An entrepreneur’s goal is to create a successful business that will be profitable for years to come. To do this, you need a product that is in demand from your customers, that is easy to use, and that solves the problems you have set. The key to this chain is the customer’s desires and problems. The Jobs To Be Done concept allows you to understand the client and create a product based on their needs, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a global bookmaker website or a local offline bookstore. Let’s find out how it works and show you how to use it by example.
How the Concept of Jobs To Be Done Works
The method is based on the idea that the consumer “hires” a product to do a job. With this approach, the creation of a product or service begins with identifying the user’s problems, challenges and needs, and only then does a product appear to solve them. It’s made for the user and has only the necessary functionality to meet their needs.
Applying JTBD, it’s important to understand why and under what circumstances the customer buys your solution. The same product can serve a person in different ways. For example, for an airplane pilot, social networking is to communicate with friends, for a target marketer, it’s a source of income. That is, it’s important to understand what exactly the customer expects from the product, or what “work needs to be done”. To do this, you need to understand the customer’s needs and motivation.
What Can Jobs To Be Done Give Businesses?
Understanding User Needs
In-depth customer research provides many important insights: what customer pains there are, why product needs arise, what limitations are present, what motivates a purchase, what global goal the user is pursuing, etc.
Product Improvement
Understanding the customer allows you to evolve in the right direction, focusing only on the functionality that is in demand and positioning the products or services correctly.
Keeping the Business Relevant
A product that is created on customer demand and changes according to customer requirements does a better job of solving problems, which means it stays in demand.
Jobs To Be Done Quick Start Guide
A detailed description of the Jobs To Be Done method will take more than a dozen pages. For a detailed study of the topic, it’s better to go through training courses, but for the first acquaintance we will tell you about the three main points.
Start With the Interview
The interview is the main tool of JTBD: it’s where the client’s understanding begins. In the conversation, it’s important to find out the following: what influenced the choice, what barriers were encountered along the way and what actions he performs to get what he wants. In the concept of JTBD it isn’t the process of using the product that is important, but the moment when the need for it appeared and the reasons for it. Therefore, pay special attention to the customer’s motivation.
When preparing for the interview, formulate hypotheses: what the user wants to get from the product and at what point does the desire arise. Based on this, make a list of questions that will help you find out what kind of problems need to be solved, what is the catalyst for the customer’s desire and what emotions he feels when he gets what he wants.
Find the Non-obvious Competitors
The user only buys products that solve specific problems. But the process of using the products may be different from the original purpose. On this ground, companies emerge that take an unconventional approach not only to solving customer problems but also to the process of consumption.
Coffee shops compete directly with restaurants and cafes. But for the client, they compete with co-working spaces, where people come to work and drink the inevitable cup of coffee. A certain group of people will be more interested in such places because they have better working conditions.
Define the Vector of Development
Improving products requires an understanding of user habits and behavior patterns. Study which of the current product features are most in demand. Less popular functions should be analyzed and decided whether they will be used more often after the improvement or it’s better to give them up. This analysis will help you understand in which direction the product should be developed in the next 2-3 years.
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