Identifying customer needs and their jobs to be done

In the last post, we discussed the importance of identifying the problem you are solving or the opportunity you are addressing. This essentially comes down to understanding or anticipating your customers’ needs. 

Customers buy products or solutions to achieve an end objective or outcome. You need to not only identify what that objective is but also understand the underlying motivations for it. 

This concept can be explained through the Customer Job to Be Done. This framework was introduced in a class taught at Harvard Business School, and it’s one of the first frameworks we teach at 500 Global. 

What is the Customer Job to  Be Done? 

The Customer Job to Be Done (JTBD) is what your customer is ultimately trying to accomplish, aka their job. It’s important to distinguish a job from a task. A JTBD is not  what the customer is actually doing, the solution they are using, or the steps they are taking, but instead their underlying objective. It is the outcome they want to achieve. It is their why. 

For example, imagine you want to have your wedding photos taken. The task is taking your wedding photos. But why do you want the photos taken? Maybe you want to remember your big day in vivid detail. Maybe you want to re-experience that joy you felt. Maybe you want to share your memories with your family. Or maybe you want to show off how fabulous your wedding is on social media.

When you think about the JTBD, consider the underlying motivation for why your customers would  want to purchase a solution. When a solution doesn’t provide that intended benefit, doesn’t fulfill their why - when it doesn’t do it’s job, they’ll “fire” it.

The three dimensions of a Customer Job to Be Done

There are three dimensions to a JTBD: functional, social, and emotional. All jobs are functional (the what) and have emotional and/or social components. Let’s dig into this a bit. 

• Functional: What do I want to do?

• Emotional: How do I want to feel before/ when/ after doing the functional job?

• Social: How do I want to be perceived before/ when/ after doing the functional job?

For example, think about someone who graduated from an Ivy League school. The functional job to be done might be “getting the education I need to get the job I want”. The emotional JTBD could be “feeling proud because I graduated from a top university” or “feeling secure in my career search because I have an Ivy League degree”. The social JTBD might be “hoping other people think I’m the smartest person in the room” or “making my parents proud”.  

When you’re thinking about the problems you’re trying to solve and your potential customers, think about the functional, emotional, and social jobs to be done.

💡TLDR:  The Customer Job to Be Done (JTBD) is what your customer is ultimately trying to accomplish from purchasing a product or solution - it is their desired outcome of having or using it, and it is their ultimate motivation for purchasing it. When you’re thinking about problems, opportunities, and solutions, think about the functional, emotional, and social jobs to be done. 

📖 Exercise: Do some user research. Interview potential customers and discern what their functional, emotional, and social jobs to be done are. Use this information to further flesh out your solution, value prop, and marketing tactics. 

🚀 Group Access: Request access to my Entrepreneurs Group to receive more helpful content, special offers, and free access to my Founder Toolkit (including my Google Drive template!).