Get the Customer's Job Done - Sales, Customers and Innovation

With growing times, Innovation has been the utmost priority for the industries. However, it is not difficult to reckon that many innovations fall short of ambitions. The producers ponder too much on looking for correlations in the ocean of data. Instead of marketing what we offer, firms need to focus and hone in on the job the customer is trying to complete.
Jobs can stand little and some stand big. With every purchase of the product, we essentially “hire” the product to get our job done. Depending upon how satisfactorily our job was done, we tend to keep hiring it in the future or dismiss it to look for alternative job doers.

The key pointer to stay in the market, boost more sales and keep penetrating the market is by pinpointing the jobs that render insignificant ease in customers’ lives and then reshaping the products and experiences around those jobs.

Before designing, understanding the JOB to be done, the problem faced, and the experience sought would give the developers a whole new approach to innovate to get the job done.


What went wrong?

With the whole chunk of data of customers, companies try to find correlations. These correlations could mean anything or simply, nothing. It is common to see management becoming entirely dependent on and basing the decision on correlations.  After seeing several companies fail, it obvious that companies are proceeding in the wrong direction as the focus is more on what I will provide than what customer hopes to accomplish. This thin line drives the basic force of staying or leaving.  To accomplish the desired target and create the success of innovation, one must contemplate to know and provide to accomplish the best Innovation.

Ø  What Job is needed?
-        To fulfill a job, one must be aware of what is it exactly that is needed to be fulfilled
Ø  What is effective to their Job requirement?
-        To get the job done, you must make an effective problem solver in your product that gets the job done with ease.
 Ø  INNOVATION - the product of those two questions
What to keep in mind to make some progress?
 

Job is shorthand in given circumstances	-  Consumes opt for change or upliftment in the experience of the offering.
Circumstances are more important	-       Seeking innovations through the lens of consumers’ circumstances, not just from the developers’ lens.
Innovations solve problems	-   A perfect innovation must fill the bucket of no solution or inadequate solution, i.e., address all the relevant problems faced by consumers.
Jobs have social and emotional dimensions too	-     Certain jobs carry social and emotional dimensions wherein which the consumers give integral thought to honor those and by simply, touching these dimensions, there is a significant difference in the mindset of consumers towards the innovation.

Identify the “JOB”
Job analysis does not encourage to throw out captured data. The captured data such as personas, ethnographic research, focus groups, customer panels, competitive analysis, etc. can be the start point to attain the basic insights. However, a self-interrogation would help eliminate ineptitude to be the desire a consumer wants. 

With the identification, the implementation is the next step. The implementation shall be executed in a way to -
Create Customer Experiences
-      Recognizing and discerning the accomplishment of the job is the initial roadway to create goods and services the consumers would opt for. However, creating customer experience for the purchase and use of the goods and services then fuse the company’s process with those experiences.
-   This also clears the way for the company to sell, thus, success making it hard for the competitors to catch up.
-        The experiences tell stories that establish a connection, which makes the company a strong player in the industry.  
Aligning Process
-        The important and the last brick to the roadway is the process. The process is more important than results and if you take care of the process, you will get the job done.
-        Process paints the picture of what matters the most to them. It is a principle that ensures a company doesn’t, unintentionally, discard the ideas which led to its success in the first place. 
-        The process ensures convenience, customer service, and an easy method to get the job done.
 
Organizations tend to come up with innovations that produce undesired results. Innovation can be in obvious favor and growth if a company recognized the job a consumer struggles to be over with. A view from a customer’s point of view can lead you to the top and, without that view, you are doomed to hit or miss method.

This blog is written by Kumar Kritanshu, a student of MBA at the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines.