WORKING PAPER

Understanding the "Why" in Customer Experience: Journey Mapping Meets Jobs
​to be Done 

By Stephen Wunker, Charlotte Desprat and Connor Fitzpatrick
The Current State of Journey Mapping

Every journey map comes with a promise: visualizing customers’ experience helps companies design powerful solutions. Yet, journey maps often fail to reach this goal due to three common shortcomings:

  • They don’t explain the journey: Journey maps often describe customers’ actions and frustrations but ignore their larger context. Why is a customer on this journey in the first place? How do they decide which step to take next? Without a storyline, these maps overlook key opportunities for growth.
  • They assume that customers are hyper-rational: Many maps represent a journey fit for a robot, not a real customer. They neglect emotional factors in users’ decisions and other paths they could have taken – nuances that determine whether the journey was actually successful for the customer.
  • They are too complex to be useful: User experiences are rich in insights, and it’s easy to get lost in a sea of icons, colors, and flashy diagrams. Moreover, because there are few organizing principles it is difficult to meaningfully compare experiences across phases of the journey. A journey map without a clear focus is not an actionable one. The takeaways are buried in visual clutter, and the map has lost its purpose. 
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Leveraging Jobs to be Done in Journey Mapping 
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​Jobs to be Done addresses these problems. As shown in our application of Jobs over the past 14 years, this approach identifies the jobs – or underlying motivations – that customers seek to accomplish. This lens provides a critical re-framing of markets – based not on what people do or what they buy, but on the underlying causes that bring them to take very distinct journeys. To help organize our view, jobs can be grouped into higher-level themes, or North Star jobs. Based on a customer’s context, which in Jobs lingo is called a driver, some jobs are more important than others. A map organized with these factors provides deep understanding behind the pain points customers face, and therefore points far more cleanly to opportunities for innovation and differentiation. Using these lenses, Jobs to be Done enhances journey mapping in three key ways:
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1. It focuses on the ‘why’ behind the journey
A Jobs-oriented map roots the journey in customers’ core motivations and broadens the solution space. An ice cream shop that focuses on what customers purchase may decide to launch new flavors or lower prices. But, if the shop shifts its focus to why customers buy ice cream, it may realize that customers are looking to celebrate an occasion or bond with their families; this helps the shop design richer experiences that resonate with its customers. Linking a user’s journey to jobs and job drivers allows the map to capture more powerful and relevant insights.

2. It reflects the complexity of real life…
Real-life decisions can be messy, and a Jobs-oriented map honors this complexity. It emphasizes both functional and emotional jobs, including those tied to multiple stakeholders. If a couple is preparing a meal, one partner may want to introduce the other to a cooking method or limit the possibility of conflict – all of which will affect the steps they take along the way. A Jobs-oriented map also lays out other paths that users could have taken: some might end their journey earlier than others, or take different steps to achieve the same goal. This approach captures the more subtle variations that impact customers’ journeys, and ultimately your solutions.
3. …while staying coherent, no matter the journey
As customers make their way through decisions and challenges, jobs and job drivers are the guiding thread that ties everything together. This makes Jobs easy to apply across all journeys, sectors, and business models – whether you’re mapping a surgery or an app-ride service, B2B or B2C. By focusing on why customers do what they do, a Jobs map consistently identifies solutions that will connect with your customers.
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Case Study: The Process of Buying a Car
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Purchasing a car is no easy task. We chose this example because it is a complex process, heavily depends on the customer’s context, and can involve several stakeholders. To make sense of these variations in our Jobs-oriented map, we focus on two hypothetical user types, each with their own set of jobs and job drivers.

Note: Functional jobs in the following grids are written out in gray, whereas emotional jobs are written out in red.

Dan: The Tech-Savvy Pragmatist
​Dan has had the same car throughout college and graduate school. On his way to work, the check engine light turns on and he brings his car to a repair shop, where he is told it will take several thousand dollars to fix it. Dan decides to take this opportunity to buy a new car, especially as his annual inspection is coming up.​

Maria: The Cautious Explorer
Maria is from Latin America and has recently moved to the US to start graduate school. Her mother is around to help her with the move. Since Maria lives far from school in an area with poor public transit, they decide to buy her a car. She will need the car only for the duration of her study program, so they agree to have the mother pay for it and then assume ownership of it after Maria’s program ends.

To see how these jobs and job drivers play out, our journey map shows each user’s journey through the process of buying a car, which has been divided into four phases:
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  • Trigger: The steps that lead up to their decision of purchasing a car
  • Explore: The steps that users take to narrow down their search to a set of target cars
  • Target: The evaluation of target cars and the process of winnowing down to a single car
  • Purchase: The process of finalizing the purchase

Legend: How to read these maps
Note: The map occasionally refers to North Star jobs when they are relevant as a whole, rather than the individual jobs. For this reason, a North Star job may be color-coded in orange because it contains both functional and emotional jobs

Let’s pick an example from the ‘Explore’ phase to see how a focus on jobs can broaden the solution space. One of Maria’s key criteria for a car is safety. If we stopped right there, a car manufacturer might think of boasting their safety awards or designing sturdier SUVs. After all, these solutions would all tap into Maria’s desire for a safe car. 
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But a Jobs-oriented map takes us further. Looking at why Maria wants a safe car, we realize that she is not simply motivated by her worries around safety; she also wants to respect her mother’s own concerns around safety. Maria is not the only one managing multiple opinions; car buyers can often include partners or families. Rather than simply emphasizing safety, a manufacturer could design tools to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders, such as a shared and editable shopping list of cars on their website. It can make itself the hub of stakeholder discussions.

Solutions can also arise from the different journeys that customers take to achieve the same goal. Look at the job ‘Feel confident that I am getting my money’s worth.’ This is a job that many customers share, and it’s tempting to think of the process in average terms: customers conduct some research on trends, compare pricing, and maybe get a second opinion from friends or family. Based on this reasoning, a manufacturer may decide to organize attractive sales or market their cars’ long-term reliability.

But, as the Jobs-oriented map shows, there is no such thing as an ‘average’ journey, even for the same job. Both Dan and Maria want to feel confident that they are getting their money’s worth. Yet, their paths could not be more different. Thanks to his interest in cars, Dan already knows what to look for and conducts very focused, independent research. To make sure he has covered his bases, Dan would benefit from using more sophisticated filters on the manufacturer’s website.

On the other hand, Maria is far less educated on the subject and has to conduct extensive research; on top of online sources, she visits dealerships in person and asks for advice from friends and family. An online checklist of criteria that she could refer to would help her feel less overwhelmed throughout the process. As the map shows, charting out these nuances leads to richer and more tailored solutions.

Just as journeys may vary in the steps that users take, they can also end at different points. A car manufacturer might assume that customers zero in on their preferred car after visiting dealerships, possibly after a test-drive. As a result, they might focus their sales energy on this final point in the journey.

​But Dan ends his journey much earlier, before he even steps into a dealership. Why? Because his desire for a reasonable price already limits his selection to a single car. Maria does not have this problem; thanks to her mother’s contribution, she can consider a wider range of cars. For this reason, she reaches her final decision at a later stage. Recognizing where journeys end and why helps companies focus on the right touchpoints with their customers.

Conclusion 
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​Journey mapping was designed to pinpoint strategic opportunities. Yet, journey maps are all too often left unused, gathering dust. Jobs to be Done helps restore the value that journey mapping promises to bring. The stories of Dan and Maria can be compounded to reveal even more innovation opportunities, all united by common reference and measurement points corresponding to the Jobs framework. By weaving the story behind customers’ purchases, a Jobs-oriented map uncovers unmet needs and paves the way to successful innovation.
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