At its core, Jobs to Be Done thinking is about understanding the underlying motivations behind customer behavior. Instead of asking, “Who is our customer?” JTBD encourages us to ask, “What is our customer trying to accomplish?” That shift opens the door to deeper, more actionable insights that traditional segmentation approaches can sometimes miss.

While demographics, psychographics, and other classic market research methods still play an important role, JTBD centers on the actual tasks and progress customers seek — especially in moments of decision-making and product usage. This perspective helps companies see their products through the lens of the customer’s desired outcome, not just product features or usage statistics.

JTBD Helps Companies Go Beyond Features and Functions

Many organizations fall into the trap of focusing product development on features, enhancements, or usability without stepping back to ask: What exact problem is the customer hiring this product to solve?

Consider this example: a person buying a power drill isn’t just interested in the drill — they’re trying to hang a shelf, which means the actual job to be done is creating a stable, level surface in their home. With that shift in thinking, product designers can innovate around stability, simplicity, or wall-safe solutions. Marketers can tailor messaging to the need for easy installation. Researchers can dig into what signals trust and ease in shoppers’ minds.

JTBD and Better Research Outcomes

Whether paired with qualitative or quantitative research, Jobs to Be Done adds context and clarity to findings. It brings structure to interviews and helps filter survey data through the lens of real decision triggers. At SIVO, we often integrate JTBD-like framing into larger consumer insights efforts to ensure outcomes are grounded in what truly drives behavior — not just what people say in a focus group or checkbox survey.

Here are a few ways JTBD enriches customer research:

• Uncovers the “why” behind usage patterns or trial-and-abandon behavior
• Identifies competitive alternatives that customers turn to
• Maps the emotional and functional needs that influence purchase decisions
• Provides a useful guidepost for product innovation across lifecycle stages

Ultimately, JTBD fits naturally into any toolkit of user research methods, giving teams a more actionable way to prioritize needs and spot unmet opportunities. It’s also a highly effective foundation for building organizational understanding about how customers make progress in their lives — which is what often sparks real, lasting innovation.

While Jobs to Be Done thinking can be valuable for any team aiming to better understand its customers, some roles stand to benefit particularly well. When learning JTBD becomes part of a team’s capability-building strategy, it equips these professionals to ask smarter questions, find deeper insights, and deliver work that aligns more closely with what customers really need.

Product Managers: Building Solutions That Solve Real Problems

For product managers, JTBD thinking offers a clear lens for prioritizing features and building products that matter. Rather than defaulting to roadmaps driven by internal ideas or competitor comparisons, JTBD helps product teams anchor decisions in the functional and emotional needs customers are trying to fulfill.

Benefits include:

• Improved decision-making in product development
• Smoother collaboration with design and research teams
• Better communication of product vision based on customer outcomes

JTBD training for product managers is increasingly used as part of internal capability-building efforts — especially for companies committed to customer-centric product innovation.

Marketers: Aligning Messaging with Customer Desires

Marketers thrive on understanding audience behavior — but traditional personas and campaign metrics often fall short of telling the whole story. JTBD enriches this picture by helping marketers see the progress customers are aiming for and better match messaging, content, and touchpoints to those goals.

For example, knowing that a customer isn’t buying a productivity app just for time-tracking, but rather to feel more in control of their day, offers rich creative direction.

How marketers use Jobs to Be Done thinking often includes:

• Improving segmentation strategies based on desired outcomes
• Crafting campaigns that speak directly to underlying needs
• Choosing more relevant channels and moments to engage audiences

Designers and UX Teams: Enhancing the Full Customer Journey

JTBD fits seamlessly into design thinking workflows. It helps designers understand not just the task flow of a user, but the emotional motivation behind each touchpoint.

Should designers learn JTBD? Absolutely — it helps them anticipate areas of friction, better align design decisions with customer motivations, and build more empathetic experiences. User interfaces become not just easier to use, but more aligned with real world progress the user wants to make.

Innovation Teams: Advancing Research-Backed Ideas

For innovation teams tasked with exploring new concepts, JTBD thinking gives research efforts a more strategic focus. By identifying high-leverage jobs customers struggle to fulfill, organizations can ideate with more precision and uncover white space opportunities.

Benefits of Jobs to Be Done for innovation teams include:

• Uncovering unmet needs not visible through traditional market segmentation
• Structuring idea generation around customer-defined success
• Evaluating new concepts based on their ability to satisfy core jobs

Across all these roles, adopting JTBD improves internal research fluency and sharpens decision-making. It’s a versatile, people-first approach that builds alignment between what customers are trying to do — and what your organization builds to help them do it.

For product managers, decision-making is a daily responsibility – from prioritizing features to choosing which customer needs to address first. Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) thinking provides a practical lens for navigating these decisions with greater clarity and confidence. By focusing on what customers are really trying to accomplish, JTBD helps product managers align their roadmaps with meaningful, demand-driven insights.

Unlike traditional user research methods that often emphasize demographic or usage data, JTBD delves deeper into the motivations behind choices. It helps identify the “job” a product is hired to do – revealing the underlying reasons customers choose one product over another. This makes it easier to spot unmet needs and unmet opportunity areas.

JTBD Training for Product Managers: Why It Matters

Learning JTBD gives product managers tools to:

• Translate vague customer feedback into specific problems to solve
• Validate product ideas based on real customer needs
• Build cross-functional alignment around a shared understanding of the user
• Avoid feature bloat by focusing on what jobs matter most

For example, rather than building yet another dashboard because “users want more data,” JTBD encourages product managers to ask: What job is the user hiring this data for? Perhaps it’s making a quick business decision or sharing insights with stakeholders. The answer can shape the entire product experience.

When JTBD Becomes a Strategic Advantage

In product development, every team faces trade-offs. JTBD equips product teams with a filter: which features or functions best serve the core job the user is hiring the product to do? This method doesn’t compete with agile or design thinking – in fact, it complements them by grounding sprints and iterations in deeper context.

For teams focused on product innovation or launching new offerings, JTBD can also identify where existing products fall short – creating a roadmap for truly differentiated solutions.

Ultimately, JTBD thinking supports product managers in becoming customer advocates and business strategists. With a clearer view of the “why” behind customer behavior, smart decisions become second nature.

Absolutely. Jobs to Be Done thinking isn’t just for product teams – it's also a valuable framework for marketers and designers looking to create more relevant, effective campaigns and experiences. By understanding the job the customer is trying to accomplish, teams can go beyond surface-level messaging or style choices and connect with people at a meaningful level.

For marketers, this means moving beyond demographic personas and looking at customer motivation. Instead of asking, “What does our target segment look like?” JTBD asks, “What job are they hiring our product or service to do for them?” This insight sharpens everything – from brand positioning to advertising copy to go-to-market strategy.

How Marketers Use Jobs to Be Done Thinking

Some practical applications of JTBD in marketing include:

• Crafting messaging that speaks directly to customer struggles and successes
• Identifying emotional and functional triggers that lead to product adoption
• Segmenting customers based on their job-to-be-done, not just demographics
• Developing customer journeys that align with the actual decision-making process

For instance, a customer doesn’t buy a fitness tracker just to count steps – they’re hiring it to help them stay motivated, track progress, or feel more in control of their wellness. Recognizing this job helps marketers shape a story that resonates on a personal level.

Why Designers Benefit from JTBD Thinking

For designers, JTBD offers a powerful complement to design thinking. While design thinking emphasizes empathy and iteration, JTBD brings structure to understanding why people behave the way they do. This allows designers to make strategic choices rooted in real needs, not assumptions.

Designers can use JTBD to:

• Design interfaces and features that fully support the job
• Prioritize usability based on what truly matters to the user
• Strengthen collaboration with product and marketing by sharing a common user framework

Whether teams are improving UX flows, launching a new campaign, or rethinking brand strategy, JTBD provides the foundation for creating human-centered solutions that work.

If your organization is serious about customer-centricity and innovation, integrating Jobs to Be Done thinking into your internal processes is a smart move. JTBD isn’t a tool that only lives in the hands of external consultants – it can become part of how your teams think, decide, and act every day.

Building internal JTBD capability means developing a shared understanding of customer needs and giving teams the tools to apply that understanding across projects, functions, and teams – from product development to customer research, strategy, and beyond.

Steps to Teach Jobs to Be Done Internally

Here are some approachable ways to embed JTBD thinking within your organization:

• Start with accessible JTBD training: Host introductory workshops or bring in a facilitator to guide your teams through the core concepts of the framework. Look for sessions that tie JTBD to real use cases like improving a product launch or uncovering new customer segments.
• Apply JTBD in real business scenarios: Practice the framework by mapping out jobs in current projects. Select a common product or service and ask: What job is our customer trying to get done? What obstacles do they face?
• Cross-train departments: Encourage marketers, designers, product managers, and researchers to work together through the JTBD lens. The more shared language you build, the faster insights flow.
• Pair with other user research methods: JTBD can enhance the tools you already use. Whether you’re running surveys or in-depth interviews, layering on a JTBD perspective will deepen your understanding of what customers truly value.

In time, JTBD becomes more than just a framework – it becomes a culture of curiosity. Teams start asking sharper questions, aligning around user problems, and making decisions based on real human behavior rather than assumptions.

Why Internal Capability Matters

Relying on external partners for consumer insights can be effective, but long-term growth benefits from internal capability too. When your organization can think in JTBD terms, you not only move faster – you become more responsive to customer behavior shifts, better equipped for product innovation, and more connected to your market than your competitors.

Whether you’re investing in market research training or looking for new ways to build empathy across teams, JTBD thinking deserves a seat at the table. It’s one of the most scalable and practical ways to make customer understanding a core business advantage.