Personas in Customer Service

What we did in the 80s .... but used an existing advertising persona that was already well know,  Then used a AI driven chatbot system to drive their interaction.   We built up a customer persona starting from an implied advertising persona.   Can work, if its done well.  I have mentioned that here a number of times,  see details at the tag.

Using personas to drive better customer service    By Paul Selby in CutomerThink

It’s done. Your customer service team has completed a six-month project to develop, test, and deploy state-of-the-art technology that was billed as the answer to drastically reducing call volume while delivering higher-quality service to customers faster. The go-live day is promoted to customers via email and a countdown timer on the main customer service landing page adds to the build-up. Everyone is excited by the profound effect this will have on customer service.

Day one … and there’s no noticeable change. That’s okay, this is going to take some time. A week goes by, then a month. Six months in and there’s some change, but nowhere near expectations. What happened?

It’s easy to jump on a new technology trend in customer service. Competitors could be delivering more advanced forms of customer service. A research company might be offering bold predictions for the future of customer service. And the ever-present pressure of rising customer expectations might play a part. Any one of these influences is enough to embark on building new customer service engagement and solution channels. But if you go to all the work to offer these new options and they aren’t being used despite ample evidence it should succeed, there might be a simple reason for its failure: customer personas weren’t considered.

Defining personas
Product design created the concept of personas in the 1990’s. They act as one or more fictional stand-ins for prospects or customers. Well-crafted personas have a story or “biography” that represents their goals and desires as well as challenges and limitations. These traits help guide the development of products and services that would be interesting and useful to them, ensuring greater success of the product or service.

Personas are constructed by examining the existing customer base for its traits (supplementing that information with research through additional conversations and surveys) and by interviewing prospects when a new product or service for a new target market is being considered. Qualities include behavior patterns, skills, attitudes, and environmental details–profession, hobbies, lifestyle, etc.–that influence their behavior. Fun fictional personal details are often added to add depth and to make them more relatable (such as giving them names and a picture). ... 
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Using personas in customer service
Persona usage in customer service doesn’t vary much from use in product design. Capturing some additional details unique to how particular personas might seek customer service are the key consideration.  .... "