She’s 26 years old, a recent graduate from a top MBA program and about to move across the country for a new position in her high-tech company. And while Sasha’s situation – and her wants, needs and expectations – are real, Sasha isn’t. Because Sasha is a persona.
As a persona, she serves as a stand-in for those customers like her who share common traits and attitudes. Essentially, Sasha’s serving as a “straw model” for a customer segment, where one set of characteristics represents the bigger group. And while she represents a segment, she is a ‘behavioral archetype’ of an individual customer distilled into the description of a person.
Sasha is on my mind, because I’ll be using her to help guide the team of customer experience executives and managers I’ll be working with over the next two days in one of the journey mapping workshops we run. And let’s be clear – Sasha is a critical participant in this workshop. Her role is pivotal; to make the target customer clear and easy for everyone to visualize, and help raise customer experience understanding to a new level.
Widely used in UX (User Experience) design for years, personas have been an increasingly important part of CX design over the last decade. Essentially, personas have become a standard for customer and user-centered design processes of all kinds – across multiple industries and for a wide-range of objectives, and with good reason.
Simply put, personas drive decisions that take customers' views into account, leading to better customer experiences. They do this by creating a deep understanding of and empathy for customers that so many well-meaning organizations lack.
Though we’ve been using persona as an experience design and journey mapping tool for over a decade, their flexibility and power as a driver of insights continues. Just in the last year or so, we’ve helped develop personas for companies in the financial services, retail, construction, software and consumer products industries (among others).
And these personas have been created for a wide range of applications, including journey mapping but always tied to it. We’ve used them to help build sales strategies and improve the employee onboarding process, to improve internal systems and processes and boost customer retention.
Here are a few examples of how organizations have leveraged them to get closer to their customers:
Client | Persona Description | Business Goals |
Global Hardware Co | Systems Architects | Drive Sales/Account Penetration |
Global Software Co | Prospective Employees | Improve New Hire Onboarding |
National Bank | SMB’s (Small and Medium Size Business Owners) | Business Lines of Credit |
Regional Credit Union | Retail Banking Customers | New Account Opening |
Leading Clothing Retailer | Retail Buyers | Increase Engagement |
Creating personas that drive real empathy and insights isn’t easy, nor is it inexpensive. So if you’re going to invest in persona development, make sure the effort is a success. While the list of success factors is a long one, these five are a good place to start:
The truth is, it’s hard to see your firm as your customers do. When the “lights go on” the results are significant, and measurable. That’s because in journey mapping and journey management, personas help break down the ‘perceptual wall’ of inside out vs. outside in by helping organizations overcome their very natural tendency to look at the world from their internal perspective.
Bottom line, customer experience personas help you better meet customer needs. And the better you get at that… well, you know the answer. It’s good.