Customer Journey Map Template (Free) With Example

A lot of journey maps end up as a nice diagram in a shared drive. This one ends with emails that actually go out.

A customer journey map lists each stage a customer goes through with your business, from first hearing about you to buying, staying and recommending you. For every stage it records what the customer is trying to do, what they worry about, the signal that shows they've reached it, and what you send or do in response.

Below: what goes in each column, a blank template to copy, the same template filled in for a small SaaS, and the step most templates skip: turning each stage into an automated email journey.

What goes in a customer journey map?

A useful map is a table. Stages run down the side, and each column answers one question about the customer at that stage.

Column	The question it answers	Why it matters
Stage	Where are they in their relationship with you?	Keeps the map in the customer's order, not your org chart's
Customer goal	What are they trying to get done right now?	Your message should help with that, not with your goal
What they do	Where do they go and what do they touch?	Shows where you can reach them
Questions and worries	What might stop them moving on?	Each worry is an email or page you need
Signal you can see	What tells you they've reached this stage?	Without a signal, you can't automate anything
What you send or do	Your response at this stage	Turns the map into a plan
Metric	How you'll know the stage is working	One number per stage, checked monthly

Two columns do most of the work. Questions and worries tells you what to write. Signal you can see tells you when to send it. In our experience, many maps have the first and skip the second, which is why they rarely turn into anything that runs.

What are the 7 stages of a customer journey?

Most businesses can use five to seven stages. The labels matter less than agreeing on what moves someone from one to the next. A common set for a business that sells online:

Aware: they know they have a problem and have found you.
Considering: they're comparing you with other options.
Trying: they've signed up for a trial, a free plan or a sample.
Buying: they decide to pay.
Using: they get value and form a habit.
Growing: they upgrade, add teammates or tell others.
Leaving: they cancel or go quiet, and you try to win them back.

A shop might replace Trying with First purchase and Growing with Repeat purchase. A service business might add Proposal between Considering and Buying. Keep stages defined by what the customer did, not by how you feel about them.

Here is a free customer journey map template to copy

Copy this into Google Docs, Word, Excel or your notes. Fill in one row per stage, and keep each cell to a sentence or two. Some teams call this a customer experience journey map template; the columns are the same.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP
Business:            ______________________
Customer (one type): ______________________
Main job they hire you for: _______________

STAGE 1: AWARE
  Customer goal:        
  What they do:         
  Questions / worries:  
  Signal you can see:   
  What you send or do:  
  Metric:               

STAGE 2: CONSIDERING
  Customer goal:        
  What they do:         
  Questions / worries:  
  Signal you can see:   
  What you send or do:  
  Metric:               

STAGE 3: TRYING
  (same six lines)

STAGE 4: BUYING
  (same six lines)

STAGE 5: USING
  (same six lines)

STAGE 6: GROWING
  (same six lines)

STAGE 7: LEAVING
  (same six lines)

GAPS
  Stages with no signal:          
  Stages with nothing sent:       
  Biggest drop-off between stages:

If you'd rather work in a spreadsheet, use the stages as rows and these as columns: Stage, Customer goal, What they do, Questions and worries, Signal you can see, What you send or do, Metric.

One rule before you start: map one type of customer at a time. A freelancer and a 50-person agency go through different journeys, and blending them gives you a map that fits neither.

Customer journey map example: a SaaS, filled in

Here's the template filled in for an illustrative business: a two-person invoicing app for freelancers, with a 14-day trial and a monthly plan. The details are made up, but the shape is what you'd write for any self-serve SaaS.

Stage	Customer goal	What they do	Questions and worries	Signal you can see	What you send or do	Metric
Aware	Stop chasing late invoices	Searches "late payment email", reads a blog post	"Is there a less awkward way to chase clients?"	Downloads the late-payment email templates	Welcome series: templates, then a short guide to payment terms	Template downloads per 1,000 blog visitors
Considering	Pick a tool that looks professional	Reads the pricing page, compares two rivals	"Will clients find it odd? Is it worth paying for?"	Clicks the pricing link in an email, or visits pricing twice	One email answering the top two objections, with a customer story	Trial starts per 100 subscribers
Trying	Send a first invoice	Signs up, adds a client, builds an invoice	"How long will setup take?"	`trial_started`, then `invoice_sent`	Onboarding: one task per email, stopping once they send an invoice	Share who send an invoice within 3 days
Buying	Decide if it's worth $15 a month	Checks what they've used in the trial	"Do I really need this, or can I go back to Word?"	Trial ends in 3 days	Reminder with their own numbers: invoices sent, days to get paid	Trial-to-paid rate
Using	Get paid faster with less effort	Sends invoices every month	"Am I using it properly?"	Invoices sent in the last 30 days	Monthly recap; a nudge if nothing was sent for 30 days	Share of customers active each month
Growing	Look bigger than they are; help a friend	Adds a logo and a second business, mentions it to peers	"What else can it do?"	30 days as a customer; 10th invoice paid	Referral ask; upgrade prompt for multi-business	Referrals and upgrades per month
Leaving	Cut costs, or moved to another tool	Cancels	"Was it me or the tool?"	Plan changes to cancelled	Win-back two weeks later, asking what would have kept them	Share who return within 90 days

Two things this example shows. First, every row has a signal, and most of them are things the app already knows: a form was filled in, an invoice was sent, a trial date passed. Second, the What you send or do column is mostly email. For a small team, that's the only realistic way to respond at every stage for every customer.

In our experience, the gaps are usually in the middle. Teams put effort into Aware (content) and Buying (pricing), and much less into Using, which is where retention is decided.

How to create a customer journey map in five steps

Pick one customer type. Your best current customers are the right starting point.
Write the stages from their side. Use the seven above, then rename or merge them until they fit how people actually buy from you.
Fill the goal and worries columns from real evidence. Read support emails, sales call notes, cancellation reasons and reviews. In our experience, five customer conversations teach you more than a workshop.
Find a signal for every stage. If a stage has no signal, decide what you'd need to track: a form, a product event, a date, a tag.
Write what you send, then build it. One response per stage to start. The next section shows how each one becomes an automation.

Review the map every quarter. When a stage's metric drops, that row is where to look first.

How to turn each stage into an automated journey

This is the part that makes the map worth drawing. Every row with a signal can become an automated journey: the signal is the trigger, the worries become the emails, and the next stage is the goal that ends it.

Here's the SaaS map above, row by row, as journeys in Spreeflo. The trigger and step names are the ones in Spreeflo's visual sequence builder.

Stage	Trigger	What the journey does	Spreeflo plan
Aware	Form Submission on the templates form	Welcome series of 3 emails, with Check Email Activity to resend to non-openers	Starter
Considering	Email Action: link clicked in welcome email 2, the one that links to pricing	Sends the objections email, then a customer story 3 days later	Starter
Considering (stronger signal)	Join Segment: visited /pricing at least 2 times in the last 7 days and isn't a customer	Same emails, triggered by website visits	Professional
Trying	Custom Event `trial_started`	Onboarding emails, each followed by a Wait Condition for `invoice_sent` and an If/Else that ends the journey once they send one	Professional
Buying	Time trigger: 3 days before the contact's `trial_ends_at` date	Reminder email using their own numbers through Liquid, such as `{{ contact.invoices_sent }}`	Starter
Using	Cyclic, monthly, for contacts whose lifecycle stage is Customer	Monthly recap; a separate Criteria Match journey nudges anyone whose `invoices_sent_30d` drops below 1	Starter
Growing	Time trigger: 30 days after Became Customer at	Referral ask, then an upgrade prompt for anyone with a second business	Starter
Leaving	Criteria Match: `plan` is cancelled	Update Contact Attribute sets the Lifecycle stage to Churned, then a win-back email 14 days later	Starter

Three notes on making this work.

The signals have to reach your email tool. Trial dates, plan names and invoice counts live in your app. Send them to Spreeflo as contact attributes through the API, or as events with the website SDK. Events as triggers and conditions (the Trying row) need Professional; on Starter, have your app update an attribute instead and start the journey with Criteria Match.

Each journey should end at the next stage. The onboarding journey's goal is a sent invoice, so the Wait Condition plus If/Else takes people out as soon as they do it. Nobody gets "here's how to send your first invoice" after they've sent five.

Lifecycle stages tie the map to your data. In Spreeflo's CRM, every contact can have a lifecycle stage (Subscriber, Lead, Customer, Churned and so on), and you can rename the labels to match your map. Journeys move contacts between stages with Update Contact Attribute, and Spreeflo stamps the date a contact first enters each stage, such as Became Customer at, which the Growing row uses as its trigger. The CRM comes with Starter.

If you sell with calls or demos rather than a self-serve trial, the Considering and Buying rows become a sales pipeline, with deals and stages. Our guide to what a sales pipeline is covers that half.

For each journey type written out step by step, see email marketing automation: six journeys to copy.

See it in Spreeflo: describe a stage from your map to the in-app AI ("when a trial has 3 days left, email them how many invoices they've sent") and it builds the journey as a draft for you to review. Nothing goes out until a person starts it. Try the journey builder, no login →

Where most customer journey maps go wrong

Four mistakes we see often.

Mapping everyone at once. One map per customer type. Start with your best one.
Writing it from the inside. "Marketing qualified lead" is your stage, not theirs. Stages should describe what the customer did.
No signal column. If you can't see when someone reaches a stage, you can't respond on time, and the map stays a poster.
Stopping at the sale. The Using, Growing and Leaving rows are where lifetime value is decided, and in our experience they're the rows most often left blank.

The broader point

A journey map is a promise about how you'll treat customers at each moment. Big companies keep that promise with teams. A founder-led business can keep it with a map that has a signal in every row and an automated journey behind each signal. Draw it once, build one row a week, and in two months every customer hears from you at the moments that matter.

Build this in Spreeflo

Spreeflo gives founder-led businesses journeys, segments, forms, lifecycle stages and a CRM on one contact record, so each row of your map becomes a journey that runs on its own. Forms and web analytics are on the free plan, so you can start collecting the Aware signals today and add journeys on Starter from $16 a month.

Start free, no card → · Browse the playbooks

Common questions

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a table or diagram of the stages a customer goes through with your business, from first hearing about you to buying, using and leaving. For each stage it records what the customer wants, what worries them, how you'll know they've reached it, and what you'll send or do.

What are the stages of a customer journey?

A common set is aware, considering, trying, buying, using, growing and leaving. Many businesses use five stages instead, merging trying with buying and growing with using. The right stages are the ones defined by things your customers actually do.

How do you create a customer journey map?

Pick one customer type, write the stages from their side, fill in their goals and worries from real support emails and sales notes, find a signal you can see for every stage, and decide what you'll send at each one. Then build the responses, starting with the stage that loses the most people.

What should a customer journey map template include?

At minimum: the stage, the customer's goal, what they do, their questions and worries, the signal that shows they're at that stage, what you send or do, and one metric. The signal column is the one many templates leave out, and it's the one that lets you automate.

What is the difference between a customer journey map and a sales funnel?

A sales funnel counts how many people move from one step to the next. A journey map describes what each step feels like from the customer's side and what you do about it. Use the funnel to find where people drop off, and the map to decide what to change.

How often should you update a customer journey map?

Every quarter, or whenever something big changes: a new pricing model, a new product, a new type of customer. Between updates, watch the metric on each row. A drop tells you which stage to look at.

Behavior-based email segmentation: a PassReady case study (29% activation lift)

Customer Journey Map Template (Free), With a Filled-In SaaS Example