Customer Empathy Map: How to Understand Your Customers Better

When Melanie Perkins was teaching design software to university students, she noticed a problem. The tools were so complicated that students could spend a long time learning how to use them before they could focus on the actual design work.

She saw an opportunity to make design simpler and more accessible, helping inspire the idea behind Canva. Read Canva's account of its early beginnings.

It's a useful reminder for anyone building a business. Customers don't always need more features, more options or a lower price. Sometimes, they need someone to understand what's making an ordinary task unnecessarily difficult.

But how do you uncover those frustrations before you build the wrong solution?

A customer empathy map can help. It gives you a structured way to explore what a particular customer says, thinks, does and feels, alongside their challenges and desired outcomes.

A founder from the Startup Networks community shared a version of this during a discussion about an early product pivot. He'd assumed his small business customers were put off by price, so he'd spent weeks building a cheaper tier. Once he actually mapped out what customers said versus what they did, the picture looked different, they weren't price-sensitive, they were confused about which plan matched their business size and had been quietly choosing the most expensive option just to avoid getting it wrong. The cheaper tier solved a problem nobody had.

For founders, students and small business owners, this is exactly what an empathy map is for, turning customer feedback into better decisions before investing time and money in a new product, improving a service or launching a marketing campaign.

In this guide, we'll explain how a customer empathy map works, what to include and how to create one using real customer insights. You can also download our Customer Empathy Map Canvas and follow along.

What Is a Customer Empathy Map?

A customer empathy map is a visual framework for organising what you know about a particular customer, their behaviour, thoughts, feelings, influences, challenges and goals.

Unlike a basic customer profile, which might focus on age, location or occupation, an empathy map explores the experiences and motivations that influence how someone evaluates a product or makes a decision.

Imagine you're building an online bookkeeping service for freelancers. Knowing that your target customer is self-employed tells you something about who they are, but it doesn't explain why they might hesitate to sign up. You might need to understand how they currently manage invoices, what frustrates them about their finances and what would make bookkeeping easier. An empathy map helps organise these findings into a clearer picture, much like it did for the founder above once he separated what customers said from what they actually chose.

The map doesn't automatically reveal what customers think. It helps you organise what you've learned and identify what you still need to investigate. A map based entirely on imagination records assumptions, not confirmed customer insights.

What Are the Main Sections of a Customer Empathy Map?

Customer empathy maps come in different formats, but most explore customer behaviour, thoughts, feelings, challenges and needs. Our Customer Empathy Map Canvas provides a practical starting point.

1. Says.
What does the customer actually say about their experience? Use direct quotes from interviews, feedback or conversations wherever possible. For example, a freelancer might say, "I spend too much time sorting out my invoices."

2. Thinks and Feels.
What concerns, motivations or expectations might influence the customer's decisions? The freelancer might worry about missing a payment deadline or making a mistake with their accounts. These are possibilities to investigate, not facts to assume.

3. Does.
What actions does the customer take? Look at their actual behaviour, routines and workarounds. Perhaps the freelancer tracks invoices in a spreadsheet, sends payment reminders manually and checks their bank account several times a week.

4. Hears and Sees.
What influences the customer? Consider advice from colleagues, recommendations, online reviews, competitors and the tools they encounter in daily life. The freelancer might hear other business owners recommend accounting software while seeing adverts for services promising to simplify bookkeeping.

5. Pains and Gains.
Pains are the customer's frustrations, obstacles and risks. Gains are the outcomes they want to achieve. For the freelancer, pains might include chasing late payments and worrying about mistakes. Gains could include getting paid on time, spending less time on administration and feeling more in control.

Some empathy maps also begin by defining the customer and their goal, keeping the exercise focused on a particular person in a particular situation rather than trying to describe an entire market.

The sections work together to build a fuller picture. A customer may say that price matters most, while their behaviour suggests that convenience or trust plays a bigger role, exactly the gap the Startup Networks founder found when he looked past what customers said and noticed what they actually clicked on.

Why Should Startups Use a Customer Empathy Map?

When you're building a business, it's easy to focus on what you want your product to do. An empathy map helps shift that attention towards the people who'll actually use it.

• Identify problems worth solving. Customers don't always describe their problems in terms of features. They might say they want a faster service when the real frustration is having to repeat the same information every time they contact a business. Exploring their experiences can help you spot the underlying problem before spending money on a solution.

• Improve your product or service. Understanding customer behaviour can reveal friction you might otherwise overlook. Perhaps users abandon your sign-up process because it asks too many questions, or customers struggle to understand what happens after making a purchase. These insights help you prioritise improvements that address real needs.

• Make your marketing more relevant. An empathy map can help you understand the language customers use, the concerns they have and what matters when making a decision. A bookkeeping startup might initially promote its software as a way to organise finances, then discover, after researching freelancers, that customers are more concerned about chasing late payments and finding time for administration. That insight could lead to more relevant marketing messages, provided the research supports it.
  

"The main benefit is focus, connecting product decisions and marketing messages to customer evidence rather than guesswork."

How to Create a Customer Empathy Map Step by Step

You don't need a large research budget or a room full of sticky notes. The most important thing is to base your map on what you learn about real customers.

Use our free Customer Empathy Map Canvas to work through these steps.

Step 1. Choose a specific customer.
Avoid trying to map your entire target market at once. Focus on one customer type and a particular situation, if you're developing bookkeeping software, you might focus on self-employed freelancers who manage their own invoices. The more specific your focus, the easier it becomes to identify relevant behaviours and challenges.

Step 2. Gather customer evidence.
Speak to potential customers, review feedback or observe how people currently solve the problem you're investigating. Our Customer Interview Questions & Discovery Worksheet can help you prepare useful questions. Ask about actual experiences rather than hypothetical intentions. Instead of asking, "Would you use an app that manages your invoices?", try asking, "How did you manage your last overdue invoice?" Real examples reveal more than general expressions of interest, as the pricing-tier example above shows.

Step 3. Fill in the map.
Organise your findings into the relevant sections, using direct quotes and observed behaviours wherever possible. If something is only a theory, label it as an assumption that needs checking. You don't have to complete every section immediately, leaving gaps is better than inventing answers.

Step 4. Look for patterns and contradictions.
Review the map and ask what stands out. Perhaps several freelancers mention late payments, but their biggest frustration is actually the time spent following up with clients. That could suggest an opportunity to simplify payment reminders rather than build an entirely new accounting system. Look for recurring themes, but don't assume one person's experience represents every customer.

Step 5. Turn insights into actions.
Choose one or two findings to investigate or address. You might test clearer payment reminders, simplify a sign-up process or interview more customers to check whether a suspected problem is widespread. Then gather feedback and update the map as you learn more. Customer needs change, and early assumptions can prove wrong, treat your empathy map as a working document, not a permanent description of your customers.

Watch a Customer Empathy Map Tutorial

Prefer learning by watching? See an empathy map tutorial to understand how customer observations can be organised into a visual canvas.

Watch Miro's Empathy Map Basics tutorial to see how the sections can help turn research into practical insights. The demonstration uses Miro, so you can apply the same general approach to our downloadable canvas.

A Simple Customer Empathy Map Example

Imagine you're building a bookkeeping service for freelancers who struggle to manage invoices alongside their actual work.

You've spoken to several freelancers and noticed a recurring frustration. Keeping track of payments takes time, and following up with clients can feel awkward.

This is an illustrative example, not the result of actual customer research. The thoughts and feelings listed would need to be validated.

The map suggests that a service focused on invoice tracking and payment reminders could be worth testing. Before building it, you'd need to investigate whether enough freelancers experience this problem, how they currently handle it and whether they'd pay for a better solution. You can also use it alongside other frameworks, our Value Proposition Canvas can help you explore how your proposed solution addresses customer pains and delivers the gains they want.

Common Customer Empathy Map Mistakes to Avoid

• Treating assumptions as facts. It's tempting to fill in what you believe customers think or feel. Separate confirmed observations from untested ideas, then use interviews and feedback to check your interpretation, the pricing-tier mix-up earlier is a reminder of how costly an unchecked assumption can be.
  

• Trying to understand everyone at once. Different customer groups can have very different needs. Focus on one customer type and situation at a time, creating separate maps when their needs differ significantly.
  

• Ignoring contradictory evidence. Customers might say they want the cheapest option but repeatedly choose a more expensive competitor. Investigate whether trust, convenience or quality also influences their decisions.
  

• Creating the map and never using it. A completed canvas won't improve your business if it sits untouched in a folder. Turn findings into specific next steps, interviewing more customers, testing a new message or improving a frustrating part of your service.
  

Turn Customer Insights Into Better Business Decisions

You don't need to know everything about your customers before starting a business. But you do need to understand their problems well enough to avoid building solutions around assumptions, a lesson the Startup Networks founder learned the expensive way with his unnecessary pricing tier.

A customer empathy map gives you a practical way to organise what you learn, identify gaps in your understanding and spot opportunities to improve your product, service or marketing. The real value comes from what you do with those insights, speak to customers, look for patterns, test your ideas and update your understanding as you learn more.

Ready to put it into practice? Download our free Customer Empathy Map Canvas and use it to explore your customers' needs, behaviours and challenges. You can also browse our Startup Resources forum for more practical templates and tools.

Don't build your business alone. Join Our Discord Community and connect with people building businesses just like you.

Let's discuss: What's one thing you've learned about your customers that changed how you approached your product or service?