JTBD: How to Identify Customer Needs | Jobs To Be Done | thrv

0:00 Jay Haynes: Welcome to the customer needs lesson in the thrive jobs to be done innovation course. I'm Jay Haynes, the founder and CEO of thrive. In this lesson we will show you how to use jobs to be done innovation methods to identify your customers needs. If you are on a product marketing or sales team, your success depends on satisfying customer needs better than competitors in your market. This brings us to the critical question for this lesson. What is a customer need? And importantly, does everyone at your company from your CEO to the newest employee agree on what your customer needs are? Almost all companies do not

0:47 agree on what a customer need even is, this is a serious problem, and it is probably true at your company. Without an agreement on needs. Teams often use customer requests, sales requests feature ideas and technologies as inputs into product development. This is a problem because all of these traditional inputs are unstable and change, often very rapidly over time. This leads to extremely inefficient product development. With these changing inputs, your product and marketing teams develop and launch your products features. When your product fails to generate the sales and revenue

1:34 growth you need. Your team is left guessing and pivoting. Don't do this. Trying to hit a moving target is extremely hard. This leads to teams blaming each other for your company's problems, and it leads to your company's death spiral. This is why products and companies ultimately fail. Thankfully, there is a much better way than this to build, market and sell your products. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, said that what's going to change in the next 10 years is a very common question he is frequently asked. But he followed this by

2:23 stating that what is not going to change in the next 10 years is the more important of the two questions. Jeff besos was making a very profound and powerful observation your customers job to be done is what will not change in the next 10 years. It is a stable target for your team to hit, regardless of any products, services or technologies that evolve from your competitors. And as we will show in this lesson, your customer's needs will not change either, like jobs needs are stable over time, because they are also independent of any

3:08 product service or solution. So what is a customer need? As we saw in a previous lesson, your customers job is a goal they need to achieve independent of your product or service. This concept dates back to the 1960s and Professor Theodore Levitt, who was famous for saying customers don't want a quarter inch drill they want a quarter inch hole. In other words, customers want to get their job done. This is true for any customer, including yours. As we saw before, consumers don't want navigation apps like Apple or Google Maps, which are products, they want to get to a destination on time, which is a

3:55 job to be done. The products to get this job done have changed dramatically over time, but the job is the same. the customer's goal is the same. Since your customers job is a goal they need to achieve. Your customers needs are the variables required for your customer to achieve their goal. In other words, to get their job done. If your customers struggle to get their job done, this is the problem that you need to solve. Because customers will purchase your product when it helps them overcome their struggle to get their job done. Let's look at

4:43 how to solve your customers problem. If your team is going to build market and sell an insanely great product, you need a method to understand your customers problem and to satisfy their needs. In the 1940s a mathematician george polya developed a method to solve problems that you can use to understand your customers problem and identify their needs his method entailed four main steps understanding the problem planning to solve it executing the solution and assessing how well the solution worked we add a revision step and a conclusion step to categorize the six types of job steps that your customer has to go through to solve their problem in other words to get

5:32 their job done let's look at our example in a consumer market when trying to get to a destination on time a consumer has to go through a series of steps they have to estimate the departure time plan the stops traveled to the destination assess when the destination will be reached along the way reset the route if needed and finally parked the vehicle these are 12 steps for a consumer to get to a destination on time like all jobs this job is complex but it follows the job step pattern your customers job follows this pattern as well job steps are important because they help you identify your customers needs

6:22 put simply a customer need is an action a customer must take using a variable to get a job step done this concept that a customer need is an action plus a variable in your customers jobs death is an important concept to remember for example in getting to a destination on time one of the job steps is to plan the stops in order to plan stops in a busy day a consumer must know the variables including the optimal sequence of stops the routes to the stops and open times at the stops these are all variables in this job step and consumers have to take actions with each of these variables for example they need

7:08 to determine the optimal sequence to make plans stops now that we have actions and variables in the job step we have well defined and quantitative customer needs since all customer needs like this one have a customer action and a variable you can measure the speed of your customers action and the accuracy of the variable to determine if your customers struggle to get their job done as we saw before products change over time but customer jobs are stable this is true for your customers needs as well they are stable and do not change over time this is a huge advantage with jobs theory you

7:58 will have a stable set of customer needs for your product marketing and sales teams to target in our example of getting to a destination on time there are over 100 customer needs which is typical of every job to be done including your customers job these are examples of needs in three of the job steps in getting to a destination on time each need has an action and a variable each need will not change over time and each need is independent of any solution this is why jobs to be done product development is extremely efficient because you know all of your customer's needs and

8:47 their struggle to get their job done before you start development let's look at another example in a business to business market in the aviation industry maintenance directors are a critical customer they are job beneficiaries who need to ensure aircraft airworthiness this is a customer job to be done for an airline like all jobs this job follows the jobs step pattern of understanding planning executing assessing revising and concluding the job in this example a maintenance director needs to determine maintenance requirements schedule an aircraft for service deliver an aircraft assess the maintenance activities resolve discrepancies and put the

9:35 aircraft back into service this customer job has 14 steps that follow the job step pattern each job step in this job has customer needs for example when maintenance directors resolve discrepancies they need to ensure a maintenance activity does not cause a residual problem like all needs this customer need is structured with an action and a variable so we can measure the speed and accuracy of satisfying this need with current competitive solutions as we saw before you can use customer needs to measure your customers struggle to get their job done this is critically important because new

10:23 customers will purchase your product when it helps them overcome their struggle to get their job done jobs theory works in consumer business and medical markets because all customer jobs can be broken down into steps and needs let's look at the techniques your team can use to identify your customers needs in order to identify your customers needs first identify the job steps then identify the variables with the variables you can then identify the actions customers need to take with the variables to get the job done you can use different research methods to uncover your customer steps and needs your team likely

11:11 already has knowledge of the variables in your customer's job and you can use industry research to uncover steps and needs as well you should interview your customers to ask them about their struggle to get their job done regardless of the types of interviews your team does what matters most is that you know what you are looking for the steps and needs in your customers job when interviewing customers you ask them about their struggle to get their job done ask them what makes it slow difficult frustrating and inaccurate to get the job done and listen to uncover job steps and needs that cause them to

11:58 struggle in your customer interviews if your customer mentions a product ask them why they struggle until you get to the root cause in other words the customer need in the job this method was developed by toyota and is often called five why's because you may need to ask why five times before you can identify the underlying reason make sure you define your customer's job steps and needs independent from any products this is critical to using jobs theory successfully to build market and sell insanely great products your customers will love we hope you will share and like this video on youtube in

12:47 the next lesson you will learn how to define and identify your customers unmet needs targeting unmet needs is critical to reducing your risk of failure and increasing your likelihood of success visit us at thr v.com to get our free how to guides and try our jobs to be done software for free