Use Customer Profiles to describe the groups your business can serve well, what they need, and how they choose a product or service. A useful profile helps you decide which offer, message, or customer experience to improve.
Profiles can describe individuals, households, or organizations. Focus on shared needs and circumstances rather than inventing a person with a name, biography, and unsupported preferences.
This guide uses an illustrative bicycle-repair business. Treat its examples as draft ideas to investigate, not customer research.
Open the plan and choose a useful starting point
Open Assistant → Strategy → Plans → Customer Profiles. Choose Fill it in myself for an empty plan, or Add details, Edit, or Review suggestions on a section. Select Save after editing each section.
Start with the priority customer and offer in your Business Strategy plan. You can save profile work in progress, but Customer Profiles needs Business Strategy to be ready before it can show Ready to use.
The three essential decisions are Customer groups, How each group decides to buy, and Evidence & open questions. For help with saving sections and reviewing suggested answers, see Setting up your business strategy in Cedros.
Choose one useful group first. Add another when its needs, buying process, or fit are different enough to change how you would serve it. Avoid creating several profiles that lead to the same decisions.
Add a customer group with a clear need
In Customer Groups & Needs, edit Customer groups and choose Add high-value target. Complete the profile card:
- Customer group: give the group a name you can recognize elsewhere in the plan, such as “Local bicycle commuters.”
- Customer situation / context: describe the circumstances that affect the need, such as relying on a bicycle for weekday travel and having limited time to arrange repairs.
- What they need to accomplish: explain the useful result they want, such as returning to reliable travel with a repair they understand and can afford.
- Pain / urgency signals: describe the problem and what makes it pressing, such as an unreliable brake or uncertainty about when the bicycle will be ready.
- Buying or fit triggers: record what prompts the search for help, such as a new fault, an upcoming commute, or a maintenance issue that keeps returning.
Use Add target profile to add another group. Use Remove to take a card out of the section, then Save to keep the changes.
Give every card enough detail to be useful. For the customer-group answer to count as complete, each card needs a group name, what they need to accomplish, and at least one pain/urgency signal or buying/fit trigger. An extra blank card can leave the answer incomplete.
For a business customer, describe the organization's situation and the people involved in the need. For example, a local delivery business may need predictable maintenance for several bicycles. Its purchase process may differ from that of an individual commuter even when both need reliable repairs.
Set priorities by fit and business value
Each profile has High, Medium, and Low controls. Use them to place profiles in High Value, Medium Value, or Low Value groups.
The first card starts at High and additional cards start at Medium. Review those choices against your strategy; the starting label is not evidence that a group is more valuable.
Consider whether your business can solve the need well, deliver the work reliably, and earn enough to support the service. Explain the reason for the priority in the profile's context, and record the supporting evidence in Evidence & open questions.
For the repair example, local commuters might be a high priority if the workshop can serve their needs reliably and repeat maintenance fits its capacity. A fleet customer might be promising but require collection arrangements or capacity the business has not established. Record those uncertainties before treating the opportunity as a priority.
Keep priorities focused enough to guide a choice. If every group is High Value, decide which one should shape the next offer or improvement first.
Explain how each group decides to buy
In Buying Decisions, use How each group decides to buy to describe the purchase process. Start each entry with the matching profile name so readers can connect it to the right card.
Cover the parts that matter:
- Who uses the product or service, chooses it, pays for it, or influences the decision.
- Which alternatives they compare, including doing the work themselves or postponing it.
- Which criteria matter, such as availability, clear estimates, location, or specialist experience.
- What causes hesitation and what information helps resolve it.
- When they usually decide, buy again, or renew, where that timing is known.
A draft assumption for local commuters could be: “The rider usually chooses and pays. They compare nearby repair shops and doing a simple repair themselves. They want a clear estimate and a realistic collection time. An unexplained price or uncertain completion time may delay the booking.”
Label that as an assumption until you have supporting evidence. For the delivery business, check whether the rider reports the issue while an operations manager chooses the supplier and approves the spend. Do not assume that the user, buyer, and payer are always the same person.
Keep useful differences between groups visible. A generic statement such as “Everyone wants good service” gives little help when choosing what to explain on a page or in a reply.
Describe poor fit in observable terms
In Fit, Evidence & Open Questions, use Customers we are not a fit for to identify needs or expectations your offer cannot meet, and explain why.
For example: “Customers who require guaranteed overnight collection and repair are outside our current service because we do not offer overnight collection.” This gives the team a clear boundary to check.
Use Signs of a poor fit for the observable signals that reveal that mismatch, such as an inquiry requiring an unsupported repair, an unavailable delivery area, or a completion deadline the team cannot meet.
Base these decisions on the work, offer, and relevant business fit. Avoid vague labels such as “difficult customers.” A question about price, an unfamiliarity with the product, or a request for an explanation may simply show that someone needs clearer information.
Record evidence and the questions still open
Use Evidence & open questions to show what supports each profile and what still needs investigation. Refer to the profile by name and record:
- Source and date: the interviews, order history, support conversations, surveys, or observations you used, and when they were collected.
- Observed pattern: what the source actually shows, including exceptions or limits.
- Confidence: how strongly the evidence supports the conclusion and why.
- Open question and next step: what remains uncertain, how you will investigate it, who will do that work, and when to review the result.
If the commuter profile is only a hypothesis, say so: “We have not yet checked whether collection time is more important than price. Review recent repair inquiries and ask customers what influenced their choice before changing our service promise.” Add an owner and review date that your team has agreed.
As evidence arrives, update the profile rather than leaving the original assumption beside a conflicting conclusion. A few conversations can suggest a direction without establishing that every customer has the same need. Summarize relevant patterns and keep unnecessary personal details out of the plan.
Review and use the saved profiles
- Reopen the plan and read each saved profile. Check that its need, priority, and buying process agree with one another and with Business Strategy.
- Check every profile card for a name, a useful outcome, and a pain or trigger. Complete or remove unfinished cards.
- Check the three essential decisions and the Business Strategy prerequisite if the plan still shows Needs decisions. Review suggestions before choosing Accept reviewed answer, then Save.
- Use Not known yet for an unresolved decision and explain the next step. Use Not applicable with a reason when a question does not apply.
- Try the profiles on a real planning decision: which service page to improve, which question to answer, or which part of the customer experience needs attention.
When included as context, these profiles help Cedros tailor ideas and planning to the groups you want to serve. Use Brand Guidelines for how the business should speak to them. Check the resulting work against both the profile evidence and your actual offer before using it.
Ready to use means the plan's readiness checks are satisfied; it does not validate the customer research. Revisit the profiles when your offer changes or new inquiries, support conversations, and buying behavior reveal a different pattern.
If a save reports a conflict, preserve your intended edits, use Reload latest plan when offered, and compare the newer version before saving again. For an unresolved editor problem, ask for help with the section name and visible error.