Situational Markets, Points of View, and Whole Job to Be Done – A Refresher of the First Three Principles
Dear Friends,
As I begin writing about Time Well Spent, the fourth and final principle of experience strategy, I thought we might review the first three principles. Each is tied to a key business question. Perhaps this quick summary of these principles will jog your memory, help you see how they relate to one another, and prompt your thinking as we start to talk about the fourth.
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Principle One: Growth Comes from Situational Market
A situation is a set of circumstances or a moment in time in which an individual has a need. Needs that arise in particular situations are always the same, and they can be anticipated and designed for. The most lucrative situational needs to solve are common, frequently occurring situations that many people experience.
Think of the original definition of a market. Think about vendors selling wares to individual buying customers. With that image in mind, now read this definition.
A market is a situation where the customer has a need, the company has a solution, and value is exchanged. Whereas in the past, the customer had to leave the situation, go to the store, buy the solution, and then return to use the solution, today we can choose to remain in situ while visiting the market. Better still, smart technologies have enabled companies to customize experiences to the specific situations customers find themselves in.
The Unlimited Potential of Situations
Frequency is the key factor to consider when developing a growth strategy. The more people do things, the more value there is in supporting those things with meaningful experiences. Think of the P&G example earlier. The company had to decide regarding the profitability of having two beauty serums available for purchase. Because their market model counts the number of people, specifically women, who use the original product, in order not to ‘cannibalize’ those counted women—their process, not mine!—they had to find a separate set of women to be buyers. Women who would pay more.
When markets are defined as situations, they don’t need to worry about cannibalizing women (phew!). Instead, they need to find two distinct situations where people may want to use two separate products. Then, they calculate the frequency of those situations. The two situations that immediately come to mind are:
Original formulation’s market: when people want to maintain the current quality of their face care.
New formulation’s market: when people want or need to dramatically improve the quality of their face care.
Within those two broad market categories, any number of situations could be supported:
When I am returning from vacation and have suffered a few sunburns (new formulation’s market)
When I am working from home and don’t want to take a lot of time to maintain my appearance (original formulation’s market)
When I am recovering from a skin treatment and need something simpler for my face (original formulation’s market)
I could keep going, but you get the idea. Now, all of the people who are regular users of the original formulation have reasons to buy both formulations!
P&G’s market for its serums just doubled. The greater the frequency of the situation (vacation skin recovery might only happen twice a year), the greater the usage—as long as the solution actually helps the individual with the situation.
This principle applies to markets for consumer goods, technology, services, experiential venues, and healthcare. You name the solution, there’s a good chance that situational market sizing will grow the category faster than persona segmentation. Apple, Facebook, and Google don’t have solutions designed based on persona segmentation. There’s no way they are going to make the Sony mistake. What they have are solutions that are useful in many, many situations, large or small. Supporting a limitless number of situations gives them incredible frequency, and incredible frequency ensures that they get almost all of the customers all of the time. That’s market share.
Principle Two: To Be Compelling Requires a Strategic Point of View?
A point of view is a forward-thinking analysis of a customer’s future needs. Not what they wanted last year or what they want now, but what they want in the future. It is built around a future-focused insight on the customer that can be fulfilled by the company because A) only the company knows about it or B) the company knows how to execute against it in a compelling way. Or both.
The point of view helps the company to make faster decisions about how to deploy resources, what channels and tools to build, and how to innovate. The point of view looks far enough forward that the company has time to adapt and adjust. It is not a ‘responsive’ strategy element—like customer experience metrics are—rather, it is a powerful element that calls upon the company to continually innovate toward a common vision of what the customer should experience. As the company grows, the point of view evolves, and keeps the company ahead of its competition. As customers become used to the new solutions generated, the company updates the point of view. And of course, the point of view informs the value proposition of the company heavily.
A point of view can be written a variety of ways. It doesn’t require a celebrity CEO to cite it. It’s an organizing tool that designed for internal audiences. It’s not the company’s mission or vision. It’s not the company’s brand truth. Like a value proposition there’s a formula you can use to help you create your company’s point of view. But the formula only really works if you are willing to invest in gathering real, new insights about people, understanding the implications of those insights, and marshalling resources to go in the direction the point of view points to.
Here's the formula:
First, identify a near future need of the customer. That near future need can be described using the statement “In the near future, our customers will …” Or, you can create a ‘should’ statement. For example,
In the near future customers will no longer be loyal to brands the way that companies have historically thought. Or: Our brand strategy should be driven by how customers actually become loyal to brand.
Both describe the future state of the customer.
Next, describe what the company can do going forward to strengthen its relationship with customers and create value for both customer and company. For example,
Our customers want to improve their personal performance and will reward us with their loyalty if we can develop a culture of innovation, direct resources toward solutions that improve customization, and learn to anticipate future needs.
The third step is to describe the impact that the new direction will have on the company’s business and business model. For example,
By focusing our resources on personal performance our company can simplify our channel strategy, deliver a consistent and compelling message to our customers, and create growth. We will be able to innovate faster. We will be able to stay ahead of what the customer needs.
The final element in the point of view is an explanation of the guiding principles that will help the company’s decision-making and design. For example,
Our guiding principles are
Use our data and resources to help individuals get the job they want to get done, done.
Celebrate the achievements of customers and employees who improve their personal performance
Measure progress, not satisfaction
Here’s how the whole point of view statement:
In the near future customers will no longer be loyal to brands the way that companies have historically thought. Our customers want to improve their personal performance and will reward us with their loyalty if we can develop a culture of innovation, direct resources toward solutions that improve customization, and learn to anticipate future needs. By focusing our resources on personal performance our company can simplify our channel strategy, deliver a consistent and compelling message to our customers, and create growth. We will be able to innovate faster. We will be able to stay ahead of what the customer needs. Our guiding principles are
Use our data and resources to help individuals get the job they want to get done, done.
Celebrate the achievements of customers and employees who improve their personal performance
Measure progress, not satisfaction
Please remember, that this is an example. Your company’s point of view will be based on your understanding of the near future needs of your customers. This is also what I call a declarative statement of your point of view. It’s the point of view in its most simple, strategic form, like a mission statement and a vision. It is meant to be revised periodically, especially as the company begins to gain traction and can more readily see its customers near future needs.
Principle Three: The Customer Needs the Whole Job Done
A company can only sustain innovation and affect the experience of the customer at touchpoints that directly pertain to its business model; leaving the customer to fend for his or herself when the solution doesn’t get the whole job done.
There are, however, additional lenses that strategists can use to help them see the whole job. These lenses push the company to pay attention to aspects of the job to be done that are not readily apparent. Here are four.
The Taxonomy – Types of JTBDs have delivery experiential requirements
The Customer’s System – Your solution fits within a customer’s system
Intelligent Amplifier – The more intelligent the solution, the more jobs the customer wants the solution to do
Channel Defects – If they can’t finish the job, why do you need the channel?
The Taxonomy – Types of JTBDs have delivery experiential requirements
Consumers—or better, people—have certain predispositions toward experiences created for their usage and enjoyment. It’s not that they overtly expect the following requirements. Instead, they pick up on what you say you are going to do for them and they associate your experience with other experiences—some completely out of your business category—that help them in similar ways.
If you don’t have certain basic elements in your experience, there is a high likelihood that you are not getting the whole job done for the customer. People have expectations of experiences that deliver on functional needs. Their expectations are different for experiences that deliver on aspirational needs. There are five primary types of jobs, or five job categories. They are:
Functional JTBDs—Help me accomplish a task
Emotional JTBDs—Help me feel deeper about a moment
Social JTBDs—Help me relate to others
Aspirational JTBDs—Help me change something about me
Systemic JTBDs—Help strengthen me across different parts of my life
The Customer’s System – Your solution fits within a customer’s system
The second lens for seeing the whole job the customer wants done is the system view. Every time I present this idea, some people assume they know what I’m talking about because their company has created an ‘ecosystem’ for their business, partners, and customers. But it’s not the company’s system that I’m talking about. It’s the customer’s systems.
People today have systems for their lives, or life systems. They have technology, relationships, schedules, and patterns that have developed to keep the various aspects of their lives in motion and in balance. We discovered the importance of life systems while doing ethnographic research on what people consider meaningful experiences. We went into people’s homes and spent hours with them talking about their meaningful experiences.
We anticipated that they talk about big trips, new life stages, or critical moments in their lives. Instead, they talked about little things that mattered to them, their daily relationships, and the way that they keep their lives balanced. We conducted the research in 2018—before COVID—but the economic shut down simply amplified what we were already seeing. People today build systems for their health, their wellbeing, the family dynamics, for work, and purchases, and on and on. These systems keep all of their activities in motion and balanced.
If they are having a particularly hard day, the system kicks in to help support them. Remember my example of when a child breaks an arm? The parent has a system for handling crises like that. That life system will help ensure that he or she can keep things moving after the crisis is averted. The same is true for less dramatic challenges like being low on cash at the end of the month, or having to rearrange a vacation because of work requirements.
From our conversations, we learned that people find meaning in their life systems. Often, their systems are intentionally designed to support their beliefs about life. Certainly, they deploy their systems to improve their quality of life.
Strengthening people’s life systems is a very important JTBD type. Getting systemic jobs done for customers is different from delivering on functional, emotional, social, or aspirational jobs. In most cases, people are trying to orchestrate their functional, emotional, social and aspirational needs through their life systems. A new need arises from a change in their situation. They want to deploy a solution that will get the job done, but that fits within their already pre-established life system.
The experience strategist needs to know and understand how his or her company’s experience fits into customer systems. That’s part of how you ensure you get the whole job done. Companies need to pay far more attention to customer life systems than company ecosystems.
Here’s how participants in our studies described their life systems:
As you can tell, they are not idealizing their life systems. The metaphors most used (like a balloon, a turtle, and a car for example) are not exactly perfectly running machines, although a few chose to say exactly that.
Intelligent Amplifier – The more intelligent the solution, the more jobs the customer wants the solution to do
Artificial Intelligence doesn’t, in and of itself, make most companies money. In fact, there are huge risks for many companies who deploy costly generative AI because people only want a few genius platforms. Consider the challenges that Amazon’s Alexa faces.
In a recent Wall Street Journal podcast, the Journal’s Kate Linebaugh and Dana Mattioli point out that Alexa, the AI that we all know because we trigger it regularly in normal conversations, doesn’t make money for Amazon. Amazon has invested heavily in the product. Over 500 million homes have an Echo device in them. Over 25 billion dollars has been lost by Amazon building out the infrastructure. Amazon sells Echo devices at below cost in hopes that people will adopt Alexa as their preferred tool for all kinds of tasks.
But it’s not working. At least not so far.
We will see how Alexa does once Amazon completes the roll out of generative AI but for now it’s still a money loser for the company. And we must ask ourselves why?
I believe it’s because Alexa cannot do ‘whole’ jobs for customers. Alexa finds information and automates tasks. Because its only consistent interface is voice interaction, people cannot easily accomplish certain information and automation tasks. Not only is there the problem of Alexa misunderstanding your request, which all voice AIs struggle with, but you must remember all of the ‘skills’ that Alexa has. And that’s just the beginning of the challenge that customers face.
To get the whole genius job to be done includes at least these elements (and probably more):
Both visual and voice interfaces. People still need dashboards. They need smart queues. Don’t force them to only use voice.
The ability to anticipate what the customer is likely to want next. Part of the reason I started this book with a chapter on situational markets was to share examples of how to anticipate needs properly. Anticipating situations is critical to genius adoption.
The ability to turn skills into superpowers. People hire genius tools to dramatically improve their performance. They don’t need generative AI to close the garage for them. They need genius platforms to fully orchestrate their home life system.
Brilliant execution. People want genius platforms to be able to accomplish thousands of things for them, brilliantly.
These are not people’s expectations for smart solutions. (Remember, there’s a distinction between smart solutions and genius solutions.) And many companies would be wise to temper customer expectations. Promise smart as you implement genius.
Channel Defects – If they can’t finish the job, why do you need the channel?
The fourth way to think about the whole job to get done focuses on channel strategy and design. Since the advent of ecommerce, the default position of most executives within corporate America has been to keep adding channels. Today, many companies are burdened by complexity. Channels today include retail, call center, partner, affiliate, influencer, online, digital, social, app, APIs, chatbots, delivery, D2C, subscription, live-streaming, SaaS, click-and-collect, aggregators, platforms, voice AI, on-demand, peer-to-peer, independent broker, gig and sharing, pop-ups, virtual, VR, AR, advertising, streaming, event, experiential, resale, b2b, b2b2c, ERP, marketplaces, and now generative AI.
If it’s a headache for companies, imagine how your customers feel.
I’m serious. Business strategists think that they have to keep adding channels because customers demand them. But it is actually complicating their lives too. And has been for some time. Companies need new criteria for determining what channels they support.
In the 2010s experience strategists led initiatives to develop omnichannel strategies. The goal of omnichannel programs was to connect the disparate channels that customers had to interact with. The insight that drove companies to invest in omnichannel work was that customers don’t like ‘friction.’ They abandon purchases because of friction. They become disloyal because of friction. Friction is anything that impedes them from accomplishing their goals easily. What keeps customers is making channels work ‘seamlessly’ together. Or so the argument goes.
While making things simple and connected is important, the thinking around omnichannel continues to miss the more important point. People hire companies to help them get jobs done, not because they like frictionless channels. In fact, they don’t need more channels.
When a customer engages with a channel, the company controls pretty much everything. Think about the call center experience: phone trees, call agents, protocols. None of them are designed to give the customer control. And the type of data that channels produce for companies shows how one sided the interactions are. The best the company can hope for is to get a satisfaction question answered post experience. With a tool, the customer has his or her own set of controls. Preferences, search, inboxes, browser, connectors, dashboards – you name it, people have controls.
Over time all channels become tools. And all environments become enhanced by tools. Even channels designed to provide human help, like retail and call centers, will become tools. Want to get people to come talk to your employees, empower the employee and customer with tools. Let them work together on a challenge rather than the tired and worn process of having the customer ask questions, then wait for the employee to look up an answer and share it.
I’m not trying to suggest that people want endless tools. Their goal is to get the job done, not to have a list of tools. But they do want tools that are appropriate to the situation. If a person is traveling in a car and needs to grab a meal, the tool needs to be appropriate to the situation. If someone is creating a shopping list on a Saturday morning, the tool should fit the situation.
Stay tuned to for Chapter 5: Value is in Time Spent …