Build a client persona and they will come
Getting to know your customer
The best place to start working on creating a more positive customer experience is by developing a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a really useful tool that transforms a theoretical “target audience” into an individual person you can actually relate to. It’s a holistic picture of your ideal client created from aggregated data like age, race, gender, occupation, political affiliation, education level, marital status, neighborhood preference, hobbies, activities, needs, desires, and pain points – anything and everything you can possibly know about your customers. The more detail, the easier it will be to pinpoint opportunities and create benchmarks for meeting your firm’s goals and delivering an exceptional customer experience.
How does your firm interact with customers?
We used to define the customer life-cycle in terms of discrete touch points – the stages where clients interact with the firm through: the old way
· Get acquainted. – Sign the contract. – Do business.- Repeat.
Today, there are many more possible interactions across a growing variety of channels and the life-cycle is no longer so simple or linear. Instead of a straight road, the experience is more of a journey with any number of side excursions – or multiple touch points – along the way. Our job is to make the customers’ experience across all of these moments consistent, natural, and positive.
Depending on where they are in the journey, your customers will have different wants and needs. Are you providing the appropriate information or service at each touch point? Is it easy to understand what the next step is and take it?
You’ll know you’re doing the journey thing well when the structure feels invisible, because the touch points are perfect and seamless. In other words, there’s no friction – which happens when stumbling blocks slow your clients’ progress, prevent them from accomplishing their goals, and cause frustration. This is not good as it will cause many potential clients to walk away in search of a better experience elsewhere.
