Phantom Dynamics of Service Networks

The customer journey is not a real structure, but a story constructed after the fact.

It gives organizations a sense of control, yet fails to describe how experience, decision-making, and behavior actually emerge.

In reality, organizations do not operate along paths, but within networks – dynamic states in which small changes can trigger delayed, indirect, and unexpected responses. Cause and effect do not progress step by step, but are intertwined within complex systems that traditional service design and CX thinking cannot read.

This book dismantles the assumptions behind customer journey thinking and returns leader-ship from diagrams, metrics, and dashboards back to reality – where organizations actually move, react, and either fail or survive.