Neal Halverson

Neal Halverson

Neal Halverson

Customer Journey Mapping

at Armstrong

Design Research · Facilitation

Design Research · Facilitation

When a new CEO arrived at Armstrong with a mandate to take an outside-in perspective on customers, it created an opportunity to put strategic design thinking into practice. After evaluating a range of frameworks, the team settled on customer journey mapping — a visual alignment tool that brings internal stakeholders together to understand the steps a customer takes while interacting with an organisation. The map surfaces pain points, moments of delight, and opportunities to create greater value — and can be extended to include the employee experience that ultimately underpins everything the customer sees.

The connection between customer experience and employee experience sits at the heart of journey mapping. What customers see is only the surface — below the waterline lies the internal processes, teams, tools, and pain points that ultimately shape every interaction. Mapping both layers together was essential to understanding where Armstrong could create the most meaningful change.


The connection between customer experience and employee experience sits at the heart of journey mapping. What customers see is only the surface — below the waterline lies the internal processes, teams, tools, and pain points that ultimately shape every interaction. Mapping both layers together was essential to understanding where Armstrong could create the most meaningful change.


Scoping the work


The project team brought together an executive board product director, two engineers, a marketing director and manager, a sales manager, and myself as design thinking facilitator. From the outset, the CEO attended the first workshop and made clear he was sponsoring the project — a signal that set the tone for the weeks ahead. To define our focus, the group mapped out the key value exchanges in Armstrong's orbit, identifying the customers and influencers the business interacts with. From that discussion, we agreed to focus on Controls Contractors — a customer segment not currently reached directly by Armstrong, but critical to growing the Optimization and Automation business.

Scoping the work


The project team brought together an executive board product director, two engineers, a marketing director and manager, a sales manager, and myself as design thinking facilitator. From the outset, the CEO attended the first workshop and made clear he was sponsoring the project — a signal that set the tone for the weeks ahead. To define our focus, the group mapped out the key value exchanges in Armstrong's orbit, identifying the customers and influencers the business interacts with. From that discussion, we agreed to focus on Controls Contractors — a customer segment not currently reached directly by Armstrong, but critical to growing the Optimization and Automation business.

Building the map

With the scope agreed, the team began interviewing Controls Contractors to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Recruiting proved harder than expected — these are busy professionals, rarely in one place for long. The breakthrough came through Facebook groups dedicated to building controls, where the offer of a gift certificate brought in a full complement of ten participants within a month. Interviews were recorded on Teams, then edited down to digestible highlight reels the group could analyse together — a process that kept executives and engineers equally engaged.

The workshop

With a digital map in hand, the team built a large physical version and hosted a workshop at Armstrong's head office. Stakeholders who hadn't been part of the project were invited to get close, study the map, and discuss what stood out as moments of truth — points in the Controls Contractor's journey where Armstrong could meaningfully intervene. The session generated shared empathy for the customer and real alignment on where to focus next.

Prioritizing activities

Following the workshop, the group brainstormed a range of project ideas and placed them on an importance/feasibility matrix. Voting surfaced two clear winners — a seminar to build internal confidence in the Optimization and Automation offering, and a technical training event to grow the network of experts who could service the technology in the field. Both were grounded directly in what Controls Contractors told us they needed.

Prototyping the future

To make the proposed projects tangible, the team created storyboards illustrating what each event could look and feel like. Sketching out scenes — including a mid-seminar happy hour where participants discuss ideas in front of large sheets of paper with markers — transformed abstract project ideas into something people could emotionally respond to. For one regional sales manager who had never experienced a working process like this, seeing the storyboard made the whole project suddenly real.