What’s Next in CX: Moving Beyond the Map and Into Journey Orchestration
By Clare Muscutt, Founder and CEO of Women in CX
On Day 1 of the Women in CX ‘Moving Beyond’ EMEA UnConference in Berlin, we hosted a panel to challenge one of the most persistent habits in CX: treating customer journey maps as static artefacts.
Because here’s the reality: today’s customers move fluidly between channels, contexts, and expectations. Static maps can be useful for sparking insight, but they rarely reflect the complexity of modern journeys—or the organisational effort required to manage them. Too often, they end up as slides in a strategy deck, rather than living frameworks that guide continuous design and improvement.
That’s why we asked the big question: how do we move beyond the map and reframe customer experience through true journey management and service design?
Our panel explored four key shifts:
How to operationalise customer journeys so they drive action, not just insight.
How to connect insight, design, and delivery teams around shared outcomes.
How to balance human-centred design with scalable systems that keep pace with expectations.
And how to align internal processes with the lived experience of customers.
The consensus was clear: the map is not the destination. Orchestration must become the operational principle of customer experience.
The Inertia of the Static Map
We began with the core question: why do journey maps feel overused yet under effective?
Heidi, who heads up Global Design Ops for H&M, explained that the issue isn’t the map itself—it’s the way it’s applied. Too often, maps are treated as “diagnostic posters.” After the initial pain points are actioned, they’re abandoned: “The map is forgotten and then it’s put somewhere where no one ever looks at it.”
Emmeliek, who heads up CX and Product at Eurail shared the practical fallout: without shared vision, language, or discipline, her organisation struggled to align marketing, product, and CX teams or prove value through metrics. Leadership often focused on “the bigger epics,” leaving little capacity for the small, continuous improvements that matter most.
Lara, an independent Service Design Expert, reminded us of their importance: “Those smaller things can do wonders in terms of motivation”—for both teams and continued investment in CX.
Susanna, CX Director at SCIEX offered a solution: making the map interactive. In her company, every project must link to specific “moments of truth,” ensuring decisions are tied directly to the journey and its impact is visible.
✨ Takeaway: Journey maps must be living tools that drive prioritisation, decision-making, and cultural change—not static artefacts gathering dust.
From Mapping to Orchestration
So what’s the difference between mapping and management? Heidi drew the line clearly: mapping focuses on one journey; management orchestrates journeys across the entire organisation.
In this model, teams can continuously contribute to and learn from the journeys, integrating customer insights into the operational fabric of the business. Orchestration, Heidi argued, is the biggest lever for transforming operating models into truly customer-centric ones.
For Lara, orchestration means shifting from an asset mindset to an outcome mindset. She uses a high-performing team framework to structure not just the maps, but the culture around them: “What stories are we telling along the way? What rituals sit behind that?”
✨ Takeaway: Journey management is less about artefacts and more about orchestration—an ongoing cycle of enablement, outcomes, and culture.
Journey Orchestration Defined
Journey orchestration is the practice of managing and optimising customer journeys in real time across channels, teams, and systems.
Unlike a static journey map—which captures a snapshot of customer pain points at one moment in time—journey orchestration is about continuously aligning people, processes, and technology to the customer’s lived experience.
It means:
Connecting silos → bringing together insights, design, operations, and technology.
Turning insight into action → using customer signals to drive immediate decisions and improvements.
Balancing human and system needs → blending empathy-driven design with scalable infrastructure.
Continuous improvement → treating journeys as living frameworks, updated and optimised as behaviours evolve.
Put simply:
Maps help us see. Orchestration helps us move.
Alignment, Trust, and the Power of Enablement
Of course, orchestration doesn’t happen in silos. It requires alignment across insight, design, operations, and technology.
Susanna emphasised resilience and two essentials: “building trust with key stakeholders” and establishing a shared framework and language.
Heidi cautioned against jumping straight to rigid processes or standardisation. Leaders often “underestimate the power of emotions” and how attached teams are to existing ways of working. Instead, she advised starting with enablement—facilitating what’s already working and scaling from there: “Ask: what are you doing right now that works? Build on that.”
✨ Takeaway: Alignment is not about enforcing standardisation but enabling collaboration—rooted in trust, shared language, and respect for what already works.
The Organising Principle for the Future
As we closed, I asked the panel for the single biggest mindset shift needed to move beyond the map:
Emmeliek: Treat the customer journey as your organising principle for ownership, priority-setting, and continuous improvement.
Heidi: Shift from an ownership mentality to a collaborative mentality—allocating resources where customer and business opportunities intersect.
Susanna: Recognise journey management as a decision-making framework. It must drive actions based on what you learn and understand from the journey.
Lara: Focus on the rituals, behaviours, stories, and tools that embed journeys into culture.
The conclusion was unanimous: the problem isn’t the map—it’s stopping at the map.
Final Thought
Journey management is not just an evolution of mapping; it is the fundamental operating model for modern customer experience. Orchestration enables continuous improvement, sustained value creation, and a more human, empathetic approach to business.
This shift requires more than systems thinking—it calls for a new kind of leadership. Orchestration depends on collaboration, resilience, and trust. It demands leaders who can bridge silos, enable teams, and align processes with the lived experience of customers.
And this is where the role of female leadership becomes vital. Research shows that women leaders bring higher levels of empathy, ethical focus, and cross-functional collaboration—the very qualities required to embed journey management into the DNA of organisations. As our panel in Berlin demonstrated, women in CX are already leading the way in linking journeys to strategy, culture, and daily decision-making.
If maps help us see, orchestration helps us move. And when women step up to lead this shift—boldly, consciously, and collaboratively—the future of CX will not only be more effective, it will be more inclusive, empathetic, and enduring.
Ready to Move Beyond? Join Us at the Next WiCX UnConferences
The conversation doesn’t stop in Berlin. We’re taking the energy and momentum to the US and LATAM Women in CX UnConference in Miami later this year—where we’ll continue to explore how women can lead the future of CX with empathy, innovation, and conscious leadership.
And we’re already looking ahead to 2026, with registrations now open for the WiCX EMEA UnConference. Don’t miss your chance to be part of the only global CX event created by women, for women—where the agenda is built by you.