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Most organizations feel they know who their customers are. After all, they have been servicing them for a long time already!
Pre ‘Age of the Customer’, an organization had to understand the size of an audience, their location, and their prospective value. This enabled the organization to create products knowing already there was an audience prepared to buy them.
Segments still have a role today. They enable media planning and financial modeling. Personas are the same but different. Importantly, they capture, through primary research, mental models – that is how we think.
By documenting what is mandatory, what is a gain, and what is a pain, CX can actively design for those things.
Your organization should use both segments and personas.
Empathy maps are tools which document what the organization assumes about each audience.
They capture the hypothesis of what the customer is:
The challenge with empathy maps is that they’re loaded with assumptions. Over time, these assumptions become ‘supposed truths’ inside organizations and it’s hard for people to accept they might not be true.
By using primary research, documented as personas, better decision-making can take place throughout the customer experience.
Segmentation is a good starting point for a recruitment screener. Typically, five candidates per segment provides a good relevance. A detailed discussion guide enables a researcher to ask each individual some questions to uncover how they think, what matters to them, and how they go about it.
After all the interviews are complete, the organization undertakes a rigorous exercise of combing insights and grouping those together. This notes any cultural differences or allowances for different country behavior.
Typically, the number of personas generated is not the same as the number of segments. For example, most organizations may have around 12 segments, but only four personas.
The reasons for this are two-fold:
The simplest use from personas is to review the mandatory needs, and then see how your organization fully meets these needs and where they occur. Don’t be surprised if there are several areas where you fall short.
This process is known as User-Centered Design. Most organizations historically do not follow this process.
Back to TopJonathan has over 20 years' experience in the areas of digital design, brand strategy and user experience. He has held senior roles within a number of high-profile agencies and consultancies including Tribal DDB, Accenture Digital and DigitasLBi, working with a range of major clients.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE
This short course covers the principles of customer experience, or CX, and demonstrates techniques and useful tools that you can use to manage CX for an organization.
You will learn how to: