Why Our Employees Need to Focus on the Customer Journey, Not Just on Tasks

I am sure we all agree that the customer experience (CX) has become a crucial differentiator in this competitive environment. Businesses that excel at delivering positive experiences often outperform their competitors, seeing stronger customer loyalty, higher satisfaction, and increased revenue. However, we often build in procedures, systems and tools that prevent our teams from seeing the big picture… their customer’s journey. How does this happen?

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It isn’t like leaders started out to build in barriers. We often started with a focus on our customers but somewhere ended up with work being broken down into multiple tasks. In my experience, some of the issue is that we designed work to be simple and piecemeal. Giving workers a series of smaller tasks makes sense if leaders keep the big picture in view. Where it goes wrong is when the leaders lose track as well.

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This article isn’t about the tools we use but instead into why our employees should focus on the customer journey rather than simply closing tickets, emphasizing the benefits of a holistic, proactive approach to customer experience. What about leaders? Ensure the tools, training, motivation and processes reinforce this need.

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Some considerations…

Reactive vs. Proactive?

• A Task Focus: Employees become reactive, focusing on solving immediate problems from a ticket rather than anticipating and preventing future issues. This short-term mindset can result in repeated problems if underlying issues are not addressed. This can lead to a “firefighting” culture, where employees spend their time putting out small fires without looking at broader issues that could be resolved proactively.
• Customer Journey Focus: A customer journey approach emphasizes understanding the full lifecycle of the customer, from onboarding to long-term use, allowing employees to be more proactive in offering solutions and improving overall experience.

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Scope of Work?

• A Task Focus: A ticket-centric approach often isolates tasks. Each ticket is seen as a separate issue, meaning employees may lose sight of how this specific task fits into the customer’s broader goals and experience with the product or service.
• A Customer Journey Focus: By seeing each interaction as part of the customer’s journey, employees can address the root cause of issues, anticipate next steps, and improve long-term satisfaction.

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When Are We Done?

• A Task Focus: Employees are often measured on how many tasks or tickets they close and how fast, leading to a focus on volume and speed rather than customer outcomes. Imagine you are buying something from a retail salesperson and their manager is listening in and checking off the tasks the employee completes during your conversation? Makes you want to purchase, right?
• A Customer Journey Focus: The journey-centered approach prioritizes customer success and long-term outcomes over simply completing tasks. It encourages employees to think about how their work impacts the customer’s goals.

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Customer Experience?

• A Task Focus: Customers may interact with multiple employees, each handling their task in isolation, leading to a fragmented and inconsistent experience.
• A Customer Journey Focus: Employees who understand the full customer journey can provide consistent, personalized experiences, making the customer feel understood and valued throughout their lifecycle.

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How do Teams Work Together?

• A Task Focus: Employees may focus on their department's responsibility (e.g., support, sales, engineering) without collaborating across teams to address broader customer issues.
• A Customer Journey Focus: A journey-based perspective encourages cross-functional collaboration, ensuring that teams like sales, marketing, product, and support work together to deliver a seamless experience.

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Continuous Improvement?

• A Task Focus: Employees treat each issue as a one-off event, which limits opportunities to identify patterns and address systemic problems that could enhance the overall customer experience. In effect, is an issue the first time it happened or are we not connecting the dots?
• A Customer Journey Focus: By analyzing how issues affect the entire journey, employees can provide feedback for continuous improvement, optimizing both the customer experience and internal processes.

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Understanding the Customer Journey

Our?customer’s journey?includes the full lifecycle of their interaction with our brand. It’s not just about one-time interactions or resolving single issues; it’s about creating meaningful touchpoints that provide value throughout the entire customer experience.

In contrast,?a task or ticket focus can?represent individual tasks or issues that need resolving—like a customer support query, a technical issue, or a request for information. In my experience, focusing solely on tasks alone can lead to a fragmented, transactional approach to service, where employees are concerned with resolving problems quickly, often without considering the broader context. While tickets are important for operational efficiency, a strict focus on them can lead to several issues that harm the overall customer experience.

Some related articles from my LinkedIn newsletter, It Is About the Outcome

• The Impact of Multiple Hand-offs
• When the Work Gets in the Way of the Purpose
• Putting Your Customer’s Journey Under the Microscope