As a marketer working in medical product development, chances are you’ve already heard of customer journey maps—and perhaps even created one.
This tool is widely used among UX researchers and is gaining popularity across product developers, designers, and marketers in many industries.
In this post, we’ll explore how customer journey maps can enhance customer experience and support the development of better products in the medical field.
What Is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer journey map (CJM) visually represents the customer’s experience with your product and company.
It is a diagram that outlines the customer’s interactions with the organization, including emotions, touchpoints, pain points, and areas for improvement—plotted in sequential order. The goal of a well-crafted CJM is to identify problems, resolve them, and enhance the overall customer experience.
Customer journey maps can range from simple to highly complex. However, the most effective maps are those that help your company align internally and focus attention on critical pain points.
Why You Need a Customer Journey Map
In product development, a customer journey map provides the entire team with a unified and shared source of information.
It enables the company to view the complete customer journey—not just isolated steps—offering a tool to understand the challenges customers face in specific contexts.
Develop Empathy
In my experience, I’ve observed a lack of customer understanding and empathy among product development teams. I believe that fostering empathy is one of the greatest advantages of customer journey maps.
Without empathy, teams may take shortcuts rather than solving real problems, and they often fail to grasp the true impact of their decisions on the customer’s experience.
You’ve likely encountered situations where a flaw in product design causes issues for the user, yet the problem is minimized—or worse, blamed on the customer for improper use. A CJM can be instrumental in helping teams better understand the customer’s perspective.
A recent study found that individuals who show empathy toward customers tend to develop more creative solutions.
Customer journey maps promote empathy by offering a deep understanding of the customer experience. They also support decision-making and provide context, keeping the customer at the center of every discussion.
Increase Alignment
Another compelling reason to develop a customer journey map is to improve alignment across teams.
Often, members of different departments focus only on a narrow segment of the customer experience, rather than considering the full journey. For example, in the case of a medical device that undergoes cleaning and sterilization after use in the operating room, it’s not uncommon for R&D to develop a technical solution that inadvertently creates challenges during sterilization or repair.
A customer journey map offers a shared vision and serves as a compass to guide direction and break down organizational silos.
Uncover New Problems
After years in the same field, it’s easy to rely on outdated assumptions about how customers interact with your product. These assumptions may stem from old research or past experiences.
While I strongly advocate for Voice of the Customer (VOC) research in product development, customer journey maps are a valuable complement to VOC efforts.
Creating a CJM helps you assess the current customer journey and identify its weaknesses, gaps, and areas for improvement.
Understand Different Customer Pathways
In our industry, we serve multiple customer types—patients, healthcare professionals, payers, regulators, and more. Each profile may have a distinct customer experience. Even within the same group, individual journeys can vary significantly.
Customer journey maps help identify both the differences and commonalities across customer profiles, enabling teams to address their needs more effectively.
They also allow companies to visualize which pain points are universal and which are specific to certain segments. Understanding which customer types are most relevant to your business helps prioritize improvements that will deliver the greatest impact.
In the next post, I’ll walk you through how to build a simple and effective customer journey map.
In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on CJMs in the comments below. If you found this post helpful, please share it with your colleagues and encourage them to subscribe or connect with me on LinkedIn.