What's one piece of advice you would give to other businesses looking to improve their customer journey? What's the most important thing to focus on?

Question

Discover how to enhance your customer journey with insights from leading business experts. This article presents a comprehensive guide to improving customer experiences across various touchpoints. Learn practical strategies that combine empathy, data-driven approaches, and innovative solutions to create meaningful connections with your audience.

Patrick T. Gimmi · Answer

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.

Adam Truszkowski · Answer

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 as if 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 have 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 combination, 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.

Brandy Morton · Answer

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 ensure 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.

Vick Antonyan · Answer

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."

Christine Perkett · Answer

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 at night? What future win are they daydreaming about on their 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.

Julia Temeer · Answer

I believe many businesses focus on what people do on their website, but they overlook how people feel when they arrive there.
For example, I understand that when an adult decides to learn violin, their starting point differs. They see numerous methods designed for children and often wonder, "Where do I fit in?" or "Is this approach right for me?" That question marks the true beginning of their journey.
On my website, I attempt to address that feeling from the very first moment. The first thing visitors see isn't a large sales message. Instead, it's a simple question: "What are you looking for?" Then I present a few clear options, such as browsing free lessons or obtaining some free sheet music. The aim is to demonstrate that they have choices and that there's no pressure. It's my way of saying, "I understand that this can feel overwhelming, so let's just start with something small and manageable."
Therefore, my one piece of advice is to really focus on that initial state of mind. Determine what your customer is thinking or feeling the moment they find you, and then construct the entire experience to meet them right there.
It's all about making people feel understood from the start and showing them you have a clear, easy path for whatever they need. When you do that, they naturally trust that you can help them reach their desired destination.

Aviad Faruz · Answer

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.

Devin Bramhall · Answer

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!
Instead of trying to map your customer journey at all, focus 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 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 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.

Anati Zubia · Answer

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, and 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.

Chloe Fox · Answer

My biggest piece of advice is "don't just map your customer journey, operationalize 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 operationalized 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 belt, 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.

Bruce Hicks · Answer

Stop guessing and actually talk to your customers. In my experience, just talking 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 customers' or prospects' 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.

Brett Farmiloe · Answer

Improve your customer journey by going on the journey with your customers. In other words, meet with your customers, talk to your customers, and listen to your customers.
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's journey.

Gene Genin · Answer

Make the process feel owned by them.
The best change we have made is to provide visibility and control to the clients without necessarily putting the burden on them. Clients do not need extra dashboards or unnecessary information in their B2B experience, especially in a compliance-based B2B service. They want to know that their priorities are being handled clearly, correctly, and 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, and 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.

Matt Rhodes · Answer

The most important thing is to understand what your customers are actually doing - not what you think they're doing. Utilize 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 optimize. If you can't see where they're hesitating, you can't fix it — so measurement has to come first.

Mateusz Mucha · Answer

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.

Katie Thomas · Answer

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.
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.

Keith Carpentier · Answer

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, reduces walkaways, and makes shoppers feel their time has been valued -- a win-win-win.

Improving the Customer Journey: Advice from 17 Business Leaders

Improving the Customer Journey: Advice from 17 Business Leaders

Architect Customer Psychological State

Map Real Customer Journeys

Pair Empathy with Data-Driven Insights

Reduce Friction at Every Touchpoint

Design Around Customer Needs

Transform Waiting Periods into Experiences

Build Authentic Community Relationships

Listen and Remove Customer Friction

Operationalize Your Customer Journey

Talk Directly to Your Customers

Engage Regularly with Customers

Provide Visibility and Control

Measure Actual Customer Behavior

Solve User Problems Quickly

Balance Personality with Performance

Optimize In-Store Checkout Experience

Meet Customers Where They Are

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