Why every JourneyOps team needs a ProductOps lead to succeed

Sérgio Tavares, ph.D.
Oct 15, 2024
5 min read

Updated: Feb 3

JourneyOps teams spend countless hours mapping, designing, and refining customer journeys to ensure every interaction meets customer needs and aligns with business goals. But here’s the reality: even the best-designed journey can fall flat if decision-makers within product teams aren't paying attention to the problems, opportunities, and solutions identified by JourneyOps.

Enter the ProductOps Lead—the role that ensures the right conversations happen within the product organization to bring JourneyOps insights to the forefront. The ProductOps Lead acts as a critical bridge between the journey’s blueprint and the product organization, making sure that the customer insights from JourneyOps are considered and discussed when product decisions are made. They don’t "bring the journey to life" in a literal sense, but they ensure that the problems and opportunities identified in the journey have a voice in the product roadmap discussions. It’s the ultimate partnership—strategy meets influence.

Why it matters

A customer journey strategy will fail if product teams don’t pay attention to the insights from JourneyOps. A ProductOps Lead ensures that those problems, opportunities, and solutions are brought to the table in product planning discussions. They make sure that decisions made at the highest levels of the product organization align with the customer’s journey and experience.

The roles: JourneyOps Lead vs. ProductOps Lead

Understanding the distinct roles of the JourneyOps Lead and the ProductOps Lead is key to ensuring consistent results. Here’s how each role contributes to the customer journey:

JourneyOps Lead is the architect of the experience

The JourneyOps Lead acts as the architect of the customer experience. They design the overarching journey, mapping every touchpoint, decision point, and interaction that a customer might encounter. Their work involves insight analysis, cross-team collaboration, and ensuring the journey aligns with the company’s strategic goals. In this role, the JourneyOps Lead:

Maps the entire customer journey, identifying key moments that shape customer perceptions.
Designs frameworks and processes that ensure the journey is repeatable and scalable.
Works cross-functionally to align journey insights with the broader company strategy.

But here’s the challenge: the best journey map is useless if the insights and opportunities it identifies are not acknowledged by decision-makers within the product organization.

ProductOps Lead is the articulator of influence

This is where the ProductOps Lead steps in. Their role is to ensure that the priorities and insights uncovered by JourneyOps are on the radar of those making product decisions. The ProductOps Lead ensures the problems, opportunities, and solutions identified in the customer journey are articulated clearly within the product organization. They:

Ensure that JourneyOps insights are brought into product roadmap discussions, so customer problems and opportunities inform the direction of product development.
Advocate for alignment between journey goals and product execution, ensuring that customer pain points are considered during planning.
Act as a liaison between JourneyOps and product teams, ensuring that the voice of the customer is represented in decision-making.

The ProductOps Lead is not responsible for executing the journey, but they make sure that the right conversations happen within product teams. This way, the journey isn’t just designed in a vacuum—it’s actively shaping the priorities and choices within the product organization.

How the ProductOps Lead ensures journey insights are prioritized

1. Customer journeys inform product decisions

The ProductOps Lead ensures that the journey insights developed by JourneyOps are actionable within the product teams. They bring customer pain points, opportunities, and solutions to the attention of the product leadership. By articulating these issues in product planning meetings, they help ensure the customer journey is not just a set of theoretical ideals, but an influential factor in what gets shipped.

Without the ProductOps Lead, there’s a risk that product teams might focus on features or improvements that don’t address the critical issues identified by the customer journey analysis. The ProductOps Lead keeps the customer experience front and center in decision-making, ensuring alignment between journey strategy and product execution.

2. Products reflect journey opportunities

The ProductOps Lead ensures that the product teams are discussing the customer journey’s insights in their roadmap decisions. They make sure the journey isn’t sidelined by internal priorities or feature requests that don’t address customer needs. This role ensures that key journey insights and customer pain points are elevated within the product development process, even if they aren’t directly responsible for the execution.

Think of it like this: the JourneyOps Lead designs the roadmap of the customer journey, while the ProductOps Lead ensures that this roadmap is reflected in the conversations that decide which product features or updates get prioritized. They ensure that the customer journey drives key product decisions, even if they aren't building the product themselves.

3. Feedback loops ensure continuous alignment

The work of the ProductOps Lead doesn’t stop once the product features are chosen. They also help create feedback loops between JourneyOps and the product teams to ensure that the insights from customer data continue to inform product decisions. The ProductOps Lead makes sure there’s a constant flow of information between the customer journey and product priorities, allowing for ongoing alignment between journey insights and product execution.

By facilitating this feedback loop, the ProductOps Lead ensures that the product teams remain agile and responsive to customer needs as they evolve over time.

Why the partnership works

The partnership between the JourneyOps Lead and the ProductOps Lead works because it ensures that every aspect of the customer journey is carefully considered by product teams. Without this partnership, customer journey insights can get lost in the shuffle, and product teams may focus on priorities that don’t align with customer needs.

Think of it like a project where the architect (JourneyOps Lead) designs the plan, but the ProductOps Lead ensures that the builders and decision-makers are paying attention to the architect’s vision. The ProductOps Lead isn’t responsible for constructing the building, but they make sure that the people who are building it know exactly what they’re supposed to build.

Take the example of a major e-commerce company. They initially struggled to connect their customer journey strategy with their product decisions, leading to a disjointed experience where customers’ needs weren’t fully addressed. After introducing a ProductOps Lead, they saw significant improvements. Customer pain points identified in the journey map were now discussed in product planning meetings, leading to better alignment between what customers wanted and what was delivered. As a result, customer satisfaction improved by 15% in just six months.

Key takeaways

Journeys need product teams to pay attention. Without a strong connection between the customer journey and product decision-making, the journey risks being ignored in the product roadmap.
The ProductOps Lead bridges strategy and product influence. They ensure that the customer journey insights from JourneyOps are discussed and considered in product roadmap meetings.
Partnership drives results. The synergy between JourneyOps and the ProductOps Lead ensures that customer journeys influence product decisions, leading to better alignment and customer outcomes.

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