Customer Journey: Definition, Phases & Example

What Does “Customer Journey” Mean?

The customer journey describes a customer’s path through all touchpoints with a company, from the first awareness of a brand through the purchase to after-sales service and subsequent contact. It encompasses all touchpoints in chronological order, both online and offline.

For simplicity, the customer journey can be divided into phases, for example:

A need is identified.

Solutions are researched.

Providers are compared.

A decision is made.

The purchase.

And renewed contact.

At its core, the customer journey illustrates that the purchase decision is not a single moment. Rather, it is the result of a whole series of touchpoints. Those who understand this can leverage it to their advantage at the right moments.

Where does the customer journey originate?

The concept of purchasing phases—the path from awareness to action—is already more than a hundred years old.

In the digital age, the concept of the journey—with all its stages—gained additional significance as it became easier to track paths through search engines, websites, social networks, and email. Since then, it has become even clearer just how complex and multi-stage modern purchasing decisions are.

Why is the customer journey important?

The customer journey broadens our perspective, because if we focus only on the final step, we fail to understand the decision and may end up investing in the wrong place.

It makes it clear that an inquiry is often the result of a specialized article read months earlier. This insight helps companies provide relevant content and offers at every stage, guiding potential customers in the right direction.

Benefits

The model provides insight into how purchasing decisions truly come about.
It reveals at which points in the journey people drop off or what they’re missing.
It helps align marketing across all phases, rather than viewing individual channels in isolation.

Challenges

The customer journey is rarely linear. People jump between phases, pause, turn back, and start over. Accurate tracking can therefore be difficult.

Offline interactions at trade shows or via phone calls are often more difficult to fully incorporate into digital measurement.

Furthermore, customer journeys vary from person to person, so a standard model rarely reflects reality.

Example

A technical manager is strolling through a trade show and hears about a vendor. Weeks later, he reads a technical article on the vendor’s website. Intrigued, he follows the vendor on LinkedIn. After three months, he requests a quote.

Anyone who only records the quote request assumes the request form is the decisive factor, even though the trade show, the technical article, and the social media presence paved the way.