WORKING PAPER

Journey Mapping Meets Jobs to be Done

By Steve Wunker, Charlotte Desprat, and Connor Fitzpatrick

This paper helps teams elevate customer experience strategy by:

Rooting every stage of the journey in customer motivations and contextual drivers to uncover new innovation opportunities.

Capturing emotional and functional Jobs across multiple stakeholders to reflect the complexity of real-world decision-making. 

Turning fragmented journeys into coherent, comparable maps that guide product design, service improvement, and experience differentiation.

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Summary

Understanding the “Why” in Customer Experience: Journey Mapping Meets Jobs to be Done by Stephen Wunker, Charlotte Desprat, and Conor Fitzpatrick demonstrates how combining Journey Mapping with Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) turns descriptive customer experiences into strategic roadmaps for innovation. The paper argues that most journey maps fail because they capture what people do, not why they do it. By layering JTBD—specifically motivations, contexts, and emotional drivers—onto customer journeys, organizations can design experiences that solve real problems, reveal unmet needs, and create offerings that resonate deeply across diverse user segments.

WORKING PAPER

Reveal the ‘Why’ Behind the Customer Journey

Make your customer journey maps more powerful with Jobs to be Done.

Traditional journey maps show what customers do. But they often miss why customers take those steps—their underlying goals, motivations, and frustrations. That’s where Jobs to be Done adds transformative value.

By integrating Jobs to be Done into journey mapping, organizations move beyond surface-level touchpoints. You start to uncover unmet needs, emotional triggers, and overlooked opportunities for innovation. The result? Journey maps that are more actionable, more strategic, and more aligned with what truly matters to your customers.

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

How Jobs to be Done Elevates Journey Mapping – And How We Can Help

Case in Point: Buying a Car Isn’t Just About Price

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

Customer journey maps were created to improve customer experience and spark innovation. Yet in practice, many fall short. Here's why:

They don’t explain the customer’s motivation.
Most journey maps focus on behaviors—what people do—but skip over the reasons behind those actions.
They oversimplify real-life decisions.
Customer behavior is emotional, nonlinear, and full of trade-offs. Traditional maps often treat users like rational machines.
They become visually cluttered and hard to act on.
Without a guiding structure, maps get bloated with icons and anecdotes, making insights harder to extract.

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

How Jobs to be Done Elevates Journey Mapping – And How We Can Help

Case in Point: Buying a Car Isn’t Just About Price

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

Customer journey maps were created to improve customer experience and spark innovation. Yet in practice, many fall short. Here's why:

They don’t explain the customer’s motivation.
Most journey maps focus on behaviors—what people do—but skip over the reasons behind those actions.
They oversimplify real-life decisions.
Customer behavior is emotional, nonlinear, and full of trade-offs. Traditional maps often treat users like rational machines.
They become visually cluttered and hard to act on.
Without a guiding structure, maps get bloated with icons and anecdotes, making insights harder to extract.

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

How Jobs to be Done Elevates Journey Mapping – And How We Can Help

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

Customer journey maps were created to improve customer experience and spark innovation. Yet in practice, many fall short. Here's why:

They don’t explain the customer’s motivation.
Most journey maps focus on behaviors—what people do—but skip over the reasons behind those actions.
They oversimplify real-life decisions.
Customer behavior is emotional, nonlinear, and full of trade-offs. Traditional maps often treat users like rational machines.
They become visually cluttered and hard to act on.
Without a guiding structure, maps get bloated with icons and anecdotes, making insights harder to extract.

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

How Jobs to be Done Elevates Journey Mapping – And How We Can Help

Case in Point: Buying a Car Isn’t Just About Price

Why Traditional Journey Mapping Isn’t Enough

Customer journey maps were created to improve customer experience and spark innovation. Yet in practice, many fall short. Here's why:

They don’t explain the customer’s motivation.
Most journey maps focus on behaviors—what people do—but skip over the reasons behind those actions.
They oversimplify real-life decisions.
Customer behavior is emotional, nonlinear, and full of trade-offs. Traditional maps often treat users like rational machines.
They become visually cluttered and hard to act on.
Without a guiding structure, maps get bloated with icons and anecdotes, making insights harder to extract.

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About The Authors

Steve Wunker

FOUNDER & GLOBAL LEADER IN JOBS TO BE DONE

Steve pioneered JTBD alongside Clayton Christensen and has led innovation work worldwide. He authored Jobs to Be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation and four other books, and his thinking appears regularly in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and The Financial Times.

WORKING PAPER

Journey Mapping Meets Jobs to be Done

By Steve Wunker, Charlotte Desprat, and Connor Fitzpatrick

Rooting every stage of the journey in customer motivations and contextual drivers to uncover new innovation opportunities.

Capturing emotional and functional Jobs across multiple stakeholders to reflect the complexity of real-world decision-making. 

Turning fragmented journeys into coherent, comparable maps that guide product design, service improvement, and experience differentiation.

Download File