How to run a results-driven journey mapping workshop

Imagine a potential customer navigating your website. They're intrigued but overwhelmed by the multitude of options. They leave without making a purchase, leaving you with a question—what could’ve been done differently? This is where a customer journey mapping workshop comes in. It helps enhance understanding and improve customer experience (CX) by visualizing and analyzing the steps customers take when interacting with your brand.

By bringing your team together to map out customers' steps, these workshops highlight the moments that matter most—such as first impressions, key decision points, and the factors influencing purchase decisions—while uncovering opportunities to improve the overall experience. 

In this guide, we’ll explore what customer journey maps are, how they benefit your customers and your business, and how to host a workshop that equips your team to deliver better experiences at every stage of the journey.

The customer journey mapping workshop is a collaborative session where teams come together to visually outline and analyze the steps customers take when interacting with their brand. Each participant's input is essential for the workshop's success. 

The goal is clear: to map the entire customer journey—from initial awareness and consideration to purchase and post-purchase experiences—while identifying key touchpoints, pain points, and moments of delight.

These workshops provide a structured environment to 

• Align team perspectives

• Uncover gaps in the customer experience

• Brainstorm actionable improvements

Participants gain valuable insights into creating more seamless, engaging experiences that drive loyalty and satisfaction by focusing on the customer's perspective. The insights gained from these workshops can empower your team to make informed decisions that positively impact your customers. 

Whether new to journey mapping or looking to refine your process, these workshops are a practical way to align your team and prioritize meaningful changes. By the end, your team will have the knowledge and tools to implement the necessary changes to improve the customer journey.

Journey mapping workshops benefit from thorough planning, ensuring that each component adds meaningful value for all participants.

Deciding which customer segments to map

To ensure your journey maps are actionable and aligned with your business goals, identify and prioritize customer segments based on concrete criteria:

• Purchase frequency: Focus on customers who frequently interact with your business, as their journeys may reveal recurring patterns or pain points.

• Revenue contribution: Target high-value segments whose journeys impact your bottom line most. For instance, consider mapping customer journeys in your top revenue-generating markets or product categories.

• Strategic importance: Highlight customer segments tied to growth objectives, such as new customers in emerging markets or loyal customers poised to become champions of your brand.

By narrowing the scope to key segments, your workshop can address these groups' unique needs and behaviors, creating more targeted and actionable journey maps.

Choosing the type of journey map you want to create

The kind of journey map you create should align with your workshop goals and the customer segment you’re focusing on. Different journey maps serve different purposes:

• Current state: Visualizes the customer experience as it exists today. This map helps identify immediate pain points and areas for improvement.

• Future state: Focuses on the ideal customer experience you want to create, outlining aspirational goals and opportunities.

• Day-in-the-life: Examines a customer’s broader context, including their daily interactions with other brands or experiences, to gain insight into their needs and habits.

• Service blueprint: Expands the customer journey map by including internal processes, systems, and team interactions that support the customer experience.

By selecting a suitable map type, you can ensure that your workshop yields actionable insights and addresses the challenges your team wants to tackle.

Select the journey mapping workshop attendees

Involving team members who work at critical touchpoints in the customer experience is key to creating an accurate and actionable journey map. To optimize the workshop's impact, consider three factors when selecting attendees: cross-functional representation, group size, and a balanced mix of seniority levels. These considerations ensure that the workshop fosters collaboration, accommodates diverse perspectives, and delivers meaningful insights for your team.

Include cross-functional team members

Employees with responsibilities that span multiple departments are becoming increasingly common, especially in smaller businesses that need to maximize the value of each team member. These individuals are often crucial for determining which participants should attend journey mapping workshops.

Cross-functional employees who engage with various aspects of the customer journey, such as those who interact directly with customers and work behind the scenes, are particularly likely to benefit from a deeper understanding of how each element of the customer journey influences the others.

Number of attendees

The number of attendees at your journey mapping workshop can influence the types of activities you choose. Due to logistics, hands-on activities often limit participants, while lecture-based sessions can accommodate more people. 

Many businesses find that having about 10 to 15 team members is ideal, allowing for full engagement and effective discussion to capture the customer journey.

Seniority of attendees

Balancing team members with different experience levels is crucial for effective customer journey mapping. Including seasoned employees (5+ years) and newer hires helps bridge knowledge gaps and ensures diverse perspectives. 

Relying too heavily on senior leaders can alienate entry-level staff, while having mostly new employees may overlook valuable insights from those who have witnessed the company's growth. A mix of different ages, tenures, and experience levels can significantly enhance collaboration and improve outcomes.

Decide whether to use an external or internal facilitator 

Choosing the right facilitator for your customer journey mapping workshop is crucial to its success. 

External facilitators, such as consultants or industry experts, bring specialized expertise and a fresh perspective, making them ideal for workshops tackling complex customer journeys or for teams new to journey mapping. 

Internal facilitators, such as experienced team leads or CX managers, can be effective for teams already familiar with the process or when focusing on internal alignment. 

Whichever you choose, ensure the facilitator can clearly explain journey mapping concepts, guide discussions, and keep the session on track to achieve actionable outcomes.

Running a successful journey mapping workshop requires a significant amount of planning. Here are some of the most important things to focus on 

Start with a leadership introduction 

Kicking off the workshop with an introduction from your leadership team helps set the tone, aligns expectations, and emphasizes the workshop's strategic importance. 

Leaders can share their vision for how journey mapping aligns with business objectives and enhances customer experiences. 

Establish ground rules for the workshop. This fosters a respectful and productive environment, encourages participation, and ensures everyone's voice is heard. 

Facilitator introduction and workshop goals

Introduce your facilitators, particularly if they are external experts, by highlighting their relevant experience and expertise to establish credibility. 

Whether internal or external, facilitators should also articulate the workshop’s goals, outline key concepts to be covered, and explain how the session aligns with specific business objectives.

Create your customer journey map

After facilitators provide an overview of journey mapping principles and their importance, guide participants through creating a journey map. 

Focus on a specific customer persona to ensure the map is detailed, actionable, and relevant to real-world scenarios.

Knowing how to use your customer journey map is as crucial as creating it. 

• Start by documenting the journey map thoroughly, capturing key insights and any supporting data.

• Share the map with relevant teams across the org to ensure alignment and gather feedback.

• Validation is another critical step—use customer feedback, analytics, or stakeholder input to confirm the accuracy of your findings.

• Finally, ongoing analysis is needed to identify patterns and prioritize solutions for addressing pain points.

This continuous improvement process ensures you create actionable strategies to enhance the customer experience in the most impactful areas.

The length of a journey mapping workshop can vary depending on the scope and objectives, but most workshops typically last between 2 to 4 hours. Some can be as short as 90 minutes for a high-level overview or as long as a full day (6–8 hours) when more in-depth exploration, group activities, and stakeholder input are needed. 

For more complex sessions that require detailed mapping, multiple team inputs, and refining the journey maps over time, workshops could span several days.

The allotted time can also affect whether the workshop focuses on a specific part of the customer journey or the entire end-to-end process.

The journey mapping process typically involves four key stages:

1. Research and data collection: Gather customer feedback, behavioral data, and other insights to inform your map.

2. Mapping the journey: Visualize each step of the customer journey, including key touchpoints and pain points.

3. Analysis and insights: Identify areas where customers face challenges or experience delight and uncover opportunities for improvement.

4. Action planning: Develop strategies to address issues and enhance CX, then  implement the changes.

These stages ensure your journey map is grounded in real data, actionable insights, and a clear plan for driving results.

Measuring the impact of a customer journey mapping workshop involves tracking both immediate and long-term outcomes. Start by defining clear KPIs before the workshop, such as:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT): Track customer satisfaction before and after implementing changes based on the journey map.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Monitor changes in NPS to gauge overall customer loyalty and sentiment.

• Conversion rates: Measure improvements in conversion or sales directly resulting from optimizing the customer journey.

• Customer retention: Evaluate changes in customer retention and repeat purchase behavior following workshop-driven improvements.

Post-workshop, validating the insights gathered by continuously gathering customer feedback and using analytics to confirm improvements is important. Regularly revisit the customer journey map to ensure the implemented changes drive the intended results. 

By focusing on these metrics, you can gauge the success of your journey mapping workshop and ensure that it leads to measurable, positive outcomes for your business.