5 Steps to JTBD Implementation

The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework helps businesses understand what customers truly need by focusing on the tasks they aim to accomplish, rather than relying on demographics or market segments. Here's a quick breakdown of the process:

1. Find Core Customer Jobs: Conduct interviews to identify the specific tasks customers "hire" your product or service to perform. Focus on behavior, emotions, and outcomes.
2. Map the Customer Job Journey: Break down each job into actionable steps, from defining the need to concluding the task, uncovering pain points and opportunities.
3. Study Functional, Emotional, and Social Dimensions: Understand the practical, emotional, and social factors driving customer decisions.
4. Rank Jobs and Desired Outcomes: Prioritize the most important and frustrating jobs using scoring systems like Mike Boysen’s or Dan Olsen’s frameworks.
5. Turn Insights into Business Strategies: Align products, messaging, and resources to address customer jobs effectively, ensuring all teams work toward the same goals.

Step 1: Find Core Customer Jobs

The first step in applying the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework is to uncover what customers truly need when they use your product or service. This isn't just about what they say they want - it's about identifying the actual tasks or "jobs" they need to accomplish.

To find these core customer jobs, you need a structured process that combines customer conversations with careful observation. By gathering raw insights, translating them into clear job statements, and organizing these statements to identify patterns, you can begin to understand what really matters to your customers. Let’s break this down further.

Run Customer Interviews

Customer interviews are the cornerstone of discovering jobs. These interviews should focus on the circumstances that drive customers to look for a solution - not on product features or satisfaction levels. The goal is to understand the why behind their decisions.

Ask situational questions to dive into the customer’s world. For instance, inquire about the last time they faced the problem your product addresses. What was happening in their life or business at that moment? What alternatives did they consider? And what would have happened if they had chosen to do nothing at all?

Timing is key. Conduct interviews within 30 to 90 days of purchase to capture fresh memories of their experience. This window helps you uncover the emotional and practical factors that influenced their choices before those details fade.

Focus on behavior, not opinions. Instead of asking, “What features do you want?” ask, “Can you walk me through the last time you encountered this issue?” This approach reveals the actual steps customers take, the obstacles they face, and the workarounds they create.

Whenever possible, record these interviews. Pay close attention to the language customers use to describe their challenges. Their exact words can highlight jobs your team might not have considered. Also, listen for the emotions they express - whether it’s frustration, urgency, or relief - as these can provide valuable context.

Write Clear Job Statements

A good job statement captures customer goals in their own words. These statements need to be specific enough to guide decisions but broad enough to apply to a range of customer situations. A common format looks like this: "When I [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome]."

Avoid using internal jargon or technical terms. If a customer says they need to "keep the books straight", don’t rephrase it as "maintain accurate financial records." Stick to their language to ensure the statement reflects their reality, not your assumptions.

Test these statements with customers by reading them back during follow-up conversations. If they respond with something like “That’s exactly it!” or offer further details, you know you’ve hit the mark. On the other hand, if they seem puzzled or start correcting you, it’s a sign the statement needs tweaking.

Make sure job statements are action-oriented and focused on outcomes. Customers use products to make progress in their lives, so the statements should reflect this forward movement. Weak job statements describe features; strong ones describe the progress customers are trying to achieve.

Group Jobs by Context and Emotion

Once you’ve gathered a list of job statements, patterns will start to emerge. Some jobs will share similar circumstances, while others will have overlapping emotional or functional elements. Grouping these jobs helps you understand customer priorities better.

• Functional jobs reflect the practical tasks customers need to complete.
• Emotional jobs capture how customers want to feel during and after completing those tasks.
• Social jobs represent how customers want to be perceived by others when using your product or service.

For example, a financial management tool might address functional jobs like bookkeeping, emotional jobs like building confidence, and social jobs like establishing professional credibility - all in one interaction.

Contextual grouping is also crucial. Some jobs are urgent and demand immediate solutions, while others are ongoing and require consistent support. Understanding when and where these jobs occur helps you prioritize and design solutions that fit seamlessly into your customers’ routines.

Step 2: Map the Customer Job Journey

Once you've pinpointed the core customer jobs, the next step is to break them down into smaller, actionable steps. This process, known as job mapping, gives you a complete view of the workflow customers follow to achieve their goals. It’s like creating a detailed roadmap of their experience, allowing you to see each stage and uncover areas where they might face challenges or frustrations.

Job mapping digs deeper than just surface-level observations. It reveals the hidden steps customers take, the decisions they make, and the moments where they might struggle. By understanding these details, you can identify ways to improve their experience and create solutions that fit seamlessly into their journey.

The key here is to focus on what customers are trying to achieve, not the methods they currently use. This mindset helps you avoid being tied to existing solutions and opens the door to fresh ideas.

Learn the 8 Steps of Job Mapping

Every customer job follows a predictable sequence of eight stages. These stages represent the natural flow people go through when tackling a meaningful task. Understanding this sequence gives you a clear picture of the customer’s experience from start to finish.

• Define: This is where customers figure out what they’re trying to achieve and what success looks like. It’s often about recognizing a problem or opportunity and deciding it’s worth addressing. Many customers struggle at this stage, especially when success isn’t clearly defined.
• Locate: Customers gather the inputs, resources, or information they need to move forward. This might involve finding data, identifying the right people to involve, or choosing the tools they’ll need. Disorganized or scattered information can slow them down here.
• Prepare: Before taking action, customers need to organize resources and set things up. This step is often overlooked, but poor preparation can lead to bigger issues later in the process.
• Confirm: At this stage, customers double-check their approach before fully committing. This could mean validating assumptions, getting approval, or simply seeking reassurance. It’s a natural step to ensure they’re on the right path.
• Execute: This is where the main work happens. Customers take the necessary actions to accomplish their goal. While this stage tends to get the most attention, it’s just one part of the bigger picture.
• Monitor: Customers track their progress and watch for potential issues. This step involves ongoing attention to ensure everything is going as planned and to catch problems early.
• Modify: Based on what they learn during monitoring, customers may need to adjust their approach. Whether it’s fixing problems, adapting strategies, or changing direction entirely, flexibility is crucial here.
• Conclude: The final step involves wrapping up the process, tying up loose ends, and reflecting on lessons learned. Although this stage is often rushed, it’s important for ensuring lasting success and preparing for future tasks.

This breakdown offers a structured way to align your business strategies with what customers actually need.

Work Together Through Workshops

Once you’ve outlined the job map, it’s time to refine it through workshops with cross-functional teams. These workshops are essential for building an accurate job map. Each team - sales, customer service, product, and others - brings unique insights into different parts of the customer experience. Together, these perspectives create a fuller picture.

Start workshops by sharing real customer quotes to ground the team in actual experiences. This helps everyone focus on what customers truly encounter, rather than relying on assumptions.

Tackle one job at a time during the sessions. Trying to map multiple jobs at once can lead to confusion and oversimplification. Focus on the most impactful job first, typically the one that delivers the most value to customers or represents the biggest opportunity for your business.

Use tools like sticky notes or digital collaboration platforms to outline each step in the customer journey. Have team members jot down their understanding of each stage, then discuss and refine these ideas as a group. Pay close attention to areas where team members have conflicting assumptions or limited visibility into customer behavior.

Challenge assumptions throughout the process. If someone says, "Customers always do X", ask for evidence. Note gaps in the map as areas needing further customer research. The goal isn’t to create a perfect map in one session but to identify what you know, what you think you know, and what still needs to be clarified.

Validate your job map with real customers after the workshop. Walk through the map with recent customers and ask them to confirm or expand on each stage. Pay close attention to steps you may have missed or areas where their experiences differ from your expectations. These insights often highlight the biggest opportunities for improvement.

Finally, document the completed job map in a format that’s easy for the entire team to access and reference. Include not just the steps but also the emotions customers feel, the information they need, and the obstacles they face at each stage. This comprehensive view will guide the next phases of your JTBD (Jobs to Be Done) strategy.

Step 3: Study Functional, Emotional, and Social Dimensions

After mapping out the job your product or service fulfills, it’s time to dive deeper into the factors driving customer decisions. Every customer "job" operates on three interconnected levels: functional (what they aim to achieve), emotional (how they want to feel), and social (how they want to be perceived). By understanding these dimensions, you can uncover customer motivations that competitors may overlook.

While functional needs are often straightforward to measure, emotional and social drivers play a significant role in purchase decisions. For example, a customer might opt for a pricier solution not because it performs better functionally, but because it boosts their confidence or enhances their professional image.

These dimensions don’t work in isolation - they’re deeply intertwined. Take project management software as an example. Customers aren’t just looking for task organization (functional); they also want to feel less stressed and more in control (emotional) while projecting competence and efficiency to their team (social). Ignoring any of these layers risks missing the full story of what motivates your customers.

Record Functional Needs

Functional needs are the practical outcomes customers want to achieve. These are the measurable results they expect your solution to deliver.

Focus on capturing specific outcomes at each stage of the customer journey. Instead of documenting broad goals like "better spreadsheets", identify what they genuinely need: "accurate project tracking" or "efficient stakeholder updates."

Be precise about success criteria. Vague goals like "save time" are not actionable. Dig deeper: How much time do they want to save? Are they trying to cut data entry from two hours to 30 minutes? Or reduce meeting prep time by half? These specifics inform product design and marketing strategies.

Also, note dependencies between functional needs. For instance, a customer might need to import existing data before they can generate reports. Recognizing these sequences helps you prioritize features and create seamless user experiences.

Lastly, consider the context of each functional need. The same requirement can vary based on factors like company size or industry. For example, a small startup managing expenses will have different needs than a Fortune 500 finance team, even if both are focused on expense tracking.

Examine Emotional and Social Factors

Emotional and social drivers often determine whether customers will use your solution consistently or recommend it to others. Emotional needs reflect how customers want to feel before, during, and after completing a task. Do they want to feel confident? Empowered? Relieved? These feelings significantly shape their experience and satisfaction.

Pinpoint emotional triggers and pain points. Where do customers currently feel stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed in their journey? These moments offer opportunities to create a better experience. For example, a looming deadline or the embarrassment of making a mistake might push someone to seek a new solution.

Social factors revolve around how customers want others to see them. Whether it’s colleagues, bosses, clients, or peers, these perceptions can heavily influence decisions - especially in business settings where multiple stakeholders are involved.

Consider the social risks tied to choosing your solution. Will customers appear forward-thinking or outdated? Will they be seen as resourceful or wasteful? Often, people choose products that minimize social risk, even if other options might perform better on paper.

Identify the social groups that matter most to your customers. For instance, a marketing manager may care about their reputation with their team, their boss, industry peers, and external clients. Each group has unique expectations, adding complexity to the decision-making process.

Social proof, such as testimonials and case studies, can also play a big role. The type of proof that resonates depends on the customer’s social environment and the groups they want to impress.

Pay attention to how customers talk about their challenges and solutions. The language they use in social settings reveals their priorities. Are they emphasizing efficiency, innovation, or cost savings when discussing options with peers? This insight can shape your messaging and positioning.

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Step 4: Rank Jobs and Desired Outcomes

After mapping the functional, emotional, and social aspects of customer jobs, the next step is prioritization. Not every customer job carries the same weight, so it's crucial to focus on the ones that matter most. Typically, these are tasks that are frequent and cause significant frustration. To ensure objectivity and avoid guesswork, develop a structured scoring system that helps your team identify opportunities with the biggest potential impact.

Consider how different factors interact. For example, a task that's moderately important but causes extreme frustration might deserve more attention than a highly important task that’s already well-handled. Similarly, even infrequent but critical tasks can deliver significant business value when improved.

Create a Scoring System

A few established frameworks can guide how you rank customer jobs. Each uses slightly different criteria but aims to pinpoint where your efforts will deliver the most value.

Mike Boysen's JTBD Rating Scale evaluates customer jobs based on three dimensions: Importance, Frequency, and Frustration. Each factor is scored on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 representing low importance, rare occurrence, or no frustration, and 5 representing high importance, frequent occurrence, or extreme frustration. The formula is:
Score = (Importance + Frequency) × Frustration

This method emphasizes frustration as a multiplier. Even if a task is important and frequent, it won’t drive action if it’s already functioning well. Scores range from 2 (for jobs rated 1:1:1) to 50 (for jobs rated 5:5:5), giving a clear sense of priority.

Dan Olsen's Opportunity Score takes a different approach, highlighting the gap between importance and satisfaction. The formula is:
Opportunity Score = Importance × (1 - Satisfaction)

Both importance and satisfaction are rated on a 1 to 5 scale, then converted to a 0 to 1 range for calculation. This method identifies areas where customers value something highly but feel underserved.

Another Jobs to be Done Opportunity Score adjusts the calculation slightly:
Opportunity Score = Importance + MAX(Importance - Satisfaction, 0)

This version sticks to the original 1 to 5 scale and provides clear benchmarks for opportunities. Scores above 15 indicate extreme opportunities, while scores above 10 still represent solid priorities.

Customer Effort Score (CES) can also complement these systems by measuring how difficult specific job steps are for customers. CES evaluates effort, speed, and accuracy, offering another layer of insight into customer pain points.

For reliable results, gather data from a diverse customer base. Instead of relying on averages, focus on the percentage of customers who rate importance and satisfaction as 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale. This ensures you’re addressing needs that are widely felt, not just occasional outliers.

Add Insights to Business Planning

Ranking customer jobs transforms raw research into actionable priorities, guiding how you allocate resources and shape your strategy. High-scoring jobs should directly influence your product roadmap, but the rankings can also uncover less obvious opportunities. For instance, jobs with high importance but low satisfaction highlight areas where you can stand out from competitors. Conversely, jobs with high satisfaction but moderate importance might signal areas to maintain for customer retention.

Ranking customer jobs can also guide financial decisions. Growth-stage companies, in particular, benefit from understanding which jobs drive the most value. This clarity helps allocate resources effectively across product development, marketing, and customer success. For example, if onboarding scores high in importance, frequency, and frustration, investing in simplifying the setup process could yield a better return than adding advanced features.

The data also informs pricing and market positioning. Tasks that are both important and frustrating but underserved by competitors represent opportunities for premium pricing. Customers are often willing to pay more for solutions that address their biggest challenges, especially if those challenges occur frequently.

Phoenix Strategy Group specializes in helping growth-stage companies turn these insights into financial models and strategic plans. By linking customer job rankings to revenue forecasts and resource needs, businesses can make informed decisions that lead to tangible results. This ensures customer research doesn’t just sit in reports but drives meaningful action.

Use your ranking system to create quarterly business reviews that track progress on top-priority jobs. Monitor how improvements in satisfaction impact metrics like customer retention, revenue growth, and acquisition rates. This feedback loop not only validates your prioritization but also helps refine your scoring system over time.

Segment your rankings by customer type to uncover specific opportunities. For example, new customers may struggle with onboarding, while experienced users might have different pain points. Similarly, enterprise clients often have distinct needs compared to small businesses. By tailoring your efforts to these segments, you can drive growth in targeted areas without overhauling your entire product. This approach strengthens the connection between customer needs and your overall strategy, ensuring that your JTBD framework delivers measurable results.

Step 5: Turn Insights into Business Strategies

Now that you've mapped and prioritized customer jobs in detail, it's time to take the next step: turning those insights into actionable strategies. The goal is to ensure that every business decision aligns with the jobs your customers are trying to get done. This isn’t just about making minor adjustments to your offerings - it’s about reshaping your value proposition and resource allocation to meet customer needs more effectively.

Build Products or Services That Match Customer Jobs

Redesign your offerings with the job in mind. Traditional product development often starts with features and works backward to customer needs. The Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework flips this process. Start by identifying the job and then create solutions that address the entire customer journey, not just isolated features.

Think about how you present your value. Instead of highlighting what your product does, focus on how it helps customers accomplish their key tasks. This approach transforms everything - your messaging, your sales pitch, and even how customers perceive your brand. Remember, customers "hire" solutions to get their jobs done.

Address the entire job ecosystem. Completing a job often involves multiple steps, each with its own challenges and goals. Your solution should aim to simplify as many of these steps as possible, offering a seamless experience that minimizes effort for the customer.

For instance, if your software helps manage finances, your customers likely need more than just accounting tools. They also need ways to gather data, create reports, share insights with stakeholders, and make informed decisions. A JTBD approach would optimize every step in this process, not just the core accounting functionality.

Don’t overlook emotional and social jobs. Customers often hire products not just for functional needs but also for emotional and social reasons - like feeling confident, looking professional, or avoiding embarrassment. These factors should influence everything from your user experience design to your pricing strategy.

This is especially true in B2B contexts, where users often need to justify their decisions to colleagues or supervisors. Features that help users demonstrate value or reduce risks can be just as crucial as the product’s core functionality.

Measure success by job completion, not product usage. Metrics like time spent in your app or feature usage don’t necessarily reflect whether customers are successfully completing their jobs. Instead, focus on outcomes that matter to them: How quickly can they finish their tasks? How confident are they in the results? How much effort is required? This shift in perspective can align your entire organization around delivering real value.

Get All Teams Working Together

Once your offerings are aligned with customer jobs, it’s essential to get every team on the same page. Integrate JTBD insights across all departments. Marketing should understand which jobs attract new customers, sales should know how to position your solution around those jobs, and customer success teams should focus on helping users complete their tasks - not just adopt the product.

Hold regular cross-functional meetings to ensure everyone stays aligned and shares insights.

Structure your organization around customer jobs. Some companies take the bold step of reorganizing their teams based on major customer jobs rather than traditional functions. This setup ensures that someone is responsible for the entire customer experience related to a specific job, minimizing handoffs and improving accountability.

If a full reorganization isn’t practical, at least assign clear ownership for each high-priority job. Designate someone to monitor job completion rates, identify pain points, and drive improvements across teams.

Speak the language of jobs in all communications. Whether it’s your website, sales materials, or support documentation, make sure you’re framing everything in terms of jobs and outcomes. This consistency not only strengthens your messaging but also helps your teams stay focused on what really matters to customers.

Train customer-facing teams to listen for job-related language during conversations. When prospects talk about their challenges or goals, they’re revealing the jobs they need to accomplish. Teams that pick up on these signals can respond more effectively and build stronger relationships.

Assign Resources for Implementation

Leadership must champion JTBD implementation. Embedding JTBD into your strategy requires commitment from the top. Without leadership support, teams may revert to old habits when faced with competing priorities. Leaders should actively participate in JTBD discussions and consistently ask, “How does this help our customers complete their jobs?” This reinforces the importance of the framework across the organization.

Allocate resources based on job priority. Use the scoring system you developed in Step 4 to guide resource distribution. High-priority jobs should receive more investment, even if it means redirecting funds from less impactful projects. By tying resource allocation to job completion rates and their potential revenue impact, you can make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Consider dedicated JTBD roles. In larger organizations, it can be helpful to have a dedicated role focused on ensuring JTBD insights are applied consistently across teams. This person acts as a bridge between research and execution, helping to keep everyone aligned.

Set clear timelines and measurable goals. Without concrete deadlines, JTBD initiatives can drag on indefinitely. Establish specific milestones, like improving satisfaction scores for top jobs by 20% within six months or launching new features for high-priority jobs by the next quarter. Clear goals keep everyone focused and accountable.

Track the business impact of your efforts. Monitor how improvements in job completion affect key metrics like customer retention, revenue per user, and acquisition costs. This data not only validates your approach but also helps refine your understanding of which jobs have the greatest impact on your business.

Plan for regular updates. Customer jobs aren’t static - they evolve as markets shift, new technologies emerge, and competitors innovate. Build processes to revisit your job research regularly and adjust your strategies as needed. Staying agile ensures you remain aligned with your customers’ changing needs.

Conclusion: Using JTBD for Long-Term Growth

The Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework offers a fresh way to understand your customers and drive growth. Instead of guessing which features or markets to target, it provides a structured approach that links every decision directly to what your customers truly need.

By focusing on customer jobs, you shift your perspective from simply offering features to delivering real value. This change impacts everything - how you price your products, organize your teams, and even position yourself in the market. Companies that adopt this mindset often find less crowded competitive spaces because they’re solving problems that others haven’t even noticed yet.

The framework helps you identify customer jobs clearly and set strategic priorities more effectively. By addressing the functional, emotional, and social aspects of these jobs, you can create well-rounded solutions. Prioritizing jobs also ensures your resources are allocated wisely, while aligning your strategies with customer needs unites your organization around a common goal: customer success.

Completing these jobs successfully doesn’t just boost short-term revenue - it creates lasting financial benefits. When your solution helps customers achieve their goals more effectively, they’re more likely to stay loyal, spend more, and recommend your product to others. This creates a ripple effect: lower acquisition costs, higher lifetime value, and predictable growth. For companies in the growth stage, this can be especially appealing to investors and stakeholders.

JTBD also drives innovation by offering clear guidance for product development. Instead of relying on assumptions or competitor behavior, your roadmap becomes a direct response to what your customers need to accomplish. This customer-centric approach ensures your efforts are always relevant and impactful.

As your business evolves, the JTBD framework grows with you. Customer needs may shift over time, but the process of identifying and addressing those needs remains consistent. Regularly revisiting job research keeps you in tune with changing demands, and the structured nature of JTBD ensures new team members can quickly grasp the principles behind your decisions.

One of the most powerful outcomes of JTBD is organizational alignment. When every team understands and speaks the language of customer jobs, decision-making becomes sharper, priorities are clearer, and collaboration improves. This shared focus strengthens your competitive position, especially as your company scales and faces more complex challenges.

Ultimately, businesses that succeed in the long run are those that consistently help their customers achieve their most important goals better than anyone else. The JTBD framework equips you with the tools to become one of those businesses. If you’re ready to integrate JTBD into your growth strategy, Phoenix Strategy Group offers advisory services to help you get there.

FAQs

What makes the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework different from traditional market segmentation?

The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework takes a different approach to understanding customers. Instead of categorizing them by demographics like age, income, or location, it focuses on the goals they’re trying to achieve. The key question shifts from "Who is the customer?" to "What job is this product or service being ‘hired’ to do?"

This perspective digs deeper into the functional, emotional, and social needs that drive customer choices. By zeroing in on these motivations, businesses can uncover sharper insights and craft solutions that truly address what customers are looking for. It’s an approach that’s particularly effective for driving innovation and creating strategies for growth.

How can organizations ensure all teams are aligned with the JTBD framework?

To bring every team on board with the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, start by weaving its principles into everyday workflows and decision-making. Encourage open conversations about customer needs, emphasizing how each team plays a role in addressing those needs effectively.

Consider forming cross-functional teams specifically for customer research and job analysis. This not only boosts collaboration but also builds a shared understanding of customer priorities. Alongside this, establish clear and measurable goals that focus on customer outcomes. Use tracking tools to monitor progress and ensure everyone remains aligned with the same objectives. By doing so, you keep customer value at the heart of your organization’s strategy, creating a unified and purpose-driven approach.

What are the best ways to measure the success of JTBD implementation in improving customer satisfaction and driving business growth?

To gauge the effectiveness of your JTBD approach, focus on metrics that highlight both customer satisfaction and business performance. Key indicators like Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) can reveal how well your solutions address customer needs and build loyalty.

On the business side, keep an eye on metrics such as customer retention, market share, and revenue growth. These figures offer a clear picture of how well your offerings align with the jobs your customers are trying to accomplish, contributing to steady growth. By regularly reviewing these metrics, you can uncover areas for improvement and ensure your JTBD strategy is driving tangible results.

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