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Chapter 17: The Human Side of the Case

Chapter 17: The Human Side of the Case - 

Personas and Customer Journeys

Video: Personas & Customer Journeys: Bring the Human Side into Your Case Solution

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

  • distinguish a persona from a demographic description
  • identify customer motivations, goals, pain points, and values
  • create useful personas from case evidence
  • map a customer, employee, or product journey
  • use personas and journeys to test the realism of a solution
  • anticipate adoption, resistance, and implementation challenges

Why This Matters

Case teams often become obsessed with numbers.

  • Revenue.
  • Market share.
  • Margins.
  • Costs.
  • Growth rates.
  • ROI.

Those numbers matter, but businesses are ultimately made up of people.

  • Customers experience your product.
  • Employees experience your systems.
  • Suppliers experience your processes.
  • Stakeholders experience your decisions.

A strategy that looks excellent on a spreadsheet can fail because it doesn't work for the people who have to use, buy, deliver, or support it. Don't just focus on numbers and strategy and forget the actual customers, consumers, and stakeholders who will experience the solution.

Discover Your Mad Skills Principle

Don’t just describe the customer. Understand the person.

A demographic description tells you: "Sarah is a 35-year-old urban professional."

A useful persona tells you: "Sarah is trying to save time, is frustrated by the complexity of the current process, values convenience over price, and is willing to switch if the experience becomes easier."

The second version gives you something to solve.

What Makes a Useful Persona?

A useful persona can include:

  • Background: Who is this person?
  • Goals: What are they trying to accomplish?
  • Motivations: What matters to them?
  • Pain Points: What frustrates or prevents them?
  • Behaviours: How do they currently act?
  • Values: What principles influence their decisions?
  • Messaging: What type of value proposition is likely to resonate?
  • Channels: Where and how do they interact with the organisation?

Deciphering Case Characteristics

Personas are especially useful when:

  • customer behaviour is central to the case;
  • different customer segments have different needs;
  • adoption is important;
  • employee behaviour matters;
  • stakeholder resistance is likely;
  • the recommendation changes the customer experience.

You can also build personas for:

  • customers;
  • consumers;
  • employees;
  • managers;
  • suppliers;
  • stakeholders;
  • decision makers.

The type of persona should depend on the question you are trying to answer.

The Customer Journey

A persona tells you: Who? A journey tells you: What happens to them?

A typical customer journey might include:

Awareness à Consideration à Decision à Purchase à Retention

At each stage, ask:

  • What is the customer doing?
  • What is the customer thinking?
  • What is the customer feeling?
  • Where does the organisation interact with them?
  •  What pain point exists?
  • What opportunity exists?

Coach's Lens

A persona should not simply make your presentation look more human. It should change your thinking.

  • If your persona indicates that customers value convenience over price, that may change your recommendation.
  • If an employee persona reveals that employees feel excluded from decision-making, that may change your implementation plan.
  • If a customer journey reveals that the biggest problem occurs after purchase rather than before it,

your solution should reflect that. The test is simple: Did the persona change what we would recommend? If not, ask whether you needed it.

Journey Mapping as a Solution Test

Apply your proposed solution to the journey. Ask:

  • Where does the customer experience the change?
  • What happens at each touchpoint?
  • What new pain points could we create?
  • What support will be required?
  • What will make the customer adopt the solution?

This makes the customer journey an implementation tool, not just an analysis tool.

Common Mistakes

  • Demographics Without Insight
  • Age, income, and location don't automatically explain behaviour.
  • Creating Too Many Personas
  • You don't need ten fictional customers.
  • Focus on the segments that matter.
  • Inventing Information
  • A persona should be grounded in the case, research, or reasonable assumptions.
  • Making the Persona Decorative
  • If the persona doesn't affect your thinking, it is probably unnecessary.
  • Ignoring the Journey
  • Knowing the customer isn't enough.
  • You need to understand their experience.

Mad Skills Drill

Choose the most important customer or stakeholder in your case. Create a persona containing:

  • background;
  • goals;
  • motivations;
  • pain points;
  • values;
  • behaviours;
  • channels.

Then map their journey. Identify: The three moments where your solution can create the greatest value.

Chapter Summary

  • Personas help you understand who you are solving for.
  • Journeys help you understand what they experience.

Together they allow you to test whether your solution is not only strategically attractive but also humanly realistic.

Key Takeaways

✓ A persona is more than demographics.

✓ Focus on motivations, goals, pain points, and values.

✓ Journeys reveal experiences and friction.

✓ Use personas to understand adoption and resistance.

✓ Use journeys to test your solution.

Looking Ahead

Understanding people helps you understand what the solution needs to accomplish. Now we need to determine: What different strategic paths could accomplish it? That brings us to alternatives.

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