The customer journey isn't linear—so why is your experience strategy?

Modern journeys are messy.

They zigzag across devices, get interrupted by life, and meander through emotion just as much as logic. And yet—despite all this complexity—many brands still build experience strategies around linear funnels, step-by-step journeys, and rigid stage-based touchpoints.

At Meridian Thinking, we believe this is a missed opportunity.

Three Things We've Learned from Real Journeys:

1. Customers don’t move in “phases”—they jump in and out of context.

A customer might discover your brand on social media, dig into reviews a month later, and finally convert via a referral. That’s not a funnel—it’s a dance. They follow their own rhythm, not yours.

2. Emotion doesn’t follow a timeline.

What makes an experience memorable often happens outside the neat boxes in a journey map. It's a surprisingly warm welcome. A perfectly timed gesture. A moment of humanity. These aren't stages—they’re inflection points.

3. Great experience strategy anticipates loops, not lines.

People re-enter, repeat, return. They don’t always proceed to the next step—they revisit the last one. When we design CX strategies, we emphasize moments that invite return, encourage exploration, and build narrative coherence, not just conversion.

Define start and end points—but let customers write the in-between.

At Meridian Thinking, we start with behavior, not blueprints. We map emotional arcs, not just touchpoints. We design for messy loops, moments that matter, and movements between needs. 

Each customer interaction is part of an episode—a distinct cluster of activities that fulfills a specific need. Your job isn’t to control the order—it’s to make each episode make sense, however and whenever it's entered.

Rigid journey maps fail fast in the real world. Instead, build a set of flexible, evolving modules based on your customers' jobs to be done. These can be rearranged, revisited, or even skipped depending on the context.

Because if your experience strategy assumes a straight line, you’re not just missing the mark. You’re missing the customer.

Want to explore how to build a non-linear experience that still feels cohesive?Let’s talk.