Roshini Vijayan

Methodologies like Six Sigma, Agile or Design Thinking always helps the project and program teams to focus on customer priorities and needs.  When targeting potential customers during the design thinking process, it's important to figure out the customer journey since facts and Data at times may miss to reveal the actual behavior, expectation, or frustrations of a customer. Customer Journey Map is of the best story telling tools that can trace all the interactions of the customer with respect to the product/ service offered.
A customer journey map is a very simple idea or a research-based tool which examines the story of how a customer relates to the, brand or product or business over time and illustrates the steps the customer(s) go through in engaging with your organization. It could be sketching the customer interaction whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, or a service, or any combination. It is widely used design teams use to reveal typical customer experiences over time and visualize the many dimensions and factors involved and see how customer experiences meet customer’s expectation and find areas where design improvements are required. Customer journey maps however can be helpful beyond the UX design and marketing teams by helping to facilitate a common business understanding of how every customer should be treated across all sales, logistics, distribution, care or channels which in turn can help break down organizational silos and perceptions  and start a process of wider customer-focused communication in a business. The tool can also help educate stakeholders as to what customers perceive when they interact with the business, explore what customers think, feel, see, hear and do and also raise some interesting “what ifs” and the possible scenarios to them.
For creating the customer journey the team usually identifies steps a potential customer (preferably, in the form of a concrete persona) experiences before, during, and after using a product or service. It is important to create a description of the target person using the Persona method, and supplement it with an empathy map.  The team members also examine all possible tasks and questions including the what if scenarios and how product/ service design meets /fails customer needs and ensures to include the tasks and subtasks including the timeline. The goal of a customer journey map is provide an understanding of how the customer experience develops over time and depict it in a way everyone in the organization can understand and work towards improvements and allows to identify  all possible problems and improve the design so it’s more likely to exceed customers’ expectations across all touchpoints.
Customer Journey Map Components 
1. User Persona Identification  
2. Timescale – Defined journey period with selected areas from awareness to conversion and beyond (1-week etc)
3. What if Scenarios – the context and sequence of events in which a user/customer must achieve a goal (e.g., a user wants to buy a ticket from Web), from first actions (problem identification) to last actions (e.g., subscription renewal).
4. Touchpoints – what customers do while interacting and how they do it.
5. Channels – where they perform actions .
6. Thoughts and feelings -what the customer thinks and feels at each touchpoint (Empathy Map can help bring clarity)
 
Steps for Customer Journey Map Creation :
1. Business Goal for the Customer Journey Map / Purpose – The team is required to understand who will use your map and what user experience it will address.
2. Research – Use customer research to determine customer experiences at all touchpoints for user personas identified
3. Align with analytical/statistical data and  anecdotal evidence to understand customer expectation  e.g., customer interviews, surveys, social media listening and competitive intelligence.
4. Map Touchpoints and Channels – List customer touchpoints (e.g., pay a bill) and channels (e.g., online)
5. Make an empathy map – helps to understand what the customer does, thinks, feels, says, hears, etc in each scenario , determine his/her needs and how he/she feels throughout the experience. Understand the source of frustration
6. Sketch the Journey – Sketch or put together all of the above (touchpoints, timescale, empathy map output, new ideas, etc.) this will depict the  customer’s course of motion through touchpoints and channels across the timescale, including his/her feelings at every touchpoint.
7. Iterate and Refine – Revise and transform your map to best depict the ideal customer journey.
8. Share with Stakeholders – Ensure all stakeholders have your map, understand it and appreciate how its use will bring beneficial changes to customers and across the organization.
 
Online Shopping Company trying to Understand the online purchase experience of the customers during festive season
 
1.User Persona Identification – Online Shopping User – retailer or wholesaler etc.
2.Business Goal for the Customer Journey Map -  Online Shopping Company trying to Understand the online purchase experience of the customers during festive season
3.Research – Online Purchaser trying to access site and purchase a product 
4.Align with analytical/statistical data and  anecdotal evidence to understand customer expectation 
E.g., Gather and analyse data on Page Hit Rates/ Sales volume turn over , Payment failures etc, competitor turnover , search data basis Facebook/ Instagram suggestions erc,, Payment Gateway failure data etc)
5.Map Touchpoints and Channels – List customer touchpoints (e.g., pay a bill) and channels (e.g., Mobile, Web online etc)
6.Make an empathy map – helps to understand what the customer does, thinks, feels, says, hears, etc in a given scenario Then, determine his/her needs and how he/she feels throughout the experience. Understand the source of frustration
7.Sketch the Journey – Sketch or put together all of the above (touchpoints, timescale, empathy map output, new ideas, etc.) this will depict the  customer’s course of motion through touchpoints and channels across the timescale, including his/her feelings at every touchpoint.
8. Iterate and Refine and Share with Stakeholders for driving improvements across the organization.
 
Thus customer journey map is a very insightful way through which businesses steps into their customers' shoes to gain a view of product/ brand performance from  customer's perspective. Once the business gets insight from customer pain or joy points, they can work on how to keep working on improving the customer experience continuously.
 
 
 
 

LSS Project success depends largely on how change management is driven at each stage and how the improvements are sustained to drive continuous improvement and as as a leader for driving the successful closer of LSS projects in an organization effective change management is key to success of the projects.
Kotter's guidelines effective change management through 8 steps including: Creating a sense of urgency, Forming powerful guiding coalitions, Developing a vision and a strategy , Communicating the vision, Removing obstacles and empowering employees for action, Creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and Strengthening change by anchoring change in the culture and to stick to it can be integrated at all of DMAIC stages. 
The integration of Change Management model at every stage ensures alignment to business goals and to ensure sustained behavior change through the application of a structured change management approach across phases .Kotter’s 8 step model can be explained with the help of the illustration given below 
 
 
   
DMAIC
KOTTER
 
How LSS CM can be success be achieved through integration of the approaches
DEFINE PHASE
 
Define – Scoping
 
1.      Highlight the Urgency
 
Understand the need for Change which makes the need for change pressing to the user to focus and lessen the inertia to resist
 
Define- Team Building
2.      Forming Powerful Guiding Coalitions
Identifying the effective change leaders in your organizations and the key stakeholders, requesting their involvement and commitment
 
Define – Vision
3.      Developing Vision and Strategy
Ensure that the change leaders can describe the vision effectively for the people to easily understand and follow (clarity in Vision to team)
MEASURE & ANALYSE
Measure – Set Goals
4.      Communicate and Hight Light Urgency basis current state and Set Performance Goals basis current baseline
Focus on constant communication to create urgency on where we stand against the set goal
Analyze
Communicate for Buy in ( 2 way for insights)
Communicate focus areas and priorities constantly
IMPLEMENTATION
Implementation
4.      Communicate/ Share Vision to people involved
Communicate change in vision very often powerfully &convincingly.
Connect the vision with all the crucial aspects like performance reviews, training, etc.
Handle people concerns /issues
5.      Removing obstacles
Encourage to act
Act as Scrum master facilitating to remove impediments
6.      Empowering employees for action
Enable people to drive change and act
7.      Creating short-term wins
Pick up Quick wins and Celebrate
CONTROL
8.      Anchoring Change
Create successful stories related to change initiatives on every given opportunity.
Ensure SUSTAINING of the change by making it integral part of the organization culture