Map your customer journey for smarter feedback collection

Key highlights

Before you write a survey question, you need to answer a more fundamental question: where should feedback live in your customer journey? Journey mapping turns vague intentions ("we should survey our customers more") into a clear plan. The process doesn't need to be complex. Four questions are enough to identify your highest-value feedback opportunities.

What you'll learn in this post:

• The four questions that identify where feedback belongs in your journey

• A step-by-step process for creating a simple, usable journey map

• A worked retail example showing how journey stages map to specific survey questions

• How to move from a journey map to a practical feedback collection plan

• What "above the line" and "below the line" mean and why both matter

Why journey mapping comes first

It’s common for feedback programmes to start with a survey. Someone decides they need customer feedback, opens a survey tool, writes some questions, and sends it out.

We’re all for that. Getting that first survey out is a solid starting point. But once it’s live, it’s time to zoom out and think about the bigger picture.

Are you asking the right questions, at the right time, to the right people?

A lot of programmes fall into the same trap: ad hoc surveys that don’t connect, big gaps in the journey that go unmeasured, the same customers getting surveyed again, and data that’s hard to act on because it lacks context.

Think about the journey you’re trying to understand, and how your surveys fit into it. One standalone survey might flag an issue at a later touchpoint, but the root cause could be much earlier in the customer’s experience. That’s why we encourage feedback to be mapped to different stages of the journey. It gives you a fuller view and helps you make decisions based on the whole picture not just one part of it.

Journey mapping helps by answering the “where” before the “what.” Once you know where feedback fits within the journey, the right questions, channels and triggers become much clearer.

Let me know if you want a version that includes an example sometimes that brings the “why it matters” home even more.

The four questions that make it work

You don't need a complex methodology or expensive workshop to map your journey. Start with four questions applied to each stage of your customer experience:

1. Where do people make decisions?

These are moments where customers are ‘choosing’.  

Below are a few examples of choosing scenarios:  

• Choosing your product over a competitor

• Choosing a plan or option  

• Choosing to proceed or abandon.  

Feedback at decision points tells you whether your experience is helping people decide confidently or creating confusion and friction.

Examples:  

• Product comparison pages

• pricing pages

• checkout flow

• plan selection

• booking confirmation

2. Where do people struggle?

These are friction points where customers encounter difficulty, confusion, or frustration. Feedback at struggle points reveals the specific problems you need to fix and helps you prioritise based on severity and frequency.

Examples:  

• Complex forms  

• returns processes

• account setup

• finding information

• contacting support

• navigating a physical space

3. Where do people succeed?

These are moments where customers achieve what they set out to do. Feedback at success points confirms what's working well (so you can protect and replicate it) and captures positive sentiment you can use for case studies, testimonials, or internal reporting.

Examples:  

• Successful first use of a product

• completing onboarding

• receiving a delivery

• resolving a support issue.

4. Where do people leave?

These are exit points where customers disengage, churn, or choose not to return. Feedback at exit points helps you understand why you're losing people, which is often the most valuable and hardest-to-get data in any feedback programme.

Examples:  

• Cart abandonment

• subscription cancellation

• contract non-renewal

• last interaction before going silent

• returns.

Step-by-step: creating your journey map

Here's a practical process you can follow. You don't need special software. A whiteboard, sticky notes, or even a spreadsheet will work.

Step 1: Define the journey scope

Choose the journey you want to map. Be specific. "The entire customer lifecycle" is too broad for a first attempt. Instead, pick something like "the online purchase journey," "the employee onboarding journey," or "the patient referral-to-appointment journey."

Step 2: List the key stages

Write out the main stages of that journey in order. Aim for 5 to 8 stages. Don't over-complicate this. You're looking for the big phases, not every micro-interaction.

For an online retail journey, this might be:  

• Awareness,

• Browsing,  

• Checkout,  

• Delivery,  

• Product Use,  

• Support (if needed),  

• Returns (if needed).

• Reviews/Advocacy

Step 3: Apply the four questions to each stage

For each stage, ask:  

• Is this a decision point?

• A struggle point?  

• A success point?  

• An exit point?  

Some stages may be more than one. Checkout, for example, is both a decision point and a potential struggle point.

Step 4: Identify "above the line" and "below the line"

This is a concept that adds depth to your map. "Above the line" is the customer experience: what the customer sees, feels, and does at each stage. "Below the line" is the operational experience: what happens behind the scenes to deliver that stage (systems, processes, teams, handoffs).

Understanding both matters because operational failures below the line often cause experience problems above the line. For example, a slow delivery (above the line) might be caused by a warehouse fulfilment bottleneck (below the line). Your feedback programme should help you connect the two.

Step 5: Mark where feedback should live

Using your answers from Step 3, mark the stages where feedback would be most valuable. You don't need to collect feedback at every stage. Focus on:

• The stages with the highest impact on customer satisfaction or business outcomes

• The stages where you currently have no data

• The stages where you suspect problems but have no evidence

Step 6: Define what to ask at each feedback point

For each marked stage, write a short note on what you'd ask. At this point, the questions often write themselves. If the stage is a struggle point, you're asking about ease. If it's a success point, you're asking about satisfaction. If it's an exit point, you're asking about the reason for leaving.

Worked example: an online retail journey

Here's how this looks for a simple online retail journey. Most people can relate to this example, even if their own industry is different.

Notice that each question is specific to the moment. You're not sending a generic "How was your experience?" survey to everyone. You're asking the right question at the right time, matched to the right channel.

Also notice the gaps. This map doesn't include feedback at the browsing or awareness stages. For many organisations, that's fine. Start with the stages that matter most and expand later.

From journey map to feedback collection plan

Your journey map is the strategic document. Your feedback collection plan is the operational one. Here's how to turn the first into the second.

For each feedback point on your map, define:

1. The question(s). Using a short survey structure (a quantitative rating, a neutral open-text question, and a conditional follow-up for dissatisfied respondents).  

2. The trigger. What event or action should prompt the survey? (Ticket closure, delivery confirmation, 14 days after purchase, etc.)

3. The channel. Which distribution method fits the context? (Email, SMS, web embed, QR code, in-app prompt.)

4. The automation. How will the trigger fire? (CRM integration, API call, or manual scheduling as a temporary step.) Check whether your survey platform integrates with your existing tools.

5. The contextual data. What do you already know about this respondent that can be piped in as a hidden field? (Product, location, agent, channel.)

Once you've filled this in for each feedback point, you have a complete collection plan that you can build and deploy.

Getting started if you've never mapped a journey before

If the concept of journey mapping is new to you, don't let the terminology put you off. At its simplest, a journey map is just a list of stages your customer goes through, laid out in order, with notes on what's happening at each one.

Here's the minimum viable version:

1. Open a spreadsheet or grab some sticky notes.

2. Write the stages across the top (5 to 8 is plenty).

3. For each stage, note one or two things the customer is doing, feeling, or trying to achieve.

4. Apply the four questions (decide, struggle, succeed, leave).

5. Mark where feedback would be most useful.

6. Write the question you'd ask at each marked stage.

That's it. You can do this in an hour. It won't be perfect, and it doesn't need to be. A rough map that guides your feedback collection is infinitely more useful than no map at all.

Over time, you'll refine it. You'll add more stages, incorporate data from the feedback you're now collecting, and fill in the "below the line" operational detail. But the first version just needs to be good enough to tell you where to start.