You have Jobs to be Done
How do you know if the product you are building is really solving client problems? You’ve probably spoken to a number of users to identify what their problems are, and they have probably told you how they want these problems to be solved. So you’ve gone ahead and built a product or an MVP, which addresses the client problem in a way you think would work best, or in a way the client explained it. But is that really solving the core client needs, and is that the best way to go about it?
From Freud to Ford
We’re building products for humans, and we are very complex organism with sophisticated brains. Additionally, there is an intricate psychological layer surrounding our basic cognitive functions. Often times we can’t explain the reason why we want something, or even if we do, that may not be the actual reason. The true cause for a want or an action can lie much deeper in the subconscious, that the person is not even aware of. The whole field of the behavioral psychology and psychoanalysis revolves around studying the subconscious and helping individuals solve their emotional problems by digging deeper into the root cause of their feelings.
Building the right product requires solid understanding customer’s true motives that they have not been able to explain. Or, like a therapist, a product manager can lead the user to explore the fundamental needs that motivate them in wanting something. So it is important to distinguish “wants” from “needs” and focus more on the needs that are unmet.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. — Henry Ford
When Henry Ford developed a car, he focused on the “needs”, rather than the “wants”. The need was to get from A to B in a faster and more convenient way, which can be done more efficiently with a car, rather than a horse.
Would you hire a Milkshake to do this job?
A well-known academic Clayton Christensen, famous for his theory of “disruptive innovation”, was once approached by McDonald’s, to help them in their endeavor to improve their milkshakes in order to increase sales. They interviewed customers and asked if they would like bigger servings, or wider variety of flavors, or of improved consistency (thickness). However, after making the improvements based on these feedbacks, the company didn’t see the increase in sales.
Christensen was invited as a consultant to help McDonald’s reach their objective, where he used the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) theory to do it. After analyzing the data, Christensen discovered that around 40% of milkshakes are sold in the morning, before 8:30AM. That was the only thing these customers bought, they were alone, and they would always get in a car and drive away with the milkshake. So Christensen went back to McDonald’s in the morning to speak with these customers and ask a question, “ What job are they trying to accomplish hiring a milkshake to do at 6:30 in the morning?”
He found out that all these customers had the same Job to do — they were all on their boring commute to work and they needed something that would keep them entertained during the long ride and full until noon, while being convenient enough to consume in the car. Some of them tried hiring other products to do the job — bananas that wouldn’t keep them full long enough, or doughnuts that were sticky, or bagels that were not convenient enough to consume during the ride. Milkshakes, however, were getting the job done better than any other product. You could grab it from a local McDonald’s in a manner or minutes, slowly sip it on your long and boring commute to work, and stay full until noon. Many customer didn’t event care about the ingredients, they were just happy the product was getting the job done.
Following this discovery the company has moved the milkshake serving station from behind the counter to the front, to help customers get their product quicker and not be late for work. Additionally, the company has launched a prepaid swipe card to speed up the check out process and made the shakes a little thicker, to make sure to increase the time it takes to finish the product.
In reality, the company wasn’t competing with its usual rivals like Burger Kind on this product line, instead it was competing with bagels, doughnuts and bananas. Once they realized that and made the necessary improvements to the product, the sales have increased by 7x!
Conclusion
Speaking with customers is not enough, you need to ask the right questions to find out what motivates them to have the wants they are vocalizing. JTBD is one of the ways to do that, where you frame a question from a point of view of a job that the customer would hire your product to get done. This framing allows users to think differently about their wants and focus more on the needs and, eventually, provide you with crucial information to form more accurate hypotheses and build the right product. This information can even help you find out who your real competitors are.