A customer journey map is a visualization technique used to illustrate the story of a customer's experience with a product, service, or organization over time and across various touchpoints. It is specifically designed to analyze the customer's perspective by mapping their actions, thoughts, feelings, and pain points at each stage of their interaction. This holistic view allows product teams to understand the complete experience, identify critical moments, and uncover opportunities for improvement, directly addressing the need to analyze the experience across all touchpoints.

A. Focus groups: This is a qualitative data collection method for gathering opinions from a group, not a technique for mapping an individual's end-to-end experience.

B. Personas: These are fictional archetypes representing target users. They describe who the customer is, not the sequential journey they undertake with the product.

C. Interviews: A one-on-one method to gather in-depth user information. The data from interviews is an input for a journey map but is not the map itself.

1. International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). (2021). A Guide to Product Ownership Analysis. Version 1.0.

Section 4.4.2.3, Customer Journey Map: "A customer journey map is a visualization of the experience that a person has with a product or organization over time and across touchpoints... It helps the product team to understand the customer's perspective..."

Section 4.4.2.5, Focus Groups: Defines this as a technique to "elicit ideas and attitudes about a specific product... in an interactive group environment."

Section 4.4.2.8, Interviews: Describes this as a "systematic approach to elicit information from a person or group of people."

Section 4.4.2.11, Personas: States that "Personas are fictional characters or archetypes that exemplify the way that typical users behave."

2. Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (2011). This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases. BIS Publishers.

Chapter: Tools, Customer Journey Map (p. 136): This foundational text, often used in university design courses, explains that a customer journey map visualizes the service process from the customer's point of view, detailing touchpoints and emotional responses throughout the experience.