467: Journey Mapping Essentials: Supercharging Your Journey Mapping

AI agents are moving beyond customer service and into supply chain, operations, legal, HR, and other parts of the enterprise. Hosts Angelina Gennis and Martin Gill explore why CX leaders need to make customer obsession machine-readable. Featuring Martin Gill, VP, Research Director Show Notes: AI agents are moving beyond customer service and into supply chain, operations, legal, HR, and other parts of the enterprise. That creates a new customer experience (CX) problem: an AI system can successfully optimize the task it was given while making a terrible decision for the customer. Hosts Angelina Gennis and Martin Gill explore why CX leaders need to make customer obsession machine-readable. That means turning aspirational CX strategies into customer outcomes, decision rights, escalation thresholds, design standards, service principles, and other explicit context that AI systems can actually use. We discuss how to: Turn customer obsession into instructions AI can act on. Spot where enterprise AI could undermine CX. Set the right boundaries for autonomous decisions. Give AI the customer context behind good decisions. Start small and make the approach practical.

Journey orchestration is moving beyond dashboards to drive decisions and real-time action.  Joana de Quintanilha joins Martin Gill to explore findings from the latest journey orchestration Wave evaluation, how AI is reshaping the market, and what buyers need to turn journey intelligence into measurable business value. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Journey orchestration is moving beyond dashboards to drive decisions and real-time action. Joana de Quintanilha joins Martin Gill to explore findings from the latest journey orchestration Wave evaluation, how AI is reshaping the market, and what buyers need to turn journey intelligence into measurable business value. We discuss: How journey orchestration differs from journey management and why AI is bringing the categories closer together. What sets leading platforms apart, from deep journey intelligence and scenario simulation to real-time decisioning and operational orchestration. Why customer, employee, and partner journeys need shared context and how governance and explainability keep AI-enabled actions aligned with customer goals and brand promises. How to build a business case around onboarding, retention, conversion, service costs, productivity, and revenue rather than platform features. What successful implementations require: clear outcome ownership, cross-functional collaboration, focused use cases, and a vendor that brings expertise, not just software.

Practitioners from Fabletics and Consensys offer detail on what it takes to move conversational AI into production—grounding deployment in customer experience, organizational readiness, and measurable outcomes. Featuring: Francesca Del Gobbo, Fabletics Dror Avieli, formerly of Consensys, current Chief Customer Officer at Elliptic And guest host Max Ball, Principal Analyst, Forrester Show notes: Generative AI promises to transform customer service, but the move from experimentation to AI-powered self-service is a leap for most organizations. Principal Analyst Max Ball brings two more experts from his network to share best practices: Francesca Del Gobbo, Technical Product Manager - Conversational AI, and Dror Avieli, former Managing Director and VP of Customer Success at Consensys (and current Chief Customer Officer at Elliptic) We explore: Why Fabletics and Consensys moved beyond traditional, deterministic bots, how LLMs change conversation design, testing, and multilingual support (among other things) What teams need to successfully operate once these systems are live Basics on how to select use cases, build the right data and API foundations, gain executive support, and assess vendors

Angelina Gennis and Max Ball speak with Joe Wang of Ancestry and Guneet Singh of AppFolio about what it takes to move conversational AI into production—grounding deployment in customer experience, organizational readiness, and measurable outcomes. Featuring: Joe Wang — Director of Customer and Commnunity Experience at Ancestry Guneet Singh — VP of Customer Experience and Global Operations at AppFolio And guest host Max Ball, Principal Analyst, Forrester Show notes: The next horizon includes more proactive onboarding, stronger voice authentication, and expanded API-enabled capabilities. It also points to an emerging need for CX leaders who combine product thinking, technical fluency, and a strong service culture. Jo Wang, Director of Customer and Community Experience at Ancestry, and Guneet Singh, VP of Customer Experience and Global Operations at AppFolio, are candid about the journey to AI adoption. Their advice: Lead with an experience-first deployment strategy. Start small with pilots and A/B testing before scaling. Prepare knowledge and content, as well as the APIs needed to enable useful actions. Measure customer effort and outcomes rather than relying on deflection alone. Partner early with legal, risk, information security, product, and finance. Support frontline teams through thoughtful change management. Look beyond service efficiency to revenue and retention opportunities. Learn how these CX leaders use the quality of the customer journey, not the technology itself, to guide priorities, deployment choices, and measures of success.

Journey mapping is valuable. Journey centricity is transformative. In this replay, explore how to move beyond individual projects and build a journey-centric operating model that aligns teams around customer goals. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Journey mapping is valuable. Journey centricity is transformative. In this replay, explore how to move beyond individual projects and build a journey-centric operating model that aligns teams around customer goals. We discuss: What journey centricity is and why it matters.  How journey centricity supports customer obsession. The stages organizations progress through on their journey-centricity roadmap.  Common challenges, catalysts, and mindset shifts.  The evolving role of the CX team in driving change. If you're looking to connect journey mapping, CX strategy, and organizational transformation, this episode provides a practical roadmap for making customer journeys a core part of how your business operates.

The best journey programs do more than identify problems. They create opportunities for innovation. In this replay, explore how customer journey insights can spark new ideas, improve experiences, and uncover opportunities for growth. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: The best journey programs do more than identify problems. They create opportunities for innovation. In this replay, explore how customer journey insights can spark new ideas, improve experiences, and uncover opportunities for growth. We discuss: How journey insights fuel innovation. Methods for identifying high-value opportunities. Ways to prioritize experience improvements. Strategies for turning insights into action. Learn how customer journeys can become a catalyst for innovation across the organization.

Creating journey maps is only the beginning. This replay from way back in the archives explores techniques for increasing the value, influence, and outcomes of journey mapping programs. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Creating journey maps is only the beginning. This replay from way back in the archives explores techniques for increasing the value, influence, and outcomes of journey mapping programs. We discuss: How to strengthen journey insights with additional data. Techniques for improving stakeholder engagement. Ways to connect journey mapping to business outcomes. Approaches for sustaining momentum over time. Perfect for CX leaders looking to move from tactical projects to ongoing journey management.

Customer journeys rarely exist in isolation. In this replay, explore why leading organizations need a journey atlas to understand how journeys connect, overlap, and influence one another. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Customer journeys rarely exist in isolation. In this replay, explore why leading organizations need a journey atlas to understand how journeys connect, overlap, and influence one another. We discuss: What a journey atlas is and why it matters. How to create visibility across journeys. Methods for prioritizing CX investments. Ways to improve organizational alignment. Learn how a journey atlas helps transform customer experience efforts from disconnected initiatives into a coordinated strategy.

Many organizations create journey maps. Far fewer use them to drive measurable change. This replay breaks down seven practical steps for creating journey maps that align teams, uncover customer pain points, and support better business decisions. Featuring: Joana de Quintanilha, VP, Principal Analyst Show Notes: Many organizations create journey maps. Far fewer use them to drive measurable change. This replay breaks down seven practical steps for creating journey maps that align teams, uncover customer pain points, and support better business decisions. We discuss: How to structure a successful journey mapping initiative. Common mistakes that limit impact. Ways to connect journey insights to action. Approaches for building stakeholder support. If your organization is investing in CX, journey mapping, or experience transformation, this episode provides a proven foundation.

Many CX leaders know culture needs to change before a customer experience (CX) transformation can succeed. The challenge is knowing where to start. In this episode, Angelina Gennis and Martin Gill explore a surprisingly simple approach: using powerful customer-focused questions as organizational rituals. Drawing on real examples from executive workshops and customer-centric organizations, they explain how the right question can expose silos, encourage knowledge sharing, improve accountability, and reinforce customer-focused behaviors. We discuss: Why culture change starts with behavior, not slogans How simple rituals can reshape behavioral norms Questions leaders can use to encourage customer curiosity Ways to uncover accountability gaps and siloed thinking How customer-focused questions create habits that support lasting CX transformation