A Journey Map You Could Feel
When a PowerPoint couldn't answer the question, we built something that could.
Project Overview
The new president of CVS Caremark had a unique perspective on customer experience. He was on the board at Disney. He asked the marketing team a simple question that turned out to be hard to answer: what does it actually feel like to be a CVS Caremark member?
A major consulting firm had already been hired to answer it. They delivered a traditional journey map. A PowerPoint deck with personas, stages, and touchpoints. It was a significant investment, and it was thoroughly done. But when the president reviewed it, his response was direct:
"I want to feel what it's like to be a member of CVS Caremark"
That was the opening we walked into.
Strategic Approach
Most journey mapping treats the member as an object of study. Our pitch flipped the frame. Instead of describing the member experience from the outside, we'd let leadership take the member's journey from the inside. First person. Choose your own adventure. Built to be experienced, not read.
We co-led working sessions with department heads across CVS Caremark to map the current state of the member experience, and to imagine what a better version could look like.
Implementation Details
Once we had the foundational information, we needed to figure out how to build the experience without going over budget. There was a tremendous amount of information to include.
We built the journey as clickable mockups across more than 200 screens, each with custom illustrations. Every decision point branched. Every communication a member would receive in real life was reproduced inside the experience. Not summarized, but present. A letter mentioned in a touchpoint was a clickable hotspot that opened the actual letter, which the user could read in full and then return to the flow without losing their place.
Each moment also registered the member's emotional state along the way, making the felt experience legible to the leaders moving through the map. Concerned. Confused. Reassured.
We delivered two full journeys. The current state first, then a future state showing what the experience could feel like with better onboarding, clearer communications, redesigned packaging, and a new set of digital touchpoints we proposed along the way.
Results
The work landed exactly the way it was meant to. Leadership didn't just understand the journey. They felt it. What had been an abstract strategic conversation became a shared experience that executives could walk through themselves.
On the strength of that project, CVS asked us to do the same work for CVS Specialty and CVS Coram, replicating the approach across two additional business units and a wider range of member populations.
Conclusion
The brief was journey mapping. The actual problem was experiential. How do you make a senior leader feel something they need to understand in order to act on it? The deliverable that answered that question couldn't be a deck. It had to be a walk in someone else's shoes. That's what we built.
Working with CVS Health
We have had the pleasure of working with various CVS Health brands, including CVS Caremark, CVS Specialty, Accordant, Coram, and Well partner for 6 years. Our work ranges widely across the B2C and B2B spectrums.
- Email marketing
- Graphic Design
- UI / UX
- Web & Mobile Development
- B2B Content Development
- WCAG Documentation and Training
- Conference Materials
- Data Visualization
- Analytics and Data Visualization
- Journey Mapping
- Marketo Support
- Explainer Videos, Animation & Illustration