Your Solution Should Fit Within a Customer’s Life System
The second lens for seeing the whole job the customer wants done is the system view. Every time I present this idea, some people assume they know what I’m talking about because their company has created an ‘ecosystem’ for their business, partners, and customers. But it’s not the company’s system that I’m talking about. It’s the customer’s systems.
People today have systems for their lives, or life systems. They have technology, relationships, schedules, and patterns they have developed to keep the various aspects of their lives in motion and in balance. We discovered the importance of life systems while doing ethnographic research on what people consider meaningful experiences. We went into people’s homes and spent hours with them talking about their meaningful experiences.
We anticipated that they talk about big trips, new life stages, or critical moments in their lives. Instead, they talked about little things that mattered to them, their daily relationships, and the way that they keep their lives balanced. We conducted the research in 2018—before COVID—but the economic shut down simply amplified what we were already seeing. People today build systems for their health, their wellbeing, family dynamics, for work, and purchases, and on and on.
If they are having a particularly hard day, the system kicks in to help support them. Remember my example of when a child breaks an arm? The parent has a system for handling crises like that. That life system will help ensure that he or she still has a life in balance and in motion after the crisis is over. The same is true for less dramatic challenges like being low on cash at the end of the month, or having to rearrange a vacation because of work requirements.
From our conversations, we learned that people find meaning in their life systems. Often, their systems are intentionally designed to support their beliefs about life. Certainly, they deploy their systems to improve their quality of life.
Strengthening people’s life systems is a very important JTBD type. Getting systemic jobs done for customers is different from delivering on functional, emotional, social, or aspirational jobs. In most cases, people are trying to orchestrate their functional, emotional, social and aspirational needs through their life systems. A new need arises from a change in their situation. They want to deploy a solution that will get the job done, but that fits within their already pre-established life system.
Just this week I was reminded of my own life system for procuring things. I am allergic to grass and sage brush, both of which are abundant in the State of Utah, my home. I’m a regular user of Flonase spray and try to buy the bulk pack to reduce the cost. On Monday I did a search and found that Target was offering Flonase bulk packs for $15 less than Amazon. I seriously considered buying from Target, but then I thought about my system for managing online purchases which centers on Amazon. I realized I wanted to make the purchase a recurring purchase that automatically happened ever three months.
And before I could make financial counterargument to myself, I was back on Amazon’s site scheduling recurring purchases of allergy medicines. It fit with my system. I wanted to keep the system working so that I could have more balance among all of my purchases.
You do the same thing. You may not have realized it, but you have systems.
(Now, before the NPS folks lecture me about how my example is really about loyalty, let me just say I do not consider myself to be a loyal Amazon customer. If I only had to buy the medicine one time, I would have used Target, but because I already have multiple prescriptions, foods, and other items set up with Amazon, I don’t want to use Target for this purchase. It would make it harder for me to remember and to follow up on. That’s not loyalty, that’s a system.)
The experience strategist needs to know and understand how his or her company’s experience fits into customer systems. That’s part of how you ensure you get the whole job done. Companies need to pay far more attention to customer life systems than company ecosystems.
Here’s how participants in our studies described their life systems:
As you can tell, they are not idealizing their life systems. The metaphors most used (like a balloon, a turtle, and a car for example) are not exactly perfectly running machines, although a few chose to say exactly that.
At first, when you start to ask customers about their life systems, they don’t exactly know how to respond. It’s helpful to simply ask, “Do you have a system for [fill in the life domain]?” Once you get them talking about their system for getting things done, you realize that many of the things that confuse you about customer behavior and actions can actually be understood when you understand their life system. Here are just a few:
Abandoned online purchases
Nonlinear decision-making
Product stickiness (or lack thereof)
Low interest in upgrades
Alert suppression
Channel switching
Many companies assume that they are doing something wrong when people don’t complete a purchase, don’t upgrade, or don’t use a new tool. But often the issue isn’t that the customer is being turned off by the offering, the issue is that the solution doesn’t fit their life system.
Here are some of the life domains that people develop systems for:
Physical Health
Emotional Wellbeing
Financial Wellbeing
Career Progress
Job Satisfaction
Family Togetherness
Relationships with Friends
Spiritual Wellness
Routine Responsibilities
Community involvement
Intellectual Wellbeing
Hobbies, Interests, Self-Care
Ability to Explore New Places, Travel
Remember I said that we discovered life systems by asking people what was meaningful to them. Notice how many of their life domains above focus on wellness, health, nurturing, and self-care. Today’s consumers create systems because they believe in a certain way of life, one that deploys technology and creates moments that result in balance, longevity, being present, and finding peace. One that automates things that can be automated, giving the individual more time to spend on things that really matter. That’s the connection between life systems and meaningful experiences.
A life system is not a journey map. It’s not linear. There are no phases. Rather there is a purpose for setting up a system. There are inputs and feedback loops. There is flexibility in the system but also durability. The system supports the individual by assisting him or her when new situations arise. It makes decision-making faster or simpler. It is in motion.
When describing the outcome of a good life system, people said they were/had:
Less anxious, more in control of emotions
Less frustration, more energy
Sense of peace, relaxation and balance
Pride and security
Able to focus on other things more easily
Acceptance of failure (part of the process)
More prepared: account for/predict seasonal needs
Abbey, a participant described her experience this way. “If all your systems are clicking you can relax at end of day and feel at peace and safe in your house. Certain systems are more joyful. Tasks that are necessities but are fun to get done like washing the dog. Systems are not an act of leisure. Leisure is when you are system-less for that time.”
When we asked people to map their money management system, for example, there were common elements that existed among most participants. We represented those elements this way:
And, as I mentioned earlier, people hire a group of solutions to help them get systemic jobs done. In fact, systemic JTBDs are the fifth job category.
The Systemic JTBD Type, or Help Strengthen Me Across Different Parts of my Life
Like the functional, emotional, social, and aspirational JTBD types, there are basic elements that need to be present in order for a company to get a systemic job done for its customers in a way that creates value for the company and the customer. You might be surprised by the basic elements, but remember, the reason why people create life systems isn’t to simply be more efficient. They seek higher order benefits of peace, flow, presences, presence, and balance.
The basic elements are:
Belief (in systems, or that systems can work better)
Recognition (of own systems)
Reflection (that leads to positive outcomes)
Support (to manage systems—such as dashboards, queues, toolkits)
Trust (between companies and customers)
For the company seeking to create a job statement for systemic jobs, consider the difference between an aspirational job and a systemic job description. An aspirational job to be done statement for a healthcare company would be written like this:
Help me achieve my health goals
A systemic job to be done is different:
Help me balance my health goals and family requirements
‘Help me balance,’ ‘help me orchestrate,’ and ‘help me manage,’ are all good ways to start a systemic JTBD statement. Notice also that the statement describes two very different life domains: health and family. Getting systemic jobs done for people requires companies to understand everything the customer experiences across multiple parts of their lives. That doesn’t mean the company must do everything for the customer across all domains. The company has a role to play. The company plays that role best by understanding how it fits into the individual’s or family’s systems.
When companies support people’s systems, they make people’s lives better. They actually improve the life systems. To do that kind of work for people, companies must encourage people to believe in their systems and to make their personal values the basis of their belief. For example, we met with a family who prioritized parent-child time through walking the dog together. That’s a beautiful part of their family’s life system. They made time for it. They purposefully designed their lives to ensure it happened because it reflected their values.
Second, companies can improve people’s life systems by helping them to recognize their systems. We happened upon this insight through the research we conducted. Every time we asked participants about their systems, they would pause for a moment, think about it and then recognize that they did indeed have a life system. This awareness on their part helped them think about how they could improve their system—and made them appreciate us for bringing it to their attention. The same will happen for companies who encourage their customers to pay attention to their systems.
Recognition that a person or family has a system is great. Even better is when people begin to incorporate reflection into their systems. After we discussed their life system for walking the dog with the family, the parents reflected on their choices and became even more committed to that aspect of their lives. When reflection is integrated into a life system it makes the system stronger. Interestingly, this is something fairly easy for most companies to do. Alerts, employee training, and outreach messaging can all be used to encourage people to take a moment to reflect. By so doing, the company is already making the individual’s life system better.
The fourth basic element of a life system is to provide the intelligent infrastructure to help the customer. They need dashboards, smart alerts, useful apps, and platforms to help them orchestrate and automate certain actions. Sometimes the company builds the platform. Other times the company plays a role on another solution’s platform. Both are helpful and necessary.
The final basic element of the systemic job to be done is trust. Do not exploit the customer’s life system. Do work to strengthen that system. The customer must trust the company to actually make his or her life better through functional, emotional, social, aspirational, and and especially systemic solutions.
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Dave Norton, Ph.D., is the founder and principal of Stone Mantel, a research-led consultancy at the forefront of customer and employee experience strategy.
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