Customer Journey
The complete path a customer takes from first awareness through purchase and ongoing relationship.
Category
Customer Experience
Full Definition
The customer journey is the complete path a customer takes in their relationship with your company — from first becoming aware of your brand, through consideration, purchase, use, and ongoing loyalty (or departure).
Customer Journey Stages: 1. Awareness: Customer learns about your brand 2. Consideration: Customer evaluates your offering 3. Purchase/Acquisition: Customer decides to buy 4. Onboarding: Customer starts using your product/service 5. Usage/Experience: Ongoing interaction with your brand 6. Loyalty/Advocacy: Customer becomes a repeat buyer and recommends you 7. Departure (if applicable): Customer ends the relationship
Common Use Cases
Real-World Examples
Scenario
Journey map shows: 90% awareness→consideration conversion, but only 20% consideration→purchase. Research reveals pricing page is confusing.
Outcome
Simplified pricing page increases conversion to 45%. Revenue jumps without increasing marketing spend.
Scenario
A hotel maps the guest journey: booking → pre-arrival email → check-in → stay → checkout → post-stay follow-up. They find check-in is a pain point (long waits, confusing process).
Outcome
They introduce mobile check-in with room key on phone. Guest satisfaction at this touchpoint jumps from 3.1 to 4.7.
Scenario
A gym maps member journey and finds "Week 3" is when 40% of new members stop coming.
Outcome
They add a "Week 3 check-in" call from a trainer. Member retention at the 90-day mark improves from 65% to 82%.
Related Terms
Touchpoint
Any point of interaction between a customer and your company.
Customer Experience (CX)
The overall perception customers have of all their interactions with a company.
Feedback Loop
The continuous cycle of collecting, analyzing, acting on, and learning from customer feedback.
Omnichannel Feedback
Collecting customer feedback across all interaction channels in a unified system.