A team at Harmonic Design has been diving deep into the evolving field of Journey Management (maybe). Before I get into the problem at the center of this blog, which is how we should settle on a name for this field, I want to share with you how we at Harmonic have been defining it:
Journey management is an ongoing, strategic practice of understanding, organizing, and optimizing end-to-end journeys across all touchpoints and channels at scale.
It aligns organizational efforts around a shared view of the experiences and needs of key actors, making it easier for cross-functional teams to collaborate in creating meaningful customer and employee experiences while driving business value.
By leveraging data and insights, journey management enables organizations to proactively and continuously refine journeys over time–creating experiences that feel connected and intentional and benefit both the customer and the business.
This, at least, is our working definition. As I mentioned, it’s a growing field, and the tools and methods are evolving rapidly, as are answers to bigger questions like “Who uses journey management?” “What value can an organization get from journey management?” and “What does a journey management governance structure look like?”
Knowing that many aspects of this field are in an exciting phase of evolution, it may be appropriate to look at the official name more closely. “Journey Management” presents some issues. Firstly, it’s already the name of a field of practice that deals with how to safely transport travelling workers. Secondly, as our CEO, PQ, likes to point out, the term “management” raises the hairs on the back of the necks of all of the other types of managers vying to control the big question of “how work gets funded and done around here,” (product managers, project managers, UX managers, community managers, etc.). Just how many managers need to be afraid that so called “journey managers” will come along and trample their tulips!? So, there are some sensitivities and issues with this formulation.
As such, I’m beginning to see a shift to “Customer Journey Management,” which solves a few of the issues that “Journey Management” has. It’s a new name for an evolving field, and it gives a little more specificity into what exactly this field is concerned with managing to allay the fears of at least some of those other managers… or does it?
Let me not bury the lead: I don’t believe we should settle on “customer journey management (CJM).”
At Harmonic Design, we do a lot of work concerning the experiences of employees, vendors, and other partners of organizations. Through this work, we’ve seen many of the same opportunities across customer, employee, and third-party journeys to better understand, organize, design, and measure them through a method like journey management. So, though I get that it’s useful to differentiate this field through a qualifier, I think “customer” is the wrong one.
I don’t know how an amorphous global community might settle this, but let me bring this up and, since I did, allow me to toss out some other possibilities to get the ball rolling.
“Experience Journey Management” could emphasize the existence of an actor who has experiences with an organization’s offerings through journeys and that what is being managed is the experiences that they’re having. This may, however, de-emphasize the importance of connecting experience outcomes with business outcomes, which is core to the value of the field. It also sounds redundant to the uninitiated and, simultaneously, like an oxymoron to service designers who work to help people see the difference between “experience maps” and “journey maps.”
“Aligned Journey Management” could be an option emphasizing how journey management creates alignment among stakeholders, aligns all variations of an actor’s journey to high-level frameworks that enhance understanding, and aligns business goals and desired experience outcomes to objectives, key results, and specific metrics. It may have too many possible meanings to allow for it to be easily understood on its own however. Next!
“Service Participant Journey Management” or “Actor Journey Management” might be options that a few service design nerds would love, but that would not likely be met with anything but raised eyebrows from the rest of the organization…
I don’t think I have the answer here. In fact, naming things has always been my least favorite part of a design project. But let’s keep asking this question until we find something that speaks to the broad versatility of this field. What are some other names we can consider?
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
The name of this field may still be up for debate, but what’s clear is the value it brings to organizations looking to create more connected, intentional experiences. At Harmonic Design, we help teams make sense of complex journeys and align efforts across customer, employee, and partner experiences. How can this approach work for your organization? Explore our Orchestration & Harmonization services.
