Visualization

Challenge and Selection  The main challenge which arises in solving a problem is defining the exact  problem. If the problem is defined and stated correctly, half the process of  solving problem is done. Most the time the problem is faced after the  business has spend some time in market and its rate of growth is not  increasing and is at constant level. So, to find the root cause and help the  stakeholders grow their business, it is necessary to define an exact  problem. I used visualization as a tool to achieve the understanding of each  aspect among all the members including SME, Stakeholders, account  leads, sometime even a sample of customer before defining of the problem.

I use this, method more often with our customers, clients who focuses on  modifying, improving or modernizing their current business. I used to  journey mapping visualization approach, it is easier to visualize and there is  no better way to understand customers than seeing the world through  their eyes. There are various benefits of using this tool journey mapping  as it bridges the gap between sales, marketing and operations, it gives  better understanding of customers, it builds an emotional connection to  the problem and hence helps to find the real problem as if we are at the  place, identifying the pain points and fill them with effective touchpoints ,  and this also helps in predicting brand success and customer behavior.  Keeping yourself in customers place helps in defining the exact problem  and hence shifts the focus of all the people towards one point and as  result solving of problem is also made easier.

Application  The first step in creating a journey map is understanding who your  customers are. To best understand the customer, it is required to develop  personas. Really get into their shoes so you understand how they behave  (including likes and dislikes) and why they do what they do. Although  everyone is unique, these customer profiles provide guidance and input for

the journey mapping. Having only one buyer persona isn’t going to give us  correct results, so have various types of buyer personas for better results.

The second step after personas are ready is to dig deep and understand  what each of them hopes to achieve as they go through journey.  Determining the goals for each customer phase clearly on map, by doing  this it makes us examine how well we are meeting the goals and answering  customers’ questions. To understand customers’ goals various other  methods are sued and those are survey, getting feedback mails, interviews  etc.

The most important part lies here finding the touchpoints, touchpoints  means the time when the customer comes in contact with your brand at  any point of time. let It be before, after or during the journey.  At this point,  it’s time to bring together all your data (both quantitative and qualitative)  and look at the big picture to identify potential roadblocks or pain points in  the customer journey. We may also want to note down areas where we’re  currently doing things right and figure out ways to improve.

This tool helps us finding the real problem but also prioritizing the problems  and fixing them. After identification of roadblocks, take a step back and look  at the big picture. Recognize that the end goal is not to optimize each step  or touchpoint just for the sake of optimizing it, but so that you can push the  customers down the funnel and bring them one step closer to converting.  There is no fix template for making journey mapping, the template changes  with the type of customer and project. There are several tools available  online using which journey mapping can be made like griffy, smaply,  lucidchart.

At the end of the day, you want to be getting more conversions. So  everything we tweak in each customer touchpoint should all be contributing  to that one goal.

Insights and Approach

By conducting the exercise with several customers, clients, stakeholders I  learned that it is important at the very first stage to find out the exact  problem to the maximum percentage of accuracy. In several cases where  there was an issue in finding the real problem, the solution found out later  was of no use. The most import insight or we can say learning which this  activity gives us is that the minds of each individual present in the activity  focuses towards one goal and in the process of finding solution all minds  shares their thoughts, ideas towards solving the same problem at one point  of time .This activity provides a focal point to the problem we are trying to  solve. The visual view of the customer journey map makes every person  taking part in the activity the advantage of keeping themselves in the  position of the customer and think in a way as if they are solving the  problem of their own. This activity gives us the pain points in the customer  journey and gives us the various focus points to focus upon and hence we  can prioritize our problem and focus on solving them one by one. They can  quickly go through the whole journey of customer and can stop at pain  points and think about solving them.

The most  valuable insight I learned from this activity is the sharing of  information among the all the people present in the activity is important  ,defining an exact problem is the most important thing in solving the  problem  and focusing all the brains towards all the pain points and  prioritizing them and after that solving them one by one by keeping the  focus of all the people towards one goal is easer using this visualization  technique. This activity does not only help in the start of a problem solving  journey but throughout the problem solving journey we can refer this and  set our goals .

