“At our company, we put customers first!” — Every manager ever.
Bringing Customers Into the Decision Making Process
SITUATION
As First Niagara stepped-up its focus on becoming customer-centric, I looked for ways to inject more customer insight into our marketing and product development work. My team was enthusiastic about trying so we got started.
ACTION
In a team meeting, we discussed ways to learn about our customers. After much discussion, we decided to begin by creating profiles of our major customer groups. We would use any insights gained to help us know our customers a little better. We split the team into three groups and each was to focus on one of three broad customer categories–Mass Market, Mass Affluent and Affluent. Each group was to bring their insights to the next team meeting.
Two weeks later, when we met to review the assignment, each group presented information about their assigned macro segment. I was impressed by the creativity and great ideas that came forward from each of the groups. Over the next few weeks, as I reviewed and compiled the information, a profile template began to emerge. Another thing was also becoming clear–three customer categories wouldn’t be enough.
As I continued to refine the profile and gather information to complete it, eight* macro customer segments took shape as those most representative of our customers. Now that I had these eight segments, I took the original profiles and added more characteristics to arrive at the end product. At this point, the profiles included enough information about the customer group that they were beginning to feel like real people. So real in fact, I gave each profile a proper name. The result was a persona, or representative customer, for each of the segments. Examples of the profile elements found in each persona include*:
- Name (eg: Jordan, Jasmine, James, etc.)
- Representative photo
- Address
- Age
- Home branch
- Income and Assets
- Financial needs profile
- Concerns
- Goals
- Current product ownership
- Next-likely product (and other potential product opportunities)
- Family stage (single, married, kids at home, empty nest, etc.)
- Financial Sophistication
- Information sources
- Leisure activities
- Automobiles
- Internet and mobile device usage
RESULT
We found that inviting customers to participate in planning meetings was an excellent way to sharpen our customer focus. Personas allow us to do just that–to have customers in the room during critical discussions to help us make better decisions. In a recent large deposits planning meeting, Josie*, our representative of the retired depositor customer group, dropped by with a large plate of homemade cookies! She joined us at the conference table (well… a life-size cutout of her did) reminding us of the attributes and needs of the segment she represented. Our team members continue to bond with the personas and, by extension, our customers.
Although personas are just fictional representations of customers, they help us know and understand the real individuals in a particular segment and have become integral to ideation and planning.
Contact Information:
Alpine Jennings
Senior Financial Services Executive
Note:
*Sample information, actual names and data are proprietary.
