Most leadership teams today agree that customer experience is critical. Yet many digital customer journey initiatives fail to deliver measurable returns. The problem is rarely technology. It is that organizations automate interactions before they design the journey, and deploy AI before deciding where human judgment truly matters. A successful digital customer journey begins with a simple question: what is the customer trying to achieve at each moment, and what outcome does the business expect in return? When this question is not clearly answered, companies end up optimizing channels instead of decisions, and speed instead of trust. Step 1: Align...