Client

Isover

Category

Strategy

A persona and customer journey map for ISOVER

From handymen at home over insulation installers to turnkey home builders: as a market leader in glass wool insulation solutions, ISOVER has a particularly broad target audience with many segments. Therefore it is no easy feat to obtain a clear view of what drives all those people, how they come into contact with the ISOVER brand and what their decision-making process looks like. Enter Onlyhumans! We created a buyer persona for ISOVER and drew up a detailed customer journey map (CJM).

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Looking for the crucial link

Gaining insight into the decision-making process of the target audience is crucial for any company. At ISOVER, this is certainly true for one of their main B2B segments. In many cases, the companies in this segment swear by one single brand of insulation material. Understanding exactly how they make their decisions is, in other words, crucial. Eager to shed some light on the matter, the good people of ISOVER came a-knockin’ on our door. 

In a first phase, we put our heads together during a workshop with ISOVER. We soon arrived at the premise that one particular group of professionals in the segment played a pivotal role in the choice of insulation materials. Using a structured questionnaire and input from ISOVER, we drew up a detailed profile of the decisionmaker ISOVER must appeal to. At the end of the workshop, Sam Dupont was born: a fictional 35-year-old who represents the segment in question. Just like any human being, Sam has specific skills and his own set of goals, motivations and frustrations in life.  

On the road with our customer

While drawing up a persona always makes for an interesting exercise, it is only an intermediate stage in mapping a customer journey. A ‘model customer’, after all, has certain goals in mind (user goals) and carries out certain tasks (user tasks) in a bid to achieve those goals. For example, to find a suitable insulation product for a specific application, they may look for information on the internet or ask their colleagues for advice.

Drawing up a persona is only an intermediate stage in mapping a customer journey

While carrying out user tasks to fulfill their user goals, personas open themselves up to so-called touchpoints: moments in time where ISOVER has an opportunity to step in to offer the persona information or an experience. Touchpoints occur both online and offline: think of information available on the ISOVER site, for example, as well as trade fairs and even construction sites. All these moments combine to form the customer journey: the road the customer travels to ultimately arrive at their purchase.

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In a second workshop with ISOVER, we poured the customer journey into a detailed map. For each phase in the funnel, we considered the goals, tasks, touchpoints, channels, potential stumbling blocks and motivations that applied. We combined the results into an extensive process drawing, including the emotions our persona is expected to experience.

A customer journey always has a rational, an emotional and a sensory side to it. For each persona, every contact with the ISOVER brand triggers all kinds of sensations. At one level, they perceive the brand with their senses (seeing the logo, touching the product, …). Each touchpoint also raises a number of questions and concerns on a rational level (What’s the added value? Will this help me achieve my goal?). Finally, there is the emotional level to reckon with: how does the persona feel when they interact with the brand?

Field exercise

While surely interesting in its own right, the model we had drawn up was merely theoretical, based on the expertise and experiences of our customer. As everyone knows, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. With our persona and customer journey map in hand, we approached ten actual decision-makers of the segment we examined. 

We presented our assumptions to them and compared them to their practical experience. 

 

With our persona and customer journey map in hand, we approached real members of the target audience.

Do these decision-makers indeed possess an analytical mind? Do they effectively conduct online research into product properties? And do they really find technical data sheets to be as confusing as we feared? We compared the EPB reporters’ answers to all our questions with our theoretical models and scored them in terms of similarity. In a next step, we presented the new insights and conclusions we collected in this way to our customer, accompanied by some remarkable quotes.

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Learnings galore

For ISOVER, our analysis proved highly educational. They now know, for instance, that the image they had of this particular segment of their target group requires fine-tuning in a number of areas. ISOVER is now also able to see themselves through the eyes of their customers. Moreover, they learned some very concrete lessons. 

ISOVER will certainly be taking our conclusions into accountIn addition, thanks to this valuable experience, they now have a reliable model for creating personas and customer journey maps for other segments of their large target group.