Customer Journey vs Experience Maps: What’s the Difference?
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
People often use “customer journey” and “experience maps” interchangeably, but that’s confusing and inaccurate. It’s time to set the record straight. They are very different, and I’ll tell you why.
Customer Journeys
As a product manager, I have found it useful to take the “customer journey” literally. A customer journey is the path a person takes to become a consumer of a product or service. There are three universal phases to a customer journey: Acquisition, Conversion, and Retention. This is true no matter what business you are in.
Therefore, a customer journey is never a map. It’s a framework for the map, and it does not change. Thus, customer journeys and experience maps are different but should work together.
- Customer journeys provide a contextual structure for goals: goals you have as a business and goals customers have with your business.
- Customer journeys distinguish the identity of your…
