Executive summary
One of the world's largest financial services organizations with more than $30 billion in annual revenue, tens of thousands of employees, and a presence in more than 200 countries and territories partnered with Stravito to build a trusted foundation for enterprise intelligence before adopting AI Personas.
Grounded in years of curated customer research and validated against real-world business scenarios, Stravito AI Personas is helping employees access trusted insights more naturally, extend the reach of a small Global Insights team, and make more confident, customer-centric decisions.
One of the world’s largest financial services organizations uses payment technology and related services to connect consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments. Operating at global scale, the company depends on trusted customer intelligence to guide product strategy, marketing, innovation, and customer experiences.
The challenge: Expanding access without compromising trust
For years, the organization's Global Insights team invested in building a deep understanding of its customers through segmentation studies and ongoing qualitative and quantitative research. But as the research library grew, so did the challenge of making valuable insights easy to discover and apply across the business.
The team wanted to help thousands of stakeholders access trusted customer intelligence more easily while maintaining the rigor expected in a highly regulated industry.
AI-powered personas presented an opportunity to transform how employees interacted with research. Rather than searching for reports, teams could ask questions in natural language and quickly explore specific customer segments’ needs, motivations, and behaviors. AI Personas are interactive representations of customer segments, grounded in research and designed to respond from their perspective.
But success depended on one critical factor: the AI had to be grounded in trusted enterprise intelligence, not generalized information, and supported by transparency, governance, and human expertise.
The Solution: AI Personas
Having partnered with Stravito for several years to centralize and democratize enterprise insights, the organization had already built the trusted foundation it needed to introduce AI personas responsibly.
They became an early adopter of Stravito AI Personas, grounding each AI Persona in its own curated research, using years of segmentation work as the foundation and enriching it with hundreds of proprietary studies alongside thousands of syndicated research reports. Instead of static customer profiles, employees could now engage with a living representation of their audiences through natural conversation.
Rather than asking employees to learn how research is organized, AI Personas allowed them to interact with enterprise intelligence in the most natural way possible: by asking questions. Every response linked back to its original source, making it easy for users to understand not only the answer, but also the evidence behind it.
The rollout reflected the same thoughtful approach. A cross-functional pilot brought together colleagues from insights, product, marketing, and other business functions to test real-world use cases, refine the experience, and establish governance. Because the AI Personas are connected to continuously updated enterprise intelligence, new research automatically strengthened the experience over time.
Validation
Before expanding adoption, the Global Insights team completed a structured validation program spanning multiple real-world business scenarios. The Personas were evaluated against concept tests, naming studies, and brand research involving hundreds of research participants.
Rather than expecting identical responses, the team looked for consistent themes, priorities, and directional alignment with the original findings. The strong correlation gave stakeholders confidence that the AI Personas could responsibly accelerate early-stage exploration while reinforcing the role of researchers in guiding strategic decisions.
Today, years of customer research have evolved from static reports into interactive conversations.
Employees can explore customer needs, evaluate ideas, and build empathy more quickly, while every answer remains grounded in trusted evidence. For the Global Insights team, the capability extends the reach of its expertise, enabling thousands of stakeholders to access customer intelligence independently while the team continues to provide strategic guidance and oversight.
The result is faster access to trusted insights, more informed decisions, and a stronger customer-centric culture across the business.
Looking ahead
The organization continues to expand its use of Stravito AI Personas, enriching them with new research and validating them against additional business scenarios as its understanding of customers evolves.
Its experience demonstrates that successful enterprise AI doesn't begin with technology; it begins with trusted enterprise intelligence.
By investing in a strong knowledge foundation, validating AI against real-world research, and partnering closely with Stravito, the company has shown how organizations can innovate responsibly while helping more employees stay closer to customers.
Photo credit: Jakub Zerdzicki
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