Know your customer

Know Your Customer?
USER PERSONAS & CUSTOMER JOURNEY
From the Udemy.com online course: Digital Product Management

Know Your Customers
 Who are they?
 What’s path(s) do they take to
satisfy their needs with regards to
your business category?
 Where are they?
Tools like User Personas, Customer Journey Maps and just thinking
about Where your Customers are and how they use digital devices
can help you craft the most important features, functions and
benefits for them.

Know Your Customers (cont’d)
 Another meaning for KYC
Just for the sake of clarity as an FYI, Know Your Customer may sound like
a generic enough phrase. However…
It has come to mean something specific within industries like banking
and is related to identity management.
That being said, let’s continue with a more marketing focused
perspective.

User Personas: What are they?
 User personas are a means to define a model of a general
type of person. It’s not an individual, but a syntheses of
demographics and psychographics that represents a
market. They are reference representations of your
customers.
 While there are many core values that come from personas,
perhaps one of the most valuable is empathy.

User Persona Formats: Random Examples

User Personas: The Value of Personas
 Product managers can help define what customer/consumer pain points
or desires might be in order to define or prioritize features.
 Uncover the true end goals of users. “Goal-directed Design” can help satisfy
customer needs. Sometimes needs are found by brainstorming or
assumptions. But discovery should be purposeful. Otherwise, you may be
depending too much on the luck of getting assumptions right.
 UX / UI design can be for specific types of people instead of generic.
 Messaging from high level brand statements to social media posts can
talk in the language of the customer.
 Team members may tend to design and develop for themselves, rather
than a target customer. Personas can help with intellectual honesty.

User Personas: Pre-requisites
 You need more than a vague idea about who your customer
is. You need some research.
 Ethnography is a common means to try to understand your
customers.
Ethnography involves observing users in the real world.
This helps define the reality of the customer and avoids fanciful
imaginings of a product team which may or may not match the
everyday customer reality.

User Personas: Pre-requisites (cont’d)
 Who are your users?
 Geographic: country, region, location density, climate,
 Demographic: age, gender, family size, occupation, income, education, religion, race,
nationality
 Psychographic: lifestyle, social class, Activities/Interests/Opinions, Values, Attitudes.
 Behavioral: occasions, loyalty, buyer intent
 Chances are you can find or buy research about your target market. Otherwise, you
may have to seek out more expensive primary research options.
 Surveys and Interviews are common tools. If cost is a major factor, you can also try
using your own site analytics and social media research,
 Nothing is better than actually meeting potential customers. While one certainly has to
be careful of small sample bias, open ended chats with real customers can yield
insights challenging to find by other means.

User Personas: Building a Persona
 You’re going to take your research and synthesize one or
several generic Personas.
 You need to genericize common traits and attitudes into a
consumer model.

User Personas: Components
 Typical Components of a Persona.
 Name.
 Demographic.
 Descriptive title.
 Photograph.
 Quote.
 Day-in-the-life narrative.
 End goals (explicit and tacit).
 Needs and wants, responsibilities, motivations, attitudes, pain points,
behavior (such as device usage), and design imperatives.

User Personas: An ExampleUser Personas: An Example

User Personas: Arguments Against
 Some believe them to be a waste of time.
 While you may find them used in companies using Lean
methods, it’s possible such cultures prefer to ideate fast
and test rather than study a lot upfront.
 Because they’re fictional, they may be too made up to be
useful. They’re not really scientific or reliable.
 There does not appear to be much hard data justifying the
cost/effort of this method.

User Personas: More Arguments
 Some believe that a persona may be too abstract and lose
sight of actual, real people.
 The result could conceivably be working on a solution that
doesn’t solve real world problems.

Customer Journey Maps: What are they?
 Customer journey maps shows the paths your customer
travels as they engage with your company’s product or
service.
 The more touchpoints you have, the more complicated the
journey.
 Their journey may actually start before you’re even
involved. And may end with a long term relationship… or
abandonment.

Customer Journey Formats: Random Examples
 Customer Journey Maps are all over the place in terms of
format. Let’s look at some…

Customer Journey Maps: Choosing a Format
 No set format.
 Relatively new
‘best’ practices.
 Just tell your
story in whatever
form you believe
works.

Customer Journey Maps: Components (1 of 2)
 Personas: Who is taking the journey?
 Timeline: There’s a set time box in which the journey is
happening. Journey’s typically have beginnings and ends.
Where does your customer journey start and end?
 Actions: What is the customer trying to do? Do you need to
capture every experience?
 Motivations / Emotions: Why are they trying to do it and
how do they feel along the way?

Customer Journey Maps: Components (2 of 2)
 Questions: What issues are they facing along the way that
cause uncertainty?
 Barriers: What blocks them?
 ZMOT: Are there “Zero Moments of Truth?” (More on this
in other sessions.)
 Note: Journeys may be simple end to end processes, or
they may end up looking like a complicated system
flowchart. If yours ends up complicated, then you have
identified your first problem.

Customer Journey Maps: Visualization
 In a perfect world, you’d have a combination UI / UX expert
and cartographer on staff.
 Just in case you don’t, that’s ok.
 Maps can look like physical areas, network topologies,
hierarchical or process flow charts, and more.
 Create a structure that makes sense for how you intend to
use the map for your own insights or to communicate user
activities to others.

Can You Even Get the Data?
 Among the holy grails of marketing is attribution analysis.
And it gets challenging to impossible the more touchpoints
and channels exist in a purchase path.
 There may be several “same device” interactions, another
device usage, a trip to a retail store, post to social media,
etc.

More Questions to Help Build Your Map
 Since there’s no set format, the steps may need to be flexible
according to your needs. Consider…
 Do distinct stages exist? If not, you may need to create edges.
 Specific behaviors associated with these stages?
 Are there specific goals or completion needs?
 Is a stage a straight path? Or iterative? Side trips?
 Can you plot the map? Simple timeline is great. But you might need a
flow diagram or other indicators. Footnoting is ok, but simple is better.
Might want to ignore edge cases, or footnote them for reference.

Customer Journey Maps: Value
 They can find customer pain points. These may be specific
to your offering, or generally industry related.
e.g., I may be looking for a good home theater system, but I’m
baffled by the many resolution standards. How do I decide on
what I need before I can even focus on a product?
 You are looking for any bottlenecks in processes.

ZMOT – Zero Moment(s) of Truth
 You are Looking for the ZMOTs
Go get the ZMOT eBook and read it. Now…
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/2011-
winning-zmot-ebook.html
All of it. I mean it. Read it. If not now, then soon. It’s really a key
understanding.
 You are looking for “nudge” opportunities.
Where you can insert an intervention to have impact towards
where you want things to go.

Where are Your Users ? (And the Business Value)
 Online connectivity is quickly becoming ubiquitous. While we
collectively continue to struggle with bandwidth in various
venues, this will only get better over time, giving users a choice
of where they interact with your products and services.

Consumption vs. Collection
 One way to think of platforms are as Consumption vs.
Collection Devices.
 Example: A user might spend hours searching and buying music on
iTunes via Desktop (Collection), but then only use their music on
mobile devices (Consumption.)
 Example: A user may scan QR or bar codes at retail with their mobile
device (collection), but do their comparison shopping at home on
desktop (consumption.)
 Example: A fitness tracker device may have minimal (if any) interactive
functionality on the device. Set up and results likely display on mobile
and desktop.

How Do Your Users Behave & Why?
 Creating and applying user persona and use case analysis will
help you decide what features, functions, benefits need to be
on which platforms.
 You may end up with vastly different experiences on a per
platform basis.
 User Surveys and Focus groups are often maligned for their
expense, bias and challenge in users understanding their own
needs. But if you have a complex interaction model, you may
find these tools useful in understanding their behavior.

The State of Mobil Users
 An early 2016 eMarketer assessment…
 The Short Answer: Android has more market share, but iOS generates more
revenue. Maybe lots of reasons why. But the point here is you need to know
the understand the consumer for your product or service.

The State of Mobil Users (cont’d)
 As of 2016, Android is a larger market place, but iOS customers
have higher propensity to purchase. Any chance your
customers are on Windows or others?
 Where are your users? Potential revenues?
 Go where the customer value is, and mind the business case. If
your business plan fails trying to do it all at the same time, that
could be game over.

Multi-platform and “second screen"
 Are you faced with situations
where a user may be using
multiple devices at once?
 Most people don’t really multi-
task. They task switch quickly.
Are your users using a second
device as an adjunct to what
their doing or for completely
separate tasks?

Bricks & Clicks
 Would you adjust your overall strategy for interacting with
customers if you knew that…
70% of smartphone owners who bought something in a
store first turned to their devices for information relevant
to that purchase. And when people search on mobile, it
tends to lead to action: 92% of those who searched on
their phone made a related purchase.
Google/Purchased Digital Diary,
"How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment,”
May, 2016

The Kano Model
 Customer satisfaction scoring
developed in 1980s by Professor
Noriaki Kano.
 It classifies customer satisfaction into
five categories.
 Must-be Quality
 One-dimensional Quality
 Attractive Quality
 Indifferent Quality
 Reverse Quality
By Craigwbrown (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Kano Model – Why Use it?
 Product Roadmapping
If Customer Satisfaction is a core goal, (and it might not be),
understanding features in terms of the Kano model may prove
useful in prioritizing.
 Feature Creep
Instead of loading products with features, you may find there are
some low value items that can wait or maybe shouldn’t be done
at all.

The Kano Model - Must-be Quality
 Must-be Quality
“Table Stakes” needs. If done right, no
one notices. Done badly, customers
are unhappy.
Example: Overly weak cell phone
screen doesn’t survive even small
bump.
Digital: I need secure login to my
bank.

The Kano Model - One-dimensional Quality
 One-dimensional Quality
Features that are satisfying when they
work and dissatisfying when they don’t.
Example: A soup can doesn’t
necessarily have to have an “easy
open tab,” but if it has one, maybe it’s
nice. If it doesn’t work, it’s very
annoying.
Digital: Password reset hard to use;
maybe can’t read CAPTCHA.

The Kano Model
 Attractive Quality
Great when they’re there and work
well, but not a big deal if missing.
Unexpected extras.
Example: Including small tools
when a product requires
assembly.
Digital: Some product drill down
criteria may be nice to have, but
unnoticeable if missing.

The Kano Model
 Indifferent Quality
Neutral. Not good. Not bad. Maybe
a necessary component to the
business, but consumer doesn’t
really notice or care.
Example: Color of freshness seal
material inside package.
Digital: Product localized to
other regions; where a
particular customer doesn’t live.

The Kano Model
 Reverse Quality
Only downside. At least, for
some consumers.
Example for both bricks
and clicks: Huge selection.
Some may like this. Others
face the “paradox of
choice.”
And no, you cannot have
all the candy.

Kano Model – Closer Look at the Graph
By Craigwbrown (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Via Wikimedia Commons
The Must Be’s
• Taken for granted.
• Table stakes features.
One Dimensional
• Measurable ranges of
fulfillment via surveys,
focus groups,
purchasing, usage.
Note: Needs for
features and functions
may change over time.

How Do You Use Kano?
 Do Your Research
 Analyze
 Plot
 Build Strategy
 There are tools and templates you can seek out to help with
surveys, plots, etc.

Diffusion of Innovations
 Idea popularized by Everett Rogers, 1995.
 How new ideas spread via various channels
over time.
 The core idea is the innovations are adopted
over time by various types of people; early
adopters, early majority, late majority, and
laggards.
 Not all innovations catch on of course. Some
simply fail.

Diffusion of Innovations - Variability
 While the model provides conceptual clarity regarding
assertions in placing consumers in categories along a
continuum, innovations may be “fuzzy” in terms of how
they progress.
 Not everything ends up getting used for its originally
intended purpose. And individuals likely behave differently
than corporations, though there’s an overlap in their
motivators.

Diffusion of Innovations – The Process
 The model suggests a five step decision-making process
over time.
 The steps:
Knowledge Persuasion Decision
Reject Accept
Implementation Confirmation

Diffusion of Innovations Chart – Stages Only

Diffusion of Innovations Chart – Stages & Numbers
2.5%
Innovators
(risk takers,
have $$$)
13.5%
Early
Adopters
(opinion leaders)
34%
Early
Majority
(avg. status,
know adopters)
34%
Late
Majority
(skeptics, lower $$$)
16%
Laggards
(aversion to change, lower
$$$)
Adoption over time…

Diffusion of Innovations – Bass Model
 The Bass model, published in 1963 by Frank Bass, offers a
mathematical attempt to make assumptions about market
size and innovator behavior.
 For those so inclined, there are spreadsheet and program
models that may be found online if you would like to
attempt your own forecasting. As you might expect, your
results will depend on the assumptions you use for variable
values.

Diffusion of Innovations – Where are You?
 Chances are you’re in earlier stages of the curve if you’re doing
new product development. But maybe not…
 Digital products have been around awhile.
 Your essential problem?
“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.”
– William Gibson
So how you are going to approach your customers will – or should –
very much depend on where they are psychographically on the
Diffusions curve as well as just where product is on that curve.

Consumer and Web Psychology
Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely
Why We Buy
Paco Underhill
Webs of Influence
Nathalie Nahai
 More ways to understand your customer.

Digital Body Language & eCommerce
 Idea popularized by Steve Woods
 It’s a variation on the idea of the Digital
Exhaust we all put out in our online
travels, but more focused towards
online sales.

Customer Engagement
 Multi-channel attribution is a common
means to try to understand where
customers are coming from. And insofar as
you might have personal information about
your customer, this info can help with
dynamic presentation of information,
offers, support and so on.
 Together these tools can help you
understand your customer better and
ideally how to craft your offerings.

The Next Level
 While “Big Data” concepts may be implied by what’s been
said so far, such methods may not be wholly necessary.
Though it is of course possible such methods may discover
unmet needs or insights. (Which is of course part of the
whole ‘sell’ for Big Data.)
 In any case, among the first goals in understanding your
customers and their needs is understanding their intent via
their behavior.

Digital Body Language Signals
 Some examples:
 Where did they come from?
 What are their Search Terms? (Both to reach you and in any internal search.)
 Where are they Browsing? (How do they drill down.)
 Did they open Emails? Click on items?
 Web Analytics: Pageviews, Returns, Depth.
 Did they submit forms with their information or requesting specific
information?
 Social Sharing Activities?
 Which ones converted to being customers!
 Basically, anything you can possibly sense about them from their behavior.

How Can You Use Digital Body Language?
 You can use the collection of info you’ve got to segment
customers by whatever means you see fit to optimize your
business goals.
 While it may be possible to analyze this info and break it
down in spreadsheets, you may want to investigate toolsets
for such things, including Customer Relationship
Management and Marketing Automation Tools.

What About Segments?
 Customer segments are often broken down
by demographics or other obviously
identifiable characteristics.
 But what about Actual Customers who Buy?
Some have high Average Order Values (AOV).
Some are highly profitable, others are not.
Some prospects will never buy.

Tying Business Goals to Prospects
 If you build Customer Buying Segments with regards to your
business goals… profitablity, high gross order ticket, lifetime
value, whatever your goals...
 ...You can then try to match these with the appropriate
collections of Body Language Segment Types and optimize
accordingly.
 If you don’t, your stuck with more simplistic funnel analysis,
such as shopping cart optimization and such. This may be fine
to start. But to truly optimize for your business goals, you will
likely need to go deeper into segments.

Thanks!
From the Udemy.com online course: Digital Product Management

Know your customer

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