Jobs-To-Be-Done?: A Perspective on Product Innovation

'The Customer rarely buys what the Company thinks it’s?selling'.

~ Peter F. Drucker

Introduction:

When I first came across the idea of looking at product innovation and development through the Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) perspective, it was an absolute eye-opener!

JTBD is not the study of how people use products, it’s the study of why. The JTBD perspective says — "When we buy a certain product, we essentially ‘hire’ it to get some job done for us. If it does the job well, we will hire the same product when confronted with that job again. If the product does a sub-standard job, we 'fire' it and look around for something else we might hire to solve the problem."

Understanding the core motive of the customer to hire a product for himself is more important than the characteristics of the customer or the product itself.

When thinking of building a solution, we must always ask ourselves — ‘What job does the customer want to accomplish?’ — ‘What characteristics of the product can help him accomplish this job better?’. The products and solutions can keep on changing, but what the person is trying to accomplish remains constant.

Understanding JTBD through a story:

The interesting question — Why did you ‘Hire’ that milkshake?

Clayton Christensen, who popularized the JTBD theory, talked about one of his experiences when his team was tasked with increasing the sales of Milkshakes for a fast food giant. The fast food chain had tried profiling the type of customers, taking feedback on the flavors they would love and tried innovating on these lines. However, there was no impact on the sales of the milkshakes after all the changes.

When Clayton’s team tried to observe the buying behavior of the milkshake customers, they noticed that more than 50% of the milkshake sales was happening early during the day. These customers were always alone, Milkshake was the only item they bought, and they always drove off with the Milkshake instead of sitting in the restaurant. This led to their team reaching out to these customers, and asking them — “What Job were you trying to do for yourself which made you come here and hire this milkshake?” And as Clayton’s team put together all the different answers, it became clearer that all these people had the same Job to be accomplished in the morning. All these customers had a long and boring commute to their office in the morning, and they needed something to keep them engaged during this time. How the Milkshake did that job was -

• Being viscous, it easily utilized 20 minutes of their time to finish it up.
• It kept them full until the next meal (unlike something like a Banana which is quickly finished and makes them hungry in a couple of hours).
• It did not crumble all over their clothes while eating (unlike Donuts and similar items).
• It fits easily in their car cup holder while driving.

It turned out that the Milkshake did the Job better than any of its competitors. Here the competitors to this fast food chain were not just other milkshake selling food chains, but also other food items like Bananas, Bagels, Donuts, Chocolate bars etc.

Once they knew — ‘For What Job the Milkshake gets hired in the morning?’, it became easier to innovate on top of it. To serve this Job better, the milkshake can be made thicker (or variants of different thickness can be introduced) for it to take more time to finish up. Fruit chunks could be added to the milkshake in order to make it more fulfilling and chewy and to give the customers a fuller stomach etc. All these innovations were directly targeted to get the ‘Job’ done better.

Yet another Job found: During this survey, they also interviewed the people who came in the evening to buy Milkshakes with their children. They found that the reason these parents came to buy Milkshakes was to make their children happy and portray their affection for their young ones. Once they understood the new ‘Job’ for which the Milkshake was hired by this customer base, they were able to optimize the offering by introducing a smaller size of the Milkshakes suitable for kids and with newly added flavors such as strawberry and chocolate etc. in this size variant, that made the kids like the milkshake more.

From the above examples, we can clearly understand that a product can have different ‘Jobs’ to accomplish for different customer bases. Once you understand the Jobs for which the product gets hired, it becomes obvious and much easier to improve and innovate the product for accomplishing those Jobs.

Confusing Correlation with Causation

A lot of times companies segment the market in terms of customer attributes and demographics. What seems prima facie is that customers of so and so attributes are buying such and such products. However, this correlation with certain customer attributes does not necessarily mean causation. The real reason for hiring a particular product could be different in the customer’s mind.

Thinking in terms of the Jobs-To-Be-Done by the customers helps you to segment the market correctly in terms of what actually caused a particular customer to ‘hire’ your product. This derives from the real job that the customer was trying to accomplish for himself and gives the correct picture of what kind of customers may actually be interested in buying your product.

Understanding the effectiveness and applications of JTBD:

1. Product Innovation: Once we identify the Jobs to be Done and the Unmet needs of the customers, appropriate products and solutions can be innovated to specifically serve those unmet needs.
2. Segmenting and Targeting customers: JTBD proves to be a breakthrough approach to segment the market basis the type of Jobs the customers want to perform. This method is much more effective than segmenting the market in terms of demographics or other factors.
3. Product Messaging: JTBD perspective helps the marketing teams to frame the messaging in terms of the specific Jobs it helps to accomplish for the customers instead of talking in terms of the Product features. This in turn makes the customers relate the product offering more with their actual problems.
4. Differentiation and Positioning: Basis the Job your product is targeting to accomplish for the customers, you can differentiate yourself from all the other products in the market and position your product as the go-to solution for accomplishing the particular job in a highly saturated market.
5. Effective Marketing Channels: Understanding the Jobs To Be Done by your customers can help choose the appropriate marketing channels to reach out to them. Having a presence at the correct places where your customers seek to accomplish those jobs, can help maximize your marketing efforts.

Conclusion:

It is for all of us to realize that JTBD is more than just a tool or a framework. It is meant to be used as a guiding light for any Product Decision making. The questions we need to ask ourselves are — What Jobs are my customers trying to accomplish? Does my product change have a positive impact on the ease with which they are able to complete that Job?

By shifting our focus from the Product Features to the underlying Jobs that the customers want to accomplish, the JTBD perspective allows the Product teams to be much more customer-centric and helps to inculcate better user empathy. This shift in focus has the ability to unleash a new set of innovative ideas which matter the most to the end users in terms of what they are trying to accomplish. Having a deep understanding of the customer motivations behind using a certain product also helps to differentiate, position and effectively communicate your product offering and advantages against your competitors in a crowded market.

It’s time for us to stand out as Customer-Centric Leaders instead of just being ‘Managers of Product’.