Creating customer value with jobs to be done

💡 Key take-outs:

The jobs to be done approach identifies the fundamental motivations behind consumer behaviour
This approach has value for all customer facing teams, including product, marketing, sales and customer experience
Jobs to be done unlocks creativity and innovation on teams

Jobs to be done is a core part of Phase One’s human-centred research approach.

We find it is a simple and effective way of identifying the fundamental motivations behind consumer behaviour, enabling us to help clients design innovative solutions to customer problems.

While jobs to be done is ubiquitous in the worlds of design and innovation, it is not widely used outside of these disciplines. We believe this is a missed opportunity. Jobs to be done has value for all customer-facing teams, including product, marketing, sales and customer experience. Even customer support teams can benefit from using jobs to be done.

In this post, we explain jobs to be done and how to put it to use.

What do your customers want?

The big mistake that every successful business makes is to assume that their customers want their products and services.

You might want to read that again. It sounds crazy but it's true.

Your customers do not want your products and services. They want what your products and services do for them.

Put another way, customers want products and services in order to enable them to complete certain jobs they need to get done in their lives.

This idea is summed up in a famous quote by Theodore Levitt:

“People do not want a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.”

When customers shop for drill bits, they’re really looking to put a hole in something. This is their job to be done.

Jobs to be done shifts our perspective on customer problems

The power of the jobs to be done approach is that it encourages us to think creatively about how to solve customer problems.

If your customer wants to put a quarter-inch hole in something, do you really need to sell them a drill bit? Perhaps there's another way of doing this job more effectively, at a lower cost and price point?

As this example bears out, the jobs to be done approach shifts our perspective on customer problems and encourages us to think of new ways of solving them. This makes the approach extremely valuable for companies that are developing customer-led innovation.

**Dare to think differently.**

By taking a jobs to be done approach, we open our mind to the possibility of novel solutions.

Delivering value over and above the product

Another benefit of the jobs to be done approach is that it encourages a holistic perspective on customer problems, revealing functional, emotional and social jobs to be done.

Functional jobs to be done are practical motivations people have, oriented towards achieving certain goals (for example, wanting create a hole in the wall to hang an artwork on the wall).
Emotional jobs to be done are feelings or experiences people want to have, often achieved through completing functional jobs (for example, wanting to feel like one is surrounded by art).
Social jobs to be done are motivations or desires people have to experience certain social interactions or achieve social status (for example, wanting to impress one’s friends with one’s taste in art).

Teasing-out the relationships between functional, emotional and social jobs to be done brings the rich complexity of customer life into view. For example, a person who wants to buy a new phone might have the functional job of needing to make calls and send texts, the emotional job of wanting to feel like they have up-to-the-minute technology, and the social job of wanting to stay connected to friends and family.

By understanding and empathizing with this holistic set of motivations, it is possible to create a coordinated set of offerings, messages and experiences to attract and impress customers.

Ultimately, this enables different teams within your organization to forge a coordinated approach to creating customer value, going beyond the transactional goal of selling products to deliver targeted digital and in-person experiences, tailored messaging and support, and more.

What are your customers’ jobs to be done?

At Phase One Insights, we use the jobs to be done approach to identify customer challenges and pain points that can be solved through product and service innovation.

The power of jobs to be done from a customer insights point of view is that it enables us to identify points where jobs are currently not getting done and thereby pinpoint high-value interventions.

If you’d like to find out how to increase the value that you’re currently creating for customers, drop us a line to talk about jobs to be done.