Designing What Members Actually Need: Journey Mapping Meets Member Portal Strategy

When organizations talk about digital transformation, it's easy to jump straight into tools and technology. But what happens when you pause and ask, “What do our members really need?” That was the question that launched one of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on—pairing member journey mapping with a strategic overhaul of our member portal and digital engagement approach.

The Catalyst: One Platform, Many Experiences

Our member portal offered great functionality, but engagement was low. Print and postage costs were high, and opt-ins for electronic documents remained flat. Internally, there was pressure to improve adoption, but the path forward wasn’t clear.

Rather than redesign blindly, we took a step back.

Why Journey Mapping?

We needed more than anecdotal feedback. We launched a customer experience journey mapping initiative to understand how members actually interact with us—across touchpoints like enrollment, ID cards, billing, and benefit usage. What we found was eye-opening: fragmented digital experiences, confusing language, and few proactive nudges to adopt digital options.

This wasn’t just a member portal issue. It was a visibility and communication issue.

My Approach

As the program lead, I helped frame the journey mapping effort into actionable insight:

• Mapped Key Journeys: Focused on early-stage member experiences (welcome kits, portal registration, ID card delivery, and first service use).

• Identified Gaps: Discovered key friction points where members dropped off from digital tools or defaulted to paper.

• Defined Requirements: Used these insights to develop a prioritized backlog for portal enhancements, content strategy, and digital opt-in campaigns.

With the journey insights in hand, we launched the Member Portal Optimization Initiative, focused on improving registration, increasing eDelivery opt-ins, and aligning digital experiences with real member needs.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

This effort brought together experience design, IT, marketing, operations, and customer service. I facilitated alignment across teams to turn journey insights into technical and strategic action items—ensuring that improvements would resonate with both members and the business.

Results We Delivered

• Mapped the full digital journey from onboarding to first claims, identifying member pain points and drop-offs

• Increased portal registrations and eDelivery opt-ins, significantly reducing print/postage spend

• Created a repeatable journey mapping framework for future member experience initiatives

• Defined a backlog of actionable improvements for the portal—prioritized by what matters most to members

  
  

What I Took Away

This wasn’t just about launching a campaign or tweaking a screen. It was about shifting the mindset from “what do we want to build?” to “what do members actually need?” Journey mapping gave us the clarity we needed. The member portal became more than a platform—it became a solution shaped by empathy, data, and purpose.