Testing next-best-action configuration with persona testing

Learn how to create personas based on the customers in the existing customer database table through the Customer Profile Viewer.

Personas represent various customer profiles that you use to test the results of the next-best-action strategy framework.

You can access the customer database table from Profile data sources. Note that the customer profile data that the decisioning uses consists of a set of data sources, which form the customer analytical data record.

You can analyze the customer profile data for each customer. For example, if you want to create a persona for one of the customers, Troy.Murphy, you navigate to the respective customer profile view.

In addition to the customer analytical data record, the persona that you use in testing contains the context in which the decision is made: the channel information and the real-time container information.

On the Next best actions tab, you select the direction, channel, and the real-time container that you want the personas to represent.

Once you select the customer and configure all additional information, create the new persona.

You can also run a decision to determine what offers the customer is eligible for depending on the present engagement policies, constraints, and propensity. You can analyze the results of this run and proceed with creating the test case.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

- How to create personas in the Customer Profile Viewer.

Learn how to conduct a persona test on customer personas to evaluate the next-best-action strategy results.

U+ Bank, a retail bank, wants to verify that customers receive the correct offers from the engagement strategy and that the offers are in line with the business requirements of the bank.

Persona-based tests use customer personas with specific characteristics to evaluate next-best-action engagement strategy results.

To test the configurations, the bank decides to use TroyInboundWeb, BarbaraInboundWeb, and JohnInboundWeb as the personas.

You can see the attributes of each person in the Customer Profile Viewer:

• TroyInboundWeb is a 26-year-old chef who became a customer of U+ Bank 3 months ago, and his annual income is 13652.
• BarbaraInboundWeb is a 32-year-old engineer who became a customer of U+ bank a month ago, and her annual income is 14452.
• JohnInboundWeb is a 45-year-old IT employee who became a customer of U+ Bank 3 months ago, and his annual income is 14426.

With persona-based tests, you verify that the next-best-action strategy gives the expected results. On the Engagement Policy tab of Next-Best-Action Designer, you can create test cases for any group.

You can create test cases for a specific group or all groups. Running test cases for all groups implies that you run the next-best-action strategy for all issues and groups in your business structure. As the bank wants to target the credit cards group, create a persona test case at the group level.

To configure a persona test case, select the action and treatment that you expect the test persona to receive according to your next-best-action strategy. In this case, TroyInboundWeb is supposed to receive the Standard card and Rewards card actions.

In the Persona (Data transform) field, select the persona against which you want to test the strategy. Select TroyInboundWeb.

In the Next-Best-Action scope section, select whether the test checks only the engagement policy configuration or includes additional elements such as constraints and arbitration.

Selecting "Engagement policies only" validates that your policy conditions provide the desired results. The selection ensures that the test looks at the eligibility, applicability, and suitability.

Selecting Engagement policies and arbitration validates the effectiveness of your policies when you arbitrate across all actions. The test considers arbitration, adaptive analytics, treatment and channel processing, and constraints.

In this case, select Engagement policies only.

BarbaraInboundWeb is a persona who is eligible for the Rewards Plus card and the Premier Rewards card. Create a test case for this persona.

JohnInboundWeb is a persona who is eligible for the Rewards Plus card and the Premier Rewards card. Create a test case for this persona.

Run the tests to confirm that they pass .

The bank now wants to offer the Standard card to customers who have an annual income greater than 14000.

See how this engagement policy change affects these test results. To define an engagement policy, click Standard card.

Define a suitability condition so that only customers who have a minimum annual income of 14000 qualify for the actions.

Run all the tests to see how this engagement policy configuration affects the test cases.

Observe that TroyInboundWeb fails the test. The failure means that Troy does not satisfy all the existing engagement policies. Analyze the results to see why the test did not give the expected outcome.

Based on the report, Troy is not eligible for the Standard card.

TroyInboundWeb's annual income is 13652, which is less than the defined applicability condition. JohnInboundWeb's annual income is 14426, and BarbaraInboundWeb's annual income is 14452, which is higher than the defined applicability condition.

Although the TroyInboundWeb persona fails the test, the JohnInboundWeb and BarbaraInboundWeb personas pass the test.

Now, edit the test for the TroyInboundWeb persona to delete the Standard card assertion, and then run the test.

You can design all these personas according to the business requirements and test them every time an engagement policy changes.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

- How to create persona test cases.

- How engagement policy changes affect the persona test results.

- How to edit persona test cases.