A customer journey map (CJM) is a spreadsheet or infographic conveying specific data. The diagram shows the points of contact with the product or brand. In other words, it displays the client’s engagement with the brand, products, or services.
A customer journey map is a tool that helps improve user experience. The companies that have implemented these maps can:
- Increase loyalty and conversion
- Shorten the sales cycle
- Become more customer-oriented
- Reduce the risk of new product failure
- Find growth points for existing ones
To achieve maximum growth, use customer journey maps (CJMs). A CJM is a unique scenario for a customer interaction that focuses on the potential buyer’s lifespan in the sales funnel.
The user’s route is non-linear and has several branches from the point-of-site entry to the order. It is important not to lose a client at every journey stage. To develop a strategy, everyone needs specialized software.
What are Customer Journey Mapping Tools?
Companies that want to learn more about how their customers use their websites use customer journey mapping tools. These tools allow businesses to track and analyze customer interactions across various touchpoints, from initial awareness to post-purchase follow-up. By mapping the customer journey, a digital marketer can see where customers have problems (nuances or issues), where they could improve, and where they are doing (interact) well.
A brick-and-mortar retail store can be an example of how customer journey mapping tools can be used offline. By tracking customers’ behaviors in-store, such as browsing habits and purchase decisions, the store can gain valuable insights into what drives customer engagement and increase revenue. In the same way, an online store can use CJM tools to look at page views, drop-offs and the amount of time users spend on certain pages (user sessions).
By analyzing data such as product views, cart abandonment rates, and checkout completion, the online store can identify pages (URLs) where customers may be dropping off and improve CR. It can also identify high-value customer segments and tailor the experience to their needs and preferences.
Customer journey mapping tools are a must-have for UX or CRO specialists looking to better understand their customer’s experience and optimize their engagement, conversion, and retention. It’s a tool to unlock growth potential and boost the bottom line.
What are the Benefits of Using Customer Journey Mapping Tools?
Using customer journey maps (CJMs) can bring several key benefits to websites and online stores. Here are some of them:
- Identifying problem areas in the customer journey and improving the overall customer experience.
- Identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities helps businesses increase their revenue.
- Segment customers and customize their experience to increase loyalty and retention.
- Track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and other initiatives.
- According to expert Mark Smith, CEO of CustomerThink, “Without a clear understanding of the customer journey, online businesses risk losing valuable customers to competitors. CJMs provide clear and actionable insights into the customer experience, enabling businesses to improve customer retention and drive growth.”
One example of how a website can use CJMs is to analyze user behavior, such as the number of clicks and time spent on certain pages.
List of The 20 Customer Journey Mapping Tools
If you want to create a successful e-commerce platform or increase the conversion of an existing online store, put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer. Special tools will help you determine all the touchpoints with your audience.
Plerdy
Plerdy is a website analysis tool that helps businesses optimize their conversion rates by providing detailed insights into how visitors interact with their websites. It offers a range of features, including heatmap tracking, SEO analysis, session replay, event tracking, and form customization. These tools enable businesses to understand how visitors behave on their websites, identify areas of improvement, and make data-driven decisions to increase conversions. The Plerdy also offers an excellent way to collect feedback and a Net Promoter Score, which some of the world’s largest enterprises trust. Customers have praised Plerdy for its accuracy, ease of use, and customer support. Businesses of all sizes have reported a 1.5x increase in sales after implementing Plerdy’s insights. Plerdy is a cost-efficient and easy-to-use tool that can help businesses improve their website’s performance and increase conversions.
Microsoft Visio
Visio is a premier visual communication and customer journey mapping tool that seamlessly integrates into the Microsoft 365 suite for commercial subscribers. This platform excels in facilitating the creation, sharing, and collaboration of intricate customer journey maps, offering an array of templates, shapes, and stencils specifically designed to simplify the process. With Visio, users can effortlessly craft detailed flowcharts, organizational charts, floor plans, network diagrams, and more, all of which can be pivotal in visualizing and refining the customer journey.
This tool is adept at supporting various business processes critical to effective customer journey mapping, including decision-making, data visualization, and process execution. Its integration with Microsoft 365 apps—such as Microsoft Teams, Power BI, Power Automate, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Azure—enhances its utility by enabling comprehensive customer journey management across multiple platforms.
Visio further distinguishes itself in the realm of customer journey mapping by allowing users to create and coauthor diagrams in real-time, fostering a collaborative environment for teams to map and optimize the customer journey together. Moreover, it’s equipped with accessibility features, ensuring that all team members can participate in the customer journey mapping process. For those concerned with security while mapping the customer journey, Visio offers enterprise-grade security and privacy features, including Information Rights Management (IRM), to safeguard diagrams during collaboration. This blend of functionality, security, and integration makes Visio an invaluable tool for anyone looking to enhance their customer journey mapping efforts.
Microsoft – one of the top software developers co-founded by Bill Gates with Paul Allen. This widget allows you to work on visualization and create diagrams and customer journey maps regardless of the location, including remotely.
Tools like Microsoft Visio make creating and sharing maps easy. Such international companies as HP, Campari, UNICEF, Northrop & Johnson, and ACTUM Digital use it for their purposes.
Smaply
Smaply is a tool for mapping the customer experience that helps businesses collect and manage customer data in one place. The tool offers a variety of features such as journey mapping, persona mapping, and stakeholder mapping to help businesses understand customer pain points and business opportunities along the customer journey. Smaply lets users create a journey map repository, connect journey maps in hierarchies, assign accountable team members, and create data hubs to manage customer experience activities. Additionally, Smaply can integrate with project management tools like Jira, allowing all CX projects and initiatives to be visualized in one place. Smaply also allows visitors to take their customers’ perspectives to understand their needs, pain points, and feelings. The tool also supports diversity and takes initiative in supporting disadvantaged people, especially those in or refugees from war zones, and for diversity as a whole.
This is a console-rendering utility from IBM. The creator of the tool is a team from Innsbruck. Their goal is to help organizations successfully do service design. With this tool, some partners (Bayer, Toyota, Deloitte, LinkedIn, Ford) improved their customer focus.
Miro
Miro also offers a variety of features for customer journey mapping, which allows businesses to understand their customer’s needs and pain points. The platform allows businesses to create journey maps and visualize interactions, facilitating a common understanding between all team members. It also lets businesses manage customer experience by creating a repository for journey maps, connecting journey maps in hierarchies, assigning responsible team members, and making data hubs. Miro’s integration capabilities also allow businesses to connect their customer journey mapping data with other tools they use, such as Jira, to centralize and manage all customer experience projects in one place. This allows businesses to uncover overlaps and synergies, improving customer experience.
It is a platform created by Andrey Khusid to make customer journey maps and interactions when creating projects and interface design. You can configure integration with other collaboration tools, third-party services, and applications.
Miro’s offices are worldwide: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Perm, Sydney, and New York. The platform is used by over 15 million users, including Cisco, Twitter, Pivotal, Netflix, and Skyscanner.
Figma
Figma is a cloud-based user interface design tool that allows real-time collaboration and version control. One of the features of Figma is the ability to create customer journey maps using a template, such as the one created by Nigel in this text. Customer journey mapping is a common UX tool that helps digital specialists understand customers’ actions, thoughts, and emotions throughout their interactions with a company. Figma’s template and auto-layout feature make creating a beautifully presented user journey map easy, with the option to share, modify and remix the template. Additionally, Figma has a Community feature where users can share and collaborate on design files.
This tool is not software but a full-fledged online service from a company with the same name, founded in 2012 by Dylan Field. The web tool was created for collaborative interface development and prototyping, and all this is possible in real time.
The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, US, and has offices in New York and London. Its main global users are Twitter, The New York Times, Kimberly-Clark, Zoom, and Deliveroo.
Lucidspark
Lucidspark is a customer journey mapping tool that helps digital specialists learn and optimize their customers’ experiences with their brands. A customer journey map is a diagram that illustrates how customers interact with a company and engage with its products, website, and/or services. The goal is to understand and optimize customers’ journeys with the brand so that they can make a return trip and tell all their friends about their experience. Customer journey mapping is the process of outlining and visualizing the customer’s experience with the brand. You can use multiple customer journey maps depending on your goals and the specific buyer persona you’re focused on. It helps to learn about and improve the customer experience (CX), identify gaps in communication and messaging, reveal customer pain points or friction, increase customer retention, optimize customer onboarding and align marketing, sales, UX, and other teams.
Developed by Lucid, a trusted partner of 99% of Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, GE, and Delta Air Lines, Lucidspark offers a flexible digital canvas for brainstorming, real-time collaboration, and turning ideas into actionable next steps. It also offers enterprise-ready features for connecting teams, keeping sensitive data safe, and scaling to meet business needs. Lucidspark is also a top pick for remote teams as it is named one of the top 50 products for remote work by G2.
Lucid has developed this virtual whiteboard for creating and visualizing ideas, group brainstorming, and remote collaboration. The brand was co-founded by Ben Dilts and Karl Sun.
Offices are now located in South Jordan (the United States), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), and Melbourne (Australia).
Canvanizer
Canvanizer emerges as a dynamic business tool, meticulously designed to enhance team brainstorming and collaboration on customer journey mapping. This platform offers pre-structured canvas templates, making it simpler for teams to visualize and refine the customer journey. With Canvanizer, users can effortlessly create a canvas dedicated to customer journey mapping, allowing for the seamless posting of ideas, the rearrangement of notes, the fine-tuning of customer journey strategies, and the sharing of these canvases with team members for synchronized updates.
This tool goes above and beyond by providing robust privacy settings and allowing users to expose their customer journey maps to the public for feedback, enriching the journey mapping process with external insights. Canvanizer 2.0, the platform’s enhanced version, introduces over 40 popular canvas templates, ensuring teams have a diverse toolkit for customer journey mapping. Additionally, it offers features like private canvases, customizable segment titles, mobile editing, and advanced team collaboration functionalities, all of which are crucial for creating comprehensive and effective customer journey maps.
Originally crafted to leverage the Business Model Canvas methodology by Alexander Osterwalder for business model creation, Canvanizer has adeptly extended its application to customer journey mapping. This adaptation underscores the tool’s versatility and its specific utility for teams focused on meticulously mapping the customer journey, making Canvanizer a vital tool for any organization prioritizing customer journey mapping in their strategy.
Founder of the Canvanizer – Stefan Peter Roos, one of the organizers of the Nuremberg Startup Weekend, 2011. Their office is located in the Coworking Space Nuremberg, Germany. The software can be downloaded publicly, so companies and people worldwide use it.
Gliffy
Gliffy is a diagramming tool that helps teams communicate visually. With Gliffy, users can create diagrams with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, collaborate in real-time and share diagrams with anyone. Gliffy is integrated with Atlassian tools such as Confluence and Jira, allowing teams to create documentation-ready diagrams without leaving the platform. Gliffy also offers enterprise solutions for businesses, product teams, software engineering teams, and IT teams. Additionally, Gliffy offers a feature to improve a business’s customer experience with Journey mapping. The journey mapping process allows businesses to understand better the customer experience, process data, and identify opportunities for improvement.
It is a cloud-based online service for creating flowcharts, organizational, UML, and network diagrams, wireframes, maps, and more. It was created and continues to improve by developers from Gliffy. Two friends and former colleagues Chris Colhardt and Clint Dixon opened this IT company in 2005.
Now, it has offices in the United States, EU countries, Israel, Japan, India, and Australia. Its clients include top brands such as Nike, Harvard University, Pixar, Xerox, Apple, and NASA.
LucidChart
LucidChart is a visual collaboration platform that allows teams to innovate faster with virtual whiteboarding, intelligent diagramming, and cloud visualization. It offers a suite of products, including Lucidspark, Lucidchart, and Lucidscale, that support every part of the workflow, help teams drive revenue, decrease costs, and improve productivity. LucidChart also offers a customer journey mapping tool that helps visualize a customer’s journey with website pages, map out different customer touchpoints, and collaborate with colleagues. The tool has a basic customer journey map template that can be easily customized to fit the specific use case. Trusted by millions of users, LucidChart integrates with other popular tools such as Atlassian and Amazon. TMobile, Microsoft, Okta, NBC, and Asana use LucidChart.
Omnigraffle
Omnigraffle is a powerful visual communication tool for professionals who must organize or communicate ideas clearly and beautifully. It is designed for professionals such as architects, designers, and developers who need to diagram and prototype ideas accurately. The software comes with a 14-day free trial and is made by The Omni Group, an employee-owned company based in Seattle, Washington. Omnigraffle offers features such as diagramming, rapid prototyping, and design, which can be used to create professional-grade vector graphics. Omnigraffle also includes a feature for customer journey mapping to help explore and visualize a customer’s journey with a website.
This is a diagramming and digital illustration app for macOS and iOS created by Omni Group. The American software company was founded in 1989 by Will Shiple, Ken Keyes, and Tim Wood. Key customers – MSLGROUP, QA Limited, Lorven Technologies, Capital One, American Express.
UXPressia
UXPressia is a company that offers customer journey mapping tools to assist businesses in understanding and enhancing their customer experiences. Their online platform includes real-time collaboration, an omnichannel experience visualization, an experience graph, branded export options, a presentation mode, and integrated web analytics. Additionally, UXPressia offers a variety of customer journey map templates and an online course to assist businesses in mapping their customers’ journeys. They also offer integration with various CRM software, allowing businesses to import customer data and create accurate journey maps. The company also supports Ukraine and provides resources for customers to learn how to help. Many customers have praised UXPressia’s user-friendly interface, ease of use, and ability to create polished customer journey maps quickly.
Many customers, such as Rui Grilo, CIO of Square Asset Management, and Nick de Voil, Director of De Voil Consulting, have praised UXPressia for its simplicity, ease of use, and ability to create beautiful customer journey maps in a short period.
It is a tool for designing customer journey maps in a standard linear form. There are persona and card templates that can also be downloaded in PDF. In the free version, you can create 1 card and 1 person. Founder of UXPressia – Yuri Vedenin. Its software users include Michelin, StepChange, Freeman Capital, HorizonCX, and UrSpectr.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics redefines customer journey mapping through its XM platform, enabling businesses to capture and analyze feedback across all touchpoints, from social media to direct feedback. This comprehensive understanding enriches customer journey mapping, aided by the integration of Clarabridge, which adds depth by analyzing emotion, effort, and intent in feedback. The platform facilitates actionable insights to enhance the customer journey, offering personalized experiences through automated actions based on a detailed experience directory. With Qualtrics, the intricacies of customer journey mapping are not just visualized but optimized, making it a pivotal tool for businesses aiming to elevate their customer experience.
Visual Paradigm
Visual Paradigm is a software company that offers a customer journey mapping tool that helps businesses learn and improve the CX. The tool provides an overview of the customer journey, allowing teams to identify and resolve specific customer pain points and hurdles. The tool also allows businesses to prioritize actions in their customer experience strategy, reveal gaps between various channels and departments, and improve customer conversion and retention rates. Visual Paradigm also offers other features, such as UX design and wireframe tools, and is trusted by over 320,000 people in small and Fortune 500 companies. Visual Paradigm users – over 100 large companies, including ASUSTeK Computer, EMC Corporation, Financial Times, US Army, and Starbucks.
This software is a suite of business process and database modeling tools. The creator of the program is a well-known software developer, Curtis Tsang. The company is headquartered in Hong Kong.
InMoment
InMoment is a leading customer experience (CX) solution provider, offering a comprehensive platform for businesses looking to improve customer interactions. The Experience Improvement (XI) Platform is designed to integrate customer signals, gain insights, and take informed action to drive real, actionable business value. It offers a range of features, including surveys, social listening, call scripts, SMS, IVR, and data signals, personalized, actionable reporting and advanced text analysis, intent prediction, impact evaluation, and anomaly detection. The platform also includes an AI-powered adaptive model for unparalleled accuracy and understanding. InMoment’s solutions are tailored to various industries, including automotive, B2B, contact centers, financial services, food services, healthcare, insurance, retail, telecom, travel & hospitality, and utilities. Many of the world’s leading brands trust InMoment to improve their customer experience.
The developer of this product for customer journey maps is a young but recognized company in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Volvo, Tesco, Hawaiian Airlines, Castlight, and Hootsuite use InMoment’s developments.
SuiteCX
SuiteCX is a powerful customer experience (CX) platform that allows businesses to design, visualize and deliver optimal customer experiences that engage customers and drive business value. The fully customizable and secure platform includes robust customer journey mapping capabilities, integrated survey data, persona development, improvement planning, and contact strategy creation. SuiteCX offers several features, such as visualizing persona-based customer journeys, CX assessment to identify customer pain points, and Applied CX to turn insights from customer journey maps into real-world execution. The company offers training, coaching, workshops, and CX consulting services to ensure its customers succeed. SuiteCX is also known for its thought leadership in the industry, for example, in the book Managing Customer Experience and Relationships, written by the board chair Martha Rogers and CEO Valerie Peck’s chapter on Understanding Customer Experience through Customer Journey Mapping. SuiteCX’s customers include Bank of the West, JumpstartMD, Furnace Creek Resort, Kimberly Clark, Starwood Vacation Network, and Xanterra Parks and Resorts.
SuiteCX has developed a customizable and secure platform for customer service, mapping, and travel analytics. The company’s founder and CEO is the young and ambitious Valerie Peck, who has made her way to the international market.
Design Tools for Mapping the Customer Journey
Customer experience management depends on creating tools that map a customer’s path from first contact to purchase. These technologies enable companies to recognize and address consumer unhappiness, enhancing customer experiences and increasing profits.
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is one of the Microsoft 365 cluster applications that was built for presentation and diagram design. It offers a wide range of powerful features for creating visually appealing slideshows, including an extensive collection of pre-designed PowerPoint templates to help users create professional-looking presentations quickly and easily. Microsoft’s offices are located around the world. The headquarters is in Redmond, Washington, USA.
The CEO, Satya Nadella, has been working here since 2014. Clients are both individuals and large businesses, including Bosch, Cersanit, Siemens, London School of Business & Finance, and BAASS Business Solutions Inc.
InDesign
InDesign is a layout and visualization tool from Adobe used to create beautiful graphic designs and customer journey maps with templates, preset images, and typography. Save content in PDF format and share it with other specialists.
John Warnock and Charles Geschke founded the brand in 1982. The developer specializes in design programs, so the maps are colorful and informative. Offices are located worldwide, with headquarters in San Jose, CA. Some of the main users are Dior, Dell, Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, and Motorola.
Canva
It is the eponymous tool, from the Australian graphic design service, founded by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht for creating images based on ready-made elements and templates. It can also be used for creating informative customer journey maps.
Cameron Adams, the third co-founder, said their service registered 55 million users, including Intel, PayPal, Gucci, Danone, and American Airlines. The company’s offices are located in Sydney, Milan, and Beijing.
XMind
This tool for creating complete maps and diagrams of business processes and buyer-seller interaction was created by XMind Ltd. It was founded in 2006 by Brian Sun, who is still the CEO. The software is useful to absolutely everyone, from schoolchildren to large companies.
Final Word
In our comprehensive exploration of the 20 best customer journey mapping tools in 2024, we’ve highlighted the key features, comparisons, and insights that make each platform unique. From user-friendly drawing tools and automation features to integrating locations and interactive elements, these tools offer a diverse toolkit for crafting effective customer journey maps. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to customer journey mapping, incorporating these tools into your strategy can elevate your customer experience. For those looking to dive deeper into customer journey optimization, Plerdy emerges as a standout platform. With its robust analytics tools and user-friendly interface, we encourage you to explore Plerdy further by trying its features firsthand or delving into our detailed reviews and comparisons. How will you leverage these insights to revolutionize your customer journey mapping and management practices, and how will this impact your overall customer experience strategy?
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