Personas are everywhere. Almost every organization says it has them. And yet, when it comes time to make decisions, they disappear completely from the conversation.
It’s not because personas aren’t useful. It’s because they are often poorly defined.
A persona is not a marketing profile with a first name, an age, and two or three preferences. Nor is it a fictional character created in a workshop to “put ourselves in the customer’s shoes.”
A persona is a strategic tool. It is a way to make a type of customer concrete in order to better understand what truly influences their decisions, expectations, and experience.
When used well, personas help answer very concrete questions. What should we invest in? For whom are we optimizing a service? Which trade-off is acceptable, and for whom is it not?
Without that clarity, organizations often make decisions based on internal intuition, bias, or operational urgency. They think they are customer-centric, but they are mostly reacting to their own reality.
That is where personas become truly valuable. They help bring discussions back to a common basis, grounded in the reality of the people being served.
But they still need to be built credibly.
A persona based solely on internal perceptions risks reinforcing biases already present in the organization. Conversely, a persona grounded in a real understanding of customer groups—whether from data, conversations, observations, or field experience—becomes a much more solid point of reference.
It does not need to be perfect. But it must be accurate enough to guide decisions.
Another common pitfall is trying to cover everything. In complex organizations, it is normal to have a wide range of profiles. But trying to act on 20 or 30 personas at once completely dilutes the impact.
Personas become truly useful when they are prioritized. When the organization consciously chooses the profiles it wants to focus on, based on its objectives and the transformations it wants to achieve. In most cases, this means a limited number of strategic personas, often around five to eight.
This choice is fundamental, because it directly influences decisions, investments, and transformation efforts.
Ultimately, the question is not whether an organization has personas or not. The real question is whether its personas are being used to guide action.
If they remain in a document, they quickly become persona non grata.
If they are integrated into projects, journeys, and strategic discussions, they become a real lever for understanding better, prioritizing better, and deciding better.
At Interface&co, we support organizations that want to go beyond “cosmetic” personas and turn them into a truly useful tool.
This involves a better understanding of customer groups, structuring personas grounded in reality, and integrating them into decisions and practices.
Whether it’s to define personas, update them, or use them more strategically, we can support you.
