Data & the Persona: An Organizational Tale

Nalini P. Kotamraju, Ph.D

Vice President of User Research & Analytics, Salesforce

UXSTRAT, Boulder, CO, USA, September 18-20, 2017

Hello, I’m Nalini. I’m a sociologist by training. I lead User Insights & Analytics at Salesforce... And sometimes I gesture earnestly.

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Um, what is Salesforce exactly?

Intelligent Customer Success Platform

Lightning

Einstein

Thunder Data Platform

Applications

Platform

force.com

Heroku Component Exchange

Predictive Analytics Machine & Deep

Learning

Natural Language Processing

Data Management Platform

CRM Data IoT & Social

Data

Sales Service Marketing Analytics Community Apps

Commerce IoT Quip AppExchange

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How our research strategy began…

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Strategic Goal 1: Making the Salesforce User Visible

As in many enterprise UX contexts, the user – not the customer – is often opaque.

Salesforce excels at focusing on its customers.

TRUST is Salesforce’s #1 Value

Strategic Goal 2: Practice Integrating Data

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS SILOES

User Insights

Competitive Intelligence

Product Data

Science

Customer & Market Insights

Implementation & Sales

Goals:

1) Making the Salesforce User Visible

2) Practice Integrating Data

Solution:

We created data-informed personas

WHAT WE ALL KNOW ABOUT PERSONAS

Align organizations

Create empathy

Keep users at the center

Are the“user” in user stories

Anchor tasks

Provide a common language for companies

Become stale

Are fun to make Time-consuming to create

WHAT WE WANTED FOR OUR PERSONAS

Stability Modularity Broad Usage Able to withstand to

small changes in features and

product landscape

Used not just by designers, but by entire

T&P (Technology & Products) organization

Structured to fit with other data sources within

Salesforce

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Sales Cloud Personas

Sales Leader

Deal Closer

Data Expert

Pipeline Builder

Trusted Advisor

Salesforce has 5 major types of sales users:

Salesforce Sales User Personas

Manage & train reps

Prep for meetings & draft contracts

Hold sales meetings & close deals

Forecast & report

Manage tools for Sales team

Find & qualify leads

Answer inbound leads

Prospect in existing accounts & upsell

Maintain relationships & renewals

Primary job function

Secondary job function

Sales Leader

Deal Closer

Data Expert

Pipeline Builder

Trusted Advisor

We conducted a large-scale survey and asked how much time participants spend on a number of core sales tasks on average each

day

We focused on what people do in their jobs

... not just what they do in Salesforce

●  “How many accounts are in your territory?”

●  “How long have you worked in sales?”

●  “How many people report to you (either directly

or indirectly)?”

●  “How do you get new leads and contacts?”

●  “On an average day, how much time do you

spend doing the following….?”.

SAMPLE BEHAVIORAL QUESTIONS FOR SALES PERSONAS

We ran a factor analysis on this reported behavior data to understand which sales tasks tend to occur together…

We interviewed and shadowed our users

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Personas as a Product

Assigned a senior researcher, Yakaira “Kai” Nuñéz as persona czarina. She shepherded the personas, implemented a communication plan and served as a domain expert.

CREATED PERSONA CZARINA ROLE

ESTABLISHED RELEASE CYCLES & COMMUNICATION PLAN

We asked executives in each product area to contribute survey questions, accompany us on customer visits, and gave them naming rights.

SOLICITED EXECUTIVE BUY-IN

WE INVITED DATA SCIENCE ON THE JOURNEY

We partnered with our Data Science team to compare reported behavior and product usage data

HIRED PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHERS

CREATED PERSONA ASSETS

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So… did it work?

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We had some challenges…

ARE THESE REALLY DESIGN PERSONAS ?

WHAT ABOUT EMERGING PERSONAS ?

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WHAT’S THE VALUE OF DATA BEHIND PERSONAS

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Not one big win for strategy....

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...rather many tactical wins for strategy

Executives started using personas to describe users

A few engineering teams started using personas in use cases

Our team became ambassadors for UX

Team portrayed as experts.

Asked to train PMs & engineers on soliciting user feedback.

Personas integrated into product roadmap forum

Data science integrated personas with product usage

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