The interviewer then asks if the customer was satisfied with the purchase and whether the product solved the customer’s struggling moment. Without leading a customer, the interviewer should ask when the buyer first thought about their “job to be done.” A customer will describe the situation that arose, and how they began looking, at first passively but then actively, for a solution. Getting insight begins by interviewing customers and asking them what was happening in their lives before they bought a product. When we told our client that we had pinpointed each person’s struggling moment and what led them to buy, they agreed with our recommendations not only for a new UI design but also what potential buyers felt the new product needed to succeed. The insight from these customer discussions clarified our recommendations for engineering and designing a smart, IoT-enabled sump pump. After the conversations, we confidently knew why these customers were hiring the existing sump pump as well as ways it didn’t measure up, which created an opportunity to build a next-generation pump for our client. Our client makes a variety of pumps and allowed us to interview some of their customers to understand why they purchased a sump pump, how they used the pump, and where the product fell short. We know this to be true because our company recently engaged on a project using JTBD. Tapping into the customers’ view of the product can also help engineers and product managers gain insight about machine specifications and designs.

The discussion unlocks the story about their purchasing decision. To uncover a customer’s underlying motivation to buy, JTBD taught us to find a range of people who’ve hired (or fired) the product and facilitate a discussion with them. The developer’s recipe was failing, and he didn’t know why. Yet, the developer struggled to sell units. And the developer’s plan, of course, was that the development’s amenities and layout would have people fighting to buy in. When my colleague and I were introduced to the JTBD framework, one example we were given was a developer who built a remarkably beautiful senior-living development in Florida. JTBD is a way to learn what motivates a customer to buy. Christensen dubbed this the “jobs to be done,” or JTBD, framework. Thinking about products as things hired to do a job is a theory developed by the late Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. When was the last time you hired a product to do a job? Was the product you hired engineered for the job, or did you use it in a way the manufacturer didn’t intend? Without realizing it, people are constantly “hiring” and “firing” products.

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