Customer Experience: Creating Customer Personas - Start with a journey map

On a morning walk with my good friend, I mentioned that I wanted to put in wood flooring. My friend told me that her friend recently had a contractor install wood floors in her home and that she was happy with the job.

I visited this person's home and was impressed with the flooring. Three months later, a satisfied customer, I recommended the company to another friend, who now also has new wood floors from the same contractor.

I've just given you the perfect example of a customer journey. Before you create personas, you have to be clear on your customers' journey. The customer journey is six steps:

1. Awareness

2. Consideration

3. Action

4. Experience

5. Repeat

6. Loyalty

How people find out about you is the first step: Awareness. For me and the wood floor installer, it was word of mouth. Awareness can be from TV or social media ads, signage, celebrity endorsements, or influencers. 

In my business, people become aware of me through LinkedIn Learning, a YouTube video, or while searching for a topic that leads them to my blog.

Asking your customers how they heard of you is an important question. But you also want to know how people curious about you but who don't go through with a purchase find out about you.

Step 2 is Consideration. Wanting to pull up old stained carpet and upgrade my home made me consider talking to flooring companies. 

What are potential customers considering with you? Are they trying to solve a problem, or are they intrigued?

Step 3 is the point when the person takes Action. For example - sign the contract for flooring, checkout, abandon the cart, ask for references, or decide not to take any action.

Experience, step 4, is when the person becomes a customer. They buy the product, attend the workshop, enter the store, or get the flooring.

Step 5 is the goal – Repeat. The customer tries the product or service again. My husband and I recently had an exquisite dining experience at a downtown restaurant - we loved it so much that we returned a second time.

Loyalty, step 6, is when the customer keeps repeating the behavior – returning again and again, telling others, which starts the customer journey over again with new customers who've heard of you through word of mouth.

Creating personas begins with you understanding and mapping out your customer's journey. So, start with journey mapping! 

Here's a preview of the next step in creating customer personas: Conduct research.

Step one: Conduct research from Customer Experience: Creating Customer Personas by Myra Golden

For help improving your customer experience through creating customer personas, check out my LinkedIn Learning course: Customer Experience: Creating Customer Personas