Customer Journey Mapping

Rob Kagan

Hi Community -

Creating customer journey maps is key to understanding the customer's experience, knowing where pain points are and give us a road map of how to add value for our customers at every interaction with our company.

Add in personas and enterprise vs SMB........and the task is daunting...but fun. 

My question - What software solutions out there to create a customer journey map are the best? The most flexible? Graphically appealing? Take into account personas and types of entities....?

Thanks for any and all responses.

Laura Lakhwara

Hi Rob,

I've used the following, and I rank in this order: 
#1 Lucid Charts - shared licenses with product teams
#3 Visio - if you're in the MS suite
#2 Draw.io - If you need free through GDrive

Other options:
https://www.smaply.com/
https://uxpressia.com/
https://mopinion.com/top-20-customer-journey-mapping-tools-an-overview/#:~:text=Smaply is a visual customer,maps, personas and stakeholder maps.&text=The mapping tool for stakeholders,parties that impact their service.

Ed Powers

I've learned that the artifact (the map) is far less important than the process of creating it. When a cross-functional team works together, they build a shared understanding, a shared vision, and a shared commitment to making the process better. Journey mapping therefore is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Surprisingly once a process is mapped, people refer more to their memory than the document, using it only occasionally as a reference or to update it during the next and much more important phase: process improvement. For that reason, I've found it's best to document using whatever application is widely used by the team. 

Dana Pavel

I agree with this. We made it in Google Sheets and frankly we almost never revisit it. It gets updated if we change something in the journey and it's very useful for newcomers, but the process of creating it is more helpful and important indeed.