How to Map Out the Customer Journey for SaaS: 6 Easy Steps

Creating a customer journey map for your SaaS product is like crafting a compelling story that guides potential users from their first encounter with your product to becoming loyal advocates. 

It is critical for the success of any SaaS business, as it directly impacts user satisfaction, churn rates, and overall revenue. By carefully mapping and analyzing this journey, you can identify areas for improvement, eliminate friction points, and deliver a seamless, delightful experience that keeps customers engaged and committed to your platform.

However, ideating a customer journey is a complex process for even experienced SaaS marketers. It requires a deep understanding of customer needs, strategic planning, and continuous optimization. 

This guide will provide you with practical strategies to help you craft an effective customer journey that not only attracts new users but also retains them for years. 

Six Steps to Map the Customer Journey for SaaS

1. Have a Clear Objective

The first step is to define what you want to achieve with the customer journey — whether it’s increasing user engagement, streamlining the onboarding process, or boosting product adoption. Without it, the entire process becomes unfocused and lacks direction.

Once you have a clear objective, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your customer journey initiatives — such as user retention rates, time to onboard, or user satisfaction scores. Tracking these KPIs allows companies to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.

Remember: As your business evolves, your goals may change. Therefore, it’s crucial to revisit and update your objectives regularly to ensure that your customer journey remains aligned with your current business priorities and market conditions.

2. Define Your Customer Personas

The next step is to understand who your customers are. This involves creating detailed customer personas that represent the different segments of your target audience.

Customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, including their demographics, behaviors, motivations, goals, and pain points. Defining these helps SaaS businesses gain deeper insights into their audience and tailor their customer experience strategy, product development, and marketing efforts to better resonate with their target customers.

To gather customer insights, conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups with your existing customers. Further, analyze customer data from your website, CRM system, and social media platforms to identify patterns and trends in behavior and engagement.

For example, customer personas for a project management SaaS tool could be: 

• Project Manager Paul: Focuses on tracking project progress and managing team members.
• Developer Dana: Needs an intuitive interface to update progress and collaborate with team members.
• CEO Carla: Interested in high-level project metrics and overall productivity.

3. Understand Your Customer Journey 

Before mapping, understanding different stages of the customer journey is essential for converting prospects into paying customers and retaining them long-term. Plus, you can pinpoint specific areas where customers may experience friction, confusion, or dissatisfaction. 

SaaS businesses typically include the following stages: 

Awareness

At this initial stage, potential customers become aware of your product and its value proposition via top-of-the-funnel blog posts, videos, social media ads, etc. 

For example, Trello, a project management tool, leverages blog posts to offer tips on productivity and project management. It not only drives traffic but also positions Trello as an authority in the industry.

Consideration

This stage provides potential customers with the information they need to evaluate your product. You can offer free trials, product demos, case studies, and comparison guides to allow users to experience the benefits firsthand and compare your product with competitors.

Slack, a communication tool, provides customer stories on their website, highlighting how various companies have successfully implemented Slack to enhance communication and productivity. 

Conversion

This stage aims to convert potential customers into paying users. Pricing pages, promotional emails, customer support, and clear CTAs not only address common concerns but also guide users toward making a purchase or signing up for a trial.

For example, Dropbox is a file storage service that uses a clean and straightforward pricing page with clear descriptions of each plan’s features. They also offer a “Try for free” CTA, encouraging users to start with a free trial before committing to a paid plan.

Onboarding

This is the stage where the user starts using your product and learns its features. To make this effective, implement interactive tutorials or guided tours, welcome emails, knowledge databases, and personalized onboarding sessions that provide tips and resources for getting started.

Asana, a task management software, provides a dedicated help center that helps new users quickly find relevant information and resources to effectively use the platform.

Retention and Advocacy

This stage focuses on maintaining positive relationships with existing customers and turning them into brand advocates who actively promote your SaaS product. Regular check-ins, post-purchase assistance, reward systems, and referral programs can work wonders for continued satisfaction. 

Zoom, a video conferencing tool, has an effective referral program that rewards users with commissions for inviting new users. Dropbox’s referral program rewards both the referrer and the new user with additional storage space. 

4. Identify Key Touchpoints

Next, identify all possible touchpoints where customers interact with your brand — both online and offline — to identify customer issues and understand where improvements can be made. 

Touchpoints can vary depending on the stage of the customer journey and the nature of your SaaS solution, but some common examples include a website landing page, email sign-up form, product demos, customer support, pricing page, feedback surveys, etc. 

In addition to the touchpoints that directly involve interactions with customers, it’s essential to consider both internal and external touchpoints within your SaaS organization. 

Internal touchpoints refer to interactions and processes within an organization that directly or indirectly influence the customer experience. These involve CTA buttons, blog posts, product pages, free trials, or customer reviews. External touchpoints, on the other hand, are interactions between customers and the external environment surrounding the organization. Examples include social media, online ads, and industry events and conferences. 

Effective management of these touchpoints can make or break the overall customer experience and increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy — ultimately contributing to the business’s success.

5. Map Your Journey

Ideating the customer journey involves creating a visual representation of the different stages, touchpoints, and interactions a customer goes through when engaging with your SaaS product. This allows you to identify key opportunities to enhance the user experience at each stage, ultimately driving higher conversions and long-term loyalty.

For a SaaS-based online learning platform, the customer journey map could include the following steps: 

• Awareness 
• Research and evaluation
• Sign up (free trial)
• Onboarding and training 
• Course exploration and enrollment 
• Course completion and certification
• Renewal or upgrade 
• Advocacy (reviews, referrals)

6. Continuously Monitor Your Journey

The customer journey is not static and evolves over time as customer needs, preferences, and market trends shift. So, continuously monitor and analyze the customer journey to identify new areas for optimization. 

Here’s how you can do it:

• Regularly reviewing customer feedback, support tickets, and feature requests
• Analyzing user behavior and engagement data to identify potential friction points or drop-off areas
• Tracking key metrics, such as conversion rates, churn rates, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and net promoter score (NPS). 

For example, if analysis shows a high churn rate during the onboarding stage, this means the process is too complicated. Simplifying the onboarding process with more intuitive guides and personal support can improve retention.

Summing Up

Crafting a customer journey is much like the process of writing a novel. Just as a novelist carefully plots their story, develop characters, and structure each chapter for an engaging narrative, SaaS businesses must also thoroughly plan the customer journey. 

However, this is an ongoing process that requires a deep understanding of your customers and their needs. Use the strategies and examples provided in this guide to start mapping your customer journey and continuously refine it based on feedback and data. Remember, a well-crafted customer journey is the key to driving growth in the competitive SaaS landscape.