New product management template: Customer journey map

Editor's note: Aha! Notebooks has been split into Aha! Knowledge and Aha! Whiteboards.

How do you develop empathy for customers? Conducting market research, digging into demographic data, and speaking directly to users are all necessary for internalizing what your customers think and feel. But when it comes to understanding what your customers actually experience as they interact with your company and product, it helps to sketch out their entire journey — from awareness through to advocacy.

Customer journey mapping helps you form a deeper understanding of what customers feel at each phase of trying, buying, and using your product.

Building a customer journey map is a useful exercise for adopting your customers' perspective and visualizing each step of the Complete Product Experience (CPE). This requires thinking through all the ways that buyers interact with your company and product, then visualizing how you can make that experience more seamless and engaging.

Keep in mind, though, that customer journey mapping will not tell you everything you need to know about the customer experience. Folks are often influenced by external factors (like word of mouth or competitors' ads) and may make purchasing decisions for reasons outside your control. This is why you should treat your customer journey map as one tool out of many. Use it to capture a high-level view of a typical journey and spark conversations with cross-functional teammates about where you can improve the overall experience.

The new customer journey map template in Aha! software empowers you to think holistically about the user experience — so you can optimize each interaction and build a more lovable offering.

Because this template is built on an interactive whiteboard, you can invite teammates from product management, marketing, sales, support, and more to add their insights directly to the board. Color-coded sticky notes and threaded discussions make it easy for everyone to collaborate in real time or asynchronously. You can even promote the best ideas on the map into actionable work items in Aha! Roadmaps.

The customer journey map template is just one of nearly 100 in all Aha! Notebooks plans (templates are also available in Aha! Roadmaps, Aha! Ideas, and Aha! Develop). Each template was created by product development experts, is fully customizable, and is ready to use right now.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial or log into your Aha! account — then follow the best practices below:

Capture every touchpoint

Start by mapping out the buyer's journey from when people first become aware of your offering all the way to when they (ideally) become loyal advocates. Stages to consider include awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. If you are trying to optimize a specific aspect of the customer experience, such as onboarding or signing up for a trial, you can also zoom in on that particular process or interaction — looking for any moments of friction users might experience.

Collect stakeholder input

Every group in the organization contributes in some way to delivering the CPE. So invite your colleagues across product, marketing, sales, and support to share their knowledge and offer ideas on how to improve the overall customer experience. Besides touchpoints, key areas to think about include user actions, feelings or pain points, roadblocks, and opportunities.

Identify improvements

Now, it is time to take action. Compare the opportunities that the team surfaced with existing ideas and requests in your backlog. Which ideas align most strongly with the company and product strategy? Which ideas will make sense to implement based on value versus effort? If you are an Aha! Roadmaps customer, you can then promote opportunities from your customer journey map directly into work items (ideas, features, epics, or initiatives) on your roadmap.

Use this new template to visualize each step of the customer journey in one place. Then, inspire the broader team to have meaningful discussions about how to optimize the complete experience.

When you see the big picture of how customers interact with your product, you can find opportunities to deliver more value at every touchpoint. Revisit your customer journey map periodically to keep it up to date and identify new ways to optimize the buyer journey. This is how you delight your customers over time.

Start a free trial today

Guided templates are available to all Aha! customers. Our suite of product development tools works seamlessly together to help teams turn raw concepts into valuable new capabilities — for customers and the business. Set strategy, crowdsource ideas, spark creativity, prioritize features, share roadmaps, manage releases, and plan development. Sign up for a free 30-day trial or join a live demo to see why more than 700,000 product builders trust our software to build lovable products and be happy doing it.