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Study the job, not the customer
What a job is
Some jobs are small and regular, and others are dramatic breakthrough problems, but each one sends a person looking for something to bring into their life. One customer faces different jobs across a day, a week, or a month, which makes the customer the wrong unit to study. Every job also has a functional, an emotional, and a social dimension, and the mix shifts with the situation.
Jobs outlast products
Jobs stay stable for centuries while the products hired for them keep changing. Getting something from here to there as fast as possible with perfect certainty was a job for Julius Caesar, who could hire a horseman and a chariot. Queen Victoria had the same job and could hire the telegraph and a railroad, Winston Churchill could hire an airplane, and now leaders can hire DHL.
Defining the business
A company that defines its business as competing with FedEx lives an unpredictable life. One that defines its business as the job finds it much easier to predict the next technology. Understanding the job leads to the experiences a buyer needs, then to what must be integrated to deliver them, and then to the brand that comes to mind when the job arises.
How long did one courier job outlast its tools?
The Pony Express carried mail across the American West starting in April 1860 and shut down in October 1861. The transcontinental telegraph line was completed that same month, and it moved messages in seconds instead of days. The job of getting a message across the continent fast and reliably had not changed. Only the product hired for it had.
How did DHL begin?
DHL was founded in 1969 by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn, and the name comes from their surname initials. Their first service flew shipping documents ahead of cargo ships between San Francisco and Honolulu so that ships could unload without waiting for paperwork. The company then grew into international express delivery. It started from one narrow job and expanded outward.
Why is the customer the wrong thing to study?
Demographic categories such as age and income describe who a person is, and they say little about what that person is trying to get done at a particular moment. The same person might buy a quick breakfast on a commute, a gift for a colleague, and a birthday cake for a child in the same week, each for a different reason. Marketers who segment only by customer traits group together people with very different needs. The same grouping also splits apart people who share a single need.
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