#23: Jim Kalbach on Journey Mapping, Jobs To Be Done, And The Intersection Of Customer Success And UX

About this episode

Jim Kalbach discusses journey mapping, customer needs, and the impact of AI on UX.

In this episode of the UX Fika podcast, I sit down with Jim Kalbach, author of several books including Mapping Experiences and The Jobs To Be Done Playbook , Collaborative Intelligence. Jim is also the Chief Evangelist at Mural and has spent more than two decades shaping how teams understand human experiences, uncover customer needs, and collaborate more meaningfully. We talk about the evolution of journey mapping, from an obscure UX technique to a must-have tool that leaders now ask for, and why the real value isn’t in the beautiful deliverable, but in the conversations, alignment, and sensemaking that happen because of it. Jim explains why mapping is a diagnostic tool, a catalyst, and increasingly a survival skill for organisations navigating relentless change and the realities of AI. We dive into how AI and journey mapping now inform each other: how AI helps us see patterns in huge datasets, and why understanding human experience has never been more essential as people land “in the middle” of journeys through search, social, and now LLMs. We also talk about Jobs To Be Done, how to separate customer needs from your solution, and why language and specificity matter so much when…

People in this episode

Host: Anna Dahlström

Guest: Jim Kalbach

Topics covered

• journey mapping
• customer success
• Jobs To Be Done
• AI in UX
• human experience
• customer needs

Keywords

• journey mapping
• customer success
• Jobs To Be Done
• AI
• human experience
• customer needs
• alignment
• sensemaking

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Mural

Books & works: Mapping Experiences, The Jobs To Be Done Playbook, Collaborative Intelligence

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