How Admitad Startups Combines Jobs to Be Done and CustDev to Enhance Interviewing Style

What’s the difference between Jobs to Be Done and Customer advancement? Anastasia Berezhnova, Head of CustDev Center, explains how to conduct JTBD interviews, analyze answers, and chart customers’ priorities. discover more about the main challenges of using JTBD

Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) and Customer advancement are two methods of conducting in-depth interviews. Each technique can be briefly described as follows:

• Customer advancement — the interviewer looks for the customer’s pain points.
• Jobs to Be Done — the interviewer looks for tasks that the customer wants to complete.

In general, the key difference is that CustDev interviews can be carried with any person, while JTBD is most valuable for interviewing consumers who purchased products made by competitors.

When creating a product, Admitad Startups uses both CustDev and Jobs to Be Done methods.

Difference between CustDev and Jobs to Be Done

Any JTBD research starts with finding a competitor whose product we aim to overpower with our launch. Then, we reach out to customers of this brand and inquire them a bunch of questions about the competing product. This way, we can comprehend:

• How the competitor operates
• Why customers choose to use this brand’s product
• How much money customers pay for it
• What features of this product were useful to them
• What customers are satisfied and dissatisfied with
• What job was completed when they bought this product made by our competitor, and so on.

Whereas during a CustDev research, we form a hypothesis about the target spectators and discover respondents based on suggested characteristics. Then we conduct a series of surveys or interviews to discover consumers’ pain points. If you desire to discover more about Customer advancement, check this piece.

Here’s an example that will assist you digest it

Let’s declare that Admitad Startups wants to launch a banner ad platform.

When using Jobs to Be Done technique, we would receive users of a banner ad product that already exists on the economy and comes as close as feasible to what’s in advancement at our incubator.

With CustDev, we would intentionally exclude customers of our competitors and interview respondents who had not used any solutions presented on the economy. Such people have a require to place banner ads, but they somehow manage it on their own. Hence, we require to comprehend what they are doing in order to complete this job without turning to available economy services.

What both styles of interviewing bring you

As a outcome of the JTBD research, we comprehend what product our target spectators is currently using, what features it needs, and how much it’s willing to pay for them.

Customer advancement interviews provide information on why consumers are reluctant to purchase products on the economy, what features and functions would make them transformation their mind, and why they prefer to deal with their pain points alone.

So when we are building a recent product, we are presented with two tasks:

1. To convert users who were not ready to spend money
2. To receive into account the shortcomings of our competitors.

How to conduct JTBD interviews

In this section, I will describe the stages of the Jobs to Be Done study.

JTBD interviews are an significant step of product advancement. They are conducted by a finding throng — it’s a throng of employees assembled to develop and construct a enterprise. These employees choose the interviewing methodology, arrive up with a list of questions, and determine the target spectators. They also get other departments involved in advancement of a product.

A finding throng typically consists of:

• a marketer,
• an interviewer,
• an employee from the production throng (designers, etc.),
• a product manager.

The request to interview and research the target spectators comes from the product manager. They usually set some benevolent of job (for example, to develop a banner ad platform), and a finding throng formulates a hypothesis about the spectators that this product could target. Then, an interviewer surveys respondents while other members of the finding throng back them with useful insights.

Segmentation of the target spectators

The most significant step is to define target segments accurately. The sooner we comprehend exactly what benevolent of customers we require, the faster we fine-tune our processes to collect the most useful information.

One might ponder that interviewing a dozen or two competitor’s customers would be enough, and there is no require for more differentiators; the key factor would be whether a buyer used the competing product. However, this way would over-expand the scope of research. Narrowing it down instead would assist a great deal.

You might desire to inquire, “How can I check whether I have identified the target segment?” Here’s the respond: respondents within the same segment have the same problems and needs. Therefore, you might notice that consumers talk about the same pain points, sometimes reframing it in different words. If so, it means you have identified the target segment.

Analysis of interviews

To analyze the information we gathered after conducting interviews, the finding throng transcribes them all into text files. Based on these texts, we fill out a table or canvas that contains the following rows:

• Competitor solutions — other products names by customers
• Fears — what stops consumers from buying solutions
• Contexts/triggers — what makes people look for a answer
• tiny jobs — tasks that consumers desire to complete
• large jobs — ideal results that consumers wants to achieve

In this regard, it is useful to conduct Customer advancement interviews in parallel — they would provide additional confirmation of whether the correct conclusions were drawn. For instance, when we at Admitad Startups complete a CustDev study of consumers who have never used competitors’ products, we also fill out a table on customers’ fears, triggers, and jobs. We then contrast the tables of both approaches.

If both audiences have matching problems, pain points, and large/tiny jobs, it means that we have successfully determined the target segment of our spectators.

Example. Admitad Startups is currently building a furniture rental assignment called Rentomatic. After analyzing interviews, our table might look like this:

Mapping customers priorities

After completing the analysis, we shift on to the next step. We gather tiny and large jobs from all the interviews and profit to our target spectators. It can be both ancient respondents and recent ones. We then have two requests for them:

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate how significant it is to you to complete this job. (‘Importance’) 
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate how straightforward it is to discover a answer in the economy. (‘Satisfaction’)

Having received the answers, we compute the priority according to the formula (2×Importance)−Satisfaction and transfer the results to a table with four cells:

• An significant job poorly served by the economy
• An significant job well served by the economy
• An unimportant job well served by the economy
• An significant job poorly served by the economy

If a job is very significant but already well served by the economy, then we don’t require to construct this product. Instead, we are looking for jobs that the client needs done but they are poorly served by existing offers.

Example. recall our furniture rental? The table for it might look like this:

Determining customers’ stage

When using Jobs to Be Done methodology, it’s significant to discover what stage the customer is on. There’s a scale that reflects how close the client comes to purchasing your answer for their job.

Example. Let’s imagine a food delivery service. Consumers who might be interested in these services have different stages of being ready for purchase:

• I came home after work. I have something in my fridge. It’s challenging for me to figure out what I can cook.
• I don’t have anything in my fridge. I try to arrive up with what to cook, and then I shop at the convenience store.
• Instead of going to the store, I order groceries to cook my meals from a delivery service.
• I don’t desire to arrive up with recent recipes, so I order a delivery of a pre-set package of groceries.
• I don’t desire to cook anything after work, so I order dishes from restaurants.

It is significant to comprehend which of the steps the buyer is on, as well as to analyze their mentality, profits level, and habits. It’s also worth considering that customers rarely jump several steps at once. 

For example, a customer is currently on the “I buy products and cook myself” stage. It will be easier to shift them to the “I desire to cook myself, but don’t desire to arrive up with a recipe”. However, it is unlikely that this customer jumps to the “I’d rather order ready-made food” stage.

How Admitad Startups researches its spectators

I ponder it’s worth explaining how quick a finding throng copes with conducting interviews. 

Keep in mind that navigator production is not included in the spectators research. It’s a divide job that, by itself, takes a long period to complete. You can discover more about it in our piece called navigator production at the finding Stage. 

Therefore, we exclude the procedure of searching for leads and commence counting from the instant we receive an already-generated list. This is the instant we commence to explore a segment of our spectators.

On average, we can complete the research in 1.5–2 months. This would be enough to conduct 50 in-depth interviews. One interview lasts about an hour. So it takes us about a month to conduct interviews and another 2 weeks to analyze them.

recall that when you make a recent product, the first few interviews are spent on understanding what’s happening in the niche. So at the beginning, we always spend a few days slightly confused and trying to make sense of the responses. 

The rest of the interview is a fairly straightforward procedure, although it has its own obstacles. Let’s talk about it in the next section.

Key challenges of using Jobs to Be Done

I would single out two main challenges when researching the target spectators.

test 1. navigator production

The main issue with spectators research is not the procedure of conducting the interview, but rather the preparation. I’m talking about the issue of finding leads. For example, we receive a request from our product manager, “We have a competitor called corporation A. We require to discover people in elder positions who have used their product in the last 3 months and paid at least $100 for it.” You have to be very creative to generate a list of leads according to the given criteria.

“Why do you ponder it’s challenging?” you might declare. Actually, finding the correct person in the correct segment is a test in itself. But when we are to discover leads half the globe away, this is a whole other level. For instance, our throng is currently located in Europe, but we mainly work with the USA and India. So we are quite often in a different period zone or have a different mentality. We are still learning to comprehend sure nuances. Naturally, this takes period.

test 2. Asking the correct questions

It is equally challenging to discover how to inquire questions so that respondents provide you with all the information you require. To do this, you require to switch your mindset from sales mode to energetic listening. 

You require to be intelligent about interviews. Asking “What’s your issue?” would only confuse your respondents. Also, sometimes they lie to themselves and can unintentionally provide an untrue respond. 

So it’s significant to discover the methods and techniques of interviewing customers. You require to establish an truthful connection and listen very carefully to whatever consumers are saying.

Final thoughts

When developing a recent product, Admitad Startups uses two interviewing styles — Customer advancement and Jobs to Be Done — to view the obvious picture of the economy and client needs.

What are the differences between these methods?

• CustDev is looking for problems that consumers are struggling with.
• JTBD looks for tasks that the buyer closes using existing products on the economy.

Instead of solving the problems of the target spectators, our product needs to receive on the job/job and complete it. 

The Jobs to Be Done study has the following steps:

1. Defining target segments and narrowing the search scope.
2. Interview analysis — the search for recurring triggers, fears, jobs.
3. Mapping priorities — the search for tasks that are significant to customers but underserved by the economy.
4. Determining customers’ stage — building a scale that shows how ready customers are to purchase a product.

As a rule, spectators research is a pretty straightforward procedure that does not include solemn obstacles. One usually encounters the main test when preparing for interviews — it’s the navigator production. When this issue is out of the way, it’s crucial to recognize the correct way of interviewing respondents. After that, you are excellent to leave and talk to customers.