Christensen Institute / Jobs to Be Done · Customer insight
Understand why the customer wants to switch
Customers 'hire' a product to make progress in a particular situation. Find out what happened when they started looking, what change they want – practical, social and emotional – and what keeps them tied to the old way.
When it helps
When the audience is described only by age, industry or company size, when you don't know why customers buy, or when buyers hesitate to switch.
Keep in mind
When you haven't talked to customers: write questions and hypotheses, not claims about what customers really feel.
How to apply it
- Ask about a specific occasion: when did the customer start looking, what had just happened, what did they try first and why did it matter right then? Ask what people did, not what they think they want.
- Describe the job as progress in a situation – 'When …, I want to …, so I can …' – rather than as a product feature or a demographic.
- Capture all three sides of the job: the practical (getting the books done), the social (how the customer wants to be seen) and the emotional (no longer having to worry).
- Our application: a switch is driven by frustration with the old way and the pull of the new, and held back by anxiety about the new and habits tied to the old. Copy should strengthen the first two and ease the last two – for example by showing how the move works.
- One customer's story is a hypothesis, not a truth about the whole audience. Look for patterns across several interviews before you build the message on them.
Questions to work with
- What happened just before the customer started looking for a solution?
- What works poorly with what they use today?
- What do they want to be able to do, feel or show afterwards?
- What makes switching difficult or uncertain?
A fictional example
Fictional: a service helps small businesses move bookkeeping records from another system. This is not based on a real interview.
Draft
Our solution suits businesses with 1–10 employees.
Revised
Want to switch accounting software but dreading the move? We'll help you transfer your records from the system you use today.
The copy meets readers in their situation – wanting to switch and worrying about the move – instead of sorting them by headcount.
Read the original sources
The application and example are our own. The example is fictional and has not been conversion-tested.