part of your business proposition that matters.

How can you improve each customer journey stage?

Ok, so this whole customer journey thing is pretty important. Understanding the customer journey phases and how they relate to the overall customer experience is how you encourage customers to stick around and spread the news via word of mouth.

But how do you ensure every part of the journey is performing as it should? Here are some practical strategies to help each customer journey stage sing…

1. Perform customer journey mapping

A customer journey map takes all of the established customer journey stages and attempts to plot how actual target audience personas might travel along them. That means using a mix of data and intuition to map out a range of journeys that utilize a range of touch points along the way.

One customer journey map, for example, might start with a TV ad, then utilize social media and third-party review sites during the consideration stage, before purchasing online and then contacting customer support about you your delivery service. And then, finally, that customer may be served a discount code for a future purchase. That’s just one example.

Customer journey mapping is really about building a myriad of those journeys that are informed by everything you know about how customers interact with you – and then using those maps to discover weaker areas of the journey.

2. Listen like you mean it

The key to building better customer journeys is listening to what customers are saying. Getting feedbac k from every stage of the journey allows you to build a strong, all-encompassing view of what’s happening from those that are experiencing it.

Maybe there’s an issue with the customer sign-up experience, for example. Or maybe the number advertised to contact for a demo doesn’t work. Or maybe you have a customer service agent in need of coaching, who only makes the issue worse. By listening, you’ll understand your customers’ issues and be able to fix them at the source. That customer service agent, for example, may just feel disempowered and unsupported, and in need of the right tools to help them perform better. Fixing that will help to optimize a key stage in the customer journey.

The key is to listen at every stage, and we can do that by employing the right technology at the right customer journey stages.

Customer surveys, for instance, can help you understand what went wrong from the people who’re willing to provide that feedback, but conversational analytics and AI solutions can automatically build insights out of all the structured and unstructured conversational data your customers are creating every time they reach out, or tweet, or leave a review on a third party website.

3. Get personal

The other side of the ‘listening’ equation is that it’s worth remembering that each and every customer’s journey is different – so treating them with a blanket approach won’t necessarily make anything better for them.

The trick instead is to use the tools available to you to build out a personalized view of every customer journey, customer journey stage, and customer engagemen t, and find common solutions.

Qualtrics Experience iD , for example, is an intelligent system that builds customer profiles that are unique to them and can identify through AI, natural language processing , and past interactions what’s not working – and what needs fixing.

On an individual basis, that will help turn each customer into an advocate. But as a whole, you’ll learn about experience gaps that are common to many journeys.

Listening to and understanding the customer experience at each customer journey stage is key to ensuring customers are satisfied and remain loyal on a huge scale.

It’s how you create 1:1 experiences, because, while an issue for one person might be an issue for many others, by fixing it quickly you can minimize the impact it might have on future customers who’re right at the start of their journey.

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Related resources

Customer Journey

Buyer's Journey 16 min read

Customer journey analytics 13 min read, how to create a customer journey map 21 min read, customer interactions 11 min read, consumer decision journey 14 min read, customer journey orchestration 12 min read, customer journey management 14 min read, request demo.

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How to Implement a Customer Journey Strategy that Works

A successful customer journey strategy starts with anticipating the potential paths a user may take when interacting with your product. Having a robust understanding of what the user experiences will help convert interest into loyalty.

A customer journey represents the entirety of a customer’s experience with a company’s products and services, from their first interaction (discovering a company) to a milestone (the purchase and use of a product). It’s about more than a high conversion rate or good customer service. Instead, it’s about all of the interactions that a current or prospective customer might have with your company and product:

• How do potential customers discover your company?
• Once interested, is there an opportunity for prospects to participate in a free trial of your product?
• Once onboarded, do you offer continued support for current customers?

All of these interactions whether before, during or after are considered touchpoints in the customer journey.

When creating a customer journey strategy, you should have a robust understanding of what users experience as they discover your company and begin interacting with it. This can include their emotions, goals, challenges, as well as their background, along with any other factors that may impact their decision making. According to research by McKinsey , a customer-centric strategy can generate a 20-30% increase in customer satisfaction.

As for designing the customer journey, you should aim to make it as easy as possible for customers to understand your products and services. Even if your product is complex, teams should strive to make the journey simple. This means that marketing campaigns should also be targeted and segmented in order to meet your audience’s distinct needs. Before anything, you’ll want to invest time into developing a clear understanding of your customer, as doing so will help guide the rest of the customer journey.

Let’s take a look at what a good customer experience looks like, and more importantly, how analytics, surveys and other research can help create the customer journey strategy that underpins it.

• To create happy customers and advocates, you must understand current and prospective customers’ goals, emotions, needs and how they interact with your company and product at every step of the customer journey.
• Analytics can help a company to gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviors.
• Successful companies use various tools and machine learning to create personalized experiences for their customers.
• After a customer journey strategy is created, a company should continue to evolve and optimize it as new information about customer behavior becomes available.

Companies with Exceptional Customer Experience

Before we break down the step-by-step process of creating a strong customer journey marketing strategy, let’s look at three exemplary customer experience strategies by large, successful companies.

In addition to having a well-designed, easy-to-use product, PayPal understands that an effective customer journey strategy is implemented by listening to customer feedback, and understanding what people are experiencing when they first interact with their product. Of course, statistics alone aren’t enough to guarantee success: a company must talk to their customers and actively reduce any causes of frustration. PayPal creates an outstanding customer experience by synthesizing all of this information.

Doordash’s focus is on optimizing the food delivery customer experience , which they achieve by offering a highly personalized product. They use quantitative, qualitative and behavioral data to understand the customer journey and continually improve on it. Analyzing this data helps them to understand their customers, and it allows the company to enhance their overall customer experience through personalized interactions. Personalization makes a product easier to use, more rewarding, and adds to the overall positive experience a customer has with a company.

There’s a reason the retail giant has become ubiquitous: the start-to-finish customer experience is both easy and convenient. Amazon’s product reviews, flexible shipping, easy returns and recommended products contribute to a shopping experience that helps to set them apart from their competitors.

For Amazon, success means they don’t rely on simple web analytics alone to determine customer behavior. They also employ advanced analytics tools and machine learning to predict what consumers want, enabling them to recommend items related to their unique customer profiles. Personalization is foundational in this strategy, as each user of their product receives an experience that is fully customized based on their browsing and shopping history.

How to implement a customer journey strategy

Note how the above companies all use analytics to understand their customers. They focus on their customers’ goals, emotions, and needs, in order to create an experience that leaves customers happy and satisfied. Companies that understand this and are willing to learn from what doesn’t work are going to be better at creating a customer journey that mitigates frustrations.

Let’s look at the six steps to implementing a customer journey strategy that works.

1. Understand what success looks like for your customer

Knowing what success looks like for your customers is a crucial first step in the process to building out your customer journey strategy. Customer success is defined as the process in which companies help customers achieve their goals through the use of their products or services.

Working with customers to understand their workstreams, challenges and goals will help in defining what success means to them, allowing you to help map out their path and ultimately determine what their customer journey strategy looks like.

2. Know the stages of the customer journey

Customers can go through multiple stages when it comes to the product journey lifecycle. These stages include:

• Awareness: This is the stage where a potential customer discovers your product for the first time. Your homepage, a search engine, an advertisement or a referral are all possible initial discovery tools.
• Consideration: Once a potential customer discovers your product, they’ll likely evaluate your offering against competitors to determine if there is a need. This could also be the stage at which a potential customer signs up for a free trial.
• Awareness/Purchase: When a need has been identified, the potential customer turns into an active customer by purchasing your product.
• Adoption: Once onboarded to your product, it’s important for a customer to begin using your product enough that it becomes part of their regular routine. If not used, the product loses its value and there’s a low likelihood of retaining that customer.
• Retention: To prevent churn, customers need to know that the goals they set are being achieved in order for them to renew the subscription.
• Expansion: While every customer’s needs are different, goals and challenges tend to change. This makes continuously checking in with customers key, as there may be an opportunity to include products that address their changing requirements.
• Advocacy: Happy customers can be your biggest brand advocates, so it’s important that you spend the time nurturing them throughout their customer journey.

3. Identify the various touchpoints of the customer journey

What are all the possible ways that people can interact with your company? To find out, leverage analytics to create a list that includes search engines, social media, advertisements, email content, sales, product demos and referrals. Also consider what’s behind all of these touchpoints: what motivates people to find your company? Determine what problem your product or service solves, and what the customer feeling was when they decided to look you up. Understanding the customer’s goals and motivations is important to building an ideal customer journey.

Touchpoints can be far-reaching, and customer service is only one part of the full customer journey. A company’s successful journey can also be generated by an immersive in-product experience or an engaging presence on social media.

4. Determine what actions customers will take

Are customers supposed to click a button to download a trial, contact you via phone or email, or take some other step? There should be a clear, simple path with a minimal number of steps. Offering too many options complicates the process and risks turning users away, while not enough options will create a barrier to entry.

On your website, in emails, social media, advertisements and other places, there should be clear steps for the user to take—a clear call-to-action that gives the customer the opportunity to take the next step. Remember that customer journeys are not linear . As there are a lot of actions a user can take, it’s important to take time to map out the full customer journey.

5. Increase retention by proactively reducing churn

Look at statistics, survey results and any other available information to understand why customers are not behaving as anticipated in the journey you’ve designed. For example, a lot of online retail companies have a high rate of customers abandoning their shopping carts on the last step before finishing the order. It would be helpful for them to understand why—perhaps shipping costs are a deterrent, or there’s a last-minute requirement to create a user profile.

Whatever it may be, you should aim to reduce all friction and pain points. The less frustrated your customers are, the greater the chance they turn into happy, loyal customers. This is where analytics and machine learning can intersect and help create personalized experiences for customers, reducing the obstacles between them and their goals. Additionally, checking in with customers along the way not just before and during the sale will help to proactively reduce churn and increase customer retention.

6. Continuously evolve your customer journey strategy

The online marketplace does not reward stagnation: review, update and refine your strategy. Your customer journey strategy should grow and evolve. New information and data obtained from analytics might result in a need for a new product launch or customer support may identify pain points current customers are experiencing with a certain feature. Continue to gather information about your customers needs and challenges, perform A/B tests, and update your customer journey strategy as needed.

A customer journey is not going to be linear and uniform, and neither should your customer journey strategy. But by being nimble, anticipating potential paths a user may take when interacting with your product and using analytics to dig into each stage of the journey, you’ll be well positioned to provide an experience that can convert interest into loyalty.

So if you’re looking for an answer to the user journey, no matter how simple or complex, Amplitude’s suite of resources can help your business increase its decision quality and velocity. You need a partner that can evolve and innovate with your teams, diving beneath superficial measurements and into the granular details that can separate you from your competitors in any industry or vertical.

About the Author

More best practices.

Service Blueprints vs. Journey Maps: differences & use cases

August 25, 2023

by Clockwork

Investment in customer experience drives customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and more. We use a few key tools to help our clients improve their customer experience—Service Blueprints and Journey Maps.

What are Service Blueprints and Journey Maps?

Before we delve into the differences and use cases, let’s get a grasp of what these tools are all about.

Service Blueprints

Service Blueprints visualize the service journey from both the customer’s and the employee’s perspective.

Service Blueprints consist of three layers:

• Top layer: the steps and interactions the customer has while using the service.
• Middle layer: the visible touchpoints where customers interact with the service provider.
• Bottom layer: the behind-the-scenes processes and resources involved in delivering the service.

Journey Maps

A Journey Map is a visual representation of the entire customer journey, weaving together each touchpoint and interaction.

Unlike Service Blueprints, Journey Maps focus solely on the customers’ emotions, thoughts, and experiences at each stage of their journey. They are valuable tools for businesses to connect emotionally with customers and improve their experience.

Complementary tools

Service Blueprints and Journey Maps have the same goal of improving customer experience, but they use different methods to achieve it. Let’s dive into the key differences of these tools:

Depth of detail

Service Blueprints delve deep into the nitty-gritty of service delivery, mapping out internal processes, resources, and frontline interactions. They provide a detailed view of how the service operates from an organizational perspective.

Journey Maps show the overall customer experience, including emotions, problems, and happy moments at each interaction. Their strength lies in presenting a holistic, empathetic view of the customer’s experience.

Service Blueprints empower service designers, process managers, and frontline staff to streamline processes, optimize resources, and ensure seamless service delivery.

Journey Maps, on the contrary, are the perfect companions for customer experience strategists, marketers, and product designers. Understanding customers’ emotional highs and lows enables strategies that delight customers and earn their loyalty.

Service Blueprints are more quantitatively focused, allowing businesses to measure and analyze specific service metrics. This includes metrics like service efficiency, average handling time, and resource utilization.

On the other hand, Journey Maps offer a qualitative perspective by capturing the emotional and experiential aspects of the customer journey. Metrics like customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and customer loyalty metrics align with Journey Maps.

Now, let’s look at their real-world applications.

Service Blueprint use cases

Service Blueprints help optimize service efficiency and streamline internal processes by identifying bottlenecks and optimizing resource allocation. This empowers businesses to deliver services with speed and precision. Additionally, Service Blueprints support smooth integration of new services into existing processes and provide a consistent customer experience.

Service Blueprints also help businesses create effective training programs for frontline staff by showing how service delivery works. This ensures employees are well-equipped to provide exceptional service.

Journey Map use cases

Journey Maps display customer emotions throughout their journey. This helps businesses create products that meet customer desires and needs. Creating a customer journey map helps find and fix problems in the customer experience. Building strong customer relationships by understanding customers’ emotions throughout their journey helps companies build deeper connections and foster customer loyalty.

Service Blueprints and Journey Maps can support business leaders in creating great customer experiences . While Service Blueprints delve into the organizational intricacies of service delivery, Journey Maps focus on customers’ emotions, experiences, and motivations. Remember, both tools are equally essential to customer experience excellence.

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Customer Journey Maps

What are customer journey maps.

Customer journey maps are visual representations of customer experiences with an organization. They provide a 360-degree view of how customers engage with a brand over time and across all channels. Product teams use these maps to uncover customer needs and their routes to reach a product or service. Using this information, you can identify pain points and opportunities to enhance customer experience and boost customer retention.

“ Data often fails to communicate the frustrations and experiences of customers. A story can do that, and one of the best storytelling tools in business is the customer journey map.” — Paul Boag, UX designer, service design consultant & digital transformation expert

In this video, Frank Spillers, CEO of Experience Dynamics, explains how you can include journey maps in your design process.

• Transcript loading…

Customer Journey Maps – Tell Customer Stories Over Time

Customer journey maps are research-based tools. They show common customer experiences over time To help brands learn more about their target audience. 

Maps are incredibly effective communication tools. See how maps simplify complex spaces and create shared understanding.

Unlike navigation maps, customer journey maps have an extra dimension—time. Design teams examine tasks and questions (e.g., what-ifs) regarding how a design meets or fails to meet customers’ needs over time when encountering a product or service. 

Customer journey maps should have comprehensive timelines that show the most essential sub-tasks and events. Over this timeline framework, you add insights into customers' thoughts and feelings when proceeding along the timeline. The map should include: 

A timescale - A defined journey period (e.g., one week). This timeframe should include the entire journey, from awareness to conversion to retention.

Scenarios - The context and sequence of events where a user/customer must achieve a goal. An example could be a user who wants to buy a ticket on the phone. Scenarios are events from the first actions (recognizing a problem) to the last activities (e.g., subscription renewal).

Channels – Where do they perform actions (e.g., Facebook)?

Touchpoints – How does the customer interact with the product or service? What actions do they perform?

Thoughts and feelings – The customer's thoughts and feelings at each touchpoint.

A customer journey map helps you understand how customer experience evolves over time. It allows you to identify possible problems and improve the design. This enables you to design products that are more likely to exceed customers’ expectations in the future state. 

How to Create a Customer Journey Map for Exceptional Experiences?

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Define Your Map’s Business Goal

Before creating a customer journey map, you must ask yourself why you're making one in the first place. Clarify who will use it and what user experience it will address.

Conduct Research

Use customer research to determine customer experiences at all touchpoints. Get analytical/statistical data and anecdotal evidence. Leverage customer interviews, surveys, social media listening, and competitive intelligence.

Watch user researcher Ditte Hvas Mortensen talk about how user research fits your design process and when you should do different studies. 

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Review Touchpoints and Channels

List customer touchpoints (e.g., paying a bill) and channels (e.g., online). Look for more touchpoints or channels to include.

Make an Empathy Map

Pinpoint what the customer does, thinks, feels, says, hears, etc., in a given situation. Then, determine their needs and how they feel throughout the experience. Focus on barriers and sources of annoyance.

Sketch the Journey

Piece everything—touchpoints, timescale, empathy map output, new ideas, etc.). Show a customer’s course of motion through touchpoints and channels across the timescale, including their feelings at every touchpoint.

Iterate and Refine

Revise and transform your sketch into the best-looking version of the ideal customer journey.

Share with Stakeholders

Ensure all stakeholders understand your map and appreciate how its use will benefit customers and the organization.

Buyer Journey vs User Journey vs Customer Journey: What's the Difference?

You must know the differences between buyer, user, and customer journeys to optimize customer experiences. A customer journey map is often synonymous with a user flow diagram or buyer journey map. However, each journey gives unique insights and needs different plans.

Customer Journey

The customer journey, or lifecycle, outlines the stages a customer goes through with a business. This journey can vary across organizations but includes five key steps:

1. Awareness : This is the first stage of the customer journey, where the customers realize they have a problem. The customer becomes aware of your brand or product at this stage, usually due to marketing efforts.

2. Consideration : Once customers know about your product or service, they start their research and compare brands.

3. Purchase : This is the stage where the customer has chosen a solution and is ready to buy your product or service.

4. Retention : After the purchase, it's about retaining that customer and nurturing a relationship. This is where good customer service comes in.

5. Advocacy : Also called the loyalty stage, this is when the customer not only continues to buy your product but also recommends it to others.

The journey doesn't end when the customer buys and recommends your solution to others. Customer journey strategies are cyclical and repetitive. After the advocacy stage, ideally, you continue to attract and retain the customers, keeping them in the cycle. 

There is no standard format for a customer journey map. The key is to create one that works best for your team and product or service. Get started with customer journey mapping with our template:

This customer journey map template features three zones:

Top – persona and scenario. 

Middle – thoughts, actions, and feelings. 

Bottom – insights and progress barriers.

Buyer Journey

The buyer's journey involves the buyer's path towards purchasing. This includes some of the steps we saw in the customer journey but is specific to purchasing :

1. Awareness Stage : This is when a prospective buyer realizes they have a problem. However, they aren't yet fully aware of the solutions available to them.

2. Consideration Stage : After identifying their problem, the buyer researches and investigates different solutions with more intent. They compare different products, services, brands, or strategies here.

3. Decision Stage : The buyer then decides which solution will solve their problem at the right price. This is where the actual purchasing action takes place.  

4. Post-Purchase Evaluation : Although not always included, this stage is critical. It's where the buyer assesses their satisfaction with the purchase. It includes customer service interactions, quality assessment, and attitudinal loyalty to the brand.

All these stages can involve many touchpoints, including online research, social media interactions, and even direct, in-person interactions. Different buyers may move through these stages at different speeds and through various channels, depending on a wide range of factors.

User Journey

The user journey focuses on people's experience with digital platforms like websites or software. Key stages include:

1. Discovery : In this stage, users become aware of your product, site, or service, often due to marketing efforts, word-of-mouth, or organic search. It also includes their initial reactions or first impressions.

2. Research/Consideration : Here, users dig deeper, exploring features, comparing with alternatives, and evaluating if your offering suits their needs and preferences.

3. Interaction/Use : Users actively engage with your product or service. They first-hand experience your solution's functionality, usability, and usefulness to achieve their goal.

4. Problem-solving : If they encounter any issues, how they seek help and resolve their issues fall into this stage. It covers user support, troubleshooting, and other assistance.

5. Retention/Loyalty : This stage involves how users stay engaged over time. Do they continue using your product, reduce usage, or stop altogether? It includes their repeated interactions, purchases, and long-term engagement over time.

6. Advocacy/Referral : This is when users are so satisfied they begin to advocate for your product, leaving positive reviews and referring others to your service.

Download this user journey map template featuring an example of a user’s routine. 

Understanding these stages can help optimize the user experience, providing value at each stage and making the journey seamless and enjoyable. 

Always remember the journey is as important as the destination. Customer relationships start from the first website visit or interaction with marketing materials. These initial touchpoints can influence the ongoing relationship with your customers.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

All customer interactions, pre and post-purchase.

Pre-purchase stages: awareness, consideration, conversion.

Subset of interactions in digital platforms.

Start/End Point

From marketing to end of customer relationship.

From awareness to conversion stages.

From user entry to exit on a digital platform.

All types of products and services—software and non—software interactions.

Decision-making before a purchase

Primarily digital platform interactions.

Drawbacks of Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping is valuable yet has limitations and potential drawbacks. Recognize these challenges and create more practical and realistic journey maps.

Over-simplification of Customer Experiences

Customer journey maps often risk simplifying complex customer experiences . They may depict varied and unpredictable customer behaviors as straightforward and linear. This simplification can lead to misunderstandings about your customers' needs and wants. As a result, you might overlook customers' diverse and unique paths. 

Always remember that real customer experiences are more complex than any map. When you recognize this, you steer clear of decisions based on simple models.

Resource Intensity

Creating detailed customer journey maps requires a lot of resources and time. You must gather extensive data and update the maps to keep them relevant. This process can strain small businesses or those with limited resources. 

You need to balance the need for comprehensive mapping with available resources. Efficient resource management and prioritization are crucial to maintaining effective journey maps.

Risk of Bias

Creating customer journey maps carries the inherent risk of biases . These biases can arise from various sources. They can impact the accuracy and effectiveness of the maps. 

Alan Dix, an expert in HCI, discusses bias in more detail in this video.  

Common biases in customer journey mapping include:

Assumption Bias: When teams make decisions based on preconceived notions rather than customer data.

Selection Bias: When the data doesn’t represent the entire customer base..

Confirmation Bias : When you focus on information that supports existing beliefs and preferences. Simultaneously, you tend to ignore or dismiss data that contradicts those beliefs.

Anchoring Bias : Relying on the first information encountered (anchor) when making decisions.

Overconfidence Bias : Placing too much trust in the accuracy of the journey map. You may overlook its potential flaws.

These biases may misguide the team, and design decisions based on these maps might not be effective.

To address these biases, review and update journey maps with real user research data. Engage with different customer segments and gather a wide range of feedback to help create a more accurate and representative map. This approach ensures the journey map aligns with actual customer experiences and behaviors.

Evolving Customer Behaviors

Customer behaviors and preferences change with time. A journey map relevant today can become outdated. You need to update and adapt your maps to reflect these changes. This requires you to perform market research and stay updated with trends and customer feedback. 

Getting fresh data ensures your journey map stays relevant and effective. You must adapt to evolving customer behaviors to maintain accurate and valuable customer journey maps.

Challenges in Capturing Emotions

Capturing emotions accurately in customer journey maps poses a significant challenge. Emotions influence customer decisions, yet you may find it difficult to quantify and represent them in maps. Most journey maps emphasize actions and touchpoints, often neglecting the emotional journey. 

You must integrate emotional insights into these maps to understand customer experiences. This integration enhances the effectiveness of customer engagement strategies. You can include user quotes, symbols such as emojis, or even graphs to capture the ups and downs of the users’ emotions..

Misalignment with Customer Needs

Misalignments in customer journey maps can manifest in various ways. It can impact the effectiveness of your strategies. Common misalignments include:

Putting business aims first, not what customers need.

Not seeing or serving the varied needs of different customer types.

Not using customer feedback in the journey map.

Thinking every customer follows a simple, straight path.

Engage with your customers to understand their needs and preferences if you want to address these misalignments. Incorporate their direct feedback into the journey map. This approach leads to more effective customer engagement and satisfaction.

Over-Reliance on the Map

Relying too much on customer journey maps can lead to problems. These maps should serve as tools rather than definitive guides. Viewing them as perfect can restrict your responsiveness to customer feedback and market changes. Treat journey maps as evolving documents that complement direct customer interactions and feedback. 

Make sure you get regular updates and maintain flexibility in your approach. Balance the insights from the map with ongoing customer engagement. This approach keeps your business agile and responsive to evolving customer needs.

Data Privacy Concerns

Collecting customer data for journey mapping poses significant privacy concerns. Thus, you need to create a balance. You must adhere to data protection laws and gather enough information for mapping. 

You need a careful strategy to ensure customer data security. Stay vigilant to adapt to evolving privacy regulations and customer expectations. This vigilance helps maintain trust and compliance.

Learn More about Customer Journey Maps

Take our Journey Mapping course to gain insights into the how and why of journey mapping. Learn practical methods to create experience maps , customer journey maps, and service blueprints for immediate application.

Explore this eBook to discover customer journey mapping .

Find some additional insights in the Customer Journey Maps article.

Questions related to Customer Journey Maps

Creating a customer journey map requires visually representing the customer's experience with your product or company. Harness the strength of visual reasoning to understand and present this journey succinctly. Instead of detailing a lengthy narrative, like a book, a well-crafted map allows stakeholders, whether designers or not, to grasp the journey quickly. It's a democratized tool that disseminates information, unifies teams, and aids decision-making by illuminating previously unnoticed or misunderstood aspects of the customer's journey.

The customer journey encompasses five distinct stages that guide a customer's interaction with a brand or product:

Awareness: The customer becomes aware of a need or problem.

Consideration: They research potential solutions or products.

Purchase: The customer decides on a solution and makes a purchase.

Retention: Post-purchase, the customer uses the product and forms an opinion.

Advocacy: Satisfied customers become brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences.

For a comprehensive understanding of these stages and how they intertwine with customer touchpoints, refer to Interaction-Design.org's in-depth article .

A perspective grid workshop is a activity that brings together stakeholders from various departments, such as product design, marketing, growth, and customer support, to align on a shared understanding of the customer's journey. These stakeholders contribute unique insights about customer needs and how they interact with a product or service. The workshop entails:

Creating a matrix to identify customers' jobs and requirements, not initially linked to specific features.

Identifying the gaps, barriers, pains, and risks associated with unmet needs, and constructing a narrative for the journey.

Highlighting the resulting value when these needs are met.

Discuss the implied technical and non-technical capabilities required to deliver this value.

Brainstorming possible solutions and eventually narrowing down to specific features.

The ultimate aim is to foster alignment within the organization and produce a user journey map based on shared knowledge. 

Learn more from this insightful video:

Customer journey mapping is vital as it harnesses our visual reasoning capabilities to articulate a customer's broad, intricate journey with a brand. Such a depiction would otherwise require extensive documentation, like a book. This tool offers a cost-effective method to convey information succinctly, ensuring understanding of whether one is a designer or lacks the time for extensive reading. It also helps the team to develop a shared vision and to encourage collaboration.  Businesses can better comprehend and address interaction points by using a journey map, facilitating informed decision-making and revealing insights that might otherwise remain obscured. Learn more about the power of visualizing the customer journey in this video.

Pain points in a customer journey map represent customers' challenges or frustrations while interacting with a product or service. They can arise from unmet needs, gaps in service, or barriers faced during the user experience. Identifying these pain points is crucial as they highlight areas for improvement, allowing businesses to enhance the customer experience and meet their needs more effectively. Pain points can relate to various aspects, including product usability, communication gaps, or post-purchase concerns. Explore the detailed article on customer journey maps at Interaction Design Foundation for a deeper understanding and real-world examples.

Customer journey mapping offers several key benefits:

It provides a holistic view of the customer experience, highlighting areas for improvement. This ensures that products or services meet users' needs effectively.

The process fosters team alignment, ensuring everyone understands and prioritizes the customer's perspective.

It helps identify pain points, revealing opportunities to enhance user satisfaction and loyalty.

This visualization allows businesses to make informed decisions, ensuring resources target the most impactful areas.

To delve deeper into the advantages and insights on journey mapping, refer to Interaction Design Foundation's article on key takeaways from the IXDF journey mapping course .

In design thinking, a customer journey map visually represents a user's interactions with a product or service over time. It provides a detailed look at a user's experience, from initial contact to long-term engagement. Focusing on the user's perspective highlights their needs, emotions, pain points, and moments of delight. This tool aids in understanding and empathizing with users, a core principle of design thinking. When used effectively, it bridges gaps between design thinking and marketing, ensuring user-centric solutions align with business goals. For a comprehensive understanding of how it fits within design thinking and its relation to marketing, refer to Interaction Design Foundation's article on resolving conflicts between design thinking and marketing .

A customer journey map and a user journey map are tools to understand the experience of users or customers with a product or service.

A customer journey map is a broader view of the entire customer experience across multiple touchpoints and stages. It considers physical and digital channels, multiple user personas, and emotional and qualitative aspects.

A user journey map is a detailed view of the steps to complete a specific task or goal within a product or service. It only considers digital channels, one user persona, and functional and quantitative aspects.

Both are useful to understand and improve the experience of the users or customers with a product or service. However, they have different scopes, perspectives, and purposes. A customer journey map provides a holistic view of the entire customer experience across multiple channels and stages. A user journey map provides a detailed view of the steps to complete a specific task or goal within a product or service.

While user journeys might emphasize specific tasks or pain points, customer journeys encapsulate the entire experience, from research and comparison to purchasing and retention. 

Customer journey maps and service blueprints are tools to understand and improve the experience of the users or customers with a product or service. A customer journey map shows the entire customer experience across multiple touchpoints and stages. It focuses on the front stage of the service, which is what the customers see and experience. It considers different user personas and emotional aspects.

A service blueprint shows how a service is delivered and operated by an organization. It focuses on the back stage of the service, which is what the customers do not see or experience. It considers one user persona and functional aspects. What are the steps that the customer takes to complete a specific task or goal within the service? What are the channels and devices that the customer interacts with at each step?

For an immersive dive into customer journey mapping, consider enrolling in the Interaction Design Foundation's specialized course . This course offers hands-on lessons, expert guidance, and actionable tools. Furthermore, to grasp the course's essence, the article “4 Takeaways from the IXDF Journey Mapping Course” sheds light on the core learnings, offering a snapshot of what to expect. These resources are tailored by industry leaders, ensuring you're equipped with the best knowledge to craft impactful customer journey maps.

Answer a Short Quiz to Earn a Gift

Why do designers create customer journey maps?

• To document internal company processes and designer feedback
• To replace other forms of customer feedback
• To visualize customer experiences and identify pain points

In which stage do customers first recognize they have a problem?

What element is essential in a customer journey map?

• Competitor analysis
• Customer's thoughts and feelings
• Empathy maps and user stories

Why are scenarios included in a customer journey map?

• To exemplify the design thinking process
• To list product features
• To show the context and sequence of events

Why should designers iterate and refine customer journey maps?

• To ensure it remains relevant and accurate
• To keep the map visually appealing
• To reduce the number of customer interactions

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Literature on Customer Journey Maps

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Journey Maps by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Journey Maps

Take a deep dive into Customer Journey Maps with our course Journey Mapping .

This course will show you how to use journey mapping to turn your own complex design challenges into simple, delightful user experiences . If you want to design a great shopping experience, an efficient signup flow or an app that brings users delight over time, journey mapping is a critical addition to your toolbox. 

We will begin with a short introduction to mapping — why it is so powerful, and why it is so useful in UX. Then we will get familiar with the three most common types of journey map — experience maps, customer journey maps and service blueprints — and how to recognize, read and use each one. Then you will learn how to collect and analyze data as a part of a journey mapping process. Next you will learn how to create each type of journey map , and in the final lesson you will learn how to run a journey mapping workshop that will help to turn your journey mapping insights into actual products and services. 

This course will provide you with practical methods that you can start using immediately in your own design projects, as well as downloadable templates that can give you a head start in your own journey mapping projects. 

The “Build Your Portfolio: Journey Mapping Project” includes three practical exercises where you can practice the methods you learn, solidify your knowledge and if you choose, create a journey mapping case study that you can add to your portfolio to demonstrate your journey mapping skills to future employers, freelance customers and your peers. 

Throughout the course you will learn from four industry experts. 

Indi Young will provide wisdom on how to gather the right data as part of your journey mapping process. She has written two books,  Practical Empathy  and  Mental Models . Currently she conducts live online advanced courses about the importance of pushing the boundaries of your perspective. She was a founder of Adaptive Path, the pioneering UX agency that was an early innovator in journey mapping. 

Kai Wang will walk us through his very practical process for creating a service blueprint, and share how he makes journey mapping a critical part of an organization’s success. Kai is a talented UX pro who has designed complex experiences for companies such as CarMax and CapitalOne. 

Matt Snyder will help us think about journey mapping as a powerful and cost-effective tool for building successful products. He will also teach you how to use a tool called a perspective grid that can help a data-rich journey mapping process go more smoothly. In 2020 Matt left his role as the Sr. Director of Product Design at Lucid Software to become Head of Product & Design at Hivewire. 

Christian Briggs will be your tour guide for this course. He is a Senior Product Designer and Design Educator at the Interaction Design Foundation. He has been designing digital products for many years, and has been using methods like journey mapping for most of those years.  

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What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is the set of steps and interactions from the customer’s point of view needed to achieve an outcome with your company.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a visual representation of the customer journey. A journey map takes a customer’s needs, processes, and perceptions through the entirety of their interaction with an organisation, and then diagrams that journey into a visual map. The more touch points a customer has along their way, the more complex the journey map becomes. What the customer encounters and feels as they progress between touchpoints on this journey forms the overall customer experience. Customer journey mapping can shorten and personalise the journey, resulting in a more positive experience.

A detailed customer journey map allows you to identify:

• Opportunities

To do this, the customer journey focuses on accessing four different factors:

• What is the customer doing/how is the customer behaving?
• What is the customer feeling?
• What/whom is the customer interacting with?
• What behind-the-scenes processes need to be taking place?

Benefits of customer journey mapping

It’s been said that you’ll never really understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Customer journey mapping allows you to do just that: placing yourself in your customers’ position and gaining a clearer understanding of their perspective. In addition to more clearly defining the realities of your customers’ experiences, journey mapping provides other advantages as well.

Provides an inbound perspective

Inbound marketing depends on your ability to create interesting and useful content to help generate interest and draw in prospective customers. Customer mapping gives you clever insight into your customers’ interests, as well as how they feel about individual aspects and touchpoints as they interact with your business. With this information, you can tailor your content offering to better attract and retain qualified leads.

Encourages proactive service

By mapping out the customer journey, you are able identify potential points of friction well in advance. You can then adjust your customer service strategy accordingly, intervening where necessary to increase your brand value and help cement a positive customer relationship. Being proactive makes your brand more reliable and helps you provide better support options for parts of the journey that may become difficult.

Identifies and refines target audiences

Locating and guiding prospective customers through their journey can be expensive, and when your leads fail to become customers, then all of that cost goes to waste. A detailed customer journey map can help you more clearly identify the demographics and traits of those who would be most interested in your services. By understanding their needs, pain points, and goals, you will be better positioned to market to the right audiences.

Improve customer retention rates

The customer journey isn’t designed only for new customers; a complete view of the customer journey provides opportunities to improve any areas that stand out as possibly problematic for returning customers as well. Customer journey mapping can help you identify those who might be considering leaving. By comparing journeys between churned customers, you may be able to identify common issues, which you can then address to help ensure that future customers keep coming back again and again.

Creates a concise representation of the user experience for your entire organisation

It can be difficult to coordinate all departments as your company grows. Sometimes, sales and marketing goals may not be aligned, or might not actually be relevant to your customers wants or needs. Your customer journey map supports a shared vision across departments. When adopted throughout your business, it can become the basis for decision-making, informing goals, supporting strategy, and aligning teams towards creating a better experience for your customers.

Understanding the customer journey

The journey that a customer takes is married to each instance that a customer comes in contact with your company. These instances include pre-purchase, mid- purchase, and post-purchase. When you break these three instances down into their constituent parts, there are seven phases of the customer journey to be aware of.

Out-of-market

This is the phase where a customer is looking to improve their business, and they want the company to be productive and efficient. At this point, they may not have a solution to achieve their goals, but they are open to inspiration and ideas.

A customer uncovers the opportunity to grow and improve their business at this phase—they have identified an issue that could be resolved.

Initial consideration

After customers have identified a solution to their problem, they will begin to research. Stakeholders and a project group work to identify the top brands in the market they need, scope out a project, and review the key functionalities and requirements.

Active evaluation

Customers then take their long list of possible solutions and narrow it down to a short list of brands. Customers contact the vendors on the short list and invite them to a meeting or demo, at which point they will review the solutions based on their trust, expertise, and scalability.

Purchase decision

This is when the customer decides on a vendor, agrees on the solution, and works out a purchase contract. Implementation begins, and customers start to roll out a team. The solution provider supports the customer as they outline KPIs, success criteria, and a timeline.

Once the customer has found the solution and teamed up with a company, they want to get the solution up and running as quickly as possible, and they want a smooth launch process. It is important to ensure that all users are trained and have proper access to consultants or account managers for support.

Once the solution has been rolled out, the customer wants to see fast results. The provider of the solution follows up, implements the solutions, and continues to help the customer fulfil their goals. This phase is where customers become loyal as results are being delivered.

How to create an effective user journey map

Understanding the importance of the customer journey map is only the first step. Before you can enjoy the advantages it offers, you first have to build it. Here, we break down the essential steps you’ll need to consider to create an effective journey map for your customers.

Define the scope for the map

• Take the time to identify the persona that you are mapping, and provide a single point of view per map to build out a strong and clear narrative.
• Choose the process that you’ll be mapping and ensure that it has a clear beginning, middle, and end point, and that it relates to the business insights you are seeking.
• Conduct research using resources such as call centre logs, field studies, usability results, and user feedback.
• Include the goal of your personas and what their expectations are, as well as quantifiable expectations, such as time to completion.

Identify the journey phases

• Think of the phases of the map as stages along the journey. If you’re mapping the user experience for onboarding, it’s possible that the journey may include setting up training, facilities access, benefits, and more.
• Choose simplicity and craft a journey map that tells a simple story. That said, be sure to include all relevant information and touch points.

Map the user’s action steps and experiences for each phase

• Document action steps for each phase of the journey, encompassing the actions that need to be taken. Most often you will have from four to twelve action steps, which may include learning about options, resolving questions, comparing choices, selecting services, etc.
• For each step, clearly document customer emotions, pain points, and challenges.

Use your journey map to build a shared vision of the user experience

• Create a journey map visualisation and gather feedback from key users.
• Use the journey map to identify potential opportunities to improve the customer experience and process.
• Continuously socialise and evolve the customer journey map to improve its effectiveness over time.

Measure your success

The success of your customer journey map relates directly to how positive and successful the overall customer experience is that you are offering. With this in mind, you can use many of the same success metrics as those used to measure and evaluate CX. These metrics include the following:

• Customer Effort Score (CES)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS)

Who should be involved in developing a user journey?

• Process owners
• Technology owners
• Upper management
• UX or UI representatives, such as an experience architect

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Service journey quality: conceptualization, measurement and customer outcomes

Journal of Service Management

ISSN : 1757-5818

Article publication date: 4 May 2021

Issue publication date: 17 December 2021

The quality of the customer journey has become a critical determinant of successful service delivery in contemporary business. Extant journey research focuses on the customer path to purchase, but pays less attention to the touchpoints related to service delivery and consumption that are key for understanding customer experiences in service-intensive contexts. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize service journey quality (SJQ), develop measures for the construct and study its key outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses a discovery-oriented research approach to conceptualize SJQ by synthesizing theory and field-based insights from customer focus group discussions. Next, using consumer survey data ( N  = 278) from the financial services context, the authors develop measures for the SJQ. Finally, based on an additional survey dataset ( N  = 239), the authors test the nomological validity and predictive relevance of the SJQ.

SJQ comprises of three dimensions: (1) journey seamlessness, (2) journey personalization and (3) journey coherence. This study demonstrates that SJQ is a critical driver of service quality and customer loyalty in contemporary business. This study finds that the loyalty link is partially mediated through service quality, indicating that SJQ explains loyalty above and beyond service quality.

Research limitations/implications

Since service quality only partially mediates the link between service journey quality and customer loyalty, future studies should examine alternative mediators, such as customer experience, for a more comprehensive understanding of the performance effects.

Practical implications

The study offers concrete tools for service managers who wish to understand and develop the quality of service journeys.

Originality/value

This study advances the service journey concept, demonstrates that the quality of the service journey is a critical driver of customer performance and provides rigorous journey constructs for future service research.

• Service journey
• Customer journey
• Service delivery
• Customer experience
• Service quality
• Service design

Jaakkola, E. and Terho, H. (2021), "Service journey quality: conceptualization, measurement and customer outcomes", Journal of Service Management , Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-06-2020-0233

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Elina Jaakkola and Harri Terho

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The notion of satisfying customers through service excellence is a cornerstone of service research and practice. During the past decade, managers and researchers alike have increasingly stressed the role of customer journeys as opposed to individual service encounters for the achievement of service excellence and the subsequent competitive advantage ( Rawson et al. , 2013 ). This emphasis aligns with broader marketing research suggesting that the set of touchpoints along the customer journey gives rise to customer experience ( Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Tueanrat et al. , 2021 ). Indeed, a recent industry report suggests that, across industries, companies' journey performance is substantially more strongly correlated with customer satisfaction and business outcomes, such as revenue and repeat purchase, than is firm performance at individual touchpoints ( Duncan et al. , 2016 ).

In the extant marketing literature, the “customer journey” is commonly defined as the series of touchpoints that customers encounter and interact with during their purchase process ( Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Becker et al. , 2020 ). In today's markets, customer journeys are ever more complex, as digitalization has accelerated the birth of a myriad of channels through which customers can interact, search for information and conduct their purchases ( Sousa and Voss, 2006 ; Edelman and Singer, 2015 ). What is more, increasing specialization has fragmented the contemporary service delivery to involve a network of providers ( Tax et al. , 2013 ). Firms must therefore manage expectational, operational and functional interdependencies between various touchpoints ( Dhebar, 2013 ), keeping in mind that clumsy and inconsistent journeys have been identified as an important source of customer churn ( Rawson et al. , 2013 ).

The customer journey is a powerful concept for understanding a customer's path to purchase (e.g. Edelman and Singer, 2015 ). However, the purchase decision-making focus is less useful for supporting service management; as in service-intensive contexts, service delivery and consumption encounters play a major role in the formation of customer experiences, accentuating the importance of touchpoints that customers interact with after their purchase decision (see Lemke et al. , 2011 ). Thus, service researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and design high-quality journeys can benefit from journey constructs that capture the functional and operational interdependencies between touchpoints comprising the service process (e.g. Tax et al. , 2013 ; Rawson et al. , 2013 ; Dhebar, 2013 ).

Extant service research offers valuable methods for analyzing and designing the composition of journeys, such as service blueprinting ( Bitner et al. , 2008 ), customer journey mapping ( Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010 ) and multilevel service design ( Patricio et al. , 2011 ), but it lacks the conceptual tools for assessing the quality of service journeys from the customer's viewpoint. This means that managers are missing the tools for measuring to what extent they succeed in designing their journeys for service delivery, and many service organizations continue measuring perceived service quality at particular touchpoints, or rely on simple aggregate measures, such as the Net Promoter Score. Research on customer experience (CX) also considers journeys, but CX measures predominantly focus on customers' perceptions of their overall experience with a brand (e.g. Brakus et al. , 2009 ) or a firm during the purchase process ( Kumar et al. , 2014 ; Kuppelwieser and Klaus, 2021 ), offering limited insights on the touchpoints related to service delivery and consumption that are critical for service-intensive contexts.

Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize service journey quality (SJQ), develop measures for the construct and study its customer outcomes . Service journey refers to the process or sequence that a customer goes through to access and use a particular service (cf. Tueanrat et al. , 2021 ; Følstad and Kvale, 2018 ; Voorhees et al. , 2017 ). This study adopts a discovery-oriented approach for conceptualizing SJQ ( Zaltman et al. , 1982 ). First, by synthesizing extant theory (e.g. Homburg et al. , 2017 ; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ) and field-based insights from customer focus group discussions, we define SJQ as the degree to which customers perceive the combination of provider-owned service process touchpoints functioning as a (1) seamless, (2) coherent and (3) personalized whole. Second, by building upon the definition and insights from the qualitative study, we develop measures for the SJQ constructs using survey data ( N  = 278) from consumers in the financial services context. Third, we demonstrate the nomological validity and practical relevance of the SJQ constructs by linking them to service quality and customer loyalty using a second survey dataset ( N  = 239) from the financial industry.

This study makes three key contributions. First, the developed conceptualization and measure for SJQ advances extant service research that has, for nearly a decade, highlighted the critical role of journeys (e.g. Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010 ; Ostrom et al. , 2015 ), but offered scant insight into what constitutes the quality of a journey in a service-intensive context. This study develops service process-focused SJQ constructs that capture the key aspects of functional service journeys, putting the emphasis on customer perceptions of the interdependencies between journey touchpoints rather than on individual encounters or the overall evaluation of a firm, thereby complementing current constructs in the area of customer journeys and experience (e.g. Lemke et al. , 2011 ; Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ). Second, this study provides rare empirical support for the notion that the journey quality is a critical driver of customer performance in contemporary service businesses (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ). Specifically, we demonstrate that service journey seamlessness, personalization and coherence are central drivers of customer loyalty intentions. Third, the study clarifies the nomological network of service journeys by providing new insights about the theoretical mechanisms through which journey quality affects loyalty. Earlier research has pointed out that the link between journey quality and loyalty is primarily due to improved brand attitudes ( Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ). Our results show that in service-intensive contexts, the journey-loyalty relationship can furthermore be partially explained through improved service quality perceptions. Since the service quality's mediation effect is only partial, we encourage future research to study more closely the role of other alternative mediators, such as customer experience, in linking SJQ to customer loyalty ( Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ). All in all, this research provides new measures for service design, service management and customer experience research, as well as for managers who wish to set goals, understand and develop their performance in service journeys as a strategic priority.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section outlines the key literature streams that offer the conceptual building blocks for SJQ. The subsequent sections report the empirical research conducted; we first conceptualize SJQ and its key dimensions by synthesizing theory-based views and field-based insights into SJQ, second, develop measures for the construct and finally demonstrate its nomological and predictive validity. The final sections outline the study's theoretical and managerial implications.

2. Conceptual underpinnings of service journey quality

The research that can be drawn from to conceptualize service journey quality is fragmented in multiple literature streams. In the service context, many of the dealings between customers and providers take place after the actual purchase decision has been made as the realization of a service offering often involves both parties. SJQ is hence best understood through literature streams that tackle the various stages of the process that consumers go through when accessing and consuming a service.

Table 1 outlines the key literature fields that offer insight into SJQ. The service management and service design research discuss high-quality service delivery processes; customer experience studies identify strategic journey-related goals for service providers and channel management research provides insights on the design and deployment of diverse channels for effective service processes.

The traditional service management literature has highlighted that customers' quality perceptions are affected not only by what they receive as an outcome of the service but critically also by the functional performance of the service process ( Grönroos, 1984 ). This research has mainly focused on the quality of the core service delivery taking place during the service encounter ( Voorhees et al. , 2017 ), typically examining customer perceptions of either a firm's service excellence at one point in time or their overall experience with the firm (e.g. Parasuraman et al. , 1991 ; Brady and Cronin, 2001 ). The studies considering the service encounter's processual nature have analyzed how positive service outcomes are affected by a particular phase or event of the service process ( Stauss and Weinlich, 1997 ; Verhoef et al. , 2004 ; Sivakumar et al. , 2014 ) or the customer relationship ( Dagger and Sweeney, 2007 ). In other words, service management research mostly focuses on individual service encounters or overall service quality rather than on the journey elements that support the functioning of the service process as a whole.

The literature on service design focuses on the customer-centered innovation of new services by emphasizing the user experience, suggesting methods for analyzing customer journeys and aligning the partners in service delivery (e.g. Karpen et al. , 2017 ; Steen et al. , 2011 ; Yu and Sangiorgi, 2018 ). Methods such as service blueprinting emerged as an attempt to gain a broader view of the service process that comprises both joint service encounters and the steps customers take outside the service setting ( Bitner et al. , 2008 ). Subsequent service design studies have expanded the analysis to include complex systems that customers and users navigate to fulfill their needs (e.g. Patricio et al. , 2011 ; Tax et al. , 2013 ). This stream highlights the importance of designing the journey in a holistic manner and incorporating the entire service delivery network to ensure a consistent service experience (e.g. Tax et al. , 2013 ). Yet, the emphasis lies on offering tools for mapping and developing customer journeys, and these studies do not offer constructs for measuring service journey quality from the customer's perspective.

Customer experience research highlights the importance of journeys by defining the customer experience as “customers' nondeliberate, spontaneous responses and reactions to offering-related stimuli along the customer journey” ( Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ). Research on customer experience management (CEM) focuses on sellers' activities for strategically designing and managing experiences throughout the customer journey. Homburg et al. (2017) found that best-practice firms have four strategic goals for designing and improving customer journeys: (1) the thematic cohesion of touchpoints, (2) the consistency of touchpoints, (3) the context sensitivity of touchpoints and (4) the connectivity of touchpoints. Kuehnl et al. (2019) found evidence for the first three of these dimensions. These findings offer tentative insights into the relevant dimensions of SJQ. However, the CX research predominantly studies customer purchase journeys, and the only existing consumer-assessed journey design construct by Kuehnl et al. (2019) emphasizes brand-focused journey qualities relating to the brand experience, brand attitudes and customer loyalty. The CX stream has thus paid very limited attention to the functional and operational touchpoint interdependencies that are critical for service contexts ( Rawson et al. , 2013 ; Dhebar, 2013 ).

Finally, research on multichannel customer management addresses “the design, deployment, and evaluation of channels to enhance customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development” ( Neslin et al. , 2006 , p. 96). Customer channels are the medium through which service providers communicate or interact with customers (e.g. call centers, e-mails, SMS, chats and face-to-face conversations) hence representing platforms for digital or human-served touchpoints ( Halvorsrud et al. , 2016 ; Sousa and Voss, 2006 ). The multichannel literature predominantly focuses on channel choice behavior, such as the drivers for online channel use (e.g. Melis et al. , 2015 ), an optimal mix of channels (e.g. Montoya-Weiss et al. , 2003 ) and the role of specific channels during particular phases of the purchase process (e.g. Verhoef et al. , 2007 ). In terms of SJQ, this stream contributes insights into channel properties that attract and guide customers, especially the importance of integrating channels to enable the easy transitioning from one channel to another (e.g. Montoya-Weiss et al. , 2003 ; Neslin et al. , 2006 ; Barwitz and Maas, 2018 ). However, as noted by Anderl et al. (2016) , channel studies tend to either focus on one single channel or consider the interplay of a few selected channels to understand the consumer's path to purchase. This literature reveals little about the quality of the combination of different types of touchpoints located within a range of channels as the focus lies on the channel strategies rather than on the functioning of the journey for service delivery.

As this literature review demonstrates, the issue of understanding and designing service journeys is relevant for many research streams, but the question as to what constitutes SJQ has not been explicitly addressed so far, and the research lacks valid measures on this topic. The research on service management and service design emphasizes the importance of gaining a customer view of the service process, but does not offer tools for understanding and measuring the functional quality of journeys. Customer experience and channel management research, in turn, focuses on the customer purchase journey and offers little insight into the interdependencies between post-purchase touchpoints that are critical for service delivery processes.

3. Conceptualization of service journey quality

To conceptualize SJQ, we applied a discovery-oriented research approach (e.g. Zaltman et al. , 1982 ). By adhering to this approach's established procedures, we build upon our initial insights from a literature review for a theory-based view and complement and refine it with a field-based view. The existing research offers a good basis for forming an initial, theory-based understanding of SJQ, but since existing studies have not addressed journeys specifically from a service process perspective, we conducted a qualitative study on consumers' perceptions of high-quality service journeys to (1) substantiate and (2) enhance and nuance the theory-based view. The conceptualization process was abductive in nature: we moved between theoretical concepts and empirical observations in an iterative fashion ( Dubois and Gadde, 2002 ), resulting in a synthesis of theory and qualitative insights that allowed us to define the SJQ construct and its key dimensions. The conceptual basis established in this phase also forms a robust foundation for the scale development process in the study's latter stages.

3.1 Theory-based view of service journey quality

The first step of the conceptualization process focuses on forming a theory-based view of the SJQ concept's key content. As our literature review demonstrates, research on service process quality and customer journeys can together offer tentative insights into SJQ. First, many studies stress the importance of designing the journey as a whole and integrating touchpoints such that the journey runs smoothly (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Homburg et al. , 2017 ; Sousa and Voss, 2006 ). However, due to the increasing functional and operational touchpoint interdependencies of the service processes, mere excellence in individual interactions may not be enough for successful service delivery if the service delivery touchpoints do not align and work in concert (see Rawson et al. , 2013 ).

Second, many authors highlight that touchpoints and their cues should be thematically consistent and coherent along the journey (e.g. Homburg et al. , 2017 ; Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ). Customers experience and evaluate service cues across touchpoints, and with an increasing number of channels and partners involved in service delivery, they may feel lost if the service touchpoints are very dissimilar (cf. Berry et al. , 2006 ).

Third, research emphasizes the individual and subjective nature of journeys, suggesting that they should be sensitive to customers ' individual needs and channel preferences (e.g. Barwitz and Maas, 2018 ; Patricio et al. , 2011 ). High-quality service delivery should therefore adapt to the needs of the individual customer throughout the whole service process (cf. Dhebar, 2013 ). These three themes – touchpoint integration, thematical coherence and sensitivity to individual customer needs – were adopted as the initial theory-based view for SJQ conceptualization, which was refined and complemented with empirical insights from service-intensive contexts.

3.2 A qualitative study for establishing a field-based view of service journey quality

Next, we conducted a qualitative study to generate an understanding of SJQ by drawing from human experiences ( Gioia et al. , 2013 ). Following Sharma and Conduit (2016) , we took the Gioia approach to first conduct open coding to identify themes emerging from data, to capture any SJQ aspects that are relevant for consumers' lived service experiences. In accordance with the abductive approach, we next integrated the first-order codes into second-order, theory-centric themes iterating between the data and the tentative conceptualizations derived from previous research ( Dubois and Gadde, 2002 ). The qualitative data thus served the purpose of substantiating and refining the theory-based view and formulating service process specific definitions for the tentative themes.

3.2.1 Data collection

We employed focus groups to capture consumer insights into SJQ. Focus groups are a suitable data collection means for explorative purposes because the method allows one to gain insights from a large number of individuals through nondirective inquiry strategies that result in a rich understanding of the studied phenomenon ( Flick, 2018 ). We organized nine focus groups of four or five consumers each, and the participants were both female and male and aged between twenty and forty years ( Table 2 ). The aim of selecting focus group participants was to facilitate the open sharing of views and understandings while ensuring that the generated data would be able to meet the research aim's requirements ( King et al. , 2019 ). The participants were university students with differing backgrounds, thus ensuring some common ground, yet a relatively broad range of views.

Each group discussed service journeys in one of the following service contexts: retail, hospitality, teleoperator and insurance services ( Table 2 ). Service delivery in these contexts often features multiple touchpoints, facilitating the gaining of a rich set of insights. The groups were asked to choose one of the four contexts, wherein each participant had some recent dealings. The participants were instructed to discuss their actual experiences of service processes in the chosen context by focusing on experiences they perceived as particularly positive or negative. The participants were asked to describe their service journeys and elaborate upon the aspects that they perceived as the root causes of their positive and/or negative perceptions of the service process. All these procedures aimed to elicit the recall and identification of critical SJQ dimensions in a nonobtrusive way.

3.2.2 Data analysis

Following the Gioia approach ( Gioia et al. , 2013 ), we conducted a thematic analysis on the data, starting with identifying any journey-specific themes mentioned by the focus group participants as relevant to their positive or negative past service experiences; this stage is akin to open coding as conducted in grounded theory ( Strauss and Corbin, 1990 ). Next, we compared and grouped the first-order codes to identify broader second-order themes related to journey quality aspects by iterating between the data and the tentative theory-based conceptualizations. The first-order analysis adhered to the informants' voices, while the second-order analysis developed a higher level of abstraction and used theory-driven insights to determine if and how the first-order themes may be connected and labeled to suggest concepts that explain the observed phenomenon ( Gioia et al. , 2013 ; cf. Sharma and Conduit, 2016 ).

3.3 Conceptualization: synthetizing theory-based view and empirical findings

By synthesizing previous research with findings from qualitative study, we define SJQ as the degree to which customers perceive the combination of provider-owned service process touchpoints functioning as a (1) seamless, (2) coherent and (3) personalized whole. With provider-owned touchpoints, we refer to touchpoints controllable by the service providers, i.e. brand- and partner-owned touchpoints ( Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ). The rationale is that while modern multichannel service processes may involve a network of service providers and outsourcing partners ( Tax et al. , 2013 ), the customer nevertheless evaluates the process as a whole and often sees each touchpoint representing, and remaining the responsibility of the focal service provider, whether outsourced or not ( Kranzbühler et al. , 2019 ). Thus, the SJQ construct focuses on service delivery touchpoints that service providers are able to design and manage (see Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ). We identify three key SJQ dimensions: seamlessness, personalization and coherence discussed in detail below.

I hit a car at the parking lot and called my insurance company. Their call center connected my call to the insurance payout services and also transferred my details since the person picking up already knew who I was and why I was calling! She told me what would happen next and helped me pick a repair shop. After the call, I got a text and an email with instructions to the repair shop, and the owner of the other car immediately got a call from my insurance company about his compensation, and I did not have to worry about it at all. (I2)

I had ordered from their online store but I could return items at the [physical] store…that was very convenient, not having to pack and send the clothes that did not fit. (R2)

I was trying to activate my new mobile phone subscription, but it was very difficult. I got a letter that instructed that I should register in one place, then confirm in another site, and then activate it in a third place! The salespersons gave totally different instructions. (T1)

These findings find support in existing research, pinpointing that journey touchpoints should be functionally integrated to enable a smooth end-to-end journey ( Homburg et al. , 2017 ). Edelman and Singer (2015) note that firms should streamline journeys so that customers are able to execute complex service processes quickly and easily; and Rawson et al. (2013) recommend shifting from siloed to cross-functional approaches in developing journeys. Combining the qualitative insights with extant research, we define journey seamlessness as the degree to which touchpoints are integrated allowing a customer ' s smooth transition between various service process touchpoints .

The [mobile phone] service provider sent me an ad to promote its special package for young adults; it looked trendy and playful. The firm was also present in our student event; they organized a funny game and gave away energy drinks…Even their sales reps were cool; they called themselves “social media ninjas”—so everything was about the trendy, bold, and youthful brand… (T1)

It is easy since every Ikea store is almost identical, and it feels the same since you can see Ikea colors all the time…their website looks like Ikea since there is blue and yellow. You also see yellow and blue signs in the stores, and you collect stuff in a yellow bag, and they pack them in a blue bag! (R1)

Different service employees had completely different styles of doing things...So their service principles seem to depend on who you happen to ask! (R3)

These findings resonate with the notion of brand cues' thematic cohesion and consistency across touchpoints (see e.g. Berry et al. , 2006 ; Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ). Previous research on customer experience management has indeed recommended that firms should systematically manage and orchestrate “experience clues” across various touchpoints ( Berry et al. , 2006 ; Zomerdijk and Voss, 2010 ). Synthesizing the qualitative insights with previous research, we define journey coherence as the degree to which service process touchpoints provide consistent experience cues .

We went to a big concert and stayed in a hotel close by. There were many concert attendees staying there, and the hotel had decided to extend the breakfast time the next morning so that we could sleep in after the concert! That seemed like excellent service. ( H2 )

I needed to file an application for compensation for a broken sink in my bathroom. I could've done that online, by phone, or by visiting their office, but I chose the mobile application since I like to do everything with my phone. (I1)

We were two families with small kids traveling together [on a cruise ship] and had booked family cabins. It was really convenient that all the family cabins were located along the same corridor, and party people were at the other end of the ship. Passengers with prams had their own entrance to the ship, and there was a ship mascot greeting us and handing coupons for free ice cream at the play area, our kids loved it! ( H1 )

Also previous research has noted the importance of designing touchpoints that are sensitive to the customer's situational context ( Homburg et al. , 2017 ; Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ), highlighting that customers should find the touchpoint architecture adaptive to their changing needs ( Dhebar, 2013 ). Combining the empirical and research insights, we define journey personalization as the degree to which the combination of service process touchpoints is tailored to fit the customer ' s preferences and situational context.

4. Service journey quality scale development

4.1 qualitative scale development procedure.

The conceptualization of SJQ enabled us to proceed into building measures for the construct. The scale development follows the established procedures for building new scales ( Churchill, 1979 ; MacKenzie et al. , 2011 ). Specifically, on the basis of the construct definitions and insights from the qualitative study, we built an initial indicator pool for all three SJQ constructs, coming up with 23 total indicators that have been designed to evenly reflect the key domain of each SJQ dimension. Next, we assessed the indicator content validity through a qualitative item-sort task test suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1991) . Twelve senior scholars were asked to assign each scale item under one SJQ construct definitions or option “other” if it could not be accurately assigned to any one definition. All but one indicator received more than ten out of twelve correct responses, thereby passing the suggested threshold criterial of psa (>0.5) and csv (>0.7). When a reviewer felt unclear about or rated an item incorrectly, the indicator was carefully evaluated, and some wordings were consequently fine-tuned. Finally, we selected the six representative indicators from the item sort test for each dimension to sustain the final scale at a reasonable length – see Appendix for the final scale indicators.

4.2 Data collection for the scale validation

To validate the developed measure, we conducted a consumer survey concerning SJQ in financial services where the process of accessing and using the service typically involves a multitude of touchpoints in different channels. The data were collected in a centrally located downtown shopping center in a northern European town. We randomly approached adult customers and asked them to participate in an academic study that concerned their experiences with their primary financial service providers. We implemented a movie ticket draw as an incentive for consumers to participate and guaranteed full anonymity for each respondent and received N  = 278 responses. The data were deemed adequate for the initial scale validation purpose of the first survey study.

4.3 Assessment of the SJQ scale validity and reliability

The SJQ scale validity was assessed based on confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS 24 software. The initial analysis of the proposed three-factor SJQ model with 18 indicators led to the elimination of two items from the seamlessness construct due to problems with discriminant validity. The elimination of problematic items is possible since the reflective indicators are interchangeable and because the construct is unchanged when an indicator is removed ( Bollen and Lennox, 1991 ). A purified three-dimensional model with 16 items demonstrated a satisfactory fit. The chi-square statistic was significant (222.4; p  = 0.00), but the critical ratio of the chi-square over degrees of freedom was close to 2 ( χ 2 /df = 2.2), thus indicating a reasonable fit. The central fit indices provide support for the scale validity: goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.91; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.95; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.94; standardized root mean residual (SRMR) = 0.042 and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.066 [0.054; 0.078] (c.f. Hu and Bentler, 1999 ). All indicator loadings were above 0.70 and significant at p  < 0.01. Figure 1 summarizes the CFA results.

The Fornell and Larcker (1981) test further supports the discriminant validity because the average variance extracted (AVE) values for all constructs exceeded 0.50, and the squared AVE values of each construct exceeded correlations with other constructs. Construct reliabilities were also satisfactory, as all Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability values were higher than 0.70 (see Table 3 for scale details).

Finally, we compared the proposed three-dimensional model against alternative models, including a null model, a single-factor SJQ model and three two-dimensional SJQ models, to further assess the dimensionality of the construct. All alternative models had poor fit (see Table 4 ), thereby supporting the proposed three-dimensional conceptualization of SJQ. All in all, the initial scale validation stage provided support for the validity and reliability of the scales.

5. Nomological and predictive validity of SJQ

5.1 research model and hypotheses.

The study's final stage focused on testing the nomological and predictive validity of each SJQ construct. For this purpose, we identified the two seminal constructs of customer loyalty and service quality from earlier service research, which are conceptually related to SJQ. Figure 2 below presents this study's research model. Next, we discuss the research model and its hypotheses as well as justify the use of composite constructs to test the hypotheses.

Service journey quality has a positive relationship with customer loyalty.

Service journey quality has a positive relationship with service quality.

The relationship between service journey quality and customer loyalty is partially mediated by service quality.

5.2 Use of composite constructs in the research model

Theoretical constructs are not per se multidimensional or unidimensional, but can usually be operationalized either way, thus representing various levels of theoretical abstraction ( Law et al. , 1998 ). SJQ and service quality represent two theoretically distinctive, although complex concepts in the research model, as both possess multiple unique dimensions. Against this background, both constructs can be meaningfully operationalized at a higher level of abstraction by means of second-order composite constructs ( Hair et al. , 2017 ). The use of hierarchical component models offers two important benefits for this study. First, they can notably reduce model complexity by decreasing the number of relationships in the full mediation model, thereby increasing parsimony ( Hair et al. , 2017 , p. 281). Second, although all studied SJQ and service quality constructs are independent by nature, they are likely to correlate with one another due their conceptual closeness concerning quality in service business settings. Establishing a higher-order structure can reduce potential collinearity issues ( Hair et al. , 2017 , p. 281).

Research should always carefully consider specification of the studied constructs because model misspecification can severely bias structural parameter estimates and lead to inappropriate conclusions about the hypothesized relationships between constructs ( Jarvis et al. , 2003 ). We argue that SJQ and service quality are best modeled as first-order reflective, second-order formative (Type II) composite constructs. We build this argument upon the following four criteria that define whether a construct is more efficiently measured by a reflective or formative perspective: (1) causality between the construct and its dimensions, (2) interchangeability of the dimensions, (3) covariation among the dimensions and (4) whether or not all dimensions have the same antecedents and consequences (cf. Jarvis et al. , 2003 , p. 203). The qualitative study suggests that the three SJQ dimensions form the overall level of the construct rather than a uniformly reflect the construct as dropping one dimension would alter the SJQ's conceptualization. Similarly, the dimensions can but are not required to correlate since a service firm might score high in seamlessness, but at the same time fail to provide personalized service encounters. Finally, one may logically expect that the various independent dimensions can have different drivers and outcomes.

5.3 Data collection

The data collection for testing the research model was conducted in collaboration with a Northern European bank that is classified as the second-largest bank in the country wherein the study was conducted. The bank provided us access to its consumers in one of its branches and drew a sample of 4,757 customers from its customer base. A customer experience-labeled survey was sent to the customers in the university's name as an academic survey. A movie ticket draw was used to incentivize the selected customers to participate in the study. All responses were highlighted to be fully confidential, and the respondents were guaranteed full anonymity for their responses. The data collection with two reminders led to N  = 239 customer responses. The respondents' characteristics are summarized in Table 5 .

5.4 Measures

We employed established scales for all the constructs in the research model. Specifically, we measured customer loyalty using the scale by Zeithaml et al. (1996) , service quality with the measure developed by Cronin and Taylor (1992) and SJQ with the developed scale. In addition, since the study relied on a single-respondent design, we included a common method variance (CMV) marker variable to the questionnaire. For this purpose, we used an a-priori “Consumer Orientation Toward Sporting Events” scale developed by Pons et al. (2006) with four indicators and no nomological relationship with other study constructs, as recommended by the established guidelines ( Lindell and Whitney, 2001 ; Chin et al. , 2013 ).

5.5 Analytical procedures

Since the maximum-likelihood-based SEM is problematic for testing models with formative constructs, we analyzed the research model with PLS modeling using the SmartPLS3.0 software ( Hair et al. , 2012 ). This method is closely suited to studies that build upon formative constructs and complex models with higher-order constructs and mediation effects. We implemented the guidelines established by Hair et al. (2012) to estimate the research model. The modeling of second-order composite constructs follows the guidelines of Becker et al. (2012) as well as Cadogan and Lee (2013) . Specifically, the simulation study conducted by Becker et al. (2012) demonstrates that reflective-formative, hierarchical type II constructs are most effectively modeled by the repeated indicator approach, path weighting scheme and mode B measurement. We further tested the SJQ construct's relationship with the second-order formative service quality construct through its lower-order dimensions (see Figure 2 ), which represents a conceptually superior way to estimate antecedent relations for formative constructs ( Cadogan and Lee, 2013 ). To account for the total effects on service quality, the explained variance in each dimension was multiplied by its weight, and the individual contributions of each dimension were added together ( Becker et al. , 2012 ). The statistical significance of the PLS parameter estimates were tested with a bootstrapping procedure based on 5,000 subsamples. For clarity, we estimated the research model in two parts; we first estimated a simple baseline model with exclusively direct relationships between SJQ and customer loyalty and second, estimated a full model with the service quality construct as a mediator.

5.6 Common method variance

Because the study relies on a single-respondent design, common method variance (CMV) must be taken into account. We relied on both procedural and statistical approaches to assess and control CMV as recommended by Podsakoff et al. (2003) . The procedural means include respondents' guaranteed anonymity, careful scale item development for added clarity and the use of different scale anchors for IV and DV. We also used several statistical means to assess CMV. First, Harman's single-factor test produced seven factors with eigenvalues greater in an un-rotated factor analysis and no single factor explained above 50% of the covariance. Second, we applied Lindell and Whitney's (2001) partial correlation technique to assess the magnitude of CMV effects in construct correlations. Importantly, the marker variable was found to have low (0.06–0.12) and insignificant relationships with other study constructs (see Table 6 ), while the specific data analysis procedures (see Lindell and Whitney, 2001 ) did not exhibit any substantial changes in their correlation coefficients or their significance when controlling for the CMV marker variable. Finally, we applied a measured latent marker variable approach when testing our research model, which has been proven to effectively detect and correct CMV in a PLS analysis (see Chin et al. , 2013 ). Specifically, our full research model includes separate CMV marker variables for all constructs in the model (see Figure 2 ). All marker variable paths were again close to zero and insignificant (see Table 7 for full details). Importantly, the marker variable's inclusion in the model did not change path coefficients or significances; overall, the results indicate that a common method bias is not a major problem for this study.

5.7 Testing the research model and hypotheses

We began testing the research model by assessing the scale validities and reliabilities. The outer model results show that all standardized indicator loadings exceeded the recommended threshold of 0.70 and were all significant at the p  < 0.01 level (see Appendix ). The construct reliabilities were supported, as all Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability values were higher than 0.70. Convergent and discriminant validity were supported because all AVEs were higher than 0.50 and because the AVE's square root exceeded the construct correlations (see Table 6 for scale details). The scale correlations were high, although closely aligned with earlier service quality research findings that have found key service quality constructs and customer performance outcomes to be tightly interrelated ( Brady and Cronin, 2001 ; Dagger and Sweeney, 2007 ). The correlations are also theoretically meaningful since all the studied constructs measured diverse aspects of service performance, including service journey quality, overall service quality and customer loyalty. Finally, a separate test of PLS cross-loadings confirmed that all indicators loaded highest on the construct that they were intended to measure ( Hair et al. , 2012 ).

The inner model evaluation also supported the quality of the model. We examined VIF values of the first-order constructs in relation to higher-order formative constructs and concluded that all values were below the suggested threshold of 5 ( Hair et al. , 2012 ).

The structural model results provide support for all three hypotheses. First, the direct effect model confirms that the developed SJQ measure has a strong, positive relationship with customer loyalty, thus supporting H1 (see Table 7 ). Specifically, the second-order SJQ construct had a path coefficient of 0.76** for loyalty in the direct effect model, thus explaining 60% of its variance. All first-order dimensions had positive and significant weights: personalization (0.40**), coherence (0.38**) and seamlessness (0.29*), thus supporting the predictive validity of all three dimensions for customer performance. The first-order path coefficients to the second-order constructs can be interpreted similarly to formative indicator weights – that is, by indicating the relative contribution of the lower-order construct to the higher-order construct while predicting outcomes in the studied nomological network ( Becker et al. , 2012 ).

Second, the full structural model results support the second hypothesis that SJQ is a central enabler of service quality in today's complex business environment. Interestingly, SJQ was positively related to all dimensions of service quality: reliability (0.85**), assurance (0.73**), tangibles (0.68**), empathy (0.65**) and responsiveness (0.57**). Yet, only two first-order dimensions of service quality contributed significantly to the second-order construct when predicting loyalty. By calculating the total indirect effects ( Becker et al. , 2012 ), SJQ explains 53% of the variance in service quality.

Third, the full mediation model results also support the partial mediation of H3 because the relationship between SJQ and customer loyalty became weaker, yet remained significant when controlling for the service quality mediation link. A separate, bootstrapping-based Preacher Hayes mediation analysis confirms the significance of the hypothesized partial mediation (see Table 8 ).

Specifically, when controlling for the service quality link, SJQ's direct effect on customer loyalty (0.26**) remained substantial and highly significant. SJQ also had a strong indirect effect (0.50**) on customer loyalty through the service quality link. Interestingly, SJQ's total effect on loyalty (0.76**) due to its direct and indirect effects was stronger than service quality's effect on loyalty (0.58**). Finally, a closer look at the dimension weights of the second-order constructs provides insight into the relative importance of the dimensions in the broader nomological network. When broadening the study focus to the full research model with both service quality and loyalty as dependent variables, the SJQ dimension weights slightly changed as the relative impact of personalization (0.56**) and seamlessness (0.28**) became more important compared to coherence (0.21*). In line with earlier findings in banking contexts (see Bloemer et al. , 1998 ; Choudhury, 2013 ), reliability (0.70**) is the dominating dimension of service quality when predicting customer loyalty. Beyond reliability, the tangibles (0.18*) represent the only other significant 2nd order service quality dimension.

6. Contributions and implications

6.1 theoretical implications.

This research responds to calls for the development of a more thorough understanding of what makes service journeys excellent and supportive of superior customer outcomes ( Ostrom et al. , 2015 ), as well as to the managerial need for easily applicable tools for measuring performance in service delivery through complex journeys. The customer journey is considered a key concept for understanding the emergence of customer experiences (e.g. Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ), but extant research has overlooked the development of this concept to fully capture the essence of service processes. This paper informs research and managerial practice by conceptualizing SJQ, developing measures for the construct and studying its relationship with service quality and customer loyalty. Extant journey research spans various literature fields ( Table 1 ), thus rendering the findings relevant for many areas of service research. This study makes three main contributions, which are discussed in detail below.

First, the conceptualization and measure development for SJQ offers researchers constructs that capture the key aspects of functional customer journeys from the service process point of view. This contributes to the service management and experience research by moving the focus from individual encounters or overall service or brand evaluations (e.g. Parasuraman et al. , 1991 ; Brakus et al. , 2009 ; Lemke et al. , 2011 ; Kumar et al. , 2014 ) to the potentially multichannel and multiprovider service journeys as whole. As such, the SJQ construct provides a modern service quality tool that tackles service delivery through complex journeys, whose quality cannot be exclusively understood as an aggregate sum of individual service encounters ( Rawson et al. , 2013 ). For service design research, the SJQ construct offers a set of concrete goals for designing journeys to ensure that cues and touchpoints operate in concert and allow for personalized configurations, and it enables the measuring of to what degree these designed journey qualities are achieved. For customer experience research, SJQ offers a journey conceptualization that captures the key elements that affect CX formation in service-intensive contexts. This supports customer experience management ( Homburg et al. , 2017 ) and complements the constructs developed by Kuehnl et al. (2019) that link brand-focused journey qualities to brand attitudes, brand experiences and loyalty, but scarcely address the operational and functional touchpoint interdependencies relevant for service processes. For multichannel customer management research, the SJQ construct provides a tool for analyzing the performance of channel integration in service-intensive contexts, complementing the existing journey perspective that is purchase-process focused.

This study's second contribution is in confirming that SJQ is a critical driver of customer performance in contemporary service businesses. Specifically, we demonstrate that service journey seamlessness, personalization and coherence act as central drivers for both perceived service quality and customer loyalty intentions. The positive connection between the quality of journeys and service quality is intuitive, yet no earlier study has demonstrated this link. This study's findings indicate that customers' overall service quality assessments are affected by their perceptions of how successfully various service delivery touchpoints operate in concert. This link is evident even though many service quality dimensions focus on personal interactions at a single encounter. It is likely that encounters at earlier stages of the service journey build expectations that affect the customer's interpretation of later service encounters. In other words, high-quality journeys reduce negative surprises and enable the consistent meeting of customer expectations, which builds better service quality perceptions. Thus, this study demonstrates that SJQ represents an important service quality enabler and provides evidence for the assumption that, in today's multichannel, digitalized markets, service excellence warrants the perfection of service journeys (cf. Halvorsrud et al. , 2016 ; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ). This finding is underscored by the empirical finding that SJQ has a stronger total effect on customer loyalty than on service quality.

Finally, this study contributes to the existing literature by clarifying the nomological network of service journeys and the theoretical mechanisms through which journey quality affects loyalty. Our findings reveal that service quality mediates the direct relationship between SJQ and customer loyalty. In other words, improved service quality represents a central mechanism that explains why high-quality journeys can help secure more loyal customers. This result complements earlier studies that have attributed the link between journey quality and loyalty primarily to improved brand attitudes ( Kuehnl et al. , 2019 ). However, this mediation is merely partial, thus indicating that SJQ contributes to customer loyalty above and beyond service quality when controlling for the mediation link. This finding is of great importance because it indicates that the relationship between SJQ and customer loyalty cannot be explained by improved service quality perceptions alone, but there may be other potential mediators as well, such as customer experience (see Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ). This proposition is discussed further in the implications for future research section.

In sum, this research provides new measures for service research, as well as for managers who wish to set goals, understand and develop their performance in service journeys. This study is among the first to develop the concept of service journeys to capture the nature of the process customers go through to access and use offerings in service-intensive contexts, in order to complement the customer journey concept that is predominantly anchored in the consumer decision-making process. In doing so, this study helps organize the pieces of the customer experience and journey puzzle by clarifying and nuancing the nomological network of some of these key concepts of contemporary service research.

6.2 Managerial implications

Contemporary service businesses rely increasingly on numerous interconnected online and personal service delivery channels, as well as diverse partners, in providing a service. This means that firms need to consider and manage various expectational, operational and functional interdependencies between various service delivery touchpoints ( Dhebar, 2013 ). While service design tools, such as blueprinting, have been developed to help in designing functional service journeys, very few tools have been developed for assessing the quality of service journeys from the customer's viewpoint. This is problematic because measuring perceived service quality at individual touchpoints says little about the quality of the service process as a whole, and simple aggregate measures, such as the Net Promoter Score, do not reveal the cause of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. This study develops constructs to assess customer-perceived SJQ and provides empirical evidence for the relevance of high-quality service journeys, demonstrating that consumers' SJQ perceptions drive both service quality and customer loyalty. These findings indicate that service providers should invest in the development and monitoring of SJQ instead of just focusing on individual service encounters or overall satisfaction.

Specifically, our results highlight that service journey quality from the customer's perspective is determined by the three key dimensions of journey seamlessness, coherence and personalization. These SJQ dimensions provide managers concrete goals in designing their service journeys. First, journey seamlessness requires that the various provider and partner-controlled touchpoints along the service process are integrated and aligned so that the customer can smoothly transition between the touchpoints, whether outsourced or not. Second, journey coherence can be achieved by thematically integrating all touchpoints and the related “experience cues” to provide a consistent impression of the firm or the brand throughout all service encounters. Third, journey personalization stresses the tailoring of the combination of service process touchpoints to fit the customer's service delivery preferences and the customer's situation. Firms can use the SJQ measures developed in this study to analyze, monitor and develop the quality of their service journeys, as well as to set collaboration and quality goals for partners (see Appendix ).

The three SJQ dimensions can also be used to analyze the functionality of customer relationship models for different customer segments that typically follow distinct journeys (e.g. when customer segments are served through different service channels). Measuring SJQ perceived by different customer segments helps the internal benchmarking of journeys, in order to reveal potential pain points in different journeys and improve performance, particularly for mass segments wherein the customers navigate their journeys independently. We also urge companies to assess whether or not SJQ might be a source of differentiation and thereby a competitive advantage in their industry and to develop their journeys accordingly.

6.3 Limitations and implications for future research

This study naturally has some limitations. Noteworthy is that the SJQ construct does not capture social and customer-owned touchpoints that are outside a firm's influence ( Lemon and Verhoef, 2016 ; Becker et al. , 2020 ), but instead focuses on provider- and partner-owned touchpoints, i.e. the parts of the journey that firms can seek to manage ( Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ). Furthermore, as the SJQ construct focuses on the quality of the service process, it does not cover what the customer receives as the outcome of the service. Therefore, when the aim is to study both technical and functional quality ( Grönroos, 1984 ), the SJQ construct should be used together with complementary measures.

While the conceptualization builds upon a broad empirical basis that includes a qualitative study and two quantitative studies, further research related to the SJQ construct's nomological network is needed. This study has identified initial evidence that service journey quality predicts customer loyalty, but those findings were based on a single-respondent study design with subjective performance measures. Future research should confirm the findings using stronger research designs with objective performance measures and multiple-respondent study designs. Also, since the quantitative study findings are based on data exclusively from the financial sector, future research should investigate the relative importance of the construct dimensions and test the results' generalizability in other empirical contexts. We assume that the developed measure is applicable across service-intensive industries, but this assumption warrants further research. Researchers could study not only brand-focused contexts, such as tourism and hospitality but also contexts such as healthcare, public services, and B2B settings, wherein more functional interdependencies between touchpoints should be a key. Future studies could also examine the SJQ construct's application to experience-centric and hedonic versus mundane services, as well as to different types of journeys.

We call for a systematic research effort that focuses on SJQ and its antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators. Various areas of service research – including service management, service design and customer experience management – should more closely study which marketing activities drive seamless, coherent and personalized service journeys. On the outcome side, future research should study SJQ's effects on objective performance and examine whether or not improved customer experience also mediates the performance link. The role of experiential outcomes is emphasized by the study finding that the SJQ-loyalty link is not fully mediated by service quality improvements. Since customer experience refers to customers' nondeliberate, spontaneous responses and reactions to offering-related stimuli along the customer journey ( Becker and Jaakkola, 2020 ), high-quality service journeys should logically be connected to positive customer experiences. Due to the complexity of the customer experience phenomenon, its measurement is challenging. Advances in this area can offer the means to study the suggested experience link in more detail (e.g. the EXQ measure by Kuppelwieser and Klaus, 2021 ), in order to clarify whether and how service journey quality relates to customer experiences. Finally, we call for research attention on the key moderators – that is, those conditions that either strengthen or weaken SJQ's antecedent and outcome sides in different contexts.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the three-factor SJQ scale

Research model

Connection of the Service Journey Quality concept to extant journey literature

Focus groups

Scale properties and correlations – scale validation sample 1

Respondent characteristics

Scale details for the full research model

Scale details

Note(s) : a Seven-point Likert-scale, anchored by 1- “strongly disagree” and 7- “strongly agree”

b Seven-point rating scale concerning likelihood, anchored by 1- “very unlikely”, 7- “very likely”

c Deleted items

* p  < 0.01

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Corresponding author

About the authors.

Elina Jaakkola is Professor of Marketing at Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland. Her research interests focus on value creation, customer/actor engagement, customer experience, service innovation, and knowledge intensive business services and solutions. Her research has been published in a wide range of journals and book chapters, for example Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Business Research, and AMS Review.

Harri Terho is Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Marketing at Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland. His research interests focus on value creation in business markets, selling and sales management, the role of technology in marketing and sales, as well as B2B customer experiences and journeys. His research has been published in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, and Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing among others.

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9 product prioritization frameworks for product managers

• Resources /
• Prioritization /

Product prioritization isn’t just about making a stack of features in a certain order—it also involves juggling the many inputs and opinions of stakeholders. Narrowing that list of demands and feature requests for a sprint or a product roadmap is one of the most challenging parts of a product manager’s job.

Another prioritization challenge product managers face is knowing how many team members, stakeholders and customers they should involve, and to what degree they should vote on which features, tasks and updates you’ll work on next.

"The most popular feature and the second most popular feature don't necessarily belong together in the same product. You've got to have a deliberate strategy where you go: We have a particular type of customer that we're trying to serve and we are trying to solve their biggest problems in a way that makes us money. That's a complex problem of finding the overlap in multiple different areas, not to mention things that a team can reasonably do technologically.”

- Bruce McCarthy, Product Manager and author of Roadmaps Relaunched

Ideally, good product prioritization frameworks allow you to silence the voice of the loudest person in the room using quantitative rankings, charts, and matrices with values that are directly tied to your customer feedback and product strategy.

Here at Roadmunk, we understand this. That’s why we offer two built-in prioritization frameworks in our feedback and idea management suite: RICE and value vs. effort .

We’ll guide you through those two frameworks, plus:

• Story mapping
• The MoSCoW method
• Opportunity scoring
• Product tree
• Cost of delay
• Buy a feature

Known as Intercom's internal scoring system for prioritizing ideas, RICE allows product teams to work on the initiatives that are most likely to impact any given goal.

This scoring system measures each feature or initiative against four factors: reach, impact, confidence and effort (hence the acronym RICE). Here’s a breakdown of what each factor stands for and how it should be quantified:

Then, those individual numbers get turned into one overall score using a formula. This formula gives product teams a standardized number that can be applied across any type of initiative that needs to be added to the roadmap.

After running each feature by this calculation, you’ll get a final RICE score. You can then use that final score to rank the order in which you’ll tackle the idea, initiative or feature. Here’s an example:

Pros of using the RICE method

• It requires that product teams make their product metrics SMART before they quantify them. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and—as seen in the parameter for the Reach score—time-based.
• It lessens the influence that inherent biases have on prioritization. By adding a confidence dimension in the calculations, prioritization moves away from attempting to predict success to measuring the level of assertion each team member has for the features. This shifts the prioritization discussions from “Here’s how much this feature is worth“ to “Here is how we are quantifying our level of confidence for each of these qualitative, speculative scores.”

Cons of using the RICE method

• RICE scores don’t take dependencies into account. There are times when an initiative with a high RICE score needs to be deprioritized over something else, so product teams need to treat the score as an exercise, rather than the end-all, be-all answer to “What should we build next?”
• Estimations will never be 100% accurate. RICE prioritization is simply an exercise in quantifying features in a way that takes into account the level of confidence teams have on their estimations.

2. Value vs. Effort

This simple approach to prioritization involves taking your list of features and initiatives and quantifying them using value and effort scores.

With this method, it’s important to keep in mind that the final scores are just an estimation. A lot of guesswork and opinions (backed with as much applicable data as possible) are involved in the process of quantifying the big question prioritization aims to answer: “Will this feature/update push our goals and metrics forward if we build it? Can we feasibly build it with the resources we have?”

Scoring methods like value vs. effort give product teams a quick and easy way to visualize a set of quantified priorities.

This method of prioritization makes room for healthy discussions among stakeholders on what they believe value and effort means, which in turn helps product managers find the strategic alignment holes and fix them. Here's what a value vs. effort scorecard looks like in Roadmunk :

(Pssst! Value vs. effort is one of two prioritization templates available in Roadmunk . You can also create your own custom prioritization criteria and use any factors that are relevant to your company.)

Pros of using value vs. effort

• What constitutes value or effort is flexible. For some organizations, effort could just mean development effort, in others it could be the implementation cost. A flexible prioritization framework can be used by any type of company, industry or type of product.
• It’s a good tool for alignment. By encouraging teams to quantify and numerically score features, product teams can agree on which initiatives have more weight than others. It leaves vague guesswork and assumptions out of the prioritization discussions.
• In companies where resources are extremely limited, something as simple as a value vs. effort analysis allows teams to focus only on the things that will have the biggest impact on their business and product goals.
• It’s easy to use because it doesn’t involve any complex formulas or models. All it requires is an agreed-upon numerical value that gets added into one overall total number.

Cons of using using value vs. effort

• Like all prioritization exercises, it’s a game of estimation and guessing. This leaves a lot of room for cognitive bias at the hands of the people doing the estimating. The final score for each feature might be too inflated, or not accurate enough.
• When it’s time for product and development to vote on how high or low the value/effort scores should be, the disagreements can take a while to resolve.
• It can be hard to use with large teams with multiple product lines, components, and product teams that oversee each of those.

3. Kano Model

The Kano model plots two sets of parameters along a horizontal and a vertical axis. On the horizontal axis, you have the implementation values (to what degree a customer need is met). These values can be classified into three buckets:

• Must-haves or basic features: If you don’t have these features, your customers won’t even consider your product as a solution to their problem.
• Performance features: The more you invest in these, the higher the level of customer satisfaction will be.
• Delighters or excitement features: These features are pleasant surprises that the customers don’t expect, but that once provided, create a delighted response.

On the vertical axis, you have the level of customer satisfaction (the satisfaction values). They range from the needs not being met on the left, all the way to the needs being fully met on the right (the implementation values).

The way you get this customer insight is by developing a Kano questionnaire where you ask your customers how they’d feel with or without any given feature.

The core idea of the Kano model is that the more time you spend investing resources (time, money, effort) to create, innovate and improve the features in each of those buckets, the higher the level of customer satisfaction will be.

Pros of using this prioritization framework:

• The Kano model questionnaire can teach teams not to overestimate excitement features and to stop underestimating must-haves.
• It can help teams make better product decisions and market predictions for feature success and your audience’s expectations for those features.

Cons of using this prioritization framework:

• The Kano questionnaire can be time-consuming. In order to get a fair representation of all your customers, you need to carry a number of surveys that are proportionate to the number of customers you have.
• Your customers might not fully understand the features you’re surveying them about.

4. Story mapping

The beauty of this product prioritization framework is in its simplicity. It also puts the focus on the user’s experience, rather than on the internal opinions of your team and stakeholders.

Along a horizontal line, you create a series of sequential buckets or categories that represent each stage of the user’s journey through your product. This allows you to think about the way your customers navigate your product from signing up, to setting up their profile, to using specific features.

Along a vertical line, you then place these tasks in order of importance, from top to bottom. This allows you to prioritize the order of the features you’ll work on. In some cases, the bottom part of the axis is labeled “Backlog items” for the tasks that you decide to put on hold.

Finally, you draw a line across all these stories to divide them into releases and sprints.

• It helps you quickly—and efficiently—identify your MVP.
• It’s centered around the user’s experiences. You get to write user stories.
• It’s collaborative. Story mapping is a group activity that involves the whole team.
• It doesn’t take into account external product prioritization factors like business value and complexity.

5. The MoSCoW Method

The MoSCoW method allows you to figure out what matters the most to your stakeholders and customers by classifying features into four priority buckets. MoSCoW (no relation to the city—the Os were added to make the acronym more memorable) stands for Must-Have, Should-Have, Could-Have, and Won’t-Have features.

• Must-Have: These are the features that have to be present for the product to be functional at all. They’re non-negotiable and essential. If one of these requirements or features isn’t present, the product cannot be launched, thus making it the most time-sensitive of all the buckets.

Example: “Users MUST log in to access their account”

• Should-Have: These requirements are important to deliver, but they’re not time sensitive.

Example: “Users SHOULD have an option to reset their password”

• Could-Have: This is a feature that’s neither essential nor important to deliver within a timeframe. They’re bonuses that would greatly improve customer satisfaction, but don’t have a great impact if they’re left out.

Example: “Users COULD save their work directly to the cloud from our app”

• Won’t-Have: These are the least critical features, tasks or requirements (and the first to go when there are resource constraints). These are features that will be considered for future releases.

The MoSCoW model is dynamic and allows room for evolving priorities. So a feature that was considered a “Won’t-Have” can one day become a must-have depending on the type of product.

• It’s good for involving stakeholders without a technical background in the product prioritization process.
• Quick, easy and intuitive way of communicating priorities to the team and the customers.
• It allows you to think about resource allocation when you classify your features and requirements into each bucket.
• It’s tempting for teams and stakeholders to overestimate the number of Must-Have features.
• It’s an exercise in formulating release criteria more than a prioritization method.

6. Opportunity scoring

Also known as opportunity analysis, this prioritization method comes from Anthony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven Innovation concept. His theory states that customers buy products and services to get certain jobs done. The idea is that, while customers aren’t very good at coming up with the solutions to their problems, their feedback is still important. This feedback is what the product team will use to come up with the desired outcomes for a product or feature.

Opportunity scoring uses a Satisfaction and Importance graph to measure and rank opportunities. After you come up with a list of ideal outcomes, you then survey your customers to ask them the following questions:

• How important is this outcome or feature? Ask your customers to rank them.
• How satisfied is the customer with the existing solutions?

After you plot these answers along the chart, you should be able to see the features that matter the most to the customers (the outcomes) yet currently have low satisfaction scores within your product. These are the features you’ll prioritize for your next sprint.

Pros of using this prioritization framework

• It’s a simple framework for quickly identifying the most innovative solutions to a common problem.
• It’s easy to visualize and categorize on a graph.

Cons of using this prioritization framework

• In the survey or questionnaire, customers might overestimate or underestimate the importance of a feature.

7. The Product Tree

Also known as pruning the product tree, this collaborative innovation game was developed by Bruce Hollman. The focus of this activity is to shape the product so it matches the customer outcomes that will bring the highest value to the company. The game aims to prune product backlog items to ensure that innovative ideas aren’t being left behind.

Here’s how it goes:

• First, draw a large tree with a few big branches on a whiteboard or a piece of paper.
• The trunk of your tree represents the features your product already has.
• The outermost branches represent the features that will be available in the next release.
• The other branches represent the features that aren’t available yet.

Ask your participants (in this case, your customers) to write some potential features on sticky notes. These will be the leaves of your tree.

Then, ask your customers to place their feature leaves on a branch.

By asking customers to place their desired features on the tree, you can identify the biggest clusters or branches. This will allow you to determine which areas of your product need more work, which features need to be changed, and what product feature areas can be deprioritized from all immediate future releases.

• It gives you a visual sense of how well balanced your product’s features are.
• It’s highly collaborative, allowing you to tap directly into the insight of your customers without relying on a rigid survey.
• This method doesn’t give product managers any quantitative values for how to rank each feature, only a general visual guide.
• Features aren’t separated into any sort of grouping bucket, making the exercise time-consuming.

8. Cost of Delay

Joshua Arnold defined Cost of Delay as “a way to communicate the impact of time on the outcomes [the company wishes] to achieve.” Specifically, cost of delay allows you to ask the questions:

• What would this feature be worth if the product had it right now?
• How much would it be worth it if this feature gets made earlier?
• How much would it cost if it was made later than planned?

The way you assign this monetary value to each feature is by calculating how much time and team effort they will take to build. You and the team can also assign value to the features in terms of how much they will be worth after they’re built.

So, let’s say you have one feature that costs you $30,000 per each week that it’s delayed, and it will only take three months to build. On the other hand, you have a feature that costs $10,000 per each week that it’s delayed and it will take you the same amount of time to build. Within this prioritization framework, the first feature would be the one your team focuses on first.

• It allows you to quantify your product backlog in terms of money.
• It helps product managers make better decisions based on the value that matters the most to the company.
• It changes the team’s mindset around features from cost and efficiency metrics, to speed and value.
• The parameters for determining the monetary value of a feature are based on gut-feel and intuition. This can lead to internal disagreements regarding the arbitrary value of any given feature.

9. Buy a feature

Buy a feature is an innovation game that can involve customers and stakeholders (it’s up to you and the needs of your product). When you use it as an exercise with your customers, this method can quantifiably tell you how much a feature or an idea is worth to the people who’ll end up using it.

The game goes like this:

Choose a list of features, ideas, or updates and assign a monetary value to each one. This value isn’t arbitrary—it should be based on how much time, money and effort each feature will cost you and the team.

Put together a group of people (up to 8 customers or your own internal team). Give them a set amount of money to “spend” on these features.

Ask your participants to buy the features they like. Some customers will put all of their money on only one feature they’re passionate about, others will spread their cash around multiple different features. Ask the participants to explain why they spent money on the feature they picked.

Then, reorganize that list of features in order of how much money your customers were willing to spend on them.

Innovation games suggests that you price some of the features high enough that no one can buy them. This forces your customers to team up and negotiate which feature they’d be willing to pool their money on.

Pros of using the buy a feature method:

• If you believe in that Steve Jobs quote (“People don't know what they want until you show it to them”) but you also would like to tap into the wisdom of your customers, this method is perfect.
• It replaces the stuffy, old-schooled customer questionnaire with a collaborative, fun exercise that forces your customers to rationalize why they think they need a feature.

Cons of using the buy a feature method:

• This prioritization method can only include features that you’ve already decided to include in a product development roadmap—the results just tell you what features customers value the most.
• Ideally, the activity requires you to get a group of customers in one place at the same time, which can be difficult to coordinate.

Wrapping up

Product prioritization methods shouldn’t replace human input in decision-making. A good framework is a way to get everyone on the same page in terms of what the greater goals are for the product. Prioritization methods are an exercise in assessing the many possible decisions that can be made around any given feature or idea.

Ideally, a prioritization method should do a few things:

• It should be a collaborative process that involves multiple team members, stakeholders, and, depending on the framework, your customers.
• The framework that you choose should give you actionable results and information that can help you drive your product strategy forward.
• It should motivate the team to position their prioritization reasoning in terms of how each idea contributes to the greater goals of the company.
• Your prioritization method should push your team to get rid of the “idea noise”—it should completely weed out the ideas that are useless or worthless.

Product managers are managers of the “why” behind a product strategy. Having a standardized prioritization process is only one piece of the strategic puzzle. There are many moving pieces involved in making sure your strategy is driven by solving the most impactful customer problems—as well communicating that strategy across the entire organization.

That’s where an end-to-end roadmapping tool like Roadmunk can help. Using our tool, you can:

• Capture, manage and analyze customer feedback in one organized place
• Create a backlog of customer-validated product ideas
• Systematically surface high-impact ideas using built-in prioritization templates
• Commit to ideas by promoting them to your roadmaps

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Guide for product managers

Expert advice for building lovable products

• 10Ps marketing matrix

Define the essential elements of your go-to-market strategy

• 2x2 prioritization matrix

Evaluate options based on value and effort to identify what to work on next

Identify the root cause of a problem or challenge

• Business model

Explore foundational questions about your business and refine your product strategy

• Customer journey map

Sketch the entire customer journey and build more lovable experiences

• Decision log

Record key decisions to provide transparency and insights into your decision-making process

• Decision tree

Make decisions, solve problems, and predict outcomes

• Fit gap analysis

Determine whether a software solution fits the needs of your organization

• Gap analysis

Find the gaps between where your product is now and where you want it to be

Prioritize features using the Kano model

• Lean canvas

Build an actionable business model with a template designed for entrepreneurs and startups

• Marketing strategy

Plan how you will reach your target market

• MoSCoW model

Prioritize features using the MoSCoW model

Set objectives and key results and measure your progress towards them

• Opportunity canvas

Identify potential opportunities for new products, features, or improvements

• Porter's 5 forces

Analyze five factors that shape the competitive landscape so you can better plan for the future

• Pricing and packaging research

Determine the right pricing for your product or service

• Pricing plan chart

Craft product pricing for multiple plans or tiers

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Refine your pricing strategy and understand the value that you offer

• Product positioning

Articulate the key benefits of your product and the problem it solves

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Set your vision for where you want your company or product to be in the future

• SAFe® framework

Capture how your team implements agile at scale

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Capture how your team implements scrum

• Segment profile

Capture the characteristics, growth opportunity, and likelihood of success for each market segment

• SMART goals

Use SMART goals to establish objectives for your product or team

• Strategic roadmap

Visualize high-level initiatives to communicate your product direction and timelines for major bodies of work

• Strategy mountain

Illustrate your strategic goals and steps needed for success

• SWOT analysis

Identify internal and external factors that could impact the success of your business or product

• The Aha! Framework

Build software like we do

• Value proposition

Communicate your product's unique benefits and value to customers

• VMOST analysis

Summarize your product vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics

• Working backwards

Work backwards to determine the steps needed to achieve your goal

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