Customer Persona — The right cast for your movie.
#Get our terms right!
Customer Persona put in simple terms is an ID card with emotional insights on our prospective customers we create — based on data, research, and interviews. It has key traits to a large segment of potential customer base’s needs and thinking — doing so gives us embryonic options to weigh on the ways to structure our solution. Done right with proper understanding, research and tools will give us the specific attitudes, concerns, and criteria that drive prospective customers to choose us.
On an informal note, it’s in a way similar to casting the right actors for your movie.
#The correct cast is halfway for a blockbuster! — Why is it important?
Though the majority of the customer base faces a similar problem the solution preferences might change from person to person, it is not always about solving the problem it’s equally important to solve the problem in a way the end-user prefers, doing so will mitigate the learning curve and adoption barriers. Thus, it develops a deeper understanding of customer needs and how to solve them.
We all develop our product with its core to the features, this complex binding set of features and core solution is where we get the right entry barrier and a competitive edge over others. This perfect blend of both can be sculptured and thought through proper end-user profiling. How is this relevant? - When a competitor does the gap analysis and if finds a niche gap and turns that into a separate product line we can just add that as an update or a new feature in the existing product line! But, if at all we know our customers there might never be a niche gap to follow. Thus, the entry barrier.
A proper persona-based tailored approach fortifies our solution.
If we have lots of productive areas to concentrate on this will help us prioritize which projects, campaigns, ideas, features, and initiatives to invest time and resources in. On a general note, it helps to create alignment across the organization and rally the whole team to tackle even a teeny-weeny product definition around a customer-centric vision. And as a result, we will be better equipped to serve your customers and deliver a superior experience that keeps them coming back to us for more. But if we don’t nail down our customer personas, every aspect of your product development process, user experience, and marketing campaigns, will suffer.
As said earlier, a bad cast will affect a film in every possible aspect and it’s just a detractor knocking us out like blunt and to be soon forgotten summer blockbusters.
#How shall we do it?
We can come to a picturized decision by articulating multiple sources of data to understand the motivations, attitudes, behaviors, and desired outcomes of our customers. The problem with many personas is that they are either based on irrelevant data, poorly sourced data, or no data at all. We should do this with a proper blend of both data and assumptions, Interviews, surveys, and analytics are the key to a deep research-based outcome.
Qualitative feedback — customer interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic research, feedback — ratings, paid trials, and beta testers.
Quantitative research — using web analytics, market segmentation tools, external surveys, and other internal data from records.
Asking the right set of questions to our potential customers is the key. The more industry-specific the questions, the better the profile. Our basic segmentation tool and little research on that will help us identify our beachhead market ( the first prospective market we should attempt to capture for scaling up to similar larger markets ) we’ll be creating a semi-fictional profile of the ideal customer based on real customer data and educated speculation ( assumptions based on real data) will lead us to potential lead customers / early adopters in the beachhead market. The goal is not to have a list of job titles or specific facts on people, but to identify common behavior patterns, shared pain points, goals, and challenges that end users have. Every decision regarding product development & definition or business development should be backed up by this profiling.
Will have dedicated posts for — The right set of questions for our user interview & how to select our beachhead market and narrow down our lead customers?
#Let’s concreate the persona!
When we finalize our beachhead market and potential lead/early adopters, we should build our own customized persona template custom modeled for our space in the industry, we can use external inspirations to make one. I will be using the one I have built for my use cases and will be using the same to explain the process.
I would recommend designing your template, have it printed out when we do our primary customer interview.
#The Customer Persona Canvas & a virtual cooked-up case study!
Let’s say we are going to interview Bob — the builder.
the above template has an assumptions checklist and we should write down all the assumptions that we have thought of about Bob related to our line of product. Let’s imagine we are going to start an online clothing business that sells summer clothes in winter and winter clothes in summer for a very huge offer. In this case, the assumption that we should make for Bob being our lead customer is that
He should shop online ( we are an online-based store )
He has no time to visit a store ( we are an online-based store )
He likes to plan ( we sell summer goods in winter, Vice-versa)
He likes to purchase goods at discounts ( We sell goods on great offers )
While interviewing Bob our ultimate aim must be to check if the assumptions are true or not, to validate our primary customer research. We should subtly ask the questions and not directly put them. If not then the interview will be manipulated. Since we have put some interest in the user’s mind and we might end up in false data, for instance, if we ask Bob — Do you like to plan? The answer will be — YESH!!, no one likes to say no to that. So, the way we ask the question matters, We should go by a prepared set of questionnaires.
After filling out the assumptions and checking if it’s true based on the interview, we should fill out the — “Intro song section”, which has all the basic details like name, age, and contact info.
Next to that is the “Identity & Demography” section where we will profile the occupation, place & nature of work, education, income, preferences, Psychographics, and all other relevant facts for our solution.
The current challenges they face and the area we need to attack for providing a better solution to the end-user will be concentrated in the “Challenges section”. This section is paramount to nail down the exact requirements and corresponding solutions for the end-user.
Finally, To summarise all is the “Problem area”, this tells us exactly where the persona faces the problem. The same problem will be faced by a cluster of stakeholders and a wise solution will be unanimous but customized to each stakeholder. This section tells us in this paradigm where the interviewee is positioned. let me rope in an example for this — UBER solves a problem for two different stakeholders with a common solution.
The dry run ( taxi running a large distance to pick up customers ) — for drivers.
Waiting time & availability for rides — for riders.
These two separate user bases have separate problems faced but UBER has linked them both to a single problem within a single solution. Thus, it is important to know where exactly the interviewee is positioned in the problem area to have a broader sense of understanding their persona.
The two tiles we have not yet discussed are the “Approachability matrix and the “Early Adopter Conversion rate”.
The “Approachability matrix” is a score out of 35 against these questions in the above canvas, it analyses the motivation and commitment towards expressing the issue, eagerness for a solution to adopt, and gives us data on need and market traction in our product line. This is scored in three-point ranges +1,+3,+5 with the maximum score being 35 and 7 as the least.
PS — I use these metrics, play with the number as you wish. It is just a scale to differentiate and indicate different prospective customer profiles.
The last tile is the most important one — “The Early Adoption Conversion Rate — ECR”. This section answers the question, on a scale of one to ten, how well the interviewee can be your early adopter?
To assess this ECR we have an ECR checklist canvas to score with, It asks important questions to validate the whole primary customer research process. This checklist evaluates how well the interview went and how strong, narrowed down the profile we have arrived at looks like. It is scored on with the most ideal & prospective lead customer/ early adopters getting anywhere near 30 and the least interested ones whose persona also does not fit our product line get a 6.
The ECR is a combined score in the range from 1–10 of the ECR checklist canvas and Approachability matrix canvas.
Why take all the effort and pain to do this? let me pull up a hypothetical but very possible situation — Bob and Lilly being our potential early adopters for our solution. Bob has the need to buy three of our products with an ECR ( early adoption conversion rate) being 8/10 and Lilly has a requirement of nine of our products with an ECR of 3/10. Without the ECR score, we will be tempted to go for the higher requirement clients but it is wise to choose a deal that is more certain to happen rather than the one with more order value. If we are a startup, getting the first few customers is the hardest.
Thus this approach will help us to get the most promising customer segment. A deal is almost certain to happen because — We know, We asked, We assumed, We got data, We interviewed and yes we solved.
Narrowing down our user segment and nailing down their persona is the right key for having a great cast for your movie. This is a critical step in your search for specificity and moving away from generalities. This makes your customer very real and concrete. This step also teaches us that we should build the company around the customer’s needs, not based on your interests.
Have them profiled so we can answer — whom we are dealing with?
Plan, design and deliver. Written & Directed by you!
Cast right! Right cast! — Blockbuster!, Persona Right! Right Persona — Success!
