The Honest Non-Customer - An Unorthodox User Persona

Every product management course I have taken emphasizes the importance of writing down the attributes of your target customer (aka a “user persona”) to guide product development. But three recent personal experiences indicate that there may also be value in considering the needs of an honest non-customer.

Experience #1: Receiving Unexpected Fast Food at 2am

Late one scorching summer afternoon at the end of a productive and refreshing day of working from home, my wife discovered an unexpected fast food order on our front porch. Accompanying the sagging bag of tacos and the near boiling liquid labelled a slushie was a DoorDash receipt for an unknown person indicating that his/her order had been dropped off around 2am – nearly 15 hours earlier.

We quickly disposed of the unsanitary meal, then tried to contact DoorDash in the hopes to support a reconciliation with the customer whose order had mistakenly come to our house. The support line offered plenty of automated options to report one’s own missing meal or track progress on a refund, but there was no way for us to report the erroneous delivery of another person’s meal. After waiting on hold for several minutes to talk to a real human, we gave up and moved on with our lives.

While I hope DoorDash refunded our unknown friend with the midnight munchies, I left this experience without the satisfaction of knowing if my efforts made a difference.

Experience #2: Finding a Lost Credit Card

While biking home from work, I once found a beat-up Cash App credit card in the street gutters. Worried that someone malicious might misuse the card, I picked it up.

After arriving home, I searched Cash App’s support center for how to report a lost card, but only found instructions for the owner of the card, not the finder. I could not open a chat since I do not have a Cash App account, nor did I want to create a long lasting account solely for a brief report.

Eventually I found a phone number to call, and while the support staffer was friendly and patient, the call ended without reaching a resolution. After more searching I eventually found Cash App’s Twitter support where we slowly worked through a full resolution of the incident (freezing the account, notifying the owner, and shredding the card).

While the process with Cash App was tedious, I am thrilled that my efforts ultimately resulted in peace of mind for the person whose credit card I found.

Experience #3: Reviewing Local Store Loyalty Cards

My local grocery and hardware stores have given me loyalty cards that fit on my keychain. Printed on these tiny cards are the instructions “If found, please drop in any mailbox. Postage Guaranteed!” along with additional contact information for the store.

In contrast to the experiences with DoorDash and Cash App, I imagine myself finding someone else’s loyalty card, and happily spending a whole 30 seconds dropping it in my mailbox, fully confident that the store will appropriately sort everything out.

The User Persona of an “Honest Non-Customer”

To me, these three experiences reveal a class of individuals, who I call “honest non-customers”, who are often overlooked during product development.

An honest non-customer is someone who does not currently use your product, is not part of your target audience, and has no desire to become a customer. Due to some chance encounter, he/she has identified one of your ailing customers and, without any motive for personal gain, wants to improve that customer’s experience with you. He/she wants the interaction to be brief, and thus would much rather contact you privately through publicly available support channels (e.g. phone, email, social media messaging) than creating an account with your product.

At first glance, all product management best practices I’ve learned would discourage allocating resources to this persona. After all he/she contributes no current/expected revenue and represents a small minority of interactions with your brand. Furthermore, these interactions are risky to incentivize (imagine a dishonest non-customer stealing a DoorDash order then reporting that it was “wrongly delivered” while eating the unearned meal).

Yet it may still be worthwhile to invest in the experience of honest non-customers. People fitting this persona provide immediate, personalized solutions to the frustrations of your current customers – like my assurance that an unknown Cash App customer’s lost credit card was not going to be used maliciously. Additionally, your brand becomes stronger through every positive interaction, including with non-customers who, if they don’t convert themselves, become more likely to provide positive word of mouth advertising to others. Finally, society benefits when we support people who assist others with no expectation of reward.