Why Journey Mapping Is a Team Sport
You can draw a journey map on your own. It will be neat, it will be defensible, and it will be a picture of what you think your customers experience.
It will also be wrong, and nobody will act on it.
Below are two real journey mapping projects — one in higher education, one in financial services — that worked precisely because they were never one person's map. One involved 45 stakeholders and 325 students. The other only got moving when a CEO stumbled across a complaint.
45 stakeholders
invited to the kick-off. One workshop was never going to be enough.
325 students
gave feedback. The staff version of the journey and the real one were not the same.
12 weeks
from kick-off to a map that produced hundreds of tactical opportunities.
ℹ️ About this article
A contributed article by Rod Netterfield, who delivers the Customer Journey Mapping Training Workshop through CX Skills, an ACXPA partner — disclosed rather than buried. The two case studies and the practical lessons are his and Jodie Fielding's. The editorial commentary is ACXPA's.
Why It Can't Be a Solo Exercise
Exploring your business through the customer's eyes is fashionable now, across every industry. But unless you're Robinson Crusoe, you shouldn't be doing it alone.
There are two reasons, and both are fatal to a solo map.
🎯 Accuracy
A map built by the people who run the process describes the process. It does not describe the experience. Only the customer knows that — and in the education case below, the gap between the two was the entire finding.
🤝 Adoption
A map nobody helped build is a map nobody defends. The people who need to act on the findings — across every silo — have to have their fingerprints on it, or it becomes a poster.
Both projects below leaned on human centered design as their underlying framework — the double diamond of diverging to explore the problem, converging on a definition, diverging again to explore solutions, then converging on what to build.
Case 1: Mapping the Student Journey
Higher education is an intricate network of campuses, faculties and facilities — not a single building. And the student journey starts long before anyone arrives on campus, and doesn't end at graduation.
We set out to capture that end-to-end journey and produce strategic recommendations alongside tactical opportunities.
The set-up
A small core group of like-minded people, and — critically — a sponsor who set the scope, defined the mapping goal and identified the stages before we started. That sponsor is not optional. Without one, you are mapping in an endless sea with no shore in sight.
Then we mind-mapped every stakeholder in the end-to-end student journey, including people outside the organisation — agents and suppliers who shaped the student experience without being employed by us.
That left us with about 45 colleagues and partners to invite. One meeting was never going to work, so the kick-off became a workshop series.
1. Build the journey as the team sees it
Starting from the moment someone first considers continuing their education — not necessarily at our university — and ending with professional development after graduation, when they return for further study or join the alumni community.
2. Validate it against data nobody was using
We asked every participant to bring anything related to the student journey that was gathering dust in a drawer or a shared folder: reports, surveys, research, statistics, niche journey maps. Some of it supported our assumptions. Some of it demolished them.
3. Fill the gaps with actual students
We collected feedback from over 325 students, representing different personas by area of study, campus and social group.
4. Ideate, prototype, test
Only once the critical pain points and opportunities were identified. We digitised everything, so no lockdown could stop the work.
The finding that mattered
The journey we designed at the first stage reflected the staff's vision. The final deliverable — built with the students — was based on real lived experience, filled with students' own words, thoughts and stories.
They were not the same map. And that gap is the reason journey mapping is a team sport. If we'd stopped at the internal version, we'd have spent twelve weeks confirming what we already believed.
Twelve weeks produced a detailed journey map, several strategic improvements and hundreds of tactical opportunities. We published it across the institution — digitally and as a hard copy on the wall — and built a Service Blueprint alongside it, carrying the extra operational data needed to actually fix things.
The student experience began to change. At every level.
Case 2: Mapping in Financial Services
Now a company that had grown rapidly for ten years. Customer-centric. Data-rich. Excellent retention.
And quietly, a problem. Rapid growth meant new products and services launched on the fly, decisions made quickly, and no time to look back at the collective experience being delivered across all of them. The frontline was carrying a superb market proposition on its back.
This is where Jodie Fielding's team came in — looking for weak spots hidden inside a high-retention haystack.
The trigger: one complaint, seen by the right person
Employees across departments genuinely wanted to improve the customer experience, but the silos between them were immovable and nobody knew where to start.
Then the CEO happened across a communication complaint from a client — and the entire executive board suddenly wanted to understand how the company actually interacted with customers. They asked for a list of every interaction and every channel.
That is executive buy-in, and it arrived by accident. The lesson isn't to wait for luck; it's to recognise the moment when it comes and move immediately.
Why they didn't start with a journey map
Here is the smartest decision in either case study, and it's counter-intuitive.
The executive team was new to journey mapping as a concept. So Jodie's team didn't build a journey map. They built an interaction journey — the key stages of the product life cycle, laid out with real emails, marketing materials and statistics printed and physically arranged against each stage.
Something familiar. Something tangible. A bridge toward the journey mapping shore, rather than a demand that the executives cross it in one leap.
Organisational maturity determines what you can start with. Insisting on the textbook artefact when nobody in the room understands it is how CX initiatives die in their first meeting.
The work surfaced the sheer volume of customer interactions and the inconsistency between channels. Then the team toured the executives through the map — which produced validation, encouragement, and something nobody predicted: competition between executives, each volunteering information the others didn't have, to fill the gaps.
After that, the map was opened to the whole company. People brought new data, and fixed things as they went. The customer experience started improving before the map was even finished — quick wins running in parallel with the long-term initiatives.
The Hurdles You'll Hit — and How to Soften Them
Journey mapping initiatives come with predictable obstacles. They're much easier to handle if you're expecting them.
Getting executive buy-in
Show them the value using concepts they already understand. Don't lead with the methodology; lead with the thing they're already worried about. Jodie's team didn't sell "journey mapping" — they answered the question the board had just asked.
The physical map has to go digital
A wall of butcher's paper and sticky notes has real benefits — it's tangible, it invites contribution, and executives will stand in front of it. But you will eventually need a digital copy, so start backing it up online early. Otherwise you lose essential data and you exclude every remote stakeholder.
Engagement is not automatic
Be flexible with your team. Run small-group workshops rather than one big one. Talk to people individually if that's what it takes. Give the busy ones time, and let people come back to the map when it finally strikes them. Comfortable people contribute more — which, incidentally, is a psychological safety problem wearing a CX hat.
Data alone won't move anyone
To prove an issue, use storytelling. A few real customer stories — actual quotes, empathy-provoking detail — will do more for a problematic touchpoint than a chart ever will. Especially with executives, who rarely speak to a customer themselves.
The one that matters most
Without a team and without executive support, a journey mapping initiative is an endless sea. You don't know where to go, your strength runs out, and the shore never appears.
Get the sponsor first. Then get the room.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should be involved in a customer journey mapping workshop?
Everyone who touches the journey — including people outside your organisation. In the education case, mind-mapping the stakeholders produced around 45 colleagues and partners, agents and suppliers included, which meant the kick-off had to become a workshop series rather than a single session. The test is simple: if someone can create a pain point in the journey, or fix one, they belong in the room. And the customers themselves are not stakeholders to be consulted at the end; they are the only source of the actual experience.
How long does a journey mapping project take?
The end-to-end student journey in this article took twelve weeks from kick-off to a finished map with strategic recommendations and hundreds of tactical opportunities. That's a realistic figure for a genuinely end-to-end, multi-stakeholder journey with primary research in it. A narrower journey, or one where you already hold good customer data, can be considerably faster. What doesn't work is compressing it by skipping the customer research — that just gets you back to the internal version of the map, faster.
What if our executives don't understand journey mapping?
Then don't start with a journey map. This is the most useful lesson in the article: Jodie's team built an interaction journey across the product life cycle instead, because the executive team was new to the concept and needed something familiar and tangible. Meet the organisation at its actual level of maturity and build a bridge, rather than insisting on the textbook artefact and losing the room in the first meeting. You can arrive at the journey map later — once they've seen the value.
Do we need customers in the room, or is internal knowledge enough?
Internal knowledge is not enough, and the education case proves it. The journey the staff designed and the journey the students actually experienced were different maps. Had the project stopped at the internal version, it would have spent twelve weeks confirming existing beliefs. Over 325 students were engaged across different personas — and their words, thoughts and stories are what made the final map credible enough for people to act on.
How do you get people to actually act on a journey map?
By making sure they helped build it. A map produced by a small team and presented to everyone else becomes a poster; a map that fifty people contributed to becomes a shared commitment. It also helps to publish it widely — both case studies made the map available across the whole organisation, digitally and physically, and invited people to keep contributing. In the financial services case, the experience started improving before the map was finished, because people fixed things as they found them.
Where to Next
🎓 Learn to run one properly — with Rod
Everything above is the compressed version. The Customer Journey Mapping Training Workshop is the full method — how to scope it, who to get in the room, how to run the workshops, how to win executive buy-in, and how to turn a wall of sticky notes into something the business actually acts on.
It's taught by Rod Netterfield — the author of this article, who ran the projects in it.
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Summary
Two projects, two industries, one lesson. In education, the map the staff drew and the map the students lived were different documents — and only 325 students could have told them that. In financial services, the work only started because a CEO saw a complaint, and only landed because the team met the executives where they were rather than where the textbook said they should be.
A journey map built alone is a description of your assumptions. A journey map built by the room is a shared commitment that people will act on — and in the finance case, they started acting on it before it was even finished.
Get the sponsor. Get the room. Bring the customers. Everything else is technique.
- About the Author
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Rod has a 15+ year career working for a variety of mid-tier and large global organisations, designing, and implementing customer experience (CX) strategies. He is a co-founder and Director of Humind – a CX design and consultancy collective, aimed at helping organisations to discover, design, and deliver experiences with the human in mind.
