Defining customers to inform strategy and design_Part 2

This is part 2 of the article defining customers to inform strategy and design. If you have not read part 1, you can find it?here.

Customer Segment and Persona are no doubt the most common approaches to defining and describing customers. To make the customer segment more actionable and zoom out from the narrow view of persona, we could develop a Customer Archetype.

Customer Archetype

Customer Archetype essentially describes a customer group based on their action or behavior with similar needs and, more importantly, who they are, based on the value that drove their action and why they do it, the motivation behind it. It emerges from the patterns uncovered in customer or user research, e.g., the users of personal finance management apps such as Mint, Personal Capital, etc., can be of two types. There could be users who may want to keep track of how much they spend monthly and where they spend to stay within the budget. At the same time, there could also be users who want to keep track of the balance across their accounts and especially their assets and liabilities to make sure they carry a positive net balance. Both will use the app: same actions, different motivations, two Customer Archetypes.

Customer Archetype makes it easy to identify motivations, the?why?than with segmentation alone. If you have questions like, “Why aren’t some customers not engaging with the app frequently. You may find that the motivation to open and engage with the app often would be higher for those who want to track the movement of every single dollar because they worry about spending more than they want to or not saving as much as they want. Whereas the motivation would be lower for those who wish to just track their balances every month, they are not worried about exceeding their monthly spend by an additional $10 or $100.

Customer Archetypes add functional depth while removing the specific ‘person’ from the representation, focusing on ‘who needs or does what, when and why?’ more than ‘who is this person?’ As a result, they’re better suited to informing design and strategy decisions because they represent customer behavior more directly than personal characteristics do and sometimes can span a broader range of target customers. Instead of defining a customer with irrelevant details such as age, sex, race, or favorite car, you define their?behavioral characteristics, needs, and key outcomes. This thereby helps shape?service or a feature that meets their needs, and by doing that, we are able to address the needs of?anyone?who behaves that way.

Determining the Customer Archetype of the product is grounded on a deep understanding of both the product and the customer, which requires asking questions such as what is the goal of the customer using the product? What is their focus on when using the product? Defining the archetype begins in the early stages of product development and needs to be fleshed out as your progress through the design process towards realizing a successful product that follows the vision.

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Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.