Here’s our guide on how to create a banking customer journey

    Banking

    Quick Summary 

    We break down how large banks can map and manage customer journeys to drive efficiency, reduce churn, and stay competitive. You’ll learn a six-step process backed by practical best practices—plus how platforms like TheyDo help teams align, act on insights, and track impact. If you’re serious about turning complex experiences into scalable wins, this guide is for you.

    Looking to refine your banking customer journey?

    We’ve all experienced clunky banking journeys—confusing apps, endless forms, and customer service that doesn’t quite serve. But for banks, that’s less of a hassle and more of a threat.

    When journeys break, so does loyalty. Hence, fixing them is no longer optional, but necessary.

    In this TheyDo article, we’ll show you how to map and improve your banking customer journey with structure and speed. But first…

    Why listen to us?

    At TheyDo, we empower large enterprises to streamline customer journey management by unifying data, automating insights with Journey AI, and enabling cross-team collaboration.

    Trusted by industry leaders like Polestar, NCR, and Ford, we’ve helped organizations achieve significant efficiency gains and cost savings. 

    What is the banking customer journey?

    A banking customer journey maps every step a customer takes—from opening an account to resolving an issue or applying for a loan. It covers digital and physical interactions alike.

    Teams use it to spot friction, gaps, and missed opportunities. When mapped well, it shows how real people experience your bank across teams and touchpoints.

    For large, regulated banks, customer journeys are important for operational efficiency, compliance, and staying ahead in a competitive market.

    Why is the banking customer journey important?

    • Spot and fix friction fast: Customer journeys surface the pain points that lead to churn, complaints, and compliance risks.

    • Drive alignment across teams: A shared journey view helps product, compliance, and service teams focus on what actually matters to customers.

    • Increase efficiency and reduce cost: Streamlining journeys cuts down on redundant processes, handoffs, and rework.

    • Uncover high-impact opportunities: Journey insights reveal where innovation can deliver both customer value and business results.

    How to create a banking customer journey

    1. Define the journey scope 

    Start with a clear, narrow scope. Mapping every journey at once slows teams down and muddies insights. Focus on one customer type, product, or flow.

    For banks, that might mean mapping the onboarding journey for first-time checking account customers or the loan servicing experience for small business clients. If you scope too wide, your map just becomes noise.

    Choose a lens that matches your business priority. For example, if account churn is rising, scope the journey right before closure. If customer satisfaction is low for mobile users, scope that experience specifically.

    When defining the scope, be explicit about:

    • The customer segment (e.g., Gen Z, SMB borrowers)

    • The product or service (e.g., debit cards, auto loans)

    • The lifecycle stage (e.g., application, upgrade, support)

    • Key channels (e.g., mobile app, branch visit, call center)

    If your organization uses a journey management platform like TheyDo, this is where you’d tag the journey accordingly, so it fits into the larger taxonomy.

    Additionally, our Banking Customer Journey Template offers a structured starting point for scoping. It includes pre-defined stages and touchpoints tailored for financial services, helping your team align faster and avoid reinventing the wheel when defining high-impact journeys.

    2. Gather qualitative and quantitative data 

    Strong customer journeys start with strong evidence. You can’t fix what you don’t fully understand, so this step is about gathering reality, not assumptions.

    Use both quantitative and qualitative data. Metrics show you what’s happening; voice-of-customer research explains why. Skip either, and you risk patching symptoms instead of root causes.

    In banking, multiple data sources usually live in silos. Pull from each one to get a full picture:

    • Call center logs and complaint tickets

    • App and web analytics

    • Customer interviews and satisfaction surveys

    • NPS, churn, and CSAT trends

    • Internal feedback from frontline teams

    Structure your findings by journey stage, then tag them by topic. With TheyDo, this tagging system becomes part of your journey taxonomy—making insights easier to scale, reuse, and share.

    Don’t treat data like a one-time task. Keep inputs live so your journey reflects what’s actually happening in the business. For instance, our Journey AI platform can help automate parts of this, turning new research into usable insights faster.

    Journey AI turns raw research—like support call transcripts and customer survey responses—into structured insights by automatically tagging needs, pain points, and opportunities. It cuts time spent on manual analysis, helping your team act faster and stay focused on impact.

    3. Identify journey stages and touchpoints 

    Now that you have data, turn it into structure. Define the stages your customer moves through—end to end—with clear transitions between each.

    In banking, a journey might start at “awareness” and end at “account closure,” but that’s too high-level for action. Break it down further.

    Stages should reflect how the customer thinks, not how your organization is structured. “Compare mortgage options” is better than “marketing funnel entry.”

    Once your stages are in place, plot the touchpoints: every interaction across digital, human, and hybrid channels. For example:

    • “Set up direct deposit via mobile app”

    • “Confirm identity at branch”

    • “Speak to agent about loan terms”

    Make sure to include both owned and third-party touchpoints. ATM networks, ID verification providers, and even SMS providers can make or break the journey.

    At TheyDo, our journey stages and touchpoints are structured within a reusable taxonomy. That consistency keeps cross-functional teams aligned and prevents duplication as journeys scale across products or regions.

    4. Map customer needs, pain points, and emotions 

    This is where raw journey structure becomes valuable. A list of steps alone doesn’t tell you what matters. Context—what customers want, feel, and struggle with—does.

    Go stage by stage. For each touchpoint, define what the customer expects to happen, what they actually experience, and how they feel about the gap.

    Use real language from interviews and feedback. Don’t sanitize. If someone says, “I felt stuck and gave up,” include that. Emotional clarity drives better design and prioritization.

    This step also surfaces the disconnect between internal views and customer reality. It’s common for banks to assume a flow is intuitive when the data and feedback say otherwise.

    Our customer journey mapping tool helps teams standardize, scale, and collaborate on customer journeys in one place. With a flexible interface and built-in templates, teams can link personas, opportunities, and solutions across journeys—ensuring consistency, clarity, and impact across the organization.

    To keep things structured and scalable, use labels that classify needs and pain points. For example:

    • Needs: Fast resolution, clear instructions, secure access

    • Pain points: Long wait times, unclear messaging, repeat ID verification

    • Emotions: Frustration, relief, anxiety, trust

    Our platform supports tagging pain points, needs, and emotions across journeys. This makes it easier to compare patterns, track impact, and link feedback to specific stages.

    Once mapped, these insights become your single source of truth. They give every team—from compliance to product—a shared view of what the customer actually experiences.

    5. Align internal processes and ownership 

    Even the best journey map fails if no one owns the delivery. Once you’ve mapped the customer experience, assign internal accountability at each stage.

    For every step, identify the team responsible for execution. In complex organizations, like banks, multiple teams touch a single moment. Map all of them.

    Create links between the customer experience and internal processes. This builds visibility into where handoffs happen and where friction starts. For example, “Verify identity” might involve compliance, IT, and branch ops.

    Make it explicit who owns the resolution when something breaks. If it’s everyone’s job, it’s no one’s job.

    Use a centralized taxonomy to keep ownership consistent. In TheyDo, journeys, pain points, and solutions are mapped to functions and KPIs—so nothing gets lost. Take Van Lanschot for instance. 

    quote
    It’s a continuous challenge to keep everyone in the loop regarding the added value for both customer and business. Luckily, managing journeys helps everyone to align.
    Mustafa Gurel

    Mustafa Gurel

    Customer Experience Specialist, Van Lanschot Kempen

    Van Lanschot used our platform to align teams—from peers to executives—around shared customer journeys. This shift broke down silos and turned their organization into a coordinated hub for identifying and acting on high-impact opportunities.

    Where possible, align your customer journey stages to key metrics and workflows:

    • Who owns each stage?

    • What tool supports the interaction (CRM, app, third party)?

    • What SLA or KPI defines success?

    This alignment turns journeys into operational tools—not just visual artifacts. Done right, it helps product, CX, compliance, and IT all row in the same direction. And it gives leaders visibility into what’s working and what isn’t, without needing a new report.

    6. Spot opportunities and prioritize improvements 

    This is where the work pays off. With journeys mapped and structured, you can now identify what’s broken, what’s underperforming, and where the biggest wins are.

    Focus first on issues that impact both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Look for steps that create delays, drop-offs, or unnecessary support load. In regulated spaces, flag areas tied to compliance risk.

    Tie each problem to a business outcome—cost, retention, conversion, etc. Without that link, prioritization turns into guessing.

    Use structured opportunity mapping to organize your backlog. In TheyDo, you can attach opportunities directly to pain points and score them across dimensions like impact, effort, and strategic fit. This helps cross-functional teams act faster and smarter.

    Not every problem is worth solving. Ruthlessly prioritize:

    • What matters to customers and the business?

    • What’s easy to fix with a high payoff?

    • What’s strategically aligned with current goals?

    Once prioritized, assign ownership and define next steps. Some fixes will require deep system changes; others just need a content tweak or a better notification.

    Make sure to track the impact over time. Journeys shouldn’t sit idle, they should evolve as your bank and customers do. A good journey management platform lets you track changes, measure outcomes, and refine priorities.

    If you do it right, this step closes the loop. It moves customer journey mapping from a design exercise to a strategic engine for growth and change.

    Best practices for banking customer journey mapping

    Maintain a single source of truth across teams

    Customer journeys often live in isolated decks or spreadsheets, updated inconsistently by different teams. That’s a fast path to misalignment.

    Create one version of the journey that everyone contributes to and works from. When updates happen—whether from new insights or product changes—ensure they’re reflected across the organization.

    Our centralized journey management platform supports this by allowing teams to collaborate within the same structured view. That way, strategy, design, ops, and compliance all stay synced.

    Use a structured taxonomy early

    Without structure, journey work doesn’t scale. As more teams get involved, naming conventions break down and journeys start to overlap or conflict.

    Define a taxonomy early—one that categorizes journeys by lifecycle stage, product, segment, and more. This helps teams align faster and prevents confusion down the line.

    Taxonomies also make it easier to roll up insights, spot redundancies, and automate reporting. 

    Link journeys to business metrics

    Journeys should connect directly to measurable outcomes, otherwise they risk becoming abstract exercises. Identify the KPIs that matter for each journey, such as:

    • Churn

    • Application completion

    • First-time resolution or

    • NPS

    Track progress as changes are made. With TheyDo, you can tie opportunities to KPIs and track the impact of improvements over time.

    That’s how you build buy-in from leadership and turn CX into a driver of business performance.

    Layer customer insights with operational data

    Voice-of-customer data is essential, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

    Match what customers say with how they behave. Compare interview themes with app usage, call logs, and ticket volumes. Look for disconnects. Maybe customers say they like a process but keep dropping off halfway through.

    By layering data types, you catch blind spots and avoid over-relying on any single source. This helps you prioritize based on both perceived pain and actual business impact.

    Streamline your banking customer journey mapping with TheyDo

    Banking customer journeys are complex, but mapping them doesn’t have to be. With the right structure, data, and alignment, you can turn every friction point into a strategic advantage. That’s where we fit in.

    TheyDo is a comprehensive journey management platform built for large, regulated organizations. We help teams centralize journey work, automate insights, and align around the moments that matter most.

    See how leading banks simplify complexity with TheyDo—start mapping smarter today!