<aside> 👋 Want the TL;DR? Check out this short article written by UserZoom about this study
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Asurion's three steps to developing frontline attitudinal personas
Most of my time at Asurion has been spent supporting internal employees and the work they do to support our customers. These employees rely on a variety of systems and tools to complete their day-to-day tasks, and my job was to make the relationship between these employees and their tools a productive one.
When I began this research initiative, I quickly realized there was a major disconnect between the two. The product teams creating these tools were operating on assumptions about the employees using them, and the employees were frustrated that they weren't a part of the systems' creation and upkeep.
Knowing that there was a disconnect, I felt it was necessary to create a resource that would bridge Asurion's frontline employees (known internally as "Experts") to the broader company, and the best way I knew how to do that was by developing personas. These personas would help build empathy between our professional employees and our Experts.
Step 1: Who am I studying?
The project began by identifying who would need to be represented in the study, as well as which stakeholders would need to be looped into the project. Being that Asurion is so large and has so many different types of expert functions, this wasn't so straight forward and took a lot of digging around. After some weeks, I was finally able to create a comprehensive list of each type of Expert, as well as key details that would help guide the project forward.
Step 2: Stakeholder Buy-in
Next I started meeting with directors and senior managers to introduce them to the project and gain their buy-in. Each stakeholder I spoke with loved the idea and agreed that it was a valuable initiative to take on. With their stamp of approval I was ready to start the research.
Step 3: Employee Interviews
Once I knew who I needed to interview and that I had approval to do so, I immediately started reaching out to Experts to see if they'd be interested in participating. I knew I'd need to speak with at least 30 employees for a solid 45 minutes to get the data I'd need. After several months of recruiting, scheduling and interviewing participants, I had completed 32 interviews with employees across 10 different Expert functions.