Let’s start with some good news. According to Forrester’s Priorities Survey, 2024, business and technology leaders tell us that the number-one priority for their firm is to “improve the experience of our ultimate customers.” The top three priorities for this year are:

1. Improve the experience of our ultimate customers.

2. Meet measurable commercial growth targets.

3. Reduce costs.

Improving customer experience (CX) is up from the third slot in 2023. That’s great, but it begs the question: How?

Cross-Functional Journey Teams Are Here ( … Ish)

We asked the respondents who said improving CX was a priority how they planned to do it, and almost a quarter said they are going to “create cross-functional teams aligned around customer journeys.” Cutting the sample by broad industry groupings backs up what we’ve heard from clients — firms in sectors like telecom, hospitality, utilities, and banking, which sell ongoing service-based “products,” are more likely to embrace cross-functional journey teams than industries like retail, where transactional channels can still dominate.

We’ve published deep case studies on journey-centric organizations like E.ON, Lloyds, and Nissan. In a pair of recent reports we looked at how the banks that lead our Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) organize to improve the quality of their customer experience through two lenses, frontstage and backstage.

The common theme is how these firms see helping customers achieve their goals as the focus of their organization — their marketing, their org structure, their budgets, their technology, their metrics, and more. Customers achieve their goals through journeys: We call this approach journey centricity.

Understand The Three Stages Of Journey Evolution

Journey centricity doesn’t happen overnight. The common threads in the case studies, as well as the wider research we’ve done, shows most firms progress through three distinct stages of evolution:

  • Journey mapping to identify pain points and build foundational business cases for tactical action. Temporary project teams focus on pain points. This is where many CX teams stall. To break through, consider adopting the language of journey management, embrace increasingly available tooling, and infuse journey maps with data to elevate them from descriptive assets to living operational tools.
  • Journey management to drive improvements and make the business case for transformation. As in some of the examples above, dedicated journey managers and journey teams begin to emerge, working cross-functionally to bridge silos in service of driving better customer outcomes. Navy Federal Credit Union maps and optimizes enterprisewide member journeys across product lines and business units.
  • Journey centricity where journeys become the business operating model. Customer outcomes become the organizing principle behind teams, technology, budgets and operations. Rabobank organizes in value streams, such as mortgage, business lending, or daily banking.

Journeys Connect Brand And Experience To Drive Growth

At our CX Summit EMEA on June 2–4, 2025, we’ll be showcasing how brand and CX combine to create a total experience. Essentially, if your brand is the promise you make to your customers, your CX is your ability to deliver on that promise.

Customers don’t interact with your brand in isolation, and (unless you’re Disney or Spotify, and even then … ) they don’t interact with you for fun. They come to you to achieve a goal.

  • Journey maps help you understand those goals.
  • Journey management helps you operationalize helping customers achieve those goals.
  • Journey centricity aligns your organization around creating a total experience.