Depth interviews, focus groups and ethnography, planned around what your team needs to understand or decide, so what you hear from customers can change what you do.
How many people share a view is a question for Quantitative research. Programs may combine the two, depending on the question and the evidence already available.
A first answer is where a conversation starts. We follow it into people’s routines, their context and their own words, so your team knows what an answer means before acting on it.
A drawing: a moderator’s discussion guide on robot vacuums, headed by the team’s decision, what the next model must get right. Its sections are typed in the planned order. In pencil, the section on a normal week is lassoed and moved up, marked “She started here”; under the typed question “What made you buy one?” the follow-up questions step down from her first answer, “To save time”, through “Time for what?”, to the reason, “Saturdays with the kids”, which is ringed. A coral note from the team watching reads “Ask what ‘clean enough’ means to her.”
Typed: the plan your team agreed, built around its decision.
In pencil: where the session went, and the questions that followed her answers.
On the note: a question from your team, watching live.
A smart home company Choosing how to talk about a new smart home security device
An outdoor equipment maker Positioning a new power tool range for two audiences
A food company’s foodservice business Defining what professional chefs expect from a seasoning
We choose the format for what your team needs to hear, and often combine them.
One person, or a pair, at a time: at home, at work or by video, when each person’s story matters in detail or the subject is private. Tasks done online beforehand let the conversation start from what people did.
A small group, in person or online, when your team needs to see routes compared side by side, or to hear how people talk about a category with each other.
When the answer is in what people do more than what they say, we use ethnographic research, in homes, in store and on their phones.
Our own qualitative researchers design and moderate the sessions, with local moderators where a market’s language needs them.
Enough to hear from each kind of person your decision depends on, in each market where they differ. We plan the number from that range, and add sessions where a smaller group matters to the decision.
Yes. One guide is shared across the markets, so they can be read side by side, while recruitment, language and materials are made for each market. We check whether a difference comes from the market itself or from the translation.
Yes. We build our own AI agents and use them to look further and check harder across what people said. Our people decide what it means, and every AI output is reviewed by a person before it reaches you.
Yes, when the question is why people choose, switch or stay. Jobs to be done looks at the progress people want to make in their circumstances, and it shapes whom we talk to and what we ask about. What you receive is in your customers’ own words.
Bring that question, and the decision it feeds, with as much or as little detail as you like. We’ll suggest who we should hear from, and how.
A partner or director will reply.