Customer Journey Examples: 5 Practical Cases by Industry [2026]

A generic Customer Journey with pretty arrows and stages doesn't help anyone. Each industry has its own channels, touchpoints, emotions and frictions. The journey of a customer buying sneakers online looks nothing like that of a company hiring management software. If you try to apply a universal template, you'll end up with a decorative map that doesn't reflect your business reality.

What you need are real customer journey examples, broken down by industry, with specific stages, intervening channels and Pain Points that slow conversion or destroy retention. These five cases give you a solid foundation to adapt to your reality. They're not for copying: they're for understanding the logic and building your own. If you need context on what a customer journey is and how it's structured, start with our guide on Customer Journey.

Example 1: Fashion E-commerce

Fashion E-commerce is one of the sectors with the most digital touchpoints and highest emotional sensitivity. The customer doesn't buy a product; they buy an image.

Awareness: the journey starts on Instagram or TikTok. An ad with an influencer wearing the garment generates the first impulse.

Consideration: the customer enters the website, looks at photos, reads reviews and checks the size guide. If reviews are scarce or the size guide is confusing, the sale is lost here.

Purchase: adds to cart, chooses shipping and pays. A checkout with too many steps or without local payment methods generates abandonment.

Post-purchase: confirmation email, shipment tracking and WhatsApp updates with package status. The post-purchase experience defines whether there will be repeat purchases.

Loyalty: exclusive discounts for recurring customers, early access to collections and points program.

Main Pain Points: slow shipping, complicated return policy and lack of communication between purchase and delivery. If the customer has to chase their order, you've failed.

Example 2: B2B SaaS

The Customer Journey in B2B SaaS is long, multi-decision-maker and oriented to demonstrable value. It's not bought on impulse; it's bought for ROI.

Awareness: the decision-maker finds your brand through a blog article positioned in SEO, a LinkedIn post from your CEO or a webinar. Educational content is the first contact.

Trial: the user registers for the freemium plan or requests a demo. Here customer onboarding is activated: sequential emails, in-app tutorial and, for enterprise accounts, an assigned CSM from minute zero.

Adoption: the first weeks are critical. The customer needs to reach Time to Value as soon as possible. If they don't discover key functionalities in the first 14 days, the probability of abandonment skyrockets.

Expansion: the customer has integrated the product into their operations and needs more users or functionalities. The Customer Success team detects the signals and proposes an upsell aligned with their objectives.

Advocacy: satisfied customers generate referrals. A well-structured referral program converts your best customers into salespeople.

Main Pain Points: confusing onboarding that doesn't guide toward value, time-to-value too high and lack of proactive follow-up between signing and full adoption. If the customer pays and feels abandoned, churn is guaranteed.

Example 3: Digital Banking

Digital banking has transformed the financial Customer Journey, but still drags frictions inherited from traditional banking.

Awareness: the customer searches in a financial product comparator or sees programmatic advertising. They compare conditions, fees and ratings from other users.

Account opening: downloads the app, initiates the KYC (Know Your Customer) process with ID photo and verification selfie. If the process takes more than 10 minutes or verification fails, abandonment is massive. This is where customers are won or lost.

First operations: the customer configures their card, makes a transfer, sets up a direct debit. Each action must be intuitive with immediate confirmation. Trust is built in the first interactions.

Support: when a problem arises--an unknown charge, a card block, a rejected transfer--the customer expects immediate response. A chatbot that resolves frequent queries in seconds makes the difference versus a phone with 20 minutes of waiting. Well-implemented business chatbots resolve 70% of these queries without human intervention.

Cross-sell: once the customer trusts the institution, banking offers premium cards, investment funds, insurance or personalized loans according to usage profile.

Main Pain Points: slow KYC process with technical failures, impersonal support through poorly trained chatbots and lack of personalization in cross-sell offers.

Example 4: Telecommunications

Telecommunications has one of the most problematic Journey Maps of any industry. The combination of long contracts, complex technical support and confusing billing generates an experience few remember fondly.

Discovery: the customer compares rates on comparators or receives a commercial offer by phone, physical store or web. First impression depends on offer clarity and absence of fine print.

Contracting: contract signing with permanence, rate choice and device. Transparency in conditions and costs is critical.

Installation: for fiber services, technical installation is a determining Touchpoint. A punctual technician who resolves in one visit generates trust; three failed visits destroy the relationship before starting.

Daily use: real speed versus contracted, mobile coverage and service stability. The customer doesn't think about the operator daily, and that's good. Starting to think about them means something is wrong.

Support and incidents: this is where the greatest frustration concentrates. Wait times in the contact center exceeding 15 minutes, agents without history context and transfers between departments forcing problem repetition. It's the Pain Point that generates the most portability.

Renewal or portability: when the end of permanence approaches, the customer evaluates whether to stay or leave. If the last 12 months were of poorly resolved incidents, portability is certain.

Main Pain Points: support wait times, confusing bills and lack of proactivity to solve problems before the customer calls.

Example 5: Restaurant and Hospitality

The Customer Journey in hospitality combines digital and in-person inseparably. The experience starts long before sitting at the table and ends long after paying the bill.

Search: the customer searches on Google Maps, TripAdvisor or Instagram. Photos, reviews and rating determine whether the restaurant enters the shortlist. A Google Business profile without updated photos is a lost opportunity.

Reservation: by web, phone or WhatsApp. If the restaurant doesn't have an accessible reservation system or takes time to confirm, the customer books elsewhere. Immediacy in confirmation is key.

In-situ experience: from welcome to farewell. Dozens of touchpoints: reception, menu, waiter attention, food quality, atmosphere and payment process. Each adds or subtracts.

Post-visit: the customer receives an email or WhatsApp message asking for rating, a discount code for the next visit or an invitation to a special event. Most restaurants ignore this phase, and it's precisely where loyalty is built.

Main Pain Points: difficult reservation process without confirmation, lack of post-visit follow-up and total absence of loyalty strategy. A restaurant that doesn't collect feedback and doesn't incentivize repetition depends exclusively on the customer remembering to return.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I adapt these examples to my business?

Use these maps as a starting point, not a definitive template. Identify the stages that match your case, eliminate those that don't apply and add missing ones. Then validate with real data: customer surveys, support ticket analysis and heat maps of your website. The real Journey Map is what your customers tell you, not what you design on a whiteboard. Check our guide on Journey Map for the step-by-step process.

Which is the most important journey map?

The one for the customer segment that generates the most revenue or presents the highest abandonment rate. If you don't know which it is, start measuring. Without data, any prioritization is a guess.

What tool do I use to create my journey map?

For visual maps, tools like Miro, Figma or Smaply work well. But the map is just the representation. What matters is a system that collects data from each Touchpoint in real time: post-interaction NPS, support tickets and usage metrics. Customer success software integrated with your channels gives you that visibility.

GuruSup automates the key touchpoints of your Customer Journey with AI agents deployed on WhatsApp: order confirmations, shipment tracking, immediate support, feedback collection and reactivation of inactive customers. All in the channel your customers already use daily. Try GuruSup free and turn every interaction into a loyalty opportunity.