A customer or user journey map visualizes an average user's process of accomplishing a goal using a specific product, organization, service, or brand. Like an experience map, it highlights pain points and builds empathy toward users.

An experience map has a broader scope — it depicts generic users having a general human experience. For example, an experience map can describe how people buy clothes at offline stores and what difficulties they face, such as long lines to the fitting rooms, wrong price tags, or a limited number of choices and item sizes.

A journey map, however, is about specific factors in specific scenarios. For example, a journey map for an online shopping app would demonstrate what steps users take to buy a necessary item online on a given app and identify problems like doubts about product quality, trust issues, delivery time, complex navigation of a website, or blurry images.^[1]

Customer journey maps help all stakeholders understand how users are treated at each channel. For example, while placing an order through a website, a mobile app, or a phone call. They can be used at any point in the design process and can pinpoint specific touchpoints that cause pain or delight in existing products or ones in the design stage.