You'll likely go into the persona building process with a lot of assumptions about your customer base, especially if you've been with your organization for a while. You probably think you know a lot about your customers, so it's just formalizing what you know in a slideshow, right? Resist the urge to jump straight into creating your personas, no matter how well you think you know your customers. Your assumptions are likely based on limited information from conversations with a limited number of customers. Close this slide deck and do as much customer research as you can before reopening it to finalize your personas. You'll avoid false assumptions that could ultimately undermine your business goals and have a much better and more authentic understanding of your customers in the future.
Engage your entire team (not just marketing) Often, the creation of personas falls to the marketing or design teams, as they are often the ones who will benefit the most from the resulting product. But relying solely on these teams is another common mistake we've seen when creating personas. Other teams, especially customer support and sales, are Image Masking Service a wealth of information when it comes to your customers. They are on the front line for your business, having some of the most important conversations about your product or service. Tap trusted colleagues in your organization to help you with the persona creation process. They'll bring a different perspective to the job and help you create well-balanced and more useful characters.
Limit your own biases Just as you enter the persona creation process with assumptions about your customers, you enter with a whole stack of personal biases. As you sift through customer lists, you might be reluctant to point out small businesses to talk to, or ignore customers whose names are hard to pronounce or sound foreign. Often these actions are almost unconscious, they are the result of a life spent in systems that denigrate otherness. Try to notice when this happens, because biases will only work to exclude people and groups from the process. There may be a language barrier when talking to customers outside of your own region, but they often make up a significant portion of your customer base. And, as humans, they have every right to be represented in these conversations. Try to be inclusive in your research phase and when building what will become your final character.