Developing B2B Technology Customer Persona
Putting ‘Customer Experience’ At The Heart of IT Service Delivery and Development.
Situation – Thousands of Customers With Different Needs
In an increasingly competitive market place and to support the university’s 10 year vision, the IT Services department of this international research and education provider sought to switch towards a “customer experience” mentality. With tens of thousand of IT users, let’s call them customers, with different goals and types of experiences working with technology and working with the IT service team, teasing out differing needs was critical. The team has no prior experience of how to approach researching and ‘understanding customers’. Jane was engaged for the project.
Objectives – The IT Service Department Project Goals
- 1. Develop a shared understanding of customer needs & pain points through development of customer persona(s) based on knowledge (not opinion).
- 2. Collect and analyse disparate knowledge across teams and data silos.
- 3. Build on team enthusiasm for understanding of customer needs.
Action Plan – Towards Understanding Customer Needs
- Understand the core market context, particularly on-going change, through preparatory market research.
- Identify disparate data sources, pool team knowledge and encourage engagement via internal stakeholder interviews and an alignment workshop .
- Explore ~40 market research data sources, including existing digital customer touch points, such as web analytics, and customer support analytics.
- Fill knowledge gaps and give the entire team first-hand experience of frank customer feedback via ~70 semi-structured ‘voice of the customer’ interviews.
- Analyse qualitative data with the team using “LP”, language processing a Japanese lean method, which enables knowledge sharing and identification of critical ‘voices’ without loss of context.
Results – Five Unique, Succinct Differentiated Customer Persona
- Five detailed B2B customer persona each with their ‘ecosystem’ of influences grounded in the market space, and each clearly differentiated from the others.
- The ability to develop customer experience metrics and improvements aligned to customer need, including those formerly invisible.
- Customer empathy and a shared language as corner stones for change which requires team involvement and commitment.
The Experience – Working with Jane at JEM 9
Ready to Develop Your B2B Customer Persona? Explore if Jane may be able to assist you.