Most brands say they “map the customer journey.” But in a keynote panel that brought together leaders from apparel, beauty, wine, and search technology, the conversation quickly moved beyond static diagrams.
As moderator Carolyn Altomare, SVP of Sales, Digital Media at RRD, set the tone, mapping is only the entry ticket. The real competitive advantage comes from continuously adjusting the journey as customer expectations, technology, and context shift.
The five speakers, Carolyn Pollock (former CMO, Tailored Brands), Brian Schmidt (VP, Marketing & eCommerce, Brooks Brothers & Eddie Bauer), Alejandra Tenorio (VP, Digital Marketing & eCommerce, RMS Beauty), Daniel Rodriguez (CEO & Founder, Currently Wine Co.), and Bernadette Nixon (CEO, Algolia), each brought a distinct view of how to turn journey theory into operational reality.
Don’t map once, map always
For Carolyn Pollock, the idea of a “finished” customer journey map doesn’t exist.
“Your journey work should be a verb, not a noun.”
Pollock explained that journeys are living systems, shaped by shifting customer priorities, changing life moments, and unexpected events. Tailored Brands’ own mapping work had to account for everything from seasonal wardrobe updates to life events like weddings and the brand’s relevance depended on keeping that picture fresh.
A static map risks becoming a blind spot. “If you lock in what you think you know and never revisit it,” Pollock warned, “you’ll keep investing in touchpoints that no longer matter, and miss the ones that suddenly do.”
Her advice: integrate journey updates into quarterly business rhythms, not as a one-off research project.
Filling the gaps between milestones
Brian Schmidt argued that most customer journey diagrams are biased toward the high-visibility stages - discovery, purchase, post-purchase - and skip over the unglamorous but decisive in-between moments.
For Brooks Brothers and Eddie Bauer, the cart-to-checkout gap is one of those critical blind spots. High-consideration apparel shoppers may spend hours, even days, lingering between selection and purchase. That period, Schmidt said, is full of opportunities to reassure, educate, or incentivize, but too often goes untouched.
“We’ve learned that if you leave the customer alone in that gap, you’re letting doubt grow. We see it in abandoned cart data all the time.”
Addressing those gaps requires cross-functional coordination: marketing and eCommerce for messaging, store operations for fulfillment promises, and customer service for live reassurance. Schmidt’s point was simple: map for reality, not just the brand’s campaign calendar.
Internal alignment before external alignment
For Alejandra Tenorio, the seamless customer journey starts behind the scenes. At RMS Beauty, marketing, eCommerce, and customer service share live dashboards so that every team works from the same truth.
Without that alignment, the customer experiences the silos directly - mismatched offers, contradictory messages, or delays caused by handoffs.
“If your teams are out of sync, your customer journey will be too, no matter how pretty your map looks.”
Tenorio’s approach is operational: shared KPIs, a single view of the customer, and cross-team standups. This keeps the brand’s digital and physical touchpoints synchronized, especially during product launches or promotions that span multiple channels.
Feedback as first-party gold
Daniel Rodriguez positioned customer feedback as more than a post-purchase survey. At Currently Wine Co., it’s embedded throughout the journey, from initial discovery to trial to repeat purchases.
Early-stage feedback often shapes product descriptions, on-site imagery, and even the packaging experience. Rodriguez described one change prompted by early customer input: simplifying the unboxing process to better match the lifestyle of their target audience.
“The moment a customer gives you their opinion is the moment they feel most invested. That’s where loyalty starts.”
This approach turns feedback into what Rodriguez called “real-time journey intelligence” - actionable data that keeps the brand responsive and relevant.
Technology as a friction remover, not an add-on
Bernadette Nixon brought the technology perspective, warning against overcomplicating journeys with tools that add steps rather than remove them.
At Algolia, AI-driven search and personalization are used to shorten the path from intent to outcome. The challenge is to deploy these capabilities without overloading customers with unnecessary prompts or decision points.
“Technology should be invisible in the journey. The moment the customer notices it, you’re probably slowing them down.”
Her point underscored a broader theme: optimization is not about adding touchpoints, but about removing the ones that create drag.
Loyalty is built in the middle
Across the panel, one insight stood out: loyalty is not a post-purchase project. It’s forged or lost in the middle of the journey, when the brand delivers (or fails to deliver) on its promises.
This mid-journey period is where expectations meet reality. Fast, transparent service builds trust; friction or inconsistency erodes it instantly. The panel agreed that brands should treat these moments as loyalty’s proving ground, not an afterthought.
Operational takeaways for retailers
The panel distilled their discussion into a set of operational truths that apply across categories:
Journey mapping is an always-on process — treat it like a living asset.
Identify and close hidden friction points between the big milestones.
Align internal teams first to avoid customer-facing misalignment.
Integrate feedback into every stage for real-time course correction.
Apply technology to remove steps, not add them.
Invest in the middle of the journey as the foundation of loyalty.
Why this matters now
Customer journeys have never been more complex or more measurable. The brands represented on this panel operate in categories as different as men’s formalwear, clean beauty, wine subscriptions, and AI search, yet the patterns they see are strikingly similar.
Journeys are dynamic, non-linear, and shaped by countless micro-moments. The winners are not those with the most elaborate diagrams, but those who can adapt in real time, remove friction before it compounds, and keep internal teams working from a single source of truth.
In short: the customer odyssey is not a path to be drawn once. It’s a system to be nurtured, measured, and improved while it’s in motion.
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