Playbook
Understanding Your Customers
Customer understanding built in layers: choose whom to serve and whom to decline, learn the job they are actually hiring you for, sort your offer by the kind of satisfaction each part buys, then walk their whole journey to find where the experience breaks.
One of our longest-standing clients once told me he stayed with the firm for one reason: we always answered the phone. I had spent years polishing the technical work, and the thing he valued most sat on a desk and cost nothing. That conversation taught me how wide the gap can be between what you sell and what people are actually buying, and it is why understanding customers takes a sequence rather than a survey. STP comes first because you cannot understand everyone; you choose whom to serve and, just as deliberately, whom to decline. Jobs to be Done then digs into why those people buy, the progress they are hiring you to make, which is usually several steps away from your product description. The Kano model sorts your offer by the kind of satisfaction each part buys, because some things merely prevent complaints while others genuinely delight, and the two deserve different money. Customer journey mapping finishes the job by walking their whole experience end to end, where the failures hide in the handoffs your departments cannot see. People buy from people, and the sequence below is how you find out what they are buying from you.
Marketing & customer
Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP)
For dividing a market into groups, choosing which to serve, and giving them a clear reason to prefer you. Leave it alone when the market is too small or too uniform to divide; one well-made offer may serve it better. Instead The Value Proposition Canvas, to make one well-made offer for a market too small or too uniform to divide.
Understanding starts with choosing. Divide the market on the things that actually drive choice rather than on whatever data is easiest to gather, then make the targeting decision most teams dodge: name the segments you will serve and the segments you will decline. Averaged messages land with nobody, and marketing spend spread across audiences with different needs buys you a little of everyone's indifference. Judge the work by the choice it forces; a segmentation that excludes nobody has not decided anything.
Watch forProducing a handsome segmentation and then continuing to market to everyone, which converts the whole exercise into wall art.
Customer & product
Jobs to be Done
For working out what a customer is really trying to get done when they buy from you, and what pushes them to switch or holds them back. Leave it alone when you need numbers across a whole market; this is a handful of good conversations, not a survey. Instead The Kano Model, surveyed properly, when you need numbers across a whole market.
Segments tell you who; the job tells you why. People hire products to make progress in a specific circumstance, and the same person hires differently in different circumstances, which is why demographics predict so little. Reconstruct the timelines of recent, real purchases, and pay attention to the emotional and social dimensions of the job, because they frequently decide the sale even in business markets. Expect your competitive set to widen: whatever else gets hired for the same progress is your competitor, however unlike you it looks.
Watch forStated preferences are theories; the timeline of an actual purchase is evidence, so interview recent switchers while their memory is fresh.
Customer & product
Kano Model
For sorting what your product offers into the things customers expect, the things they will pay for more of, and the things that delight them. Leave it alone when you cannot ask real customers; guessed answers are the very thing it exists to replace. Instead Jobs to be Done, a few real conversations, when you cannot survey; a Kano drawn from guesses measures nothing.
Now sort your offer by the kind of satisfaction each part buys. Some attributes merely prevent dissatisfaction, and meeting them fully is a threshold to reach and then stop spending on. Some scale steadily with performance. A few delight because nobody expected them. The classification matters because satisfaction scores stall when investment keeps flowing into things customers now take for granted, and because yesterday's delighter decays into tomorrow's expectation. Run the paired questionnaire with real customers, segment by segment, and date-stamp what comes back.
Watch forClassifying features by internal debate and drawing the diagram afterwards gives you opinions arranged in an elegant chart.
Marketing & customer
Customer Journey Mapping
For walking the customer's whole experience of you, step by step, with what they do, think and feel, to find where it breaks. Leave it alone when you have no customer research and no time to get any; a map built from opinion is guesswork with polish. Instead Jobs to be Done: a handful of real customer conversations is the research the map needs.
Finish by walking the whole experience in your customer's shoes, stage by stage. The worst failures rarely sit inside any one department, which is why every department's metrics can look fine while customers quietly leave; they sit in the handoffs, where ownership changes hands and nobody holds the whole thread. Map one journey per priority segment, validate it with actual customer research, and read the emotional curve before the touchpoint detail, because the deepest trough and the ending are what customers remember and retell.
Watch forA journey assembled by staff in a workshop, unvalidated by customers, reliably maps the org chart rather than the experience.
In the end
You should finish with a named choice of whom you serve, a job statement with evidence under it, a classification of your offer by the satisfaction it buys, and a journey map with owners against the broken moments. Treat all four as dated snapshots. Customers move, delighters decay into expectations, and segments dissolve as needs and channels shift, so the understanding you have just built starts going stale the day you file it. Put a review date on each artefact before it goes in the drawer, and be suspicious of any of them that survives a year unchanged.