When Being Customer-Focused Isn’t Enough

Many organizations proudly promote being “customer focused” in their vision, mission, values and/or culture. I think we can all agree that this is a good thing because, for starters, without customers, there wouldn’t be a business. And probably all of us can cite many reasons why we like doing business with customer-focused organizations including employee friendliness, helpfulness, having a good experience, being treated honestly and fairly, etc. – all great stuff!

But when it comes to driving innovation and growth – i.e., creating your organization’s future – being customer-focused isn’t enough. It’s good for everyday operations, but it’s too vague for innovation. Simply telling employees to be customer-focused does not tell them what type of information to obtain from customers, how to get it, or how to use it to drive innovation and growth in a repeatable manner. The consequence is that employees end up asking customers the wrong questions which gets the wrong answers and ensures high failure rates. How can this be?

Being customer-focused without having a deeper understanding of how to create new value for target customers can lead employees to ask customers, “What do you want?” That may sound reasonable but that question usually sends customers into “solution thinking” – i.e., thinking about product or service specifications.

Most customers don’t have the experience or expertise to tell suppliers what product or service specifications they want. That would be like asking patients what type of medical treatment they need. Developing the treatment plan is the physician’s responsibility and developing the best product or service specifications is the supplier’s responsibility based on collaboratively identifying their unmet needs. Just as doctors diagnose and then treat, suppliers must learn how to “diagnosis” their target customers’ condition to reliably guide them in the development of new and improved offerings.

The good news is that customers can tell us what they want if we ask them what they want to accomplish rather than asking for product or service specifications. Organizations that are serious about driving innovation and growth as a repeatable business process must go beyond being customer-focused and become customer “job-focused.” That is, organizations must learn how to identify, study, and understand:

• The functional, emotional, and social jobs their target customers are trying to get done
• The steps they have to go through to get the job done (not the steps they currently go through with a given product/service solution)
• How they measure success when executing each step in the core functional job
• Where they struggle given their current product or service solutions.

The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) innovation approach makes it possible to consistently get this information. Like a blood test for a patient, obtaining this information enables firms to identify exactly what ails the customer with statistical validity (when desired), and in a format that is ideal for developing new and improved offerings.

Most organizations don’t lack creativity or good ideas; they lack focus. They lack clarity about where the market is under-served and where the opportunities lie. JTBD fixes that problem by providing a lens through which to see the world from the customer’s point of view. This gives suppliers clarity and confidence about where to focus and what to do to create unique value. The best creativity trigger is a well-defined customer need.

Reveal needs. Create value. Drive growth. Let me show you how.

(A version of this article appeared in The Business Journals, May 5, 2022).