How do you create customer personas for your CJM?

One thing I've found that is helpful is to ask why does the problem, you're trying to solve, exist? Why does that problem exist? It is important to refrain from exploring the "how" - how to solve the problem. By jumping to how, we might accidentally create more problems by overlooking the true problem we are solving too quickly. An opportunity map is most helpful in moving from an abstract concept to a more specific objective.

Creating effective customer personas begins with clarity on your goals and scope. What are you trying to achieve with your customer journey mapping (CJM)? Whether it's enhancing customer satisfaction, increasing sales, or streamlining processes, defining these objectives will guide your persona creation. Use AI to analyze market trends and gather insights. Engage your LinkedIn network for diverse perspectives. This foundational step ensures your personas are aligned with strategic objectives, setting a strong base for accurate and actionable CJM.

A key aspect of analyzing customer data is maintaining an open mindset. It's essential for teams engaged in customer journey mapping to grasp that the purpose of this workshop is to address customer issues, not to assign blame. This approach encourages all stakeholders, especially those directly interfacing with clients, to freely express their thoughts while ensuring that teams remain focused on the desired outcome without becoming defensive.

Refrain from asking yes and no or closed ended questions as this will limit the insight gained. Understanding the macro drivers of a consumer before digging deep into the immediate problem provides a more holistic picture of the problem and potential solution(s). What are the customer's motivators, fears, aspirations, and influencers? Customers are not finite data points. It is important to understand the emotion behind their responses. Without understanding and applying this, it's easy to misinterpret data and create solutions that do not actually solve the problems you look to uncover. Once you've gathered data, affinity map each data point by grouping similar or connected data points. This is organization will show themes.

The data you gather needs to come from multiple sources & needs to span quantitative and qualitative data. Some of my favourite routes include behavioural science led customer surveys - to ensure your questions do not contain unintended bias. Followed by focus groups & customer facing staff interviews or workshops. Businesses can often forget the power of their customer facing team, they hold so much knowledge around customer pain points & pre-sales buying questions. Alongside the above, social listening is a great way to hear what is being said, unprompted, within your market. You can also look to analyse CRM data or to find existing data studies. There are so many methods, finding the right way for your business is critical to success

Data is the lifeblood of accurate customer personas. Leverage AI tools to gather data from various sources: social media, CRM systems, and website analytics. AI algorithms can identify patterns and trends that might not be immediately obvious. LinkedIn is a treasure trove of insights—connect with industry experts, join relevant groups, and participate in discussions to gather qualitative data. This comprehensive data collection and analysis phase is crucial to building a robust foundation for your personas.

Constructing authentic customer personas begins with comprehensive data collection from diverse sources like surveys, website analytics, CRM systems, and market research, depending on what information your company has for disposal. This data unveils insights into customer demographics, preferences, behaviors, and decision-making factors. Analyze this data efficiently using affinity diagrams for thematic organization and empathy maps for visualizing thoughts, feelings, actions, and pain points. Employ data visualization techniques like charts and graphs to highlight patterns and trends, enabling a nuanced understanding of your customer base.

It is essential to keep in mind that you cannot use one Persona to represent your entire clientele. Nor can you base a Persona just on one specific customer you happened to know. It has to be a significant group of customers with similar characteristics, needs, goals, and behaviors. When it comes to segmenting your audience into Personas, the first thing you need to do is analyze the research data you have collected. Then identify behavioral attributes common to people with the same role (eg project managers). The attributes should describe what affects a person’s behavior in situations when the person: - is trying to complete some tasks - is achieving their goals - is solving their problems - is interacting with your product or service.

It is helpful to segment customers by ranges in the categories above. Choosing one, or a handful of categories depends on the objective you hope to achieve or problem you are solving for. Think of customer segments in 3 basic categories - who are your customers today, who do you want them to be tomorrow, and who do you not want them to be? Add two customer segments to fit between these three. Think of the additional two as grey areas.

With your data in hand, the next step is to identify and prioritize customer segments. AI can help by clustering data into meaningful segments based on behaviors, needs, and demographics. Use LinkedIn polls and feedback to validate these segments with real-world input. Prioritize segments that align closely with your business goals. This targeted approach ensures your personas reflect the most critical customer groups, enabling more precise and effective CJM.

Pretend that you are writing a biographical summary of yourself, or your best friend, with the focus on the objective or problem statement. Empathy is your best tool for this exercise. How is this person feeling? What are they thinking? What do they say and what do they do? All in the context of your problem statement.

Speak with the engineers / developers and the customer service reps of your organization. They can help review the personas, and use them. Engineers will know who they are developing for. Customer service reps will quickly understand who they are speaking to when addressing issues, and how to effectively communicate with these customers.

There are other resources online on how to create a journey map. Empathy, empathy, empathy. Pretend that you are the person, and walk through the journey as if you are that character. What are your goals? How do you go about researching to address your goals? What are the various touch points both within the company, and outside? Keep in mind to focus on the what, and avoid addressing the how. How to solve this problem or achieve the persona's goal.

As an example, let's consider an e-commerce company leveraging customer personas in their CJM project. Using data gathered, they create personas like Budget Shopper & Luxury Enthusiast. Through journey mapping, they identify that the "Luxury Enthusiast" persona desires a more personalized and exclusive shopping experience. Utilizing service blueprints, the company aligns internal processes to ensure personalized recommendations and VIP treatment during the shopping journey. Prototyping and testing involves implementing a tailored loyalty program for the luxury segment. As a result, they refine the VIP program based on insights, creating a perfect and satisfying journey for their luxury customers while ensuring ongoing improvements. Voila!

Focus on 3-5 personas. Anymore, and journey mapping becomes daunting, not to mention there will be too much overlap. Eventually, you will collapse the personas into 3 and then one middle of the road persona to design for. But that's for another article.