How do you use customer journey mapping to identify and eliminate waste in lean teams?

Based on my experience, in order to use customer journey mapping to identify and eliminate waste 1 Identify different customer personas and their unique needs preference behaviors 2 Identify all touchpoints and interaction customer have with product service or organization 3 Document customer perspective, thoughts pain-point at each touch point 4 Examine all steps in customer journey map to identify delays bottle neck and inefficient processes 5 Find out activities which do not contribute to improve customer experience or deliver value 6 Prioritize waste that directly impact customer satisfaction 7 Analyze value stream to identify opportunities to reduce cycle time and improve flow Define KPI and monitor impact on customer experience

Customer journey mapping expands the value stream beyond the walls of the organization. It creates opportunities to define what is of value to the customer during the life-cycle of the product beyond the purchasing decision. This is a great way to improve a product and its value stream in a more global context.

Mapping the customer journey is an important tool to identify and eliminate waste in processes. By visualizing and understanding all the steps a customer takes, form initiation to completion of their interaction with the company, areas of waste or non-value-added activities can be identified. This allows for prioritizing and implementing improvements focused on optimizing the customer experience and related processes, resulting in increased efficiency and customer satisfaction.

In Lean Thinking, customer journey mapping is a customer-centric tool that charts a customer's interactions with a product or service from their perspective. It focuses on understanding and improving the customer experience. The map uses qualitative data like feedback and emotions to identify areas of value and waste, aligning with Lean goals of enhancing customer value and eliminating inefficiencies.

Many folks naturally love the way they do things and the products they create. Sometimes, though, they might miss seeing things from the customer's point of view. This is something every company can relate to. It's a chance for companies to improve by taking a fresh look at both their products and processes. By cutting out unnecessary steps that don't really matter to customers, they can make things better. It's a time for businesses to rethink what they're passionate about.

Customer journey mapping is an invaluable tool for lean teams striving for operational excellence. By visualizing and understanding every touchpoint a customer has with a product or service, lean teams can identify areas of improvement, eliminate inefficiencies, and optimize processes to enhance overall customer satisfaction. This mapping technique allows teams to empathize with customers, viewing interactions from their perspective and uncovering pain points or gaps in the user experience. For lean methodologies focused on minimizing waste and maximizing value, customer journey mapping serves as a compass, guiding teams to allocate resources effectively and prioritize initiatives that directly impact customer satisfaction.

CJ is relevant for lean teams to clarify value from customer perspective, It does it through direct insights, ensuring products/services are tailored to actual needs: take the case of an online clothing store adjusting inventory based on customer preferences. This approach eliminates waste and optimizes the value stream by removing non-value-adding steps. It also aids in implementing a pull system, responding to real-time customer demand rather than pushing excess products, much like a demand-driven inventory model in retail. It also guides teams towards perfection by continuously identifying and addressing gaps in the customer journey, ensuring constant improvement based on feedback and satisfaction, echoing Lean's customer-centricity.

To create a customer journey map, it's important to bring in several different stakeholders. Anyone team that is part of the process can contribute data and experience that will help making the CJM more complete. Once it is built, then it needs to be shared with customers who can add, change, complete what is already documented. The customer journey map is a great tool to capture the voice of the customer, understand how they feel throughout this journey and how they are impacted by the artefacts and interactions that they have with the organization. Once we understand all of that, we can then look at how to improve the steps, the artefacts, and the interactions to create a smoother path for our clients.

il est indispensable de cartographier le parcours client de manière précise et exhaustive. C'est là que les swimlanes entrent en jeu.Les swimlanes sont un outil visuel puissant qui permet de représenter les différentes étapes du parcours client ainsi que les responsabilités et les actions des différentes parties prenantes impliquées. En organisant les processus de manière horizontale et les r?les de manière verticale, les swimlanes offrent une vue claire et structurée du parcours client, facilitant ainsi l'identification des points de friction et des opportunités d'amélioration

To create a journey map, include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned responsibilities in each phase. Customize the design with images, colors and various shapes to better visualize actions, emotions and transitions. A current state map will help you identify gaps in the experience, and collaborators can comment in any colborative platform (Miro, Mural,Lucidchart, etc) to point out areas for improvement.

Since the CJM is focused on the customers' perspective, it can help us understood all the steps that the customer has to go through to engage with our company and the emotions that it generates. From there, we can re-evaluate the steps and see how we can streamline them and even remove them completely. In addition to the tools mentioned, asking for feedback from the customer in these steps can also yield great ideas on how to improve them. When we work on CJM for a service, emotions then to be very important, and understanding how we can help the customer feel better or less stress, can be a game changer. Poke-Yoke and 5S can be applied as much on the employee than the customer side. It needs to be easy to follow and self-explanatory.

Customer journey mapping in lean management identifies and eliminates waste by pinpointing inefficiencies in the customer's experience. It highlights pain points, comparing the current journey with the ideal state, revealing defects, overproduction, and delays. Prioritizing these issues for impact and feasibility guides targeted improvements. Implementing lean tools like 5S, kaizen, or kanban addresses these areas, enhancing processes. Continuously monitoring outcomes, especially customer satisfaction and loyalty, ensures the elimination of waste and alignment with customer-centric values, key in lean philosophy.

Customer journey mapping nurtures a customer-focused culture by engaging team members in mapping and analyzing the customer experience, fostering ownership and empathy. Involving customers in this process builds trust and ensures a genuine customer perspective. Communicating these maps aligns the team with the organization's customer-centric goals. Empowering team members to implement improvements encourages proactive problem-solving and innovation. Celebrating successes reinforces the importance of customer focus, motivating ongoing learning and development. This approach embeds customer-centricity into the team’s ethos, enhancing both customer satisfaction and team morale.

Consider integrating analytics tools into customer journey mapping for more precision. For instance, using behavior flow analysis from tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar can identify drop-off points. These insights can be mapped to specific stages in the customer journey to pinpoint where customers disengage. Similarly, employing A/B testing, possibly through platforms like Optimizely or VWO, at various touchpoints helps in optimizing interactions based on user responses. Directly feeding these data-driven insights into the journey map enhances the identification of process inefficiencies and waste, leading to more effective improvements.