Creating a segmented persona driven Customer Experience strategy is all well and good, but without the ability to tie it back to individual customers through data - so that you know which customer should be treated with which treatment strategy - then the whole thing is a paper exercise.

Some organisations develop journey maps, pop them on the wall and then leave it at that. But the map isn't really the point of Customer Journey Mapping, it's just a byprroduct. So, what is the point?

Different parts of the business can often lay claim to the 'ownership' of the relationship with the customer, but which part of the business should own Customer Experience Management?

Don't think for one second that one organisation has the ability to control the customer's experience. Going on holiday is so much more than booking a flight...

If your employees are having a bad experience in the workplace, how can you expect them to deliver your customers a great experience. But beware! Delivering a great employee experience is no guarantee of your business deivering a great customer experience...

You deliver the experience to the customer via your service, product and channel propositions (the value proposition), however the experience is judged against what the customer expected from you, which is, in part, governed by your brand promise.

You can give a customer a series of brilliant interactions, but if the most important ones are poor, you can ruin the entire experience. Moments of Truth and the Peak-End rule come into play.

Customer Journeys are so important to customer experience because customers think about their experience chronologically. And stories are an evolution of a journey, adding in an emotional layer to the customer's experience.