How to take the Customer Perspective

Companies work on many growth initiatives such as new product development, innovation, UX projects, etc. It’s clear that the success of these initiatives depends on how well they meet the needs of the users and customers.

Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) is the most powerful framework to take the true outside-in perspective. It helps to identify real customer needs independently of internal hypotheses, beliefs and biases. A key challenge to apply JTBD however is the right framing for your growth initiative at hand. Clayton Christensen’s milkshake example or the famous “customers want a hole not a drill” quote is intuitive but many practitioners get lost, once they frame JTBD to a specific case.

In this conversation between Jim Kalbach and Beat Walther, two proven tools for framing the Job-to-be-done will be introduced and compared: Jim’s JTBD Canvas 2.0 and Vendbridge’s JTBD Hierarchy.

Here you find the to the Vendbridge Jobs-to-be-done hierarchy, and here Jim Kalbachs Jobs-to-be-done Canvas 2.0.

Watch the video and find out how to apply the method Jobs-to-be-done and what are the differences between the canvas and the hierarchy.