Stop Scaling Functions, Start Scaling the Journey with Sarah Clearwater

About this episode

Sarah Clearwater discusses the importance of customer journey mapping and how it can improve business growth by aligning team priorities.

Why are your teams busy, but the business isn't growing the way it should? Sarah Clearwater, founder of Reframer and customer experience strategist, explains how siloed KPIs create invisible dysfunction — marketing optimises for volume, sales for conversion, product for features, and engineering for delivery — while nobody is optimising for the customer journey as a whole. In this episode, we explore how customer journey mapping gives technology leaders a shared language for prioritisation, why engineers benefit from seeing how their work connects to real customer value, what "experience debt" is and why it might be the best way to get your executive team to care about tech debt, and how AI agents are changing journey design. Try it yourself: download Sarah's free 90-minute journey mapping template at https://www.reframr.co.nz/90minutemap This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed .

People in this episode

Guest: Sarah Clearwater

Topics covered

• customer journey mapping
• siloed KPIs
• experience debt
• AI agents
• technology leadership

Keywords

• customer experience
• journey mapping
• siloed KPIs
• experience debt
• AI in journey design

Sponsors

Wires Uncrossed

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Reframer

More episodes of Tech Waka Podcast

• The Search Is the Job: What Nobody Tells You About Exec Roles in NZ · June 1, 2026 · 29 min
• What If the Agent Gets Promoted? Joekub Joins Tech Waka · May 17, 2026 · 25 min
• "Quit If Your CEO Isn't Using AI" with John-D Trask · April 13, 2026 · 40 min
• 27% More Productive or Just Working Weekends? The Real Impact of AI on Dev Teams with Lauren Peate · March 30, 2026 · 38 min
• What CTOs Need Help With - with Daniel Walters · March 16, 2026 · 33 min
• Are NZ leaders underrated? with Paul Meyrick and Stuart Collins · February 1, 2026 · 34 min