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Customer JTBD Interviewing Skills

9 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Learn the E2E process for planning and conducting customer JTBD research. Get hands-on experience planning and performing interviews.

Course overview

Aquire the skills and methods to perform Customer JTBD interviews yourself:

As part of my Customer JTBD Interviewing Skills course on Maven, I guide you through the end-to-end JTBD Research Process that I use with my clients


Here’s an overview of what you’ll learn:


Formulating a Hypothesis: We’ll start by identifying key assumptions about your customer’s Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) and their motivations. You’ll learn how to create an initial hypothesis informing both your recruitment and interview structuring.


Planning and Recruitment: Understand the best practices for identifying and recruiting participants that represent the different situational contexts and motivations relevant to your research.


Creating the Interview Guide: Using JTBD interview cards, you’ll build an effective interview guide. These cards act as prompts for in-depth interviews, ensuring you cover all necessary aspects of the customer’s journey or progress.


Conducting Team Interviews: Learn to facilitate team-based JTBD interviews using The Wheel of Progress®, a structured framework that uncovers the underlying drivers of customer behavior at each stage of the journey.


Aggregating and Synthesizing Findings: After conducting interviews, you’ll learn to analyze and aggregate insights to identify patterns, needs, and opportunities for enhancing and improving customer progress.


Defining Desire for Progress Statements: Finally, you’ll develop Desire for Progress Statements, highlighting the underlying stories, that clearly articulate what progress your customers are trying to make, allowing you to better align solutions with their needs.


Throughout the course, you will not only learn the theory but also apply it to a real-world case study of your choosing, working collaboratively in a cohort team. This hands-on approach ensures that you’ll leave with practical skills ready to be implemented in your projects.

Who is this course for

01

The Marketer who wants to better tailor their messaging to the core jobs-to-be-done (aspirational, functional, emotional, social)

02

A Product Manager who wants to fall in love with problem (based upon jTBD research) prior to thinking about the solution.

03

The Designer or Researcher who wants to better understand constraints or behavioral-based barriers to customer progress.

04

The Product Trio (PM, UX, Tech) who want to learn how to improve the customer interview process as a team (multiple perspectives).

What you’ll get out of this course

Learn the E2E process for planning and conducting Customer JTBD research


Practice both facilitating and listening roles during actual Customer JTBD interviews


How to conduct Customer JTBD interviews as a team (planning, structuring and execution)

Aggregating and synthesizing insights across multiple interviews


Formulating Desire for Progress Statement(s) based upon interviews


This course includes

7 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

22 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Feb 5—Feb 9

    Feb

    5

    Session 1: Introduction and Overview of E2E JTBD Research Process

    Wed 2/58:00 PM—10:00 PM (UTC)

    The Focus of Your Research (different types of Customer JTBD interviews)

    1 item

    Selecting a Case Study

    1 item

    Formulating a Hypothesis for Job Performer/Job-to-be-done

    0 items

    Determining your Recruitment Strategy

    1 item

    Planning your Customer JTBD Research (end-to-end process)

    1 item

    Reviewing Milestones for Case Study Execution (recruiting, interviewing, etc.)

    0 items

Week 2

Feb 10—Feb 16
    Nothing scheduled for this week

Week 3

Feb 17—Feb 23

    Feb

    19

    Session 2: Select a Case Study for your Team

    Wed 2/198:00 PM—10:00 PM (UTC)

    Formulate a Hypothesis around your Case Study

    1 item

    Feb

    20

    Special Focus on Recruiting and Interview Structure

    Thu 2/207:00 PM—8:00 PM (UTC)

    Customer JTBD Interview Spectrum

    1 item

    Customer JTBD Interview Structure

    3 items

    Customer JTBD Interview Structure using JTBD Cards

    4 items

    Customer JTBD Interviews (Team roles and responsibilities)

    3 items

    Revisit the Milestones for Case Study Execution (recruiting, interviewing, etc.)

    0 items

Week 4

Feb 24—Mar 2

    Recruitment Strategy

    1 item

    Case Study: Preparing for Customer JTBD Interviews (as a Team)

    0 items

    Case Study: Recruitment of Participants for Customer JTBD Interviews

    0 items

    Feb

    25

    Office Hours (Interview Structure)

    Tue 2/258:30 PM—9:30 PM (UTC)

Week 5

Mar 3—Mar 9

    Case Study: Performing Customer JTBD Interviews (as a Team)

    1 item

    Mar

    4

    Office Hours: Focus on Interview Execution

    Tue 3/48:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

Week 6

Mar 10—Mar 16

    Case Study: Performing Customer JTBD Interviews (as a Team)

    0 items

    General Guidelines for Conduction JTBD Interviews

    1 item

Week 7

Mar 17—Mar 23

    Mar

    19

    Session 3: Case Study Check-in and Synthesizing Multiple Interviews

    Wed 3/197:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

    Team Case Study Check-ins (status, progress, schedule, etc.)

    0 items

    Customer JTBD Interview Aggregation and Synthesis Process

    1 item

    Desire Progress Statements

    1 item

Week 8

Mar 24—Mar 30

    Case Study: Aggregating and Synthesizing Customer JTBD Interviews (as a Team)

    0 items

Week 9

Mar 31—Apr 2

    Apr

    2

    Session 4: Case Study Share Outs and Other Topics

    Wed 4/27:00 PM—9:00 PM (UTC)

    Team Case Study Shareouts

    1 item

    Group Discussion around Case Study Shareouts

    0 items

    Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned from Customer JTBD Interview Process

    0 items

What people are saying

        Capturing and organising ‘jobs’ in real time during interviews can be the toughest part of applying JTBD theory. However, John has a great skill in simplifying the art of job interviews into tangible steps. His Mural templates and interview approaches make it easy for anyone to build the confidence to start conducting JTBD interviews.
Don Garza

Don Garza

Service Designer, Opencast
        We leveraged the jobs-to-be-done process to identify opportunities to improve our on-boarding experience, helping new Gympass members find the right plan, gym or studio for themselves along with getting started on their wellness journey.
Minh Tran

Minh Tran

Senior Director of CX Gympass
        The Forces and Desires Model taught in this course is like 'gold'. It helped us build a better understanding of homeowner motivations and switching behavior related to moving in, repairing, upgrading, maintaining or improving their home.
Kyle Sandburg

Kyle Sandburg

Former VP Strategy, Porch.com
        John has taught customer jobs-to-be-done based methods to clients across industries. He is skilled at both teaching and utilizing when conducting JTBD-based insights research.
Eckhart Boehme

Eckhart Boehme

Creator of The Wheel of Progress® framework

Meet your instructor

JOHN GUSIFF

JOHN GUSIFF

CX Strategist

John Gusiff is the Managing Partner for Customer Centric Solutions LLC. He founded the company in 2002 after spending 15 years helping leading brands across B2C, B2B, and B2B2C industries, design and implement customer acquisition, engagement, service, and retention strategies.


He is passionate about improving the lives of customers via human-centered design and design thinking methods. He leverages customer jobs-to-be-done (jtbd) insights research along with applied behavioral science when consulting with his clients.


He has worked directly with executives in marketing, sales, product development, customer service and support functions to help them rethink how they better service their customers and implement the processes, organization, and technology to support it.


Clients have included: American Honda, Canada Goose, Citibank, Ecobee, G Adventures, Gympass, Humana, Porch, lululemon, Royal Ambulance, Shaklee, and TransAlta.

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Course schedule

Four Weeks; 6-8 hours for Case Study

  • Four Cohort Sessions

    1.5 to 2 hrs per session of Instruction

    This course is designed for multiple Teams to each go through a Case Study of their collective choice from start to finish. Planning, conducting, and synthesizing findings across two to four customer JTBD interviews.

  • The Case Study Itself

    6 to 8 hours

    Outside of LIVE cohort class sessions to provide guidance and direction, educate on methods, check-in, and review share outs by each team.


    An additional 6 to 8 hours will be required by your Teams to recruit participants, conduct the interviews, and synthesize findings.

  • Maven Community

    Leveraging the Maven community for posting announcements, reading materials, general discussion, and takeaways from the class.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

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Customer JTBD Interviewing Skills