By Alan Shen
Anyone who has worn a one-size-fits-all T-shirt is aware of that not each match is an effective match, regardless of what the label says.
The identical holds true for the supply of enterprise applied sciences to staff. A one-size-fits-all technique could loosely match the wants of a few of your staff—however not all.
Some profitable organizations have embraced a promising various: persona mapping, the technique of figuring out people (or personas) inside your group and tailoring the expertise experiences you ship to every persona group. It’s a shift from the mindset of “a user is a user” that maps every worker to the enterprise operate they serve.
Persona mapping is a should for any group prioritizing enterprise for understanding and refining the worker experiences (EXs) you present. By creating persona teams, you possibly can measure and optimize the enterprise influence of your enterprise applied sciences.
How can persona mapping optimize IT service supply?
Persona mapping allows your IT groups to acknowledge the distinctive wants of each worker reasonably than specializing in a broad image of a generic finish consumer. Beyond bettering EX, a persona-mapping technique can align to organizational priorities, making it simpler to realize key enterprise outcomes.
Here are two of many functions for persona mapping.
Help desk ticket routing
Organizations typically wrestle to effectively allocate restricted IT help sources and prioritize service tickets, particularly when a number of specialised service desks are concerned. Imagine explaining your drawback to a service desk agent, being transferred to a distinct agent, after which being required to restate the main points of your challenge. This inefficiency can lead to irritating delays for workers in search of assist. Us for higher customer support and diminished response instances.
When an worker contacts the service desk, a dynamic lookup system identifies their persona group and directs them to the correct specialist instantly. A subject salesperson is perhaps despatched on to a workforce specializing of their particular gross sales software program, whereas a well being care employee may very well be directed to an skilled accustomed to their hospital’s digital medical document system. This strategy not solely improves the help expertise but in addition enhances worker productiveness.
Equipment refresh
Adopting a persona-driven strategy to system life cycle administration ensures your workforce has the instruments it wants for optimum efficiency. Engineers utilizing heavy-duty functions may have frequent system updates, whereas occasional gear upgrades could suffice for a salesman, saving prices and benefiting the surroundings.
Moreover, frontline staff, like airline crews utilizing company tablets, profit from tailor-made help options. Providing help at briefing facilities or a “device help” button for airport workers ensures environment friendly on-site troubleshooting with out inconveniencing passengers.
How do you select your personas?
The variety of personas your group ought to create relies on what’s each manageable and helpful for IT. If you’re new to persona mapping, begin with as much as ten personas to stability advantages and administrative ease. Scaling up can happen as wanted.
Remember, personas shouldn’t be aligned solely by job position, as a result of roles can differ broadly in expertise wants. Instead, create personas based mostly on clusters of staff with comparable wants, comparable to a bunch comprising finance, authorized, and advertising and marketing workers or one other based mostly on geographic location.
When creating personas, take into account these key elements:
- Seniority and position: High-ranking executives and mission-critical staff like trauma middle medical doctors may have prioritized IT help. Organizations typically create a VIP persona for such roles.
- Customer expertise: Roles which might be buyer dealing with, like retail workers, could require faster help to reduce downtime and its influence on the client expertise.
- Location: Employees at a producing plant could require quick Tier 1 service desk consideration to keep away from pricey downtime. Location-based personas additionally assist tailor companies for distant and in-office workers.
Some staff could match a number of personas, comparable to a health care provider who’s each buyer dealing with and of excessive seniority. In such circumstances, set up a course of to assist IT resolve which persona takes priority in several eventualities. Whatever the circumstance, understanding a day within the life of every of your consumer personas is a should.
What’s concerned in organising persona mapping?
Persona mapping entails qualitative analysis, typically via workshops with key stakeholders, to know worker tech wants and day by day experiences. However, merely itemizing personas isn’t sufficient; vital engineering is required to map this information in your id database for tailor-made IT companies.
A typical hurdle for adoption is unclear duty for planning, implementation, and upkeep of personas. To keep away from setbacks, it’s essential to assemble a devoted workforce and make clear stakeholder duties early on.
Maximize your enterprise worth with persona mapping
Prioritize your IT sources based mostly on personas to higher inform gear refreshes, service ticket routing, EX initiatives, and different enterprise processes. Persona mapping may also help your staff ship higher buyer outcomes, contributing to larger buyer loyalty and renewals. Unlike a one-size-fits-all T-shirt, persona mapping results in a a lot better match for everybody.
Learn extra about crafting a persona-powered office right here.
Alan Shen is Vice President of Solution Portfolio and Development, Digital Workplace Solutions at Unisys
