Defining Customer Journies

This reminds me of the similar issue to defining business process.   Its a good idea to be in agreement with others doing the same thing kind of analysis in your company, industry, context, domain, etc.  That way you can compare measures and results more easily.    Such models also often have depth/simplicity assumptions that can be chosen to represent resources and goals being explored.

  Its usually good to start simple and fill out other parts as they are needed.  Or follow existing templates.  Simpler models are better understood by management,  to sell the model, but have to have enough detail to get results.  Customer journey is a little different, because you are dealing with an element whose behavior is less predictable, in fact may only be statistically known.   Machine learning is helping us find and classify different kinds of patterns,   Good summary below about at least one kind of approach to customer Journeys.

What is a customer journey? The jury is out
By Richard Calvert - in CustomerThink

Recently we won an award for our work with Jo Malone London. One of the categories we entered was Best Customer Journey – but what soon became apparent is that there are differences in opinion when it comes to defining exactly what we all mean. So what is a customer journey?

Let’s take two definitions:

Forrester tell us that a Customer Journey is: a series of interactions between a customer and a company that occur as the customer pursues a specific goal (The journey may not conform to the company’s intentions).

Whilst according to Lyons Consulting, a Customer Journey is the traditional path to purchase.

Judging by the many lacklustre marketing communications I have received over the past few months there are a number of marketers that subscribe to the Lyons definition, placing value on transaction, not engagement. In this respect customer journey marketing becomes a ‘paint-by-numbers’ exercise.
The customer journey is mapped out longitudinally and communications are sent out at these various intervals designed to ‘enhance’ the customer experience and move the consumer further down the funnel towards the desired goal, whether this might be first time purchase, repeat purchase or even just increased engagement.     ... "