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Jobs-to-be-Done
12 posts about Jobs-to-be-Done. Every summary links to the original.
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Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done - The Intercom Blog
Bob Moesta, a principal architect of the Jobs-to-be-Done framework, explains that JTBD interviews focus on uncovering the actions and progress a buyer is trying to make, not opinions or product features. He describes the key forces driving customer switching—push, pull, anxiety, and habit—and notes that innovation opportunities lie at the edge where people want to be better, not with habitual users. Moesta introduces the concepts of big hire (purchase) and little hire (actual use), emphasizing that value is delivered in the latter and that both must be designed for. He addresses zombie revenue, which can arise when customers move on after the job is done, don’t understand the product, or when the product serves a different job than intended. For startups new to JTBD, Moesta advises removing their product from the interview equation and starting with competitor customers to understand the context and outcome independently of the product.
This is not a map - The Intercom Blog
Intercom added a map feature showing customer locations worldwide, kept it live for three years, and recently sunset it despite its popularity because the use case was unclear. Customers primarily used the map to show off at conferences, on Twitter, and to investors, not for geographical analysis. Realizing the map’s true job was as a showpiece, Intercom shifted improvement focus from cartographical accuracy, clustering, and borders to aesthetics and shareability. They redesigned the map to automatically hide sensitive data, look impressive, and provide a unique shareable URL, making it easier to show off. This approach resulted in a geographically inferior map that better served customers’ actual needs, proving that understanding usage trumps the feature category.
How to predict technology flops - The Intercom Blog
Technology flops share a common trait: they fail to perform a clear job for customers. The Segway, for instance, offered marginal speed and height advantages that only appealed to niche markets like tourists and security guards, not the global walking market it targeted. Google Glass and Google Wave also suffered from impressive technology without a defined use case, leaving them without a job to be done. In contrast, disruptive products like modern weather apps succeed by precisely understanding the simple jobs customers actually need, such as knowing if it will rain soon. Game-changing products like the iPhone combine new technology with concrete, useful applications, focusing on what users can do rather than what the product does, and 47% of first movers fail because they cannot explain their product’s job.
Interview with Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done (Part 2) – Inside Intercom
Bob Moesta explains how startups can apply Jobs-to-be-Done theory by identifying struggling moments and understanding the switching mechanism, including why people switch, the cost to switch, and how they choose alternatives. He advises focusing on people who have already switched rather than hypothetical buyers, because actual purchases embed a value code that reveals trade-offs and what they are willing to give up. Moesta argues that beta tests must include a payment component to reveal what customers truly value, otherwise feedback is unreliable and leads to over-engineering features no one will pay for. He illustrates with a home building example where reframing from selling homes to helping people move increased sales, and including a moving service or furniture for a divorced mom sold more homes. The interview also covers competing against non-consumption, as seen with Siri enabling texting in situations where typing was avoided, increasing texting by 300 percent.
Interview with Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done – Inside Intercom
Bob Moesta, who works with Clay Christensen to develop an online course on Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD), applies the framework through his company The ReWired Group, which helps Fortune 500 companies find innovation whitespace and incubates technology startups. JTBD is gaining popularity because Christensen promotes it, markets are saturated, and traditional marketing methods target large markets rather than seeding niches from existing consumer struggles. The method starts with the consumer’s situational context and motivation, stopping abstraction when the consumer cannot think about the problem, as in the milkshake example of solving commute boredom. Products often perform multiple jobs; the decision to split products depends on conflicts in how consumers measure value, not just benefits. Branding can be structured with endorser, driver, descriptor, and ingredient brands to clearly communicate the job a product solves, as with IBM Thinkpad and Intel Inside.
Insights and lessons from some of the best people in product - The Intercom Blog
The post compiles insights from Intercom’s 50th podcast episode, featuring product leaders Bob Moesta, Julie Zhuo, Michael Pryor, and Jason Fried on topics from customer jobs to pricing and product overhaul. Bob Moesta explains that new products always replace existing consumption; understanding what customers stop doing reveals the job to be done, as there is no new time in the world. Julie Zhuo describes a hierarchy where utility is foundational, then ease of use, and finally emotional appeal differentiates products when utility is equal. Michael Pryor shares that Trello initially avoided charging but user fear of shutdown forced them to introduce a simple pricing model, and they debated per-user versus flat fees. Jason Fried advocates for periodic ground-up rebuilds when new ideas cannot be retrofitted, supporting old versions indefinitely and not forcing upgrades.
Ways to think about customer onboarding - The Intercom Blog
Customer onboarding is critical, yet most apps lose half their new users by the second day because it fails to deliver real value. Instead of focusing on feature adoption like creating a to-do list, onboarding should help users achieve their ultimate goal, such as delivering a project on time, turning them into superheroes. The Jobs-to-be-Done framework reveals the motivations driving sign-ups, enabling segmentation and tailored onboarding flows for groups with similar needs. The four forces model adds context by showing push and pull factors when users switch, maximizing forces for change like long email trails and minimizing resistance like switching anxiety. Finally, behavior-based messaging should be scheduled by time with a priority list rather than predefined sequences, avoiding the complexity of N-dimensional decision trees, as implemented in Intercom’s Smart Campaigns.
Real customer delight isn't over the top - The Intercom Blog
Many businesses emulate Zappos’ over-the-top customer support, but research in The Effortless Experience shows that striving to delight customers by going far above and beyond typically harms more than helps. The study finds low effort is the true driver of customer loyalty, as customers simply want their issue fixed quickly so they can resume their job. Support teams lower perceived effort by anticipating needs rather than focusing on objective exertion, since subjective emotional factors make up 65.4 percent of how customers evaluate effort. A more effective metric than First Contact Resolution is Next Contact Avoidance (NCA), which addresses the customer’s entire job by proactively handling their next logical question, like suggesting export documentation. Finally, eliminating valueless ‘dumb contacts’ and closing the feedback loop by using customer insights to improve the product are essential for efficient, low-effort support.
Designing Features Using Job Stories - Inside Intercom
Personas rely on demographic attributes that fail to explain causality behind consumption, and User Stories couple implementation with motivations, obscuring reasons for feature failure. Job Stories overcome this by focusing on the situation, motivation, and desired outcome without prescribing a solution. A case study demonstrates the approach: designing a profile page for a car loan application, using a five-step process starting with the high-level job of helping salespeople secure loans. The team observed customers currently rely on physical proximity to assess trust, and wrote a Job Story about anxiety of sharing sensitive data electronically. The resulting UI featured the salesperson’s photo, title, cars sold, years at company, and contact options, each chosen to ease customer anxiety and ensure safe data sharing.
The dribbblisation of design - The Intercom Blog
Paul Adams argues that the Dribbble community rewards superficial aesthetics, moving product design backward. He observes that job applicants often submit pixel-perfect PNGs lacking context, business constraints, or problem definition, focusing on visual polish rather than solving real problems. Strong candidates instead present sketches, whiteboard diagrams, and prototypes that show interactions with real data, documenting pros, cons, and tradeoffs made during the process. True product design begins with company mission and a clear product architecture defining system components and their relationships, such as Facebook’s directory of people, friends, and interests with its relationship map, then progresses through outcome, system, interaction, and visual layers. The Jobs framework, structured as ‘When ____, I want ____, so I can ____,’ forces designers to specify triggering events and desired outcomes, ensuring designs are mapped to the company mission and product architecture.
Intercom's product principles: Start with the problem to achieve better solutions - The Intercom Blog
Intercom’s primary product principle “Start with the problem” guides all its teams to focus on understanding real customer issues more deeply before designing any solutions. The company argues that many businesses fail because they quickly jump to solutions without thoroughly exploring the underlying problem, leading to solutions that often miss the mark, do not match real customer needs, and end up unused entirely. Common pitfalls include insufficient problem comprehension, failing to update problem understanding over time, and solving problems that are too niche, not urgent, or not aligned with customer needs. To counter this, Intercom dedicates about a third of a team’s effort to problem definition before any building begins, using problem statements and customer research. This whole-team approach builds shared understanding, ensures accurate solutions, and allows “porpoising” between problem and solution understanding while defining measurable success metrics upfront to validate impact.
New book: Intercom on Jobs
Intercom launched its fourth book, Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done, to document lessons from applying the Jobs-to-be-Done framework to product, design, and marketing for software. The book addresses a gap: although the framework is nearly 30 years old and often discussed through physical products, few materials cover its application to software companies. Intercom says the framework helped it understand the needs customers addressed with its product and improve their experience. Rather than offering a prescriptive, step-by-step method, the book presents hard-learned lessons intended to be timeless and universal, including customer switching, real competitors, product scope, exact jobs, Job Stories versus personas, and software research.
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