Our Origin Story
Several years ago Mark and Jes, despite living on opposite sides of the world - Auckland and Boston, realized that they both worked in the CX discipline where a powerful connection was growing. They saw an opportunity to bring together their work in the two sides of Customer Experience - People and Technology - into a new business with a unique approach.
Mark had a history of building software to analyze customer behavior. Helping companies optimize customer engagement driven by this analysis led him to the importance of customer journeys. Mark was a founder and executive at three high-growth technology businesses, Quadstone, Portrait Software, and Kitewheel, all of which had successful exits through acquisition by public companies.
Jes has years of experience in people, culture and customer experience consulting, having been a Global Programme Director with TMI, a Partner at On-Brand Partners in New Zealand, and an accredited expert in Branded Customer Service. Jes has a speciality in supporting global clients define their brand promise and behaviors and then empower their people to deliver to that promise for customers.
At the start of the 2020s Mark and Jes realized that as more companies moved to a subscription business model the importance of their connected customer experiences was growing - indeed the most successful companies would be those that delivered the most memorable and powerful experiences. This is where the world of Brand Promise meets Experience Delivery - and so they founded the Journey-Smiths business to bring the two aspects of our expertise together.
While Mark completed the sale of Kitewheel and a successful embedding into CSG, Jes got to work building out the leadership and culture assets for the business based in New Zealand. Starting in late 2024 Mark then launched the US side of the business, focused on aligning data and technology assets to people and leadership strategies to deliver the best in Branded Customer Experience solutions.