Why Customer Journey Mapping is Essential for Digital-First Businesses
By Kristen Hayer
One morning, I was out for a walk near my house. I was about a mile and a half away when I got the dreaded text—my flight was canceled. I had to give a talk in Chicago later that night and was planning to leave that morning. I started to panic. Would I have to spend an hour arguing with customer service just to get rebooked? Would I miss the talk I had spent weeks preparing for?
Luckily, the airline included a link to their app in the text. When I clicked it, I was immediately taken to a page that let me choose among three alternative flights that would each get me to Chicago at roughly the same time. Whew! I selected a slightly earlier flight and picked up my pace to get home and pack.
Because it was an earlier flight, I started to worry again on my way to the airport. Would I make it in time? What if I got stuck in security?
Checking my boarding pass, I realized the airline had automatically upgraded me to premium security. I cruised through with no problems and made it to the gate just in time to board. As I scanned my phone, the machine spit out a paper ticket—I had been upgraded to first class. What started as a potential disaster turned into a premium experience. And all of it happened without me talking to a single person.
So, why, if my point is that customer journey mapping still matters, am I telling you this story? Because someone had to design this journey, even though the delivery was entirely digital. Someone had to think about what it would feel like to have an important flight canceled and decide how to first solve that problem and second, turn it into an excellent experience. Someone had to have both empathy and enough experience with real-world travel disruptions to create the seamless solution I received.
Why AI Alone Can’t Solve Customer Journey Challenges
Designing customer experiences can’t just be outsourced to AI, and I’ll tell you another story to demonstrate why. One of my friends is writing a children’s book about a kid mowing a lawn. To help the artist he’s working with understand what he was looking for in terms of visuals, he asked ChatGPT to generate AI versions of a few of his ideas. While AI did a good job with the overall concepts, it kept positioning the human on the side of the lawnmower instead of behind it, pushing.
I was curious about this and had a conversation with ChatGPT about it. Through our conversation, I realized that AI struggles with two key aspects of human experience: physical interactions and emotions. While it can conceptually understand these things, it doesn’t feel and has never been in a human body, so it misses the nuances. Exceptional customer experiences are all about the nuances.
If you think back to my experience with my canceled flight, I had a whole range of both physical challenges (walking quickly back home, getting a ride to the airport, getting through security on time) and emotions (fear of missing my talk, frustration with the airline, excitement about my upgraded seat). While AI probably could have figured out the technology behind getting me onto another flight, it would have missed key aspects of my experience that turned it from good to great.
The Human Side of Digital Customer Experiences
Digital customer experiences are still human experiences. Taking the time to consider what customers go through and how to address challenges still needs to be a human exercise.
To create a truly exceptional digital experience, you need a cross-functional team that understands both the technical and human sides of the journey. By mapping out the customer experience from start to finish, you ensure that your solutions don’t just function well—they feel right to the people using them.
A well-designed customer journey isn’t just about solving problems; it’s about anticipating emotions and proactively delivering moments of delight. Customers don’t just want efficiency—they want to feel understood. That’s why the best digital experiences are designed by people who can empathize with real-world frustrations and build solutions that go beyond transactional fixes. Whether it’s reducing friction during a high-stress situation or adding unexpected perks that create lasting loyalty, the human touch is what transforms a good experience into a great one.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers classes for CS leaders in both human-led and digital-first journey mapping. For more information on class details, visit TheSuccessLeague.io
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with scaling tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field. Kristen has served as a judge for the Customer Success Excellence awards, and is on the board of several early-stage tech companies. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
