Too often, product teams rely on surface-level user research – identifying what users say they want, or how they behave in an app – without understanding what’s driving that behavior. The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework changes this by offering a deeper lens into customer needs and intentions.

From Tasks to True Motivations

With JTBD, the goal isn’t just to identify what users are doing with your product, but what they’re trying to achieve in their lives. It goes beyond features and usability, focusing on the user’s “job” – the progress they seek in a given situation. This job might be functional (e.g., managing a schedule), emotional (e.g., feeling in control), or social (e.g., appearing organized).

For example, someone isn’t just using a budgeting app to track expenses. They may be hiring it to feel more confident about their finances, reduce stress, or show responsibility to a partner. When teams grasp those underlying needs, they can design features and experiences that truly resonate with users.

Making UX Research More Actionable

JTBD pairs well with qualitative UX research because both seek to understand people at a deeper level. But JTBD stands out by turning those insights into patterns – reusable "job statements" that anchor innovation and prioritization. These statements take the form of:

• "When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [desired outcome]."

For instance: "When I get paid, I want to quickly plan my expenses, so I can avoid overdraft and feel secure." This makes user insights more concrete, testable, and aligned across teams.

Benefits for Product Teams

When JTBD is integrated into UX strategy, teams gain:

• Clear, practical user motivations to guide roadmap decisions
• A shared language across design, engineering, and marketing
• The ability to prioritize features based on real customer intent
• More meaningful UX insights that support business strategy

In short, JTBD helps product teams make smarter decisions by focusing on what people actually need – not just what features they click on.

Many organizations face a common challenge: UX teams strive to improve user satisfaction, while business teams focus on metrics like revenue, retention, or market share. When these priorities are disconnected, even the best-designed experience may not move the business forward. JTBD helps bridge this gap by putting customer needs at the center of both UX and business strategy.

From User Pain Points to Strategic Opportunity

Using the Jobs To Be Done framework, organizations can reframe customer needs as strategic opportunities. These jobs express what customers are willing to pay for, remain loyal to, or adopt over competitors. When UX goals are tied to specific customer jobs, they become much easier to map against business outcomes.

Let’s say a bank discovers a key job: "When I decide whether to open an account, I want to feel like I’m making a trustworthy choice, so I can avoid financial headaches later." That insight doesn’t just guide branding or copy messaging – it can inform UX design, customer onboarding, marketing language, and support strategy.

Connecting UX Insights to Business Impact

By focusing on what customers are trying to achieve, JTBD enables measurable alignment. For example:

• Improving a UX flow tied to a high-priority job can boost conversion rates
• Fixing pain points around an emotional job can increase NPS or retention
• Innovating around underserved jobs may open new market segments

In this way, JTBD strengthens the link between customer understanding and business growth. It also enables cross-functional collaboration, helping UX, product, marketing, and leadership teams align on shared goals.

Supporting Cross-Functional Teams with a Common Language

One of the biggest challenges in product development is alignment between different teams. Sales is talking about customer objections. UX is reporting usability frustrations. Marketing is chasing personas. JTBD helps create a unified, actionable view of the customer by focusing on the "job" they are trying to get done. This supports a user-centered business strategy and encourages deeper collaboration.

When everyone orients around the same core jobs – the actual progress customers want – it’s easier to make coordinated decisions that benefit both the user and the business. That’s how JTBD connects UX and business strategy in a meaningful, scalable way.

Successful product development requires alignment across different disciplines – from marketing to design, product management to engineering. One of the standout benefits of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is how effectively it fosters better cross-functional collaboration among diverse teams.

By centering around a shared understanding of customer needs and motivations, JTBD creates a common language that keeps teams grounded in the ‘why’ behind user behavior. Rather than working in silos, each team can connect their decisions to a larger goal: solving a real problem for the user.

Turning User Research into Shared Purpose

Too often, user research gets stuck within a single discipline – like UX or marketing – and doesn’t flow across the organization. JTBD changes that by clarifying what users are trying to accomplish in their lives, not just how they use a product. This allows teams to rally around solving the same core job, even if their execution differs.

For example, while UX designers may focus on removing friction from a user journey, business teams can use those same user jobs to prioritize feature rollouts or pricing strategies that better match customer priorities. Everyone is working toward fulfilling the same customer job – just from different angles.

How JTBD Supports Cross-Functional Teams

• Aligns strategy and execution: JTBD frameworks translate high-level business goals into actionable UX insights and product choices.
• Promotes shared vocabulary: When teams speak in terms of “jobs,” it becomes easier to disconnect from internal assumptions or departmental goals and focus outward on customer impact.
• Supports prioritization: By knowing which job is most critical to the customer, teams can agree more easily on what to build (or not build) next.

This collaborative mindset also accelerates decision-making. Instead of revisiting the same questions during every planning cycle, the JTBD method gives teams a foundational understanding that informs roadmaps, brand messaging, and user experience design consistently over time.

In short, JTBD supports cross-functional teams by providing a research-based, user-centered anchor point – something that stands firm outside of role or function.

Understanding how JTBD functions in real-world business settings can make its value more tangible. Companies across industries are turning to Jobs To Be Done not just to guide UX design, but to unlock innovation, align business units, and drive growth. Here are a few simple examples of how the JTBD framework can lead to measurable impact when applied strategically.

Example 1: Consumer Packaged Goods – Redefining the Job, Not Just the Product

A leading snack food brand struggled with declining loyalty among young professionals. Traditional market segmentation wasn’t providing meaningful direction. By leveraging JTBD research, the team uncovered that customers weren’t just looking for a snack – they were hiring the product to provide “a no-mess, energizing break between meetings.”

UX design adjusted packaging usability based on this insight, while marketing rebranded the snack to align with the desired job outcome. The result? Upticks in repeat purchase and higher engagement among the target group – all tied back to a better understanding of the user’s context and needs.

Example 2: SaaS Company – Streamlining Product Choices with Clear Jobs

A software company offering multiple productivity tools faced churn issues due to customer confusion about which product to choose. JTBD helped the team identify distinct customer jobs: “coordinate with a team,” “track my tasks,” and “share updates with clients.”

UX teams redesigned onboarding flows to match these jobs explicitly. Business strategy teams then refined pricing plans to bundle features based on the identified jobs. Together, these changes improved conversion rates and reduced customer support requests.

Example 3: Healthcare Services – Uncovering Latent Jobs Through Research

In a healthcare context, JTBD uncovered that patients weren’t just booking appointments – they were trying to “regain peace of mind about their symptoms.” This insight led to streamlined digital scheduling tools and more empathetic messaging across UX touchpoints. For the business, this clarity helped prioritize experience improvements that ultimately increased patient satisfaction scores.

In each of these scenarios, JTBD could drive UX insights that directly guided business decisions. By focusing on why people engage with a service or product – not just what they say or do – teams are better positioned to craft experiences that generate loyalty, solve real problems, and align tightly with strategic outcomes.

If you’re looking to integrate JTBD into your next user research or business strategy initiative, the good news is: you don’t need to overhaul everything. Jobs To Be Done can complement existing processes like design thinking, user interviews, or product roadmapping by providing a more purposeful lens on customer behaviors.

Start with the Right Questions

The JTBD method begins by asking: “What is the user really trying to accomplish?” This focuses the research on the user's desired progress instead of demographic or product-based assumptions. In user interviews or observational studies, try asking:

• “What were you hoping to get out of using this product?”
• “What happened just before you started using this tool?”
• “What would you do if this product didn’t exist?”

These types of questions help uncover the emotional and functional jobs that give context to user decisions.

Map Jobs Before Jumping to Solutions

After collecting responses, look for patterns in user behavior that reveal hidden motivators. Then group these into categories of functional, social, or emotional jobs. For example, a meal kit service might serve the job of “helping me feel accomplished for feeding my family a healthy meal,” which is both emotional and practical.

This job clarity can then guide UX design choices, product positioning, and even business model innovation.

Ready to act? Here’s a simple path to get started:

1. Identify a customer segment you want to better understand.
2. Conduct qualitative research (interviews, shadowing, diary studies) focused on situations and outcomes – not product feedback.
3. Define key Jobs To Be Done based on recurring patterns, quotes, and actions.
4. Translate jobs into user stories or opportunity areas that apply directly to UX design or product strategy.
5. Prioritize based on impact and feasibility, aligning with broader business goals.

Whether you’re in UX, marketing, strategy, or product, using Jobs To Be Done can help turn raw user research into actionable insights – creating a stronger link between design efforts and measurable business success.

If you're not sure where to begin, research partners like SIVO Insights can help structure the research and extract the core jobs that will inform your team’s decisions from day one.