You are currently viewing Job-to-be-done impersonation

Job-to-be-done impersonation

It starts with empathy

At the cornerstone of all product development is one thing: customer empathy.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. And don’t just try them on. Walk in them. Assume their path and purpose.

Impersonate their job-to-be-done so you can better understand their mental, physical, and emotional process.

Here’s how.

Impersonation Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is to impersonate one of your personas and complete a typical “job” in their workflow. By focusing on a single job and putting yourself in their headspace (goals & expectations), you are more likely to experience the routine pain points they feel at each step.

Here’s the 7-step process:

  1. List the most common “job” for each of your personas
  2. Pick one to impersonate
  3. Record your actions and sentiments at each step
  4. Group your top pain points
  5. Brainstorm how you might solve them
  6. Evaluate your solutions based on their business impact
  7. Discuss the top candidates with your team (and customers)

Let’s run through an example together.

1. List the most common “job” for each of your personas

  • Tech Founder: Find an app to make a 30-60 second product video for my startup’s homepage
  • Social media marketer for e-commerce company: Make a 1 min IG ad for selling a juicer
  • HR manager for 200 person architecture company: Make a 2-3 minute health and safety video for employees returning to the office in November
  • Front office associate for a Dentist office: Make a 20 second “use your benefits by end of year” video to send out to existing patients in our quarterly newsletter

2. Pick one to impersonate

  • Tech Founder: Find an app to make a 30-60 second product video for my startup’s homepage

3. Record your actions and sentiments at each step

Note: I only include 2 bullet points per step for brevity. In reality, each step will have 10 or more mental, physical, and emotional moments worth recording.

Set up

  • I’m using my Macbook Pro where I do most of my work
  • I’m using Chrome browser which runs most of my web apps, plugins, and google searches

Search

  • I type in “make a video for my customers” into google
  • [Video company] was the first non-ad ranked site. It had some helpful “How do I” snippets and I’ve seen their ads in my IG feed over the last month so I decided to click on it

Landing page

  • Landed on [business landing page]
  • Nice autoplay video and “as used by” social proof

Homepage

  • It wasn’t immediately obvious I could/should scroll – would’ve expected the social proof of other companies above the fold with the change in color to designate more below
  • I clicked one of the “make a video” CTAs

Sign up

  • The page layout feels disjointed but looks easy to complete
  • I expected to see the plans come up again but didn’t. I don’t mind since everything I clicked said “free” anyway so happy to start playing with the product sooner than later

In-app

  • I like the welcome note to help me know what to do
  • I like the tutorial video too – it’s well done – though I stopped at the 2 min mark b/c it was too long for what I need right now to just start poking around. I could see myself coming back to this with questions

4. Group your top pain points

Based on the sentiments above (likely a few pages worth), look for patterns and moments of highest frustration. List them:

  • Cumbersome signup process
  • Not knowing what to do when I finish signing up and land in the app
  • Finding the best content for my needs

5. Brainstorm how you might solve them

For each pain point, consider ways to improve them so the job you were trying to do could be easier and more enjoyable. List them:

  • Simplify registration & segmentation
  • Create onboarding checklist
  • Show gif / motion previews of templates when browsing

6. Evaluate your solutions based on their business impact

While pain points are a great starting ground for deciding what to build, solving them alone won’t grow your business. Make sure to contextualize your challenges in the greater opportunity of your business.

Starting with your product funnel may help.

Daily Funnel

  • X visitors
  • X account creations (new users) – Y% previous
  • X activations (first-time exports) – Y% previous
  • X new subs (first-time subscribers) – Y% previous
  • $X avg. first time payment
  • X months avg. retention by cohort
  • $X LTV by cohort

Strategic considerations

  • “Value creation” is often the biggest opportunity. A product with growing customer value can increase conversion at every point in the funnel
  • Mid-funnel can be a great place to start since customers are already qualified to an extent and any changes have relatively quick feedback loops. They also reflect the first-time experience of a user which can improve a lot of down-funnel activity, e.g. retention from good onboarding

7. Discuss the top candidates with your team (and customers)

Once everyone on your team has finished their impersonation and own solution ranking, discuss them as a team. There are many frameworks to do this (e.g. ICE scoring model). No matter which you choose, make sure you agree on the criteria ahead of time.

Then, once your best ideas are defined, test them with current and prospective customers to understand what resonates and what doesn’t.

Impersonation helps, but nothing can replace real customer conversations. Let them guide the way.