Jobs To Be Done Study – Sarah Kennedy

At Jiffy, we used this framework to identify core needs of our customers, a.k.a. their "jobs to be done". The JTBD framework provided our team with a method to define and measure where we are meeting and failing to meet the needs of our customers.

“People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

- Theodore Levitt.

STEP 1

Identify the Core Functional Job

To start, we needed to identify Jiffy's Core Functional Job.

The core functional job is "the stable, long-term focal point around which all other needs are defined". To do this, we needed a single statement that would encompass why customers use Jiffy and what job they are ultimately trying to get done.

Jiffy's Core Functional Job

“Complete professional home improvement services for your home.”

STEP 2

Create a Job Map

Next, we created a job map of our core functional job. A job map helps us identify each step of the core functional job. According to JTBD, most core jobs consist of the following Universal Job Map:

Using this outline, we conducted user interviews to create our own job map. We asked customers to walk us through each step of their experience trying to complete professional home improvement services for their home.

Universal Job Map
Define → Locate → Prepare → Confirm → Execute → Monitor → Modify → Conclude

We developed the following job map based on our interviews:

STEP 3

Outcome Statements

Using our job map, we conducted another round of interviews. This time, we were looking for user needs.

At each step, we used the following questions to uncover any goals, achievements, or problems customers experienced, as well as any issues customers tried to avoid.

The answers to these questions were identified as success metrics.

For every success metric we found, we wrote a "Desired Outcome Statement" according to the JTBD framework.

The outcome statements were sorted by sticky notes and refined into approximately 5 to 10 statements for each step.

STEP 4

Customer Surveys

We laid out all of our Desired Outcome Statements in a survey and asked customers to rank each statement by Importance and Satisfaction. We asked the questions, "How Important is this to you?" and "When using Jiffy, how satisfied are you with your ability to do this?".

Confession 🤫

After testing our survey, we learned the Desired Outcome Statements were confusing and left testers feeling frustrated. We decided to shift away from JTBD guidelines and rephrase our statements. Phrases like "Minimize the likelihood that my property will be damaged" were simplified to "Avoid property damage".

STEP 5

Survey Analysis

After we received close to 100 survey responses, we calculated Importance Scores and Satisfaction Scores for each outcome statement. To do that, we calculated the percentage of users who selected 4 or 5 for each question.

Image of Example Calculating Importance and Satisfaction Scores

In this example, 43 of 93 (46%) users selected 4 or 5 for importance. Resulting in a 4.6 Importance Score. For the same question, 53 of 93 (57%) users selected 4 or 5 for satisfaction. Resulting in a 5.7 Satisfaction Score.

Revealing Areas of Opportunity

Next, we use the importance score and the satisfaction score to find the opportunity score.

Opportunity Score
Importance Score + (Importance Score – Satisfaction Score)

Example
4.6 + (4.6 - 5.7) = 3.5

We calculated opportunity scores for all Desired Outcome Statements from our survey and plotted them on an "Opportunity Landscape".

Opportunity Score Legend

15+ Outstanding area of opportunity
12 - 15 Established and new areas of opportunity
10 - 12 Worthy of consideration
5 - 10 Satisfied
0 - 5 Overserved

STEP 6

Finding Patterns

Maybe we could've stopped there, but our curiosity drove us further.
At this point, we had a clear idea of which outcome statements we needed to focus on, but we wanted to know if these underserved opportunties shared any similarities, and how user needs might be different among New vs. Medium or Heavy Users.

Image of Underserved Opportunities for New Users

In this example, we looked at underserved opportunities for New Users.

We added tags to identify any subjects that may be similar.

Here, you can see that some of the main concerns for New Users focus primarily on Pricing, Performance, Communication, and Quality.

These findings became very useful as we approached our next project on Personalized Home Screens (See Case Study Here). We discovered that some priorities and underserved opportunities changed as we filtered out New, Medium, or Heavy Users; however, some priorities, such as Pricing, remained a major opportunity across all user groups.

STEP 7

Repeat

At Jiffy, we carry out a Jobs To Be Done survey every year.
This helps us compare and contrast areas of improvement or decline. So far, our studies have shown increased customer satisfaction and outcomes that were once in areas of opportunity are falling within the "approprately served" range.

Image of Graph depicting Year over year results.

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