To Begin: The Rationale for In-depth Generation of Stakeholder Personas
With today’s preoccupation with ChatGPT, and all things AI/digital and sophisticated text analytics and data mining oriented, the value of proactively generating qualitative employee and customer insight is often overlooked or bypassed. For some time, it has been readily accepted that developing and leveraging personas, particularly as related to marketplace behavior, is basic and essential to understanding Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) in customer experience. This is a critical first step in defining, or redefining, elements of how the customer perceives value and value delivery. Some companies are doing this, others are not. Some are doing it inconsistently, without a cohesive process.
Just as important as exploring the mindsets and emotions which occur in the customer’s journey and relationship with a supplier to build personas and categorically track and evaluate each touchpoint element, it is equally important to generate and apply personas for the other stakeholder group so essential to optimizing customer experience, the employees.
In human-centric terms, and just as with customers in CX, it has become pivotal to understand EX, or employee experience. Because of the well-proven linkage between employee experience and customer experience, and the fact that employee perceptions of key value delivery elements often don’t align with those of customers, i.e. what we often define as ‘mirroring’, this has emerged as a pivotal subject for every enterprise.
Qualitative persona determination is often also a valuable precursor to segmentation and micro-segmentation approaches applied in quantitative, or dimensional, customer and employee behavior measurement.
The Array of Qualitative Techniques Which Can Be Applied.
Forming personas is both an art and a science, requiring approaches which transcend much of the traditional, conventional thinking about employee and customer behavior research. For example, beyond the fit, alignment and productivity embedded in decades-old definitions of employee engagement, today employees are searching for greater meaning and personal value in their work. Meaning can be found in the insights which aid in formation of personas. In CX and EX, that meaning often comes through enterprise-wide commitment to the brand promise, the enterprise and fellow employees, and the customer. Employee and customer persona generation can help meet both EX and CX design goals.
Qualitative researchers serve as skilled investigators into identifying what employees and customers really mean – not just what they say (which can be difficult to interpret) – as they participate in guided discussions or answer questions on the kinds of persona-related subjects identified.
Unstructured data, from an ever-growing landscape of sources, evidenced by the geometric growth of online social media outlets, forms the core of employee and customer content analyzed to help design personas and other CX and EX initiatives. However, it is carefully designed quantitative insight research which offers the most comprehensive depth and opportunity for discovery. The array of qualitative techniques which can be applied, for both B2B and B2C companies includes:
- Focus Groups
- IDI’s (Individual Depth Interviews)
- Mini-Groups
- Online and In-Person Forums
- Ideation and Synectics Sessions
- Ethnographic/Observational Approaches
- (OBB’s) Online Bulletin Boards
- Online Community Dialogue
- Chat/email Transcripts, Phone Transcripts, Customer Diaries
- Executive and Employee (EX) Interviews
- Customer Experience (CX) Interviews
Full Range of Qualitative Insight Applications
Qualitative insight research, in sum, can be defined as the collection, compilation, and analysis of the types of unstructured information noted above. The methods typically used support communication, concept, and product/service assessment, and the generation of anecdotal content on specific subjects. In addition to personas, qualitative research projects and initiatives can include product development, assessment of customer attitudes and purchase behavior, positioning statement analysis, ad campaign development, website usability testing, enterprise stakeholder-centricity and cultural strength/cohesiveness, and so on.
As noted, qualitative research can often be used to help set up quantitative research for internal marketing, communication, and process-related initiatives and also for outside applications (such as advertising agencies, consulting organizations, and experience design firms) before proceeding with programs. At their most actionable, this type of detailed insight generation enables an enterprise to connect with target audiences and generate in-depth feedback that identifies not only what people do, but why they do it.
