Customer Journey Map Template
The default example is an insurance renewal. Name your stages and score how the user feels at each one. Everything is editable: rename, reorder, add or remove stages, and score each one's emotion. The grid scrolls sideways on narrow screens.
Renewing a commercial insurance policy
Persona: Priya, an office manager renewing the firm's liability cover
Goal: Get the policy renewed correctly and cheaply, with as little disruption as possible
PRIORITY MOMENT TO FIX — Support (Very negative)
| Stage | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emotion | |||||
| ActionsWhat the person actually does at this stage | |||||
| TouchpointsWhere/how it happens: channel, page, person, document | |||||
| ThoughtsWhat they're thinking, in their own words if you can | |||||
| Pain pointsWhat's confusing, slow, or frustrating | |||||
| OpportunitiesWhat could be changed to fix or improve this |
| Stage | Awareness | Consideration | Onboarding | First use | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emotion | Neutral | Negative | Positive | Neutral | Very negative |
| Actions | Receives a renewal notice email 30 days before expiry | Logs into the broker portal to compare last year's cover against this year's quote | Confirms cover, updates one outdated business detail, pays by card | Downloads the new policy schedule to file for the firm's records | Calls the broker six months later after a minor incident, to ask if it's covered |
| Touchpoints | Automated email from the broker portal | Broker portal, PDF policy schedule, a phone call to the broker | Broker portal checkout | Portal document library, email confirmation | Phone line, hold music, eventually a human |
| Thoughts | "I need to deal with this before it lapses, but not today." | "Why has the premium gone up 18% when nothing about the business changed?" | "That was quicker than I expected." | "I hope I never actually need to claim on this." | "I have been on hold for 22 minutes and I still don't know if I'm covered." |
| Pain points | The email buries the renewal date in the third paragraph | No explanation for the price change is shown anywhere. Has to call and wait on hold | Business details form re-asks for information already on file from last year | Can't tell from the schedule alone what's and isn't covered | No way to check coverage for a specific situation without calling and waiting |
| Opportunities | Put the date and the deadline in the subject line | Show a one-line reason for any premium change next to the number, before she has to ask | Pre-fill last year's details and only ask what has changed | A plain-English summary page above the legal schedule, not instead of it | A "would this be covered" self-check tool in the portal, with an escalation path to a human if it can't answer |
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How to run the session that produces one.
- Pick one persona and one goal. A map that tries to cover every user type at once collapses into generic mush. Do a separate map per persona if you need more than one.
- Gather what real evidence exists first: support tickets, call transcripts, analytics drop-off, past user interviews. With none of that, a journey map is a guess.
- Bring the people who touch each stage (support, sales, onboarding, whoever runs the process), not just the design team. They'll correct assumptions the room would otherwise never notice.
- Fill Actions and Touchpoints first. These are the rows people actually know the answer to, and they keep the Thoughts and Emotion rows honest rather than invented.
- Score Emotion last, one stage at a time, and let the curve show you where things are worst before you start debating fixes.
- Treat the lowest point the tool highlights as the first thing to validate with real users, not the first thing to build a fix for.
A workshop map tells you what your team believes.
If this map came out of a workshop rather than real user data, it tells you what your team believes is true about the experience, which is genuinely useful, because it turns vague worry into specific, checkable claims. It doesn't tell you what's actually happening. Before spending real budget against a pain point on this map, go and check it: watch a session, read the support tickets, run a handful of interviews.
Frequently asked questions
What's in a customer journey map template?
One persona and one goal, then stages across the top (for example Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Use, Support). Under each stage: actions, touchpoints, thoughts, an emotion score, pain points and opportunities. Add an evidence line saying where it came from. The blank template above has every row with a prompt for what goes in it.
Can I download a blank journey map template?
Yes. The "Download blank template" button gives you a Markdown table with all rows and five starter stages. Paste it into Notion, Confluence or Google Docs, or click "Start a blank map" to fill the same rows in here with a working emotion curve.
What's a user journey map?
A user journey map lays out what a specific person does, thinks, and feels as they move through stages of doing something with your product or service, from first hearing about it through to using it and getting support. It's read left to right, stage by stage, and its job is to show where the experience breaks down, not just what happens.
How do I run a session that produces one?
Start from real evidence if you have it: support tickets, call transcripts, analytics drop-off points, or a handful of user interviews. Bring the people who actually touch each stage (support, sales, product) into the room, agree the stages first, then fill Actions and Touchpoints before Thoughts and Emotion, because the factual rows keep the emotional ones honest. Expect 60-90 minutes for a first pass.
Is a journey map built in a workshop reliable on its own?
No. A map built from a team's assumptions in a room is a hypothesis about the experience, not a measurement of it. It's a genuinely useful hypothesis (it tells you what to go and check), but treat every pain point on it as something to validate with real users, support data, or session recordings before you commit budget to fixing it.
What does the emotion curve actually show?
Each stage gets a score from very negative to very positive. Plotted across the stages, the shape of that line is the fastest way to see where an experience currently feels worst. The tool marks that low point automatically as the priority moment to fix, because that's usually where the biggest single improvement is available.