Customer Personas

2020 ICT Growth Program

22 November 2020
Customer Personas
Cartoon by Tom Fishburne from “Talking to Humans” by Giff Constable
Critical Concept #1

A market segment is a group of

customers sharing common desires,
needs, and buying patterns.
William Davidow, Marketing High Technology

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Assess all of the possible customers and
segments to explore value perception

emotion, value

¨ List all possible customer

segments
¤ Remember, a segment
shares common desires,
needs, and buying
patterns
¤ Develop personas and/or
use cases to help define
segment (and tee-up
value propositions)

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Use an empathy map to explore target market
segment’s pains & gains associated with jobs

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Sample personas

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The B2B customer presents an extra layer of
complexity
¨ Establish the role of the “customer”
¤ End user
Customer Persona
¤ Decision maker
¤ Influencer
¤ Payor
¤ Beneficiary
¨ Differentiate among the customer
roles
¤ Jobs
¤ Gains
¤ Pains

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To understand your customer, you must learn
the jobs they are trying to accomplish
¨ Functional
Help the customer
complete a task, solve a Customer Persona
problem
¨ Social
Help the customer look
good or gain status/power
¨ Emotional Customer Job(s)
Focus on aesthetics or
feeling good, being secure
¨ Supporting
In the context of
purchasing/consuming
value

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Customer jobs have levels of importance;
priority order may define different segments

+ Important Customer Persona

Customer Job(s)

– Insignificant

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Seek measurable ways to describe the
benefits for your customer
¨ Before, during, and after the
job
Customer Persona
¨ Gains: Positive emotions,
revenues and desires that
would surprise and delight
Gains
your customer
¨ Pains: Negative emotions,
undesired costs, risks and Customer Job(s)
situations you help your
customer avoid or reduce Pains

¨ Calculate the value of

pains, gains

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TODAY’S EXERCISE / INDEPENDENT LEARNING

Pick one customer segment & role; develop the persona