The key to a successful business lies in your understanding of your customers. If you want to increase revenue, you've got to focus on your Customer Persona.
"We spend SO much time on our email campaigns, and yet, our Churn Rate is so high!"
How many of you relate to this feeling?
Putting so much effort into writing (and re-writing) your onboarding strategy and email campaigns only to find out they still don't decrease the Churn Rate.
At a certain point, you really need to stop working on the wrong things and go back to the basics -
The foundation of your Customer Success Strategy.
How well do you actually know your customers? Are you even providing the right value?
The Answers Lie in Your Customer Personas
How to Create the Ultimate Customer Persona
Step 1 - Identify your customers.
I'm sure you know that Customer Success is about ensuring the success of current customers.
This is why you don't need to guess or invent your Customer Personas; they already exist in your customer database.
The first step is about learning your database and uncovering trends about your customers.
These trends will help you create accurate Customer Personas that will be used to customize and personalize the Customer Experience.
Important note: while CSMs should be able to complete this step fairly quickly based on their book of business, CS Leaders might need to spend more time going through the customer database.
For this reason, I recommend working on this project with your CSMs.
Step 2 - Start with the demographic details.
Once you identify the first customer persona from your database, you can start writing down their demographic information:
Name
Age
Location
Gender
Right before proceeding to the next step, stop and ask yourself:
"What makes customers within demographic segments unique?"
This question will really help you get to the bottom of each persona and its unique demographic characteristics.
Step 3 - Cover the persona's job.
With the customer's name, gender, age, and location written down, you can start collecting information about their job and career.
Here are a few examples:
Do most of your customers work in the same department? Do they have the same position?
Identify their areas of responsibility and the "chain of command".
What are their managers' positions and responsibilities?
Make sure to write it all down while providing as many details as possible.
As you find out more about the customer's job and career path, whenever you come across details that will influence their journey with you and your company, you should write them down and highlight them.
Step 4 - Deep dive into their personality.
Based on the information you've collected so far and your experience at the company,
You should have a fair idea of who your customers are as unique individuals.
In this step, you should focus on the personality traits that will influence your relationship with your customer.
For example:
Is your customer data-driven?
Are they spontaneous? Do they like surprises?
What is important to them in a professional relationship?
Step 5 - When personality meets the job.
Up until now, each step focused on a different component of our customer persona.
It's time to combine all of the components into one persona that will represent our customers.
Start by making a list of the customers' pain points and desired outcomes.
Then, take a look at the information collected in steps 2-4 and identify any traits or characteristics that can help you:
Solve your customer's pain points.
Form a strong relationship with the customer.
Deliver value and ensure that the desired outcomes are being achieved.
For example, if your customer is data-driven, then you'd become a trusted advisor by proactively providing them with the data they're looking for.
Conclusion
Creating the ultimate Customer Persona is a long process and might involve multiple functions at the company.
That being said, it's the key to delivering customized and personalized value to each customer.
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