There’s an emerging narrative in customer experience that journey management gets easier when you “map less.”
The idea is seductive, especially when a CX solution involves fewer journey steps, fewer teams and faster execution.
But here’s the flaw: identifying the ‘critical 3–4 steps’ without understanding the ‘as-is’ (current-state) journey risks incorrectly pinpointing symptoms rather than root causes.
High-friction interactions may signal underlying CX problems, but without rigour, organisations risk treating surface pain points while systemic issues go unresolved.
Equally problematic is when the ‘as is’ journey mapping is avoided altogether because of complexity, interdependencies and messiness.
In these cases, leaders default to assumptions, internal frames of reference and the status quo when prioritising improvements — misdirecting scarce resources toward cosmetic fixes or single touchpoints instead of addressing structural issues.
Trees For The Forrest
A rigorous current-state journey map using qualitative customer-led research and triangulates with voice-of-customer insights, operational data and financial impact, reframing the organisational conversation.
It moves leaders and teams beyond siloed departments and single touchpoints to understand the bigger picture of the customer’s end-to-end experience.
Done well, an as-is journey map:
- Surfaces the customers’ lived experience; their context, goals, behaviours, unmet needs and emotional highs and lows.
- Democratises customer journey insights, empowering teams to collaborate for the good of customers.
- Makes sense of the complexity using a clear visual narrative that shifts attention from isolated touchpoint optimisation to journey-centric thinking and problem-solving.
- Ensures decision-making isn’t biased through assumptions, internal frames of reference and the status quo.
- Delivers leadership confidence that prioritisation and investment decisions are grounded in evidence and tied to measurable performance.
Balancing rigour, depth and actionability
- Capture the real customer journey: Ensure multiple viewpoints and behavioural evidence, not just internal stakeholder workshops.
- Layer evidence: Combine qualitative inquiry with VoC, operational and financial metrics; integrate live feeds into dashboards and workflows.
- Instrument from day one: Link maps to measurable business indicators (retention, revenue, operational cost) to demonstrate CX ROI.
- Govern systematically: Establish prioritisation guardrails, cadences, ownership and feedback loops to keep maps evolving.
- Communicate and Collaborate: Engage with cross-functional teams often to establish a cadence of insight sharing to secure buy-in and drive enterprise-wide change.
Final Thought
The value of as-is mapping is not the artefact itself, but the perspective it provides: a unifying view that equips leaders to distinguish between surface friction and the underlying systemic issues that truly drive customer outcomes and business performance.