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Jobs-to-be-done at scale: Disrupting the status quo with customer focus
Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing,
12
(3),
262-275
(2024)
Abstract
This paper shows how Stepstone leveraged the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework to achieve customer focus at scale. Transformations typically span a decade and often fall short of initial goals. In under three years, however, Stepstone successfully ingrained a strong customer-focused mindset throughout the organisation, with tangible contributions to its product pipeline. Four phases were critical. First, recognising the need for change, setting a vision and getting senior leadership in touch with JBTD was critical. Secondly, an extensive customer research project identifying opportunities was conducted; indepth qualitative research uncovered Jobs-to-be-done and unmet user needs and a large sample size survey quantified these unmet needs. Thirdly, internal JTBD champions in the product and research departments were trained on the insights and provided with tools to apply them in workshops across the organisation. Finally, JTBD insights were integrated into regular product development. Stepstone is on course for shifting the mindset from inside-out (ie a technology-driven perspective focused on optimising and scaling existing solutions) to an outside-in viewpoint (ie a focus on unmet user needs in the market and user-focused growth and innovation).
Keywords: jobs-to-be-done; innovation; customer experience; user experience; human-centred; user-focused
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Jim Kalbach is Chief Evangelist at Mural, the leading online whiteboard, as well as the co-founder and Principal at the JTBD Toolkit, an online resource with learning, training and content. Jim is a noted author, speaker and instructor in innovation, design and the future of work, and his books include ‘Designing Web Navigation’ (2007), ‘Mapping Experiences’ (2nd edn, 2020), ‘The Jobs to Be Done Playbook’ (2020) and, with Mariano Battan, ‘Collaborative Intelligence’ (2023).
Yann Wermuth is a Partner at Vendbridge, a boutique growth consultancy based in Zurich. He has more than 15 years of experience with Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) and is an expert in customer-focused innovation; a methodology to make JTBD actionable. He has a PhD in philosophy and besides his consulting work he enjoys side projects such as experimenting with artificial intelligence and running the Product Quest podcast, a leading resource in innovation management.
Sabrina Duda is part of the Design and Research Leadership Team at the Stepstone Group, where she works as a principal UX researcher. She is passionate about user-centred product development, and has more than 25 years of experience in the field of user experience. Sabrina earned her MSc in psychology at Humboldt University, specialising in engineering psychology, cognitive ergonomics and computer science. She co-founded one of the first UX agencies in Germany (eye square) and served for over 12 years as a managing director and partner. She frequently speaks and writes about UX.
Florin Ciontu is SVP Product at the Stepstone Group, where he has worked for more than eight years. Florin and his teams are focused on redefining the jobseeker’s experience in the age of AI, building towards the vision of the right job for everyone. Florin sees leveraging data as a superpower, especially when combined with intuitive thinking and deep domain expertise. Florin Ciontu holds an engineering degree in computer science from the University Politehnica of Bucharest.
