Future State Customer Journey Map Template

What is a Future State Customer Journey Map?

The Future State Journey Map imagines ideal interactions between a customer and a brand. It is a desired customer experience yet to be created. With the Future State of the Customer Journey Map, teams can keep an eye on the contrast between today’s reality and a vision for tomorrow.

Product and UX design teams can employ this tool during the early stages of a new product design. This is an opportunity to employ a good designer’s instincts and let them project their idealism into the picture. This is also a good way to test and validate a vision on paper before dedicating resources to implement it.

Startups or corporate innovation projects can use this tool as part of their transformation research and innovation documentation. It is not necessarily something to revisit too frequently, but to keep an eye on around long-term milestones.

Branding and marketing can use a Future State Customer Journey Map to develop aspirational content and influence consumer behavior to better align with the way of the future.

How to create a Future State Customer Journey Map?

Tap into your creativity and long-term vision to develop the Future State Customer Journey Map. There is room to apply an idealist’s instincts at this stage and shoot for the moon. Then, scale back as needed. It is important to base this map on research and not solely on imagination. You may not want to lose aspects of an experience that are already working well and will make customers frustrated if it’s taken from them. Always keep a balance between creativity and practicality. Paired with the Current State of the Customer this living document will help identify what to keep and what to change.

Another strategic framework that pairs well with it is the PESTLE Analysis which looks at Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental forces surrounding your organization. Tune into the signals that predict what’s ahead for the market, and what are the larger-than-life forces that drive change. Develop the Future State Customer Journey Map with a good sense of the big picture.

We created an easily editable template that breaks the Future State Journey down into 6 main parts. You may edit these sections add or remove columns and make this layout your own.

• A quick title to name the Persona. Click and type a name for this Customer, relevant to their relationship with your product or organization. For example “GenX Prosumer,” or “Working Mother.” Here you can also add a brief scenario. Such as “Creating short videos for social media.” or “Throwing an eco-friendly birthday party.”  
  

• Stages. This could be the typical buyer funnel, from discovery to advocacy. For this template, we left this area open to your interpretation. So you can modify this timeline and make it more precise for your scenario.
  

• Thoughts and Feelings can be obtained via social listening, customer observations, interviews, and surveys. Use actual quotes in this area to capture the most authentic reaction.
  

• What actions do they take to address their priorities, goals, or problems? These are the sequence of events in which the customer takes action towards completing a task or achieving a goal. Use Xtensio’s task module to list out these steps.

• How do they interact with your company or product in an ideal scenario? In this zone populate a quick list of touchpoints using Xtensio’s label module. These can be the actual points of interaction with a product, such as using a tool, clicking a button on a mobile app, or encounters on a marketing channel such as social media posts, TV ads, or promotion emails. Mark what type of reaction you hope to get These are places where a user quickly develops an opinion about a product and have an emotional response to it. Flag any issues that come up in these areas.
  

• How is the above different from the customer’s current experience? Describe a key change to make. This could be the basis of a brand new product idea or a small iteration that can make a big difference in business performance.
  

Feel free to slightly change the contents and titles of these 6 parts, and add more columns or rows to fit your needs. Xtensio’s fully customizable Future State Customer Journey Map template is a live web page. Share it as a link with your stakeholders.

Alternatively, you can select among other types of Journey Maps and check out our Intuitive Guide to Customer Journey Mapping for a deeper dive into this research tool. 

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