Levi Strauss & Co

Modernizing operations through automated email workflows and Customer 360 visibility.

Client: Levi Strauss & Co
Year: 2021
Discipline: UX Design
Focus: Enterprise UX, Design Sprint, Automation

Overview

As UX Lead, I partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. to lead a human-centered design sprint focused on replacing manual, paper-based workflows with a unified, automated digital experience. The outcome was a clearly defined Minimal Viable Product (MVP), a validated prototype, and a roadmap to stand up intelligent email triaging, standardized processing, and a 360° customer view, all built on Pegasystems software.

Challenge

The initiative began as a global enterprise transformation, but the pandemic's business impact pushed Levi's to pivot from large-scale ambitions to an agile, high-value approach. The organization needed to eliminate Excel- and email-based workflows, centralize customer visibility across departments, and deliver value within a limited budget and tight timeline, all while avoiding custom-built complexity in favor of scalable, out-of-the-box solutions.

The challenge: how can we deliver cross-functional automation and visibility fast, while minimizing risk and resource strain?

The pivot — from an ambiguous, high-risk enterprise vision to a short time-to-value delivery model focused on rapid, finite outcomes.

Process & Solution

The sprint. I led a two-week virtual design sprint using Pega Express and Catalyst methodology, working with Levi's stakeholders to map the current state through a cross-department service blueprint. That work surfaced pain points across Finance, Sales, Credit, AR, and Order Management, which we used to define the core functionality for the first MLP and storyboard an ideal future-state user flow.

Cross-department service blueprint — mapping the current-state claim and deduction workflow across Customer, AR, Sales, Finance, and Order Management swimlanes.

The prototype. From there, we built a working prototype centered on smart email intake, auto-tagging and triaging powered by NLP, queue routing based on content and customer history, and a single 360-degree view of the customer and their past interactions. We validated the design through a multi-day virtual user testing session with stakeholders across departments, refining the flow based on their feedback.

Pega Express design thinking workshop — storyboarding the user test flow and validating concepts with end users across three rounds of sketches.

From prototype to MVP. The final MVP scope included NLP-powered email intake, skill-based routing to five work queues, one to two reusable correspondence templates, dashboards with SLA and case tracking, a 360-degree customer interaction history built out-of-the-box, and REST API integration to Customer Master, a scope deliberately sized to move fast without adding custom-built complexity.

MLP1: Email Bot – Customer 360 — vision, execution, and outcome, delivered in 7 weeks.

Impact

Centralized customer view improved issue resolution and transparency
Automated intake and routing reduced email volume in shared inboxes
8-week MLP delivery accelerated time-to-value
Scalable solution design ready for future channels and work types

Deliverables

Service blueprint and cross-department journey maps
Working prototype with NLP-driven email intake and Customer 360 view
MVP delivery plan and roadmap
Virtual user testing synthesis and recommendations

"Less administration means more time for everything else, helping drive customer service and profitability." — Pega Workshop Team

Visuals shown reflect sprint prototypes and workshop artifacts using representative data. No real customer or transaction information is included.