When a team uncovers a compelling "job" that a customer is trying to solve, it's tempting to jump into action – to build a product, launch a campaign, or pivot strategy. But even the most exciting Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) insights can fall short if they haven’t been properly vetted. That’s where validation comes in.

Validating JTBD insights ensures your organization is interpreting customer needs clearly and accurately. This step is particularly important when dealing with qualitative insights, which can sometimes reflect interview bias, small sample sizes, or surface-level interpretations. Validation helps move your understanding from anecdotal to actionable.

What Happens When You Skip Insight Validation?

Overlooking proper JTBD validation can result in strategic missteps, such as:

• Misaligned product features that fix the wrong problem
• Marketing messages that don’t resonate with your target audience
• Wasted resources on developing solutions for a misunderstood customer job

This is why it’s key to treat Jobs to Be Done statements not as final conclusions, but as hypotheses that should be scrutinized and tested through an insight review process involving multiple perspectives.

JTBD Insight Quality Isn’t Guaranteed at First Glance

Even seasoned insight professionals know that the first version of a customer job statement might need refinement. Validating qualitative research findings such as Jobs to Be Done involves confirming a few critical things:

• Does this statement reflect a consistent customer need across the sample?
• Is it specific and clear enough to inform decision-making?
• Is it framed in a way that aligns with our business objectives and capabilities?

The goal is to make sure you're not just hearing what you want to hear – but what’s really true and useful. That’s where a cross-functional team insight approval process can play a big role.

Validation Adds Rigor to Consumer Insights

To truly leverage market research insights, your JTBD work needs quality control just like any other research output. Validating customer job statements helps filter out noise and focus on what really matters. It also increases organizational confidence that insights are grounded in solid evidence.

Done right, this process unlocks JTBD insights that serve as a strong foundation for innovation, marketing, and growth. In fact, many companies use validation as a key step in scaling their insights programs because it aligns everyone around a shared truth.

So, you've conducted your research, gathered interviews, and distilled key customer jobs. Now comes a big question: who in your organization should have the responsibility – and authority – to approve these JTBD insights before they inform major decisions?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but there are common team roles that play a crucial part in ensuring the accuracy, clarity, and strategic fit of Jobs to Be Done statements. A balanced approval process typically includes representatives from insights, product, marketing, and leadership.

Key Team Roles for Validating Market Insights

Several core roles should be involved in the JTBD review and approval process:

1. Consumer Insights Team

The heart of the insight review process, your consumer insights professionals (or external market research partners like SIVO) are usually the ones who uncover and craft the initial JTBD statements. They bring methodological rigor, ensure qualitative insights are interpreted correctly, and often take the lead on validating Jobs to Be Done research.

2. Product and Innovation Leads

These team members are essential for linking JTBD statements to your product roadmaps. Their input helps assess whether the identified customer job is something the company is positioned to solve. They also test feasibility and align research findings with upcoming solutions.

3. Marketing and Brand Strategists

JTBD insights often feed directly into messaging, so marketers have a vested interest in approving accurate, resonant customer job statements. They're experts in consumer language and can flag whether insights support positioning efforts.

4. Cross-Functional Leadership

Depending on your org’s size, stakeholders from executive or functional leadership should review insights for alignment with broader strategic priorities. Their role isn’t to re-analyze findings, but to ensure business decisions based on the insights make sense company-wide.

Why Cross-Functional Insight Approval Matters

When multiple perspectives come together to review JTBD research, it creates richer, more trustworthy outputs. Here’s why that matters:

• It brings stakeholder alignment early, reducing friction later
• It minimizes the risk of misinterpreting qualitative insights
• It ensures JTBD themes are not only valid, but also useful company-wide

This internal collaboration is a form of governance for customer insights – giving your business confidence that the direction it's taking is rooted in shared, reliable information.

Keep the Process Scalable and Clear

To make JTBD validation work long term, create a repeatable process. Define who owns which part of the review, how decisions are made, and how feedback flows between teams. Organizations that build JTBD quality control processes into their workflow are better able to unlock the full value of their market research insights.

Establishing a clear, repeatable process to approve Jobs to Be Done insights ensures your team is aligned and working from validated, high-quality inputs. This process doesn’t have to be complex. A well-structured JTBD insight review process should help prevent bias, increase consistency, and drive confidence in business decisions based on customer job statements.

Start With a Centralized Repository

Begin by centralizing all JTBD research findings, including qualitative insights, customer interviews, and draft job statements. Keeping insights in a shared space ensures transparency and makes it easier for teams across functions – from product to marketing – to engage with and contribute to the validation process.

Define Review Roles and Responsibilities

Clarify who is responsible for reviewing and validating JTBD insights. Typically, your consumer insights team or market research leads will guide this, with additional input from product, marketing, and strategy teams. Setting expectations across roles prevents confusion, especially when insights are being refined or reworded.

Use a Consistent Evaluation Framework

Every job statement should be evaluated against a consistent set of criteria. You might ask:

• Is the job statement truly customer-centered?
• Does it reflect a clear problem or goal the customer is trying to achieve?
• Is it based on validated qualitative research findings?
• Is it too solution-specific or biased?

Having consistent standards supports a fair and objective insight approval process and reduces the risk of misinterpreting data or acting on bad assumptions.

Build in a Two-Step Validation Process

Minimize the risk of error by introducing a two-step review:

1. Initial Review: Conducted by the insights or research team to ensure quality and alignment with research objectives and methodologies.
2. Cross-Functional Review: Involves stakeholders from other departments to validate relevance and clarity for strategic use.

This layered approach is especially helpful when you need to validate market research that will inform wide-reaching decisions.

Continuously Improve the Review Process

JTBD insight quality control is not a one-time thing. Schedule periodic check-ins to refine your review process, incorporate feedback, and adjust your criteria based on evolving business needs or customer behavior patterns.

By keeping your JTBD insight approval process simple but thoughtful, you empower your entire team to make high-impact decisions backed by consumer truths.

Jobs to Be Done research can be incredibly powerful – when it’s been properly vetted. However, teams new to this framework often run into avoidable mistakes during the insight review process. Understanding these pitfalls can help you better validate qualitative research findings and ensure your customer job statements are practical and actionable.

Mistaking Product Features for Customer Jobs

One of the most common JTBD insight pitfalls is confusing a product feature with an actual job to be done. For example, saying “users want a faster checkout button” is feature-centric. A better JTBD framing might be: “customers want to complete online purchases with minimum effort.”

Quick Fix: Always ask, “What deeper goal is the customer trying to achieve?” Strip away tools and tech – focus on the desired outcome, not the delivery method.

Writing Jobs Too Vaguely

Another trap is overly vague or broad job statements like “customers want to feel good.” While emotionally driven jobs are valid, they must still be specific enough to inform strategy.

Quick Fix: Anchor statements in observable behavior or contextual triggers. If the job can’t directly influence a product feature, service, or campaign, it may need refinement.

Skipping Secondary Validation

Qualitative insights are rich and nuanced – but they’re also susceptible to bias or misinterpretation. Relying solely on initial interview findings without additional triangulation can lead to acting on the wrong customer motivations.

Quick Fix: Consider re-testing themes in surveys or concept validation sessions. In JTBD validation, qualitative and quantitative insights work hand-in-hand.

Failing to Involve Stakeholders Early

Sometimes insights fail not because they’re inaccurate, but because they haven’t been socialized. JTBD insight approval is far more effective when relevant departments are included early in the process.

Quick Fix: During the early review phase, invite input from functions like CX, product, and strategy to anticipate how insights will be applied down the line.

Overlooking Long-Term Relevance

Some teams focus too much on short-term fixes. While jobs to be done often unlock quick wins, the best insights stand the test of time.

Quick Fix: When approving customer job statements, consider: Will this job likely persist beyond the latest market trends? Does it reflect a durable need or behavior?

The good news? Most of these issues can be avoided with a reliable JTBD insight quality control process in place. A little extra diligence upfront goes a long way toward building customer-first strategies.

Effective JTBD validation doesn’t happen in a silo. Since Jobs to Be Done insights often guide decisions across departments – from product design to messaging strategy – having a cross-functional team review and approve them ensures everyone is aligned on what matters most to the customer.

Start With a Shared Understanding of JTBD

Before diving into specific job statements, make sure all stakeholders understand what JTBD research aims to accomplish. Consider hosting a short workshop or briefing where the consumer insights team explains:

• What a customer job is (versus a product feature)
• Why JTBD matters for innovation and growth
• How insights were gathered and synthesized

Establishing this common language helps everyone contribute effectively during the insight approval process.

Clarify Roles in the Review Process

Not every department needs to approve insights, but each plays a role. For example:

• Consumer insights team: Leads research and translates customer needs into job statements
• Product team: Validates feasibility and relevance to user experience
• Marketing: Assesses messaging potential and alignment with brand strategy
• Leadership/stakeholders: Confirms alignment with business goals and strategic priorities

Clear ownership accelerates approval and reduces rounds of vague feedback.

Use Collaborative Tools and Structured Feedback

Leverage tools like shared documents, feedback templates, or digital whiteboards to collect comments in one place. Ask reviewers to flag unclear language, note duplicates, or suggest reframing—with a focus on keeping insights customer-centric.

Keep discussions grounded in the customer’s voice, especially when perspectives differ between departments.

Balance Speed with Rigor

It’s important to move efficiently – especially in fast-paced markets – but don’t rush through insight review. A well-run JTBD governance process blends speed with rigor: fast enough to stay agile, deliberate enough to capture real customer needs.

If needed, set a standing recurring meeting or defined review timeframe so insight validation becomes routine and embedded in your workflow.

Celebrate Practical Application

Once JTBD statements are validated and used to inform strategy or product direction, showcase the impact. Real-life examples reinforce the value of cross-functional team insight approval and create buy-in for future research initiatives.

Collaboration doesn’t just clarify the insights – it strengthens your organization’s ability to solve real customer problems, together.