Customer Experience Journey Mapping

Customer Experience Journey Mapping for the "THREE EXPERIENCE PILLARS"

Customer experience journey mapping is a strategic process that defines end-to-end customer journeys in detail, identifies customer-centric pain points, and delivers actionable improvements to enhance engagement, elevate buying, boost satisfaction, and drive loyalty.

Where should you focus your journey mapping efforts? There are "Three Experience Pillars” that, when perfected, create a growth ripple effect throughout the entire business:

End-to-end digital buying journeys
Post-sale experiences (delivery, click and collect, returns)
The customer support function (providing seamless support across the above two pillars)

Master these three pillars, and you establish a strong loyalty foundation.

Research Proves the Three Pillars are Crucial

Research indicates that the primary source of customer dissatisfaction in retail is experiences in these areas. Consider this verified research from 2025:

91% of consumers report encountering frustrating digital buying issues.
Poor digital journeys have caused 50% of consumers to switch to competitors.
79% of consumers would be deterred from purchasing again after a negative post-purchase experience, such as a bad delivery experience or a confusing returns process.
89% of customers cease doing business with a company due to poor customer service.

Physical Retail - the 4th Pillar

Customer dissatisfaction in physical retail is significantly lower than the figures above, reflecting decades of focus.

While there is always room for improvement, research shows that strengthening the three pillars drives foot traffic and enhances the physical retail experience.

Enhancing these experience pillars represents a retailer's low-hanging fruit.

Read on to learn more about the three pillars and what this mapping process looks like.

Experience Pillar #1 - Journey Mapping End-to-End Digital Journeys:

Seamless and intuitive end-to-end digital experiences, from discovery through purchase, are foundational.

This journey is mapped using a mix of wireframes and commentary that defines the broader content flow, along with detailed descriptions of the functional behaviours of specific pages.

It is this layer of detail that separates average experiences from amazing ones. This process of digital journey mapping is also referred to as UX (user experience) Design.

Experience Pillar #2 - Journey Mapping Post-Sale Experiences

Research proves the foundation to building trust and loyalty in customers comes from delivering a high standard of post-sale experiences: delivery, pickup, and hassle-free returns.

When you take money from a customer, you are essentially making a promise. Now it's time to keep that promise.

Before considering what software systems must look like to support this experience pillar, a mapping process must happen to define these journeys from your customer's perspective.

Experience Pillar #3 - Journey Mapping Customer Support

The pillar is all about...

Responsive live chat
Knowledgeable support teams
The accessibility of these teams
Efficient issue resolution
Leveraging AI throughout

When customers feel supported and valued, they are more likely to remain loyal, continue purchasing, and recommend the brand, creating a virtuous cycle of retention and acquisition.

This mapping process elevates customer support from a sunk cost to a business function that plays a key role in new customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty.

How Customer Experience Journey Mapping works

”There is both an art and science to journey mapping”

Learn how Greg Randall fuses customer-centric first-party data, your business strategy, and proven best practices to create customer journey maps that are easy to understand and, more importantly, easy to implement.

Below is a high-level summary of core mapping activities...

Customer-Centric Research and Data Analysis

Greg rolls up his sleeves and analyses customer-centric data to uncover insights into customer needs, emotions, and behaviours.

A wide array of datasets is reviewed to ensure a comprehensive perspective of the customer is captured. This process ensures the voice of the customer is heard and leveraged.

This process identifies pain points and journey blockers, forming the foundation for targeted improvements.

Customer Centric Journey Mapping

Detailed digital customer experience journey maps are created to visualise and optimise customer experiences across primary digital assets: websites, APPs, and other digital channels.

Customers don't see "digital" as being separate from "customer support". They see a single experience in which their needs must be met.

We must construct journey maps in the same way. The maps are designed and built from the customer's perspective.

Only once this is complete can we translate them into a project scope for technology selection and accurate implementation.

Customer Service Blueprinting - "Service Design"

Specific effort is made to design a customer support function that assists when customers need it. This can be during a digital buying journey, post-sale, or when organising a return.

This is known as "Service Design".

This does not mean that an employee must always be on standby. There are multiple methods to build support capabilities that meet customer needs, including employee accessibility, access to informative content libraries, and AI systems.

Journey Map Measurement Plan

Monitoring systems and custom dashboards are also planned and designed to give the business a transparent view of all journey mapping and touchpoint optimisations.

This layer of data capture achieves two key outcomes...

Monitoring new journeys to determine business performance impacts - what does ROI look like?
A new layer of first-party data capture is introduced to define new customer behaviours and inform the business on experience enhancements needed in future phases of work.

Why Choose Comma Consulting?

Greg Randall, founder of Comma Consulting, helps you understand, visualise, and optimise every stage of the new customer journeys that must be brought to life.

From research and mapping to actionable improvements, Greg drives customer satisfaction to new levels with the most significant impact.

Greg is an experienced implementer of journey map plans. Greg can help you envision your future and bring it to life.

Ready to Grow? Let's Go! Contact Greg Now.