Unveiling Customer Needs: A Comprehensive Exploration of Jobs to be Done Interviews

In a rapidly changing economy, companies must be able to keep pace with the dynamics of customer preferences. Traditional product development methods often reach their limits in gaining deep insight into the customer's needs, desires, and emotions. The Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework aims to understand the true motivations and needs of customers by understanding and analyzing the so-called jobs that customers want to do. This study examines the potential of JTBD, in particular JTBD interviews, to improve product management. While there are few case studies on such interviews in the gray literature, empirical studies on the key elements and challenges of JTBD interviews in practice are limited. The goal of this study is to identify the critical elements and challenges in conducting JTBD interviews. This research method used is a qualitative interview study. The results explain critical factors that can make JTBD interviews effective. In addition to the familiar factors such as thorough preparation and confidence-building, this includes structuring the interviews, e.g. with a timeline or a job map. Such structuring is not common in traditional customer interviews. The results provide practical guidance for companies to conduct or improve JTBD interviews to better align their product development with the actual needs of their customers.