Anthony W. Ulwick

DEFINE THE CUSTOMER

Before a company can understand the customer’s needs, company managers must agree on exactly who the customer is.

Gaining such agreement is not easy. When we ask company managers who their customer is, we typically hear, “We have many customers.” Often they add that customers include both “internal stakeholders and external customers.” To further complicate matters, external customers are typically said to include influencers, decision makers, buying groups, end users, operators, installers, and others. In a medical device company, for example, external customers include the surgeon, patient, insurer, nurse, operating-room manager, and hospital buying group, among others. It’s true that a company has many customers, but is there a way to simplify matters?

Let’s start with the why question. Why do we need to know who the customer is? Obviously, we want to know whom it is we’re trying to serve, but there is a more tactical reason. From a strategy and innovation perspective, we must identify the customer so we can gain the insights we need to

create products and services that will get the job done better and/or more cheaply.

So the question becomes, “Who holds these insights?” Through our work, we have discovered that there are three key customers types (or job executors) that must be considered: the end user (or functional job executor), the product life cycle support team, and the purchase decision maker.

THE END USER

The end user is the person who uses the product or service to get the core functional job done. In many situations, the end user and the purchase decision maker are different people.
The end user can provide your company with the functional metrics (desired outcomes) it needs to figure out how to create a product that will get the job done faster, more predictably, and more efficiently, with higher output or throughput.

For a medical device manufacturer, the end user of a surgical tool is the surgeon. The surgeon may be seeking products or services that will “minimize the likelihood of removing healthy tissue” or “quickly determine the points of affixation for attachment.” End users are also able to provide your company with a list of their emotional jobs and their related jobs, two other key inputs identified in the Jobs-to-be-Done Needs Framework