Types of Journey Maps

Customer journey maps document user experiences through sequential stages, typically organized horizontally. Key components include user actions, thoughts, emotions, and touchpoints at each phase. The emotional journey often appears as a curve showing highs and lows throughout the experience.

Each stage connects to show progression through time. Customer journey maps focus on one user type completing one specific scenario, providing deep insight into that particular experience. Some organizations also create maps that track multiple personas or aggregate common patterns across user segments. These maps excel at revealing emotional patterns and pain points. They help teams understand not just what users do, but why they do it and how they feel. This emotional layer distinguishes journey maps from other documentation methods.

Customer journey maps capture the big picture of user experiences across time and touchpoints. User flows and task flows zoom in on specific interactions within your product. While journey maps might show "customer searches for help," user flows detail every screen, decision point, and possible path through your help system.^[1]

Task flows focus even tighter on single objectives without branches. They show the ideal path to complete one task, like "reset password" or "update payment method." User flows include all possible paths, decisions, and error states. Both are tactical tools for designing specific features.

These tools work best together. Start with customer journey maps to identify critical moments, then create user flows for complex interactions and task flows for straightforward actions. Journey maps reveal where users struggle, while flows show exactly how to fix those struggles through better interaction design.

Customer journey maps and experience maps are often confused, but they serve different purposes. A customer journey map focuses on one persona going through one specific scenario; for example, a first-time mother buying and using a bottle steriliser. It captures that single interaction in detail, from beginning to end.

An experience map takes a broader view. It shows how different personas move through a larger experience that may span multiple scenarios. For instance, it might cover the entire 9-month pregnancy journey, including everything from initial research to postnatal care. It helps teams spot patterns, gaps, and shared challenges across user types and touchpoints.^[2]

The choice depends on your goals. Use customer journey maps when solving specific problems or improving particular workflows. Choose experience maps when redesigning entire service ecosystems or understanding how different customer segments relate to each other. Both tools complement rather than compete with each other.

Customer journey maps and service blueprints both visualize experiences, but from different angles. Customer journey maps show the experience from the customer's perspective, focusing on what they see, feel, and do. They capture the emotional and practical reality of interacting with your product or service.

Service blueprints add layers beneath the customer experience to show how it's delivered. They map the frontstage (what customers see) and backstage (internal processes, systems, and people that enable the experience). This includes employee actions, support systems, and technical and data infrastructure.^[3]

Used together, they create a complete picture: journey maps ensure you're solving the right problems from the customer's viewpoint, while blueprints reveal all the moving parts that need coordination to deliver better experiences.

Current-state customer journey maps document how users actually experience your product today, including all friction points and workarounds. They capture real behaviors, not intended flows. Key elements include actual user paths, pain points, error states, drop-off points, and unplanned interactions.

These maps often reveal surprising truths about user behavior. They show where users get stuck, create workarounds, or abandon tasks entirely. Current-state maps can include metrics like completion rates, time on task, and error frequency to quantify problems.

Creating accurate current-state maps requires real user data from analytics, support tickets, and user research. They serve as baselines for measuring improvement and help teams prioritize fixes based on actual user impact rather than assumptions.^[4]

Future-state maps show how user interactions should work after improvements. They include new features, removed pain points, streamlined flows, and added touchpoints. These maps balance user needs with business goals and often span multiple time horizons, like near-term fixes, medium-term changes, and long-term vision. They’re useful early in product development to communicate direction and gain stakeholder support. Key components include improved flows, new touchpoints, success metrics, and clear connections between user needs and strategy. A good future-state map is ambitious but grounded, offering a clear path from current to future.

Different product development stages require different mapping approaches:

• Discovery: Current-state maps reveal how users actually interact with your product today. They uncover real behaviors, pain points, and workarounds that inform design decisions. Customer journey maps during early research expose emotional highs and lows throughout the user experience.
• Planning and strategy: Customer experience maps excel when exploring new markets or expanding to multiple channels. They show all touchpoints across your ecosystem, revealing gaps and opportunities. Future-state maps align teams on product vision and help prioritize features based on desired outcomes.
• Implementation and operations: Service blueprints become essential when coordinating complex services across multiple teams. They connect frontend experiences to backend processes, showing dependencies and handoffs. Use them when designing multi-channel services or improving operational efficiency.

Each map type aligns with specific business goals:

• Customer-centric objectives: Customer journey maps drive customer satisfaction by uncovering emotional pain points throughout user experiences. They pinpoint exactly where users feel frustrated, confused, or delighted. Use them to identify why users abandon tasks and which improvements will have the most impact.
• Operational and efficiency goals: Service blueprints transform operational efficiency by mapping both visible and invisible processes. They expose bottlenecks, redundant handoffs, and disconnected systems that waste time and resources. When aiming to reduce support costs or streamline operations, blueprints reveal which backstage processes need optimization.
• Strategic business transformation: Current-state maps establish baselines by documenting actual user behaviors and pain points today. Customer experience maps enable omnichannel excellence by displaying all customer touchpoints across platforms. Future-state maps unite stakeholders around transformation visions, showing clear paths from current problems to innovative solutions that drive competitive advantage.