If You’ve Never Experienced Your Own Customer Journey, It Shows

There’s something I say to leadership teams all the time, and it usually lands a little uncomfortably:

Not enough companies go through their own customer processes.

And it shows.

You can see it in the messy onboarding.

You can feel it in the clunky handoffs.

You can hear it in the awkward renewal conversations.

Most of the time, customers are polite about it. But they notice. They always notice.

When I work with companies on Customer Success strategy and operations, one of the first things I do is go through their experience as if I were a customer. Not as a consultant. Not as an observer. As a participant.

I sign up. I read the emails. I attend the meetings. I follow the steps. I respond as a real customer would.

And what I find is rarely surprising, but often eye-opening for the teams running those processes.

What It Actually Means to “Go Through Your Own Process”

When I evaluate a customer journey, I don’t just look at documentation or dashboards. I walk through the entire lifecycle.

Onboarding

I read every onboarding email. I watch the videos. I try to configure the product. I click the links. I follow the instructions exactly as a customer would. If something is confusing, slow, or redundant, I experience it firsthand.

Business reviews and ongoing engagement

I help coordinate the logistics. I sit in on prep calls. I attend the QBR or EBR. I read the follow-up notes. I pay attention to what feels valuable and what feels like a status update disguised as strategy.

Renewals

I track the communication cadence. I read the contracts. I join the calls. And yes, I negotiate. Hard. Because many customers do. It’s one of the best ways to understand how prepared your team really is for that moment.

This exercise almost always reveals the same core issues. Not because teams don’t care. But because processes get built once and then left alone for far too long.

Where Most Customer Processes Go Off Track

After doing this across dozens of companies, a few patterns show up again and again.

1. Processes are built once and rarely revisited

Many teams design workflows, automations, and templates during a period of growth or transition. Then they move on. Six months later, the business has evolved, the product has changed, and the customer base looks different. But the process? It’s exactly the same.

If you haven’t revisited your onboarding, engagement, or renewal workflows in the last six months, there’s a strong chance they no longer reflect how your business actually operates or what your customers need.

Optimization should be ongoing. Not a once-a-year exercise.

2. Internal efficiency wins over customer experience

This one is harder to admit, but easy to spot.

Many processes are optimized for internal convenience rather than customer value. They make sense inside the organization. They follow the structure of your CRM, your automation platform, or your reporting cadence. But they don’t always align with how customers actually work.

Customers don’t care about your internal stages or systems. They care about outcomes, timing, and relevance. When a process feels rigid or misaligned, it’s often because it was designed around internal workflows first and the customer experience second.

3. Systems are driving strategy

Technology can be incredibly helpful. But it can also become a crutch.

Teams buy platforms with built-in templates and assume those templates will solve deeper operational issues. They implement workflows based on what the tool makes easy rather than what the strategy requires.

The reality is that most systems are generic by design. They are meant to support your strategy, not define it. If your tools are dictating how you engage customers, there’s a good chance your process is being shaped by software limitations rather than business intent.

Why This Matters More Than Most Teams Realize

When processes feel disjointed or outdated, customers feel it immediately. It shows up as confusion during onboarding, disengagement during the lifecycle, and friction at renewal. Over time, those small moments compound into larger issues: slower adoption, weaker relationships, and lower retention.

The fix isn’t always a major overhaul. Often, it starts with awareness.

When leaders and operators experience their own journey end-to-end, they see the gaps. They notice the redundancies. They feel the friction. And once they feel it, they’re far more motivated to fix it.

How to Start

If you’re a Customer Success leader or operator, here’s a simple exercise:

Go through your own onboarding as if you were a new customer.

Attend a business review as a participant, not just a host.

Review your renewal communications from start to finish.

Take notes. Pay attention to what feels clear, what feels repetitive, and what feels unnecessary.

If you don’t have the time or objectivity to do this internally, bring in someone external to run the process as a customer and document the experience. An outside perspective often surfaces things internal teams have normalized.

Either way, the goal is the same: align your processes with the experience you want customers to have, not just the workflow you want internally.

Customer Success is built on consistency, clarity, and trust. Those things don’t come from a process that was designed once and left untouched. They come from continuous refinement and a willingness to experience what your customers experience.

So here’s the question worth asking:

When was the last time you went through your own customer journey from start to finish and made changes based on what you learned?