Jobs to Be Done Analyzer

---
name: jobs-to-be-done
description: Use when understanding why customers buy, switch, or churn — not what they say they want. Triggers on "jobs to be done", "JTBD", "why do customers hire us", "what job does this do", "four forces", "switch interview", "competing against alternatives", "why people buy".
---

# Jobs to Be Done Analyzer

Customers don't buy products — they hire them to make progress in a specific situation. The JTBD framework (Christensen, Competing Against Luck, 2016) answers "why did they hire this?" — which is a different question from "what features do they use?" and a more useful one for positioning, pricing, and roadmap.

## Required inputs

1. **The product or feature** — what you're analyzing
2. **The segment** — don't average across segments; the job varies by buyer type, company size, and use case
3. **Evidence** — at minimum, 5 switch or churn interviews, or significant behavioral data. JTBD without evidence is armchair reasoning.

If you have no evidence, the output is a hypothesis map to validate — not a positioning brief.

## The job statement

Every job follows this format:

> **When** [specific situation or trigger], **I want to** [motivation or progress], **so I can** [expected outcome].

The "when" is load-bearing. The same product gets hired for different jobs in different situations. An expense tool hired by an individual contractor ("when I invoice a client, I want to track what I'm owed, so I can follow up") is different from the same tool hired by a finance team ("when month-end closes, I want to reconcile travel spend to GL, so I can close the books without chasing receipts").

Identify the primary job and 1-2 secondary jobs. More than 3 usually means you've conflated segments.

## Three dimensions of the job

For each job:

**Functional** — the task itself. What is the customer literally trying to accomplish? Be specific: "reconcile employee expense reports before the 5th" beats "manage expenses."

**Social** — how does the customer want to be perceived by others when they do this job? Example: "Look like a finance leader who runs a tight ship" or "Appear organized to my manager when submitting my first expense report."

**Emotional** — how do they want to feel? Example: "Confident I won't miss a deductible" or "Relieved that month-end won't turn into a firefighting session."

Most positioning only addresses the functional job. The social and emotional dimensions are where differentiation lives — and where a competitor can win even with an inferior functional feature set.

## The four forces

Explains why a customer switches — or doesn't. Applies to any transition: from a competitor, from a spreadsheet, from doing nothing.

**Push** — what's bad enough about the current situation to make them look for an alternative?
- "Our finance team spends 3 days every month chasing missing receipts"
- "I've been rejected twice for late expense submissions"

**Pull** — what's attractive about the new solution that promises progress?
- "Real-time spend visibility before the month closes"
- "One-click mobile receipt capture that actually works"

**Anxiety** — what fears slow or stop the switch?
- "Will it integrate with our ERP?"
- "Is the data export good enough if we leave?"
- "What if the team doesn't adopt it?"

**Attachment** — what habits or existing investments make staying easier than switching?
- "We've trained the team on spreadsheets"
- "The current tool is bundled with our accounting software"

Push + pull drive switching. Anxiety + attachment resist it. If you're losing market share, it's usually because your pull is weak or competitors are neutralizing your push. If conversion is stalling, it's usually anxiety.

## Who is the real competition?

JTBD competition is defined by the customer's alternatives in the moment of the job — not the G2 category.

List:
1. **Direct alternatives** — same category (Concur, Ramp, Expensify)
2. **Indirect alternatives** — different category but same job (Excel, email receipts, paper forms)
3. **Non-consumption** — doing nothing, delaying, or finding a workaround

The indirect alternatives and non-consumption are where most positioning errors happen. If your headline only beats direct competitors, you've already lost the customers choosing the spreadsheet.

## Output structure

```
# JTBD Analysis: [product / segment / date]

## Primary job
When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome].

## Job dimensions
- Functional: [specific task]
- Social: [how customer wants to be perceived]
- Emotional: [how customer wants to feel]

## Secondary jobs (if applicable)
[Same format, max 2]

## Four forces
- Push: [what's intolerable about the current situation]
- Pull: [what this solution promises]
- Anxiety: [what's blocking the switch]
- Attachment: [what keeps them in place]

## Real competition
- Direct: [names + why customers compare]
- Indirect: [alternatives; what job those serve]
- Non-consumption: [what segment does instead]

## Positioning implications
[2-3 specific changes to headline, proof points, or pricing framing that follow from this analysis]

## What this analysis cannot tell you
[Limits — evidence gaps, segment assumptions, unknowns]
```

## Anti-patterns

- **Job = feature** — "use our reporting dashboard" is not a job; it's a feature. The job is the outcome the dashboard enables.
- **Averaging across segments** — a freelancer and a 200-person finance team have different jobs, different anxieties, different competition. Separate them before analyzing.
- **Skipping the situation** — a job statement without "when" is a wish, not a job. The situation is what triggers the hiring decision.
- **Treating JTBD as a survey** — customers can't articulate their jobs reliably. The framework is for interpreting behavior and switch stories, not for asking "what job are you hiring this for?"
- **Using JTBD to confirm the current positioning** — the framework is for discovering unexpected competition and emotional/social dimensions that copy currently ignores. If the output doesn't challenge something, it wasn't applied honestly.