One piece of advice? Map the mess. Most businesses don't actually know what their customer journey looks like. They just hope it's "working." But if you want to improve it? First, write down exactly how it works today. From "Hi, I found you on Google" to "Cool, I'm in," document every step like you're creating a how-to guide for your own business. It doesn't have to be pretty. Just real. Then, and this part's important, ask your actual clients what they liked and what could've been better. Not theoretical stuff. Real feedback. How did they find you? What made them trust you? Where did they get confused or almost bail? Once you've got that messy pile of feedback and process notes, hand it over to AI. Let it spot patterns, gaps, weird friction points, and small wins you missed. That combo, your current reality + real client insights + objective analysis, is gold. It gives you a clear path to creating a customer journey that doesn't just "work," but actually converts interest into revenue. The best journeys aren't fancy, they're just smooth, intentional, and human.
My one piece of advice is to stop mapping your customer's journey and start architecting their psychological state. Businesses obsess over tactical touchpoints—the ad click, the email open, the page view—but they ignore the invisible path the customer is traveling internally. True success isn't just creating a "path of goodies"; it's about ensuring every step on that path feels like the only logical and emotionally resonant next move. The most important thing to focus on, therefore, is what I like to call "Psychological Congruence". This means ensuring the core emotional promise you make at the 'Awareness' stage is perfectly congruent with the experience at the 'Decision' stage. It's the ultimate source of friction when a brand that speaks with a rebellious, freedom-loving voice (the archetypal "Outlaw") suddenly has a rigid and bureaucratic checkout process, or when a brand promising simplicity (the archetypal "Innocent") has a guarantee riddled with complex legal jargon. These moments of psychological dissonance break trust and kill conversions. Your primary focus should be to find and eliminate these points of friction, ensuring that from the first ad to the final thank you page, your entire system reinforces the same core truth and makes the customer feel profoundly understood and brilliant for choosing you.
If there's one piece of advice I'd give to businesses working to improve their customer journey, it's this: get obsessed with context and make sure your data is doing more than just sitting in a dashboard. Too often, we map journeys based on internal goals rather than what's actually unfolding in the customer's world. But the real magic happens when we pair empathy with insight. The most important thing to focus on is the moment-to-moment transitions—when someone moves from curious to ready, or from uncertain to all-in. That's where trust is either built or lost. And that's exactly where AI and CRM data can shine. By using AI to spot intent signals and patterns in behavior, and tapping into your CRM for win/loss insights and buying signals, you can personalize the journey in ways that actually resonate. Not just a first name in an email, but showing up with the right message, on the right channel, at the right time. Improving the customer journey isn't just about adding more touchpoints. It's about making every interaction smarter, more relevant, and more human.
Focus on reducing friction at every touchpoint, especially the transition from interest to action. We audit client websites and consistently find 3-5 unnecessary steps between a visitor showing interest and becoming a lead. One plumbing client had potential customers fill out a 12-field contact form—we reduced it to name, phone, and service needed, which increased conversions by 89%. Our AI now automatically identifies these friction points by tracking where users drop off. The goal isn't perfection; it's removing every obstacle that makes saying "yes" harder than saying "no."
My single, non-negotiable rule for improving any customer journey is this: It's not about you. The moment you design a touchpoint around what you want to say instead of what they need to hear, you've disrupted the flow. Every engagement begins inside the customer's head. So how does that translate? Psychographics before spreadsheets. Demographics tell you who; psychographics reveal why. What's keeping them up tonight? What future win are they day-dreaming about on the commute? How will what you have to say not just engage them, but resonate and drive the desired action? Map today's friction with tomorrow's ambition. If you solve only the current pain, you earn thanks. If you light a path to their next aspiration, you earn loyalty. Show up as a partner, not a producer. Every email, chatbot answer, or onboarding nudge should feel like, "We're in this with you," not, "Here's our product sheet." When you treat the journey as their story—with your brand cast as the helpful guide—conversion rates stop being the goal and start being the by-product.
The single most impactful way to improve a customer journey is to obsess over the "in-between" moments—the gaps where the customer is waiting. Most businesses focus on optimizing active touchpoints like the checkout process or a support call. The real opportunity for differentiation lies in transforming the passive waiting periods, which are typically filled with anxiety, into proactive moments of delight. The most important thing to focus on is proactive, value-added communication that bridges these gaps. For any business with a lead time between purchase and delivery, this "waiting void" is the point of highest friction. Instead of silence, it should be filled with storytelling. Sending a simple, unexpected update—like a photo from the workshop showing their specific project in progress, or a note saying, "We've just finished a key step and everything is looking perfect"—reassures the customer and makes them a participant in the creation story. This approach transforms a period of anxiety into a memorable, behind-the-scenes experience. It drastically reduces "Where is my order?" inquiries and builds a level of brand loyalty and trust that a smooth checkout alone can never achieve.
Stop mapping the customer journey on a whiteboard and start listening to what customers actually experience. Most companies design a "perfect" funnel and then wonder why it does not match reality. The single most important thing: remove friction. Every unnecessary click, every confusing email, every handoff between teams is a chance for a customer to walk away. Audit the journey like a skeptic, not an optimist. And talk to customers. Real conversations beat dashboards every time. Data will tell you what is happening, but customers will tell you why. If you want loyalty, do not make customers work for it.
Stop mapping customer journeys as linear paths. Real customers don't move through neat funnel stages, they go about their lives having conversations and experiences, doing their own research, asking for recommendations - all of which fall outside your tracking systems. That's not a bad thing! So instead of trying on your customer journey at all, focus instead on becoming an integral part of their community. Build genuine relationships through authentic expertise sharing, not solely conversion-focused campaigns. When your team participates authentically in the spaces where your customers naturally gather—whether that's industry forums, conferences, or peer networks—you create trust that no amount of retargeting can replicate. Start by finding and viewing existing conversations. Learn what folks are talking about in smaller groups and forums. Then map those questions to your team's expertise to facilitate and helpful interaction between them Next, look to your teams' networks, leadership and board networks, and your proprietary insights to create a customer experience that inspires curiosity and a motivation to engage with individuals at your company. Allow your team to guide potential customers to the next right place. When you focus on serving customer needs authentically while highlighting what only you can offer, the customer journey becomes less about directing traffic and more about building lasting relationships that drive sustainable growth.
My biggest piece of advice is "don't just map your customer journey, operationalise it." Too often, businesses design beautiful journey diagrams that never make it past the strategy stage. When I led the overhaul of our commercial operations/customer journey at Halo Solutions, our goal was to close the gap between what we thought the customer experience was and what it actually felt like. We built a fully operationalised journey in HubSpot that aligned marketing, sales, onboarding, and account management into a single, trackable system. We designed stage-based pipelines, automated key handovers and follow-ups, and launched the 'Halo Journey' guide (a customer-facing document that moved with them through each stage). This helped eliminate friction, prevent leads from falling through the cracks, and deliver consistent value at every touchpoint. Crucially, we didn't automate for automation's sake, we focused on moments where delays or inconsistency harmed the experience and built workflows that improved both speed and clarity. Because the best customer journeys don't make you feel like you're going through a conveyor, but make your brand constantly accessible. The most important shift wasn't just in tools, it was in culture. By aligning every team around the same journey, language, and expectations, we created a seamless, scalable experience for both customers and staff. If you're looking to improve your customer journey, start by walking it yourself. Where are the drop-off points? Where is it confusing or inconsistent? Then build workflows, automations, and collateral to support the experience you want your customers to have, and measure it properly. A good customer journey isn't just good for customers, it makes your business more efficient, scalable, and trustworthy.
Stop guessing and actually talk to your customers. In my experience, just talk to your customers goes such a long way in understanding their pain points, reservations, and why they behave the way they do. There are various ways to do this but I prefer to either set up interviews or send out comprehensive surveys. Not everyone will want to talk to you, but just talking to a few customers or prospects can help you gain valuable information. For example, I work in the metal roofing industry and I know most of my customer's or prospect's biggest concern is going to be cost. That's something completely unavoidable, but through talking to people, I've been able to identify less obvious pain points or concerns that we can address and do something about.
Improve your customer journey by going on the journey with your customers. In other words, meet with your customer, talk to your customer, listen to your customer. I personally schedule conversations with about 10-20 customers weekly to understand their pain points, gather product improvement ideas, and collect feedback before developing new features. This consistent engagement helps us identify gaps in the customer journey that might otherwise go unnoticed and ensures our development priorities align with actual customer needs rather than internal assumptions. When you make listening to customers a part of your process, good things happen for your company journey.
Make the process feel owned - by them. The best change that we have made is to provide visibility and control to the clients without necessarily putting the burden on the client. Clients do not need extra dashboards or unnecessary information in their B2B experience, especially in a B2B service where we are compliance-based. They want to know that their priorities are being handled clearly, correctly & with no surprises. We stopped thinking of the customer journey as a straight path and started to see it as a map of responsibilities: who is responsible for what, when & how it is shown. Accountability within each step helps the clients trust by default. If you only appear when you are needed to respond, you are already too late. Build it so that everything is clear without needing to ask, that is what keeps clients.
"The most important thing is to understand what your customers are actually doing - not what you think they're doing. Utilise tools like Google Analytics to measure where users are dwelling and how they interact with your pages. This will show you exactly where friction exists and what to optimise. If you can't see where they're hesitating, you can't fix it — so measurement has to come first."
Focus on solving the user's problem as fast and clearly as possible. That's the whole journey. At Omni, everything we do - design, copy, features - is built around that single goal. People don't come to our site for entertainment. They come to get an answer. The quicker they get it, the better the experience.
One piece of advice I'd give to other businesses looking to improve their customer journey is to implement what I call the ultimate duo: a standout personality hire paired with a high-performing, results-driven team member. Let me explain. Yes, you absolutely need the personality hire, not just because they elevate the customer experience and enhance how your company is perceived, but also because they lift internal morale. They energize the team, contribute to a more enjoyable work environment, and often improve deliverables simply by making people want to do their best. The second, equally crucial half of this duo is the highly skilled team member who can execute on everything the personality hire just closed with the customer. This tandem creates the perfect one-two punch for the customer and your business. The key takeaway is to ensure that you secure both parts of the duo. Without that balance, things tend not to end well.
Don't forget to give attention to in-store checkouts. It's the last stage in the shopper experience, and often, it's overlooked. Use merchandising solutions to maximize checkout spaces for impulse buys. Apply technology here to expedite lines, this could be something like a call forward system. Implementing something like this makes lines more productive, walkaways will be reduced and shoppers will feel their time has been valued -- a win-win-win.
The most critical element in any customer journey, especially for a new business, is building trust and accessibility *before* they ever become a paying customer. In healthcare, this means establishing credibility and an inviting presence from the very first touchpoint, which I learned launching my husband's private practice. We ensured our foundational marketing plan, including a strong visual brand and an engaging website, laid this groundwork. The site was designed not just for function, but as a tool for patient engagement and growth, streamlining their initial journey. Concurrently, despite a strict non-compete, we prioritized creative networking to build relationships with 263 referring physicians. This proactive approach significantly improved the indirect patient journey, bringing customers who already had a trusted recommendation. The focus must be on making that initial research and connection effortless and confidence-inspiring. This early investment in trust pays dividends, as seen by billing $239K in the first 90 days.
When frontline workers are empowered to fix problems on the spot without manager approval, you cultivate a frictionless experience, something that distinguishes great businesses from the mundane. At City Unscripted, we put a policy in place which allows our guides to offer spur-of-the-moment upgrades (e.g. extending a tour by another hour or arranging a spur-of-the-moment local experience) when they sense real traveler interest. This effort has helped drive a whopping 45 percent boost in satisfaction ratings and created countless tales of how small moments turned good trips into great adventures. This empowerment effectively cuts out any friction points, helping customers to dodge those delays waiting for approvals that can take the wind out of their sails. These days, the capacity of our guides to capitalize on real-time opportunities: securing a last-minute reservation at a restaurant, say, or arranging impromptu encounters with artisans encountered during tours—has grown exponentially. These genuine opportunities naturally occur when team members are empowered to make experiences better without going through any red tape. It is important to empower your front-line people to have a spending budget limit and the ability to make a decision in order to solve a problem or allow a good surprise without having to go and ask! Teaching them to spot points of leverage where small investments in customer delight can reap eternal loyalty is crucial. Focus on removing roadblocks that prevent your team from responding quickly to the needs of your customers - the ability to take action now is often more important than the action itself.
What's one piece of advice you would give to other businesses looking to improve their customer journey? If I had to pick one piece of advice, it would be this: eliminate friction wherever you can — and then check for even more. The "big touchpoints"—website design, checkout flow, support response time—are usually what businesses focus on, but for the most part those are the things customers notice and talk about. The vast majority of customer interactions occur in places where there is no interface to manage insights. For one example: in the early days of RedAwning, we discovered that a significant number of guests were dropping out at the last moment prior to checkout. Nothing was obviously broken. Upon closer review of the page we realized that if you had browsed a listing before logging into their system, they required renters to re-enter their email address. A small misstep — but a step nonetheless. Once we removed that step, the booking conversions shot up practically over night. It is such emotional drag that arises from having to remember passwords, making users go through unnecessary confirmations and even finding the cancellation policies buried two clicks deep. The problem is not that the customer gets mad, it is that they get bored. Customers who are tired do not finish their journey. What's the most important thing to focus on? Clarity. You are unable optimize what you can not see It's not about the software you use, or the metrics you chase, even it's the strategy that you implement — but rather, it is the clarity of perspective you bring to what experience or story — you are building. Owning a clarity means knowing your customer's goals, motivations, hesitations, and expectations (from the perspectives of how this applies to their lives, not yours). And that sort of clarity hardly ever occurs behind a dashboard. Anecdotally, perhaps the most impactful exercise we ever did at RedAwning was to huddle in a room and watch real customers doing their thing (user-testing) on our platform while planning a trip. No testing scripts. No guided demos. Just watching. The most salient part of that — not what they said, but what they hesitated on. You would have been able to SEE the emotional resistance as we struggled with descriptions that didn't come with pics, or when a map took forever to load. We made some adjustments based on those hesitations and our return bookings went up BIG time.
The most important thing to focus on when improving the customer journey is consistency. I've found it useful to map every touchpoint a customer goes through, from initial awareness as a prospect seeing our digital advertising, through to onboarding, product support, contract renewal, and even invoicing. The aim is to ensure that every step of the customer journey is understood and reflects the same standard and clarity of brand throughout. Mapping out the entire journey will also highlight points of leakage. When do clients fail to renew or re-purchase? When was the last time they heard from your business? It's common for teams to put significant effort into front-end assets like websites, pitch decks, or marketing campaigns, only to overlook the rest. But onboarding emails, account updates, or even invoice templates all contribute to the customer's overall perception of the business. If those elements feel inconsistent or lower in quality, it can leave customers feeling confused, neglected, or underwhelmed. We've made a point of ensuring that something as operational as a payment confirmation document is treated with the same care as a proposal or brand asset. It all adds up. Inconsistency, even in small things, creates friction. It also comes down to people. Customer experience depends not just on what you send, but who delivers it. That means identifying where colleague training or support is needed to ensure the way the brand is represented is consistent, credible, and intentional. In short, polish is wasted if it's only applied at the beginning. A well-designed journey is one that feels joined-up from start to finish.