Top 8 tips for JTBD Interviews

I got some feedback on this article on what to do with your JTBD research. I was told that I jumped into the deep end of JTBD and some people may not understand the reasoning for some of my recommendations. Instead of cramming it all into one article I’ve summarized my top 8 tips for JTBD Interviews that may help answer addition questions.

1. Is JTBD even the right approach?

As great as JTBD is, it’s not the holy grail of customer research. It’s just one of the many tools available in the Design Thinking framework. If you’re trying to innovate a new product or feature then JTBD is great. If your trying to work out how to improve an existing feature maybe you should try User Testing first. JTBD works best when you can find a switch event that has a lot of customer struggles in it.

2. Focus on a switch event

There is no point talking to someone who’s been buying “Product X” for years. If you ask them why they are purchasing that particular brand they will just give you a generic response. That’s because the struggle that made them switch to Product X happened years ago. Your better off talking to people who have recently bought Product X for the very first time. This will tell you all the struggles they went through when they switched from their old behaviour to their new behaviour. It’s in these struggles that you learn what is promoting and blocking the new behaviour.

So when your organising interviews try talk to people who have in the last 30 days switched to your product, or to a product similar to yours. This will help you understand why your customers are hiring you. You can also talk to people who switched away from your product to learn why they fired you.

3. You might be competing against nothing

Finding a switch event can be hard, especially when there’s nothing that is already trying to solve the job. If this is the case try and look for work arounds or hacks people are using to currently get the job done and focus on thouse switch events.

Audio books is a great example. I personally didn’t used to read a lot. I wanted to, but I never found the time and my learning style is more Aural then Verbal. I used to commute 90 minutes a day into work and in that time I listened to podcasts on my phone. Before Audible was launched someone from their team might have been able to interview me to work out what job I was hiring podcasts for and how Audible might improve it (which they did, I love it).

4. Talk to 10 people (with the same switch event)

This is a mistake I made when I first started, because we offer different products I focused on 4 different switch events. I also only talked to 3–4 people in each. The result was a bunch research notes that was hard to make sense of.

You need to focus on just 1 switch event at a time and talk to 10 people who have switched in the last 30 days. After 5 you should start to notice patterns in the events that lead them to switch. It will also help you prioritise the main motivations and pain points as you compare notes at the end.

5. Do the interviews with a partner

Another mistake I made. Having a partner helps the conversation flowing as you take notes and organise your thoughts. Ideally in an JTBD interview you will have someone leading and someone supporting.

The Leader will direct the conversation through each of the events in the timeline. They need a solid understanding of JTBD and know what questions to ask to uncover the struggle in a customers story.

The Supporter will help fill in the gaps by asking questions that dive deeper into whatever part of the timeline the Leader is talking about. This gives the leader time to take notes and work out what the next line of questioning should be. It also helps uncover other useful nuggets that might otherwise have been missed and keeps the conversation flowing naturally.

6. Listen for the motivations and pain points that led to a switch

While conducting the interview you need to be listening for 4 forces:

Push of the situation

What was it about their situation that led them to look for a new solution?
e.g. “I’ve bought so many books to read and I haven’t finished any of them”

Pull of the new solution

What was it about the new solution that led them to try it?
e.g. “Audible is cheaper and I can listen to it while I commute to work”

Habits holding them back

What habits did they have that held them back from trying a new solution? e.g. “My podcasts are free and I still enjoy them”

Anxieties of the new solution

What Anxieties did they have about the new solution?
e.g. “What if I don’t like a book? Will I lose some books context without visual diagrams?”

7. Start with the point of purchase and work your way back

In timeine (customer journey) people will always want to talk about the point of purchase first, it’s what they remember easily and it’s why they think you’re talking to them so get it out of the way first. Work out what they got, where, how, with whom etc. Then work your way backwards asking them what they used to use to solve the job and when they first thought about solving the job differently. Then find out what was different about this particular situation that made them switch to Product X to solve the job. Finally go all the way past the purchase to work out if the product met their expectations.

8. Learn why your customers are firing you

If your trying to work out why customers are switching away from your product you need to do two interviews. First work out why they hired you, then you can learn why they fired you.

For people who have a subscription product this is easy, talk to people who recently canceled their subscription. For others you need to talk to customers who show a pattern of loyal behaviour that suddenly stops.

When conducting the interviews first work out what job they originally hired you for and then work out why they hired a different solution to solve that job (or why they went back to hiring nothing). It could be that your product didn’t deliver on their expectations or a competitor’s product solves the job better. Alternatively their situation might of changed and so the job is now different or no longer exists for them.

I hope this helps, comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

If you would like to learn more about JTBD Interviews I’d highly recommend this course.

If you want to learn how to apply JTBD to your work, including what to do once you’ve got the research I’m working on a video course with David Herse here jobstobedone.pro