Higher Education Personas
Project Case Study :: Research
Case Study Overview
When initial conversations started for the rebuilt of our client platform for strengths-based-campuses, I persuaded stakeholders to hold off on project requirements until persona development was first conducted.
We have four personas for our Higher Education customers and clients. Project requirements were to be determined by our two primary personas and two secondary personas would help support the primary personas.
Goals
- For stakeholders and partners to reference the needs, responsibilities, and goals of our users for current and future projects.
- Better understand the needs of our two primary personas.
- Better understand the two secondary personas on how they support the needs of the primary personas.
- Gain insights into what customers need in order to convert to clients to increase the Education Practice’s revenue goals.
Timeline
- Practice Internal study / 1 week
- User Recruitment / 1 week
- Interviews / 1 month
- Data Agrigation / 1 week
- Persona Creation / 1 week
Terms to Remember
Customers vs Clients
- Customers are self-help users that purchase the product through our e-commerce store. They generally have no direct communication or business agreements with Gallup OR had one in the past but have chosen to downgrade.
- Clients were customers that have gone through the marketing funnel that now have a relationship with the Practice and have client contracts with Gallup. They started on the Basic platform and wanted more features and services from the Premium platform.
Basic vs Premium
- Basic refers to the self-help platform that institutions are first exposed to the product through our e-commerce store. This applies to customer users primarily.
- Premium refers to the custom centralized platform that institutions purchase through a contract. This applies only to client users.
This graph represents where clients and customers fall between our measurements of product usage. The black square (upper-right) represents where our best clients (and sometimes consumers) fall under.
First Phase :: Internal Discovery
If you haven’t already, I recommend viewing the Service & Product Blueprinting to better understand the Education Practice and the product.
Starting out here gave me a rough perspective of what the personas would be and helped inform the questions I should be asking in the interviews.
The second step in this phase was to get a list of interviewees for the personas.
I asked these internal partners to tailor a list of clients from our Premium platform that I could interview for the persona development.
I also got the purchase ledger from our accounting department to curate a contact list of customers that use our Basic platform to interview.
Second Phase :: Collect Interview Criteria
Customer Criteria
- Purchased previous fall term (their busy season).
- Have purchased for the past 3 years (level of product dedication).
- Purchased over 2,000 product assessments of their entire purchase history (indicates great investment in the product).
These requirements ensured the customers are moderate product experts.
Client Criteria
- Purchased last fall term (their busy season).
- Have purchase for the past 6 years (level of product dedication).
- Purchased over 8,000 product assessments of an entire purchase history (indicates significant investment in the product).
- Been a client for at least 2 fall terms (proves they know the Premium platform well).
These requirements ensure the clients are considered advanced product experts.
Third Phase :: The Interviews
Recruiting Interviewees
For customers, I sent cold-call-style emails to accounts from our purchase ledger that met the criteria. Sending 50 emails at a time and if I didn’t get a lot of appointments scheduled the next day I’d send 50 more until I hit between 20-25 and gave a deadline for when they could schedule time. We also offered a small incentive.
For clients, it was much easier to recruit since we already had a business relationship with them. Our Client Relations Manager contacted a list of clients that fit the criteria and we had 100% turnout. This told us that our clients were fully engaged and excited to participate in the research study.
The Process
I used an appointment booking software for the user to schedule on their own time that connected to my calendar without all the manual back and forth of finding a time to interview.
I crafted a script that I collaborated on with stakeholders and would adapt the script when parts of the interviews were hitting a snag or didn’t quite resonate with the interviewees.
Overall we conducted 48 user interviews:
- 23 Customer interviews
- 24 Client interviews
Data Collecting and Spectrums
With the help of a teammate to conduct the interviews, we recorded the phone interviews, reviewed our notes, replyed the recordings, and input our findings into excel sheets. We also kept Customers and Clients in separate documents.
After inputting the findings into our Excel sheets, I created spectrum profiles of the interviewees to get a grasp of their operations and responsibilities. These tell a snapshot story of how the product initiatives are being used.
Fourth Phase :: Persona Creation
I interviewed for our two primary personas – Administrator and Implementor – and asked questions during the interview about the secondary personas – Director and Student Leader – to still come up with a rough idea of what those personas do, need within the platform, and how they interact with the primary personas.
Results & Outcomes
One of our biggest findings from both user groups was that nearly 40% of them had created 2 or more accounts at one point or another for similar reasons. This hurts our market funnels greatly and affects our tracking on the sales teams.
Premium Platform Users
Primary findings gave us opportunity to captured feedback about their struggles with the legacy platform and determine what features needed to be a prioity to the roadmap.
Some expressed we control the narrative of the product too much.
Discovered these users are less likely to upgrade from Top 5 to All 34.
%
of users want to know what other institutions are doing with the product.
%
of users crave for more learning opportunities with the product from the Education Practice.
Basic Platform Users
Large-scale campaigns for these ursers creates a lot of admin time that they are willing to pay for with 3-5 seasonal possisions.
Discovered these users do not crave for more learning opportunities – contrary to the Premium users.
Discovered these users are more likely to upgrade from Top 5 to All 34.
%
of users did not know there was a Premium platform.
%