Personalize your IT service delivery with persona mapping

Anyone who has worn a one-size-fits-all T-shirt knows that not every fit is a good fit, despite what the label says. The same holds true for the delivery of enterprise technologies to employees. A one-size-fits-all strategy may loosely fit the needs of some of your employees—but not all.

Some successful organizations have embraced a promising alternative: persona mapping, the strategy of identifying individuals (or personas) within your organization and tailoring the technology experiences you deliver to each persona group. It’s a shift from the mindset of “a user is a user” that maps each employee to the business function they serve.

Persona mapping is a must for any organization prioritizing business for understanding and refining the employee experiences (EXs) you provide. By creating persona groups, you can measure and optimize the business impact of your enterprise technologies.

How can persona mapping optimize IT service delivery?

Persona mapping enables your IT teams to recognize the unique needs of every employee rather than focusing on a broad picture of a generic end user. Beyond improving EX, a persona-mapping strategy can align to organizational priorities, making it easier to achieve key business outcomes.

Here are two of many applications for persona mapping.

Help desk ticket routing

Organizations often struggle to efficiently allocate limited IT support resources and prioritize service tickets, especially when multiple specialized service desks are involved. Imagine explaining your problem to a service desk agent, being transferred to a different agent, and then being required to restate the details of your issue. This inefficiency can result in frustrating delays for employees seeking help. Us for better customer service and reduced response times.

When an employee contacts the service desk, a dynamic lookup system identifies their persona group and directs them to the right specialist immediately. A field salesperson might be sent directly to a team specializing in their specific sales software, while a health care worker could be directed to an expert familiar with their hospital’s electronic medical record system. This approach not only improves the support experience but also enhances employee productivity.

Equipment refresh

Adopting a persona-driven approach to device life cycle management ensures your workforce has the tools it needs for optimal performance. Engineers using heavy-duty applications may need frequent device updates, while occasional equipment upgrades may suffice for a salesperson, saving costs and benefiting the environment.

Moreover, frontline employees, like airline crews using corporate tablets, benefit from tailored support solutions. Providing support at briefing centers or a “device help” button for airport staff ensures efficient on-site troubleshooting without inconveniencing passengers.

How do you choose your personas?

The number of personas your organization should create depends on what’s both manageable and useful for IT. If you’re new to persona mapping, start with up to ten personas to balance benefits and administrative ease. Scaling up can occur as needed.

Remember, personas shouldn’t be aligned solely by job role, because roles can vary widely in technology needs. Instead, create personas based on clusters of employees with similar needs, such as a group comprising finance, legal, and marketing staff or another based on geographic location.

When developing personas, consider these key factors:

• Seniority and role: High-ranking executives and mission-critical employees like trauma center doctors may need prioritized IT support. Organizations often create a VIP persona for such roles.
• Customer experience: Roles that are customer facing, like retail staff, may require quicker support to minimize downtime and its impact on the customer experience.
• Location: Employees at a manufacturing plant may require immediate Tier 1 service desk attention to avoid costly downtime. Location-based personas also help tailor services for remote and in-office staff.

Some employees may fit multiple personas, such as a doctor who is both customer-facing and of high seniority. In such cases, establish a process to help IT decide which persona takes precedence in different scenarios. Whatever the circumstance, understanding a day in the life of each of your user personas is a must.

What’s involved in setting up persona mapping?

Persona mapping involves qualitative research, often through workshops with key stakeholders, to understand employee tech needs and daily experiences. However, merely listing personas isn’t enough; significant engineering is required to map this data in your identity database for tailored IT services.

A common hurdle for adoption is unclear responsibility for planning, implementation, and maintenance of personas. To avoid setbacks, it’s crucial to assemble a dedicated team and clarify stakeholder responsibilities early on.

Maximize your business value with persona mapping

Prioritize your IT resources based on personas to better inform equipment refreshes, service ticket routing, EX initiatives, and other business processes. Persona mapping can help your employees deliver better customer outcomes, contributing to higher customer loyalty and renewals. Unlike a one-size-fits-all T-shirt, persona mapping leads to a much better fit for everyone.

Learn how Unisys can help you craft a persona-powered hybrid workplace for outstanding employee experiences.

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*This article originally appeared as sponsored content on HBR.org.