

Thinking Of Customers As Your Guests - koichi
http://52weeksofux.com/post/1087338409/customers-as-guests

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bmcnamara82
The one argument goes that if you simply view your customer as a data point
you tend to lose the 'customer perspective'. However, data doesn't lie, if you
can augment your results with qualitative customer feedback, this is the best
scenario.

This makes me think that the tool of using personas in product development
might go away.

For example, this is from the Wikipedia article on personas:

"Personas are said to be cognitively compelling because they put a personal
human face on otherwise abstract data about customers.

Before we had the means to collect data and easily reach certain customer
segments they played an important role, but now that we have powerful
analytics to measure our decisions and new ways to interact with customers I
could see personas being used less often.

~~~
ziweb
I think they go hand in hand. You can only treat someone as a guest if you
know something about them. It is the influx of data that has given character
to customers. The more data you have, the more you will build their persona.

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kia
If you come too close to somebody your view can be biased. This can affect you
when making tough decisions which can be vital for your business survival.

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po
I guess this works if you're a good party host. I've been to some pretty
terrible parties, and some terrible websites.

I like seeing where the analogy goes though. The login is your ticket, the
captcha is our bouncer, etc...

~~~
barkmadley
The 404 is an empty closet.

The 403 is a locked bedroom.

The error stack trace is someone's vomit on your shoe.

