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Blog
Customer journey mapping: a great place to start your digital transformation
Feras Mahdi, Sr. Principal, Head of IQVIA MedTech, Asia Pacific
Mairin Reid, Principal, Head of Digital Health Solutions, IQVIA, Asia Pacific
Oct 21, 2021

In our recent whitepaper “Digital Transformation for MedTech: The Time is Now,” we discuss redefining and adapting strategies in MedTech to achieve true digital transformation in the post-COVID-19 era. The paper itself focused on the overarching process of digital transformation, but when deciding if you’re ready for digital transformation a key question is: “Have I identified the specific customer needs that require optimization, or the gaps in the customer experience?”

A digital transformation objective must be grounded in a robust understanding of the customers’ needs or pain points, achieved effectively through customer journey mapping. The desired future state journey map will articulate this journey across different touchpoints and the enablers that are required to deliver on this experience, keeping in mind the balance between desirability, feasibility, and viability. Here we delve into some key success factors for developing a customer journey map, particularly within the MedTech space.

Identify the customer(s) needs clearly

Due to the complex nature of healthcare and MedTech, there can often be a blurred line between the users, end users and decision makers. For example, in the case of a telemedicine app the end users may be both the patients and the doctors while decision makers on whether to implement the system may be the insurance provider. A customer journey map for a product or service will look very different based on the customer need one is solving for. Robust baseline research and data gathering through methods like ethnographic research (observing the customer in their own environment) and Voice of Customer (VoC) studies (e.g. surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, social listening) can provide a deep insight into customer said and unsaid needs.

Establish personas

Personas are graphical representations of your typical customers which can include information such as demographics, history, motivation and pain points. Personas can be used as an effective tool to make sense of extensive data sets, and enabling actionable insights to be extracted. For example: For a Hospital Information System (HIS) software, the customer segments might include private hospitals, multi-specialty clinics, medical schools and integrated operators and each of these stakeholders have unique set of needs. By establishing personas, different users from across customer segments can be brought together based on common behaviour along the customer journey. Behavioural attributes, like motivation for purchase or cost consciousness can be built into the composite portraits of personas, and enable better targeting and messaging.

Map journey components and identify Moments of Truth (MoT)

A structure that breaks down the customer journey into stages and is customized to the specific healthcare interaction is important to capture the nuances of the customer experience. For the telemedicine app, in the earlier example, the stages could be awareness, evaluation, download /usage whereas for a hospital designing their appointment management system the stages might be pre, during and post appointment. MoTs are the pivotal points through each stage of the journey where customers determine their choices. For MedTech sectors with typically have long sales cycles and multi-stakeholder relationships, knowing these MoTs are important in designing your solution to ensure it is visible, available, and viable in the customer’s mind.

Identify touchpoints and channels

For MedTech customers, touchpoints for interaction with the products/company were traditionally via physical (offline) channels like sales reps and conferences. As use of health apps, patient or product support online forums, remote care services, virtual surgical training or other online channels increase, offline and online touchpoints become further enmeshed across the customer journey. It is crucial to understand their relevance in the customer’s journey at the MoTs.

Customers journey maps can be brought to life with co-creation exercises and empathy maps which can put a spotlight on the customers pain point that are being solved. A robust research driven customer journey map and consequent customer experience design will align your organisation or cross-functional digital transformation team, serve as the North Star, and provide the basis for measurement metrics for impact.

For more information on designing a customer experience journey, please feel free to contact us.

Authors

Feras Mahdi, Principal, Head of IQVIA MedTech, Asia Pacific
Mairin Reid, Principal, Head of Digital Health Solutions, IQVIA, Asia Pacific
Ruthie Burr, Enterprise Marketing Lead, IQVIA, Asia Pacific

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