What Do Journey Managers Actually Do? Responsibilities and Essential Skills
What Do Journey Managers Actually Do? Responsibilities and Essential Skills
What Do Journey Managers Actually Do? Responsibilities and Essential Skills
Apr 14, 2025
I reviewed a dozen Journey Manager job listings for a closer look at how organizations are defining this role.
As companies increasingly recognize the limitations of traditional product-centric design, many are beginning to adopt journey management as a way to enhance their overall customer experience. This shift towards a journey-centric approach is not just a change in mindset; it's an operational evolution. Organizations are investing in new resources, reorganizing existing teams, and developing playbooks to effectively manage the diverse priorities of various teams under a unified vision.
This transformation highlights the growing necessity for a specific role: the Journey Manager. As the focal point for design shifts to customer journeys, the Journey Manager is responsible for owning the long-term strategy for one or multiple customer journeys and working to improve performance for both customers and the business. The Journey Manager is to the journey as the product manager is to a product.
Journey Manager Responsibilities
To understand the typical responsibilities of a Journey Manager, I evaluated 12 Journey Manager job descriptions from various job-search sites such as LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. All 12 job openings came from companies in the finance, insurance, and software industries, spanning locations including the United States, France, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and the Netherlands. From this analysis, five key themes emerged:
Data Analysis and Insights
Most job descriptions emphasized the need for strong data analytics capabilities to identify pain points within customer journeys. This includes conducting analyses, leveraging digital analytics tools, and employing A/B testing strategies to refine and optimize the customer experience.
Several job descriptions indicated a mature journey analytics approach requiring the Journey Manager to collaborate with dedicated analytics and insights teams to define audience segmentation and develop predictive models for targeted personalization throughout the journey.
Although most of the analysis responsibilities were focused on quantitative data analysis, several jobs also emphasized the analysis of qualitative insights as part of the role.
Establishing Performance KPIs and Reporting
Journey Managers are tasked with establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to benchmark and actively monitor journey performance. They are responsible for developing reporting frameworks that convey performance metrics, trend analyses, and recommendations for performance optimization.
3. Identifying and Resolving Friction Points
The job descriptions outlined the need for continuous assessment of journey insights to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, while also implementing proposed changes. Several roles specifically called for more advanced data analysis to develop audience segmentation and personalization strategies using first-party data.
Cross-Department Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
Effective collaboration is crucial for a Journey Manager. All job descriptions stressed the importance of working closely with various teams (e.g., business, marketing, loyalty, digital, and tech) to align on coordinated improvement strategies. Managing relationships with stakeholders across departments is also a critical. Journey Managers are tasked with advocating for customer-centric solutions and facilitating collaboration for project execution.
Strategic Oversight
Every job description noted the importance of owning and leading journey improvement initiatives. This includes ensuring journey enhancements align with broader business goals, setting objectives, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and managing the long-term vision and roadmap.
Sample Job Description
Below is a representative job summary from one of the jobs analyzed that shows the granularity of the tasks and responsibilities across the themes outlined above.
Job Summary
This position owns multiple customer journey areas end-to-end and holds decision authority for their performance. The role leads initiatives to enhance journey effectiveness and customer satisfaction by applying human-centered design principles. The position manages collaborative relationships with stakeholders, including project teams and senior and executive leadership, to ensure implementation of journey strategies that align with broader business objectives. The role is an individual contributor who operates with significant autonomy while leveraging broad expertise to deliver customer journey initiatives across functions.
Responsibilities
Reviews end-to-end customer journeys to analyze behaviors, motivations, and pain points. Identifies customer needs and opportunities for improvement.
Leads creation of journey maps for complex to highly complex journeys
Applies human-centered design principles to propose solutions that address customer needs.
Documents customer journey information to support optimization efforts and ensure consistency across multiple journeys and areas while promoting best practices.
Applies broad expertise of customer journeys and process improvement to implement optimizations at scale across functional groups.
Analyzes and synthesizes customer feedback to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
Leads processes to intake, act on, and synthesize feedback to accurately reflect the voice of the customer.
Aggregates and prioritizes data to identify large scale opportunities and inform decision making for customer experience improvements.
Transforms insights into actionable recommendations for senior stakeholders and leadership to shape customer experience roadmaps and strategies.
Leads projects to improve customer experiences by defining customer needs and recommending process improvements across multiple journey areas.
Develops cost-benefit analyses to assess the impact of improvements and provides insights to sustain project momentum.
Recognizes project, program, or enterprise integration points and collaborates with stakeholders to ensure alignment.
Manages stakeholder relationships across functions to support objectives, secure support and resources, and drive project execution.
Monitors and measures the quality of customer journeys using KPIs, OKRs, NPS and other performance metrics.
Contributes to development of performance metrics.
Performs comprehensive reporting on journey performance to provide actionable insights for stakeholders, senior leadership, and executive leadership.
Strategically aligns improvement efforts with broader business objectives to address inefficiencies, enhance customer experience, and achieve key performance targets.
Acts as a subject matter specialist and decision authority to influence and shape optimization efforts through strong journey ownership practices.
Helps stakeholders understand the value of customer experience improvements and champion the adoption of customer customer-centric approaches.
Communicates and presents with clarity, poise, and tactical and strategic relevance
Variability of Jobs Analyzed
While there were overarching themes across all job descriptions, there was noticeable variability as well. This reflects the variability in how organizations interpret the purpose of journey-management. Perspectives on journey management differ, with some focusing heavily on conversion rate optimization, while others prioritize emphasizing user-centered design, and some that balance various objectives. Notable variants of Journey Manager roles include:
Sales-Focused Roles
Some job descriptions were distinctly more sales-oriented than others, placing a strong emphasis on defining and executing sales strategies across digital channels, optimizing lead generation, and removing friction points in customer acquisition journeys to increase conversion.
Customer Experience and Engagement Focus
In contrast, other roles focused on understanding customer needs and enhancing customer experience rather than directly driving sales. These positions emphasized mapping customer journeys, identifying pain points, and applying human-centered design principles to proposed solutions.
Quantitative Analysis and Personalization
As previously noted, several job descriptions stressed quantitative data analysis to drive targeted personalization and automation strategies.
Recruiting Candidates: Key Skills and Qualifications
Let's look at this role from another perspective, in terms of essential skills candidates need to be successful in this role.
I evaluated the qualifications organizations outlined for applicants in each job description. From this, along with my perspectives from working with organizations implementing journey management, I've identified 6 key skills that are essential for successful Journey Managers. Although some of these skills closely reflect the job responsibilities outlined above, there are some additional skills worth noting that aren’t explicitly clear when looking at responsibilities alone.
Data Analysis
Strong analytical abilities are crucial for drawing meaningful conclusions, enabling Journey Managers to identify trends and develop effective optimization strategies. Analytical skills are also vital for tracking key performance indicators, forecasting the ROI of recommended improvements, and measuring the outcomes of completed initiatives for reporting purposes.
Some roles outlined the need for proficiency in analytical tools (e.g., SQL, Tableau, Power BI) and familiarity with journey mapping tools and Customer Data Platforms.
Stakeholder Management
Journey Managers must work with various parts of the organization such as marketing, product development, design, and operations to improve both the front-stage experience and back-stage processes that create the customer journey. Proven skills in managing relationships with key stakeholders across various departments are necessary to facilitate strategic alignment and coordinated execution.
Project Management
Strong project management skills are essential for coordinating tasks, managing timelines, and ensuring the successful completion of initiatives.
Strategic Oversight
Candidates must demonstrate the ability to translate overarching business objectives into actionable strategies for journey optimization. This includes developing a strategic vision, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing, and sequencing initiatives.
Communication and Storytelling
Journey Managers must effectively communicate technical and analytical concepts into business terms to inform and influence decision-making. With regular reporting of KPIs being a key responsibility of Journey Managers, presenting analytics in concise and understandable format is critical.
User-Centered Design
A solid understanding of user-centered design principles is important for identifying customer needs and proposing effective solutions.
Conclusion
The Journey Manager role is becoming more important as companies shift from focusing on individual products to designing around the full customer journey. As this role becomes more in demand, organizations need to get on the same page about what journey management means for them—and what skills are needed to make it work.
As companies increasingly recognize the limitations of traditional product-centric design, many are beginning to adopt journey management as a way to enhance their overall customer experience. This shift towards a journey-centric approach is not just a change in mindset; it's an operational evolution. Organizations are investing in new resources, reorganizing existing teams, and developing playbooks to effectively manage the diverse priorities of various teams under a unified vision.
This transformation highlights the growing necessity for a specific role: the Journey Manager. As the focal point for design shifts to customer journeys, the Journey Manager is responsible for owning the long-term strategy for one or multiple customer journeys and working to improve performance for both customers and the business. The Journey Manager is to the journey as the product manager is to a product.
Journey Manager Responsibilities
To understand the typical responsibilities of a Journey Manager, I evaluated 12 Journey Manager job descriptions from various job-search sites such as LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. All 12 job openings came from companies in the finance, insurance, and software industries, spanning locations including the United States, France, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and the Netherlands. From this analysis, five key themes emerged:
Data Analysis and Insights
Most job descriptions emphasized the need for strong data analytics capabilities to identify pain points within customer journeys. This includes conducting analyses, leveraging digital analytics tools, and employing A/B testing strategies to refine and optimize the customer experience.
Several job descriptions indicated a mature journey analytics approach requiring the Journey Manager to collaborate with dedicated analytics and insights teams to define audience segmentation and develop predictive models for targeted personalization throughout the journey.
Although most of the analysis responsibilities were focused on quantitative data analysis, several jobs also emphasized the analysis of qualitative insights as part of the role.
Establishing Performance KPIs and Reporting
Journey Managers are tasked with establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to benchmark and actively monitor journey performance. They are responsible for developing reporting frameworks that convey performance metrics, trend analyses, and recommendations for performance optimization.
3. Identifying and Resolving Friction Points
The job descriptions outlined the need for continuous assessment of journey insights to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, while also implementing proposed changes. Several roles specifically called for more advanced data analysis to develop audience segmentation and personalization strategies using first-party data.
Cross-Department Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
Effective collaboration is crucial for a Journey Manager. All job descriptions stressed the importance of working closely with various teams (e.g., business, marketing, loyalty, digital, and tech) to align on coordinated improvement strategies. Managing relationships with stakeholders across departments is also a critical. Journey Managers are tasked with advocating for customer-centric solutions and facilitating collaboration for project execution.
Strategic Oversight
Every job description noted the importance of owning and leading journey improvement initiatives. This includes ensuring journey enhancements align with broader business goals, setting objectives, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and managing the long-term vision and roadmap.
Sample Job Description
Below is a representative job summary from one of the jobs analyzed that shows the granularity of the tasks and responsibilities across the themes outlined above.
Job Summary
This position owns multiple customer journey areas end-to-end and holds decision authority for their performance. The role leads initiatives to enhance journey effectiveness and customer satisfaction by applying human-centered design principles. The position manages collaborative relationships with stakeholders, including project teams and senior and executive leadership, to ensure implementation of journey strategies that align with broader business objectives. The role is an individual contributor who operates with significant autonomy while leveraging broad expertise to deliver customer journey initiatives across functions.
Responsibilities
Reviews end-to-end customer journeys to analyze behaviors, motivations, and pain points. Identifies customer needs and opportunities for improvement.
Leads creation of journey maps for complex to highly complex journeys
Applies human-centered design principles to propose solutions that address customer needs.
Documents customer journey information to support optimization efforts and ensure consistency across multiple journeys and areas while promoting best practices.
Applies broad expertise of customer journeys and process improvement to implement optimizations at scale across functional groups.
Analyzes and synthesizes customer feedback to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
Leads processes to intake, act on, and synthesize feedback to accurately reflect the voice of the customer.
Aggregates and prioritizes data to identify large scale opportunities and inform decision making for customer experience improvements.
Transforms insights into actionable recommendations for senior stakeholders and leadership to shape customer experience roadmaps and strategies.
Leads projects to improve customer experiences by defining customer needs and recommending process improvements across multiple journey areas.
Develops cost-benefit analyses to assess the impact of improvements and provides insights to sustain project momentum.
Recognizes project, program, or enterprise integration points and collaborates with stakeholders to ensure alignment.
Manages stakeholder relationships across functions to support objectives, secure support and resources, and drive project execution.
Monitors and measures the quality of customer journeys using KPIs, OKRs, NPS and other performance metrics.
Contributes to development of performance metrics.
Performs comprehensive reporting on journey performance to provide actionable insights for stakeholders, senior leadership, and executive leadership.
Strategically aligns improvement efforts with broader business objectives to address inefficiencies, enhance customer experience, and achieve key performance targets.
Acts as a subject matter specialist and decision authority to influence and shape optimization efforts through strong journey ownership practices.
Helps stakeholders understand the value of customer experience improvements and champion the adoption of customer customer-centric approaches.
Communicates and presents with clarity, poise, and tactical and strategic relevance
Variability of Jobs Analyzed
While there were overarching themes across all job descriptions, there was noticeable variability as well. This reflects the variability in how organizations interpret the purpose of journey-management. Perspectives on journey management differ, with some focusing heavily on conversion rate optimization, while others prioritize emphasizing user-centered design, and some that balance various objectives. Notable variants of Journey Manager roles include:
Sales-Focused Roles
Some job descriptions were distinctly more sales-oriented than others, placing a strong emphasis on defining and executing sales strategies across digital channels, optimizing lead generation, and removing friction points in customer acquisition journeys to increase conversion.
Customer Experience and Engagement Focus
In contrast, other roles focused on understanding customer needs and enhancing customer experience rather than directly driving sales. These positions emphasized mapping customer journeys, identifying pain points, and applying human-centered design principles to proposed solutions.
Quantitative Analysis and Personalization
As previously noted, several job descriptions stressed quantitative data analysis to drive targeted personalization and automation strategies.
Recruiting Candidates: Key Skills and Qualifications
Let's look at this role from another perspective, in terms of essential skills candidates need to be successful in this role.
I evaluated the qualifications organizations outlined for applicants in each job description. From this, along with my perspectives from working with organizations implementing journey management, I've identified 6 key skills that are essential for successful Journey Managers. Although some of these skills closely reflect the job responsibilities outlined above, there are some additional skills worth noting that aren’t explicitly clear when looking at responsibilities alone.
Data Analysis
Strong analytical abilities are crucial for drawing meaningful conclusions, enabling Journey Managers to identify trends and develop effective optimization strategies. Analytical skills are also vital for tracking key performance indicators, forecasting the ROI of recommended improvements, and measuring the outcomes of completed initiatives for reporting purposes.
Some roles outlined the need for proficiency in analytical tools (e.g., SQL, Tableau, Power BI) and familiarity with journey mapping tools and Customer Data Platforms.
Stakeholder Management
Journey Managers must work with various parts of the organization such as marketing, product development, design, and operations to improve both the front-stage experience and back-stage processes that create the customer journey. Proven skills in managing relationships with key stakeholders across various departments are necessary to facilitate strategic alignment and coordinated execution.
Project Management
Strong project management skills are essential for coordinating tasks, managing timelines, and ensuring the successful completion of initiatives.
Strategic Oversight
Candidates must demonstrate the ability to translate overarching business objectives into actionable strategies for journey optimization. This includes developing a strategic vision, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing, and sequencing initiatives.
Communication and Storytelling
Journey Managers must effectively communicate technical and analytical concepts into business terms to inform and influence decision-making. With regular reporting of KPIs being a key responsibility of Journey Managers, presenting analytics in concise and understandable format is critical.
User-Centered Design
A solid understanding of user-centered design principles is important for identifying customer needs and proposing effective solutions.
Conclusion
The Journey Manager role is becoming more important as companies shift from focusing on individual products to designing around the full customer journey. As this role becomes more in demand, organizations need to get on the same page about what journey management means for them—and what skills are needed to make it work.
