Solve Customer Problems

Start with the job to be done

Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and many others, stated that "Customers don’t buy products; they hire them to do a job." This is known as the Jobs to Be Done Theory and with it, he argues that the focus on knowing more and more about customers is taking firms in the wrong direction. What they really need to home in on is the progress that the customer is trying to make in a given circumstance, what the customer hopes to accomplish or what job they are trying to get done. Some of these jobs are quite small such as “entertain me while I wait in line” while others are quite large such as “help me get into the college of my dreams.”

The origin story of Airbnb serves as a great example of solving a customer problem with the first customer being Brian Chesky and his roommate Joe Gebbia. In October 2007, the two were struggling to pay rent on their San Francisco apartment. A design conference was coming to town, and hotel rooms were in short supply. Sensing an opportunity, they decided to rent out space in their living room to attendees, offering three air mattresses and homemade breakfast. They called the service "AirBed & Breakfast." Their first guests were a 30-something Indian man, a woman from Boston, and a father from Utah. Despite the humble accommodations, the experience planted the seed of an idea: people were willing to pay for a more personal and affordable alternative to hotels, even if it meant staying in someone’s home. The problem was making money with unused space in a house and the solution turned out to be Airbnb.

Another company successful in large part because of its intense focus on solving customers problems is Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ wrote in Amazon’s 1999 shareholder letter, "We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards." This quote from Bezos is reminiscent of Steve Jobs' comment at Apple’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference, "You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology." In an analysis of 23 shareholder letters from Bezos, the word “customer” appeared more than 443 times as opposed to Amazon just 340 times.

This obsession frames Amazon’s entire operating philosophy: truly understanding customer needs and pain points, and working backwards from there to build services and products that solve them. This “working backwards” model means teams begin with a clear problem statement, a mock press release or FAQ, before writing code or designing features, ensuring they deliver something that matters to customers, not just what the company thinks is trendy. It drives continuous invention, from Prime’s fast, reliable shipping to personalized recommendations and seamless checkout experiences, not because Amazon chased competitors, but because customers consistently want something better, often before they even know it themselves.

Under current CEO Andy Jassy, that same ethos persists. In a recent shareholder letter, Jassy confirmed that Amazon continues asking “why” at every decision point and is treating itself like “the world’s largest startup,” working on over 1,000 generative AI applications designed to make customers’ lives meaningfully easier. This steadfast culture, rooted in identifying real problems and inventing deeply customer‑oriented solutions, remains Amazon’s defining competitive advantage.

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

– Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School

Stewart Butterfield, founder of Slack said in his 2013 memo to his team, “We don't sell saddles here. We sell a better way to ride." Slack has built its reputation on obsessive customer focus, designing its product and business around reducing friction in workplace communication. Rather than simply adding features, Slack’s team studies how real users interact with the product, constantly looking for patterns of confusion or inefficiency.

One notable example came early in Slack’s development when the team embedded themselves in customer offices to observe workflows firsthand. They noticed that many users weren’t discovering or fully understanding how to use channels effectively. In response, they overhauled onboarding, tooltips, and UI elements to better educate users in context, leading to significantly higher engagement. By overhauling onboarding, tooltips, and UI elements, Slack wasn’t just adding more features, it was solving a core customer problem: users didn’t understand how to get value from the product. Instead of assuming users would figure things out, Slack addressed the real issue, confusion and underutilization, by guiding people more effectively through what already existed. This shift improved engagement not by expanding functionality, but by helping users unlock the power of the tool they already had.

Too often, companies fall into the trap of believing that knowing more about the customer equates to understanding what the customer needs. They commission detailed persona profiles, track demographic trends, analyze psychographics, and segment users by age, income, or region. While this data can be useful, it frequently misses the point. Knowing that your customer is a 38-year-old parent with a household income of $100,000 tells you very little about the friction in their morning routine, their frustration with managing digital tools, or their anxiety about making the right decisions quickly.

The critical shift is from customer-as-category to customer-as-human-being-with-a-problem. That’s the heart of the Jobs to Be Done framework and where real innovation begins. Great companies don’t just learn who their customers are on paper. They immerse themselves in customers’ lives, uncovering the moments of struggle or aspiration where a solution can make a meaningful difference. It’s not about building a persona; it’s about solving a problem. As Christensen warned, the seduction of surface-level customer insights can actually pull teams away from doing the harder, more valuable work: deeply understanding what customers are trying to accomplish and creating tools, services, or experiences that help them do just that.

Customer Problem Archetypes

Christensen’s warning about the seduction of surface-level customer insights points to a deeper challenge: teams often fail not because they don’t care about customers, but because they don’t understand the type of problem they’re solving. To help avoid this trap, it’s useful to recognize some recurring archetypes of customer problems. These patterns appear across industries and customer segments, and they can act as a diagnostic tool for product builders and strategists looking to sharpen their focus.

• Efficiency Problems - Customers want to save time, effort, or mental bandwidth. This includes anything that automates repetitive tasks, simplifies processes, or reduces steps. Think of Instacart removing the need to go to the grocery store, or Calendly eliminating back-and-forth scheduling emails.

• Access Problems - Customers can’t get what they need, whether it’s a product, service, resource, or community, because it’s too expensive, too complex, or too far away. Spotify gave millions of people access to music without needing to buy albums. Airbnb gave travelers access to affordable lodging in cities with sold-out hotels.

• Trust Problems - Customers aren’t confident in the information, quality, or consistency of a product or experience. Trust gaps often occur in markets where risk or uncertainty is high. Amazon addressed this with reviews, guarantees, and fast returns. Airbnb worked hard to close this gap with verified profiles, reviews, and host guarantees.

• Identity Problems - Customers seek products that reflect or reinforce who they are, or who they aspire to be. Apple excels here by building devices and interfaces that signal simplicity, sophistication, and creative empowerment. Patagonia customers aren’t just buying gear; they’re aligning with environmental values.

• Emotional Problems - Customers want to feel something: comfort, connection, entertainment, calm, inspiration. These jobs are often overlooked because they’re less tangible, but incredibly powerful. Duolingo taps into emotional reward and habit-building. TikTok offers micro-entertainment that fills downtime and relieves boredom.

By asking, “Which type of problem are we solving?” teams can escape the gravitational pull of demographic generalizations and instead anchor their work in something more durable: the human struggles, needs, and aspirations that cross every market and persona deck.

Juicero

When companies misdiagnose the problem, or skip the diagnosis altogether, they often build solutions that look impressive but fail to resonate. One of the most well-known examples is Juicero, the $400 Wi-Fi-connected juicer that launched in 2016 with over $120 million in funding from Silicon Valley heavyweights. On the surface, the company had it all: a sleek product design, organic branding, a tech-forward experience, and an upscale target demographic that seemed like the perfect fit.

But Juicero wasn’t solving a meaningful customer problem. The company assumed consumers wanted a more elegant, connected way to drink cold-pressed juice. What many customers actually wanted was convenience. When it was revealed that the juice packets could be squeezed by hand without the machine, the entire value proposition collapsed. Juicero had invested heavily in product innovation and brand storytelling, but failed to deeply examine what “job” their customers were hiring a juice product to do. In the end, the product was not essential, not even helpful, it was merely ornamental.

This isn’t just a story about a failed appliance. It’s a broader warning: without a clear understanding of the customer problem, even the best-funded, best-designed product can land with a thud. Real customer insight isn’t just about preferences or aspirations, it’s about uncovering friction. What gets in the way of progress? What’s frustrating, confusing, or slow? If you’re not answering those questions, you may be building a solution in search of a problem.

Conclusion

So how do you make sure your team is actually solving customer problems, and not just building based on assumptions, personas, or competitor checklists?

Start every roadmap discussion with a simple, ruthless question: What problem is this solving?

Push past surface answers. Don't accept “it improves engagement” or “it adds personalization” as ends in themselves. Ask why that matters. Ask what job your customer is hiring your product to do. Talk to real users, not just power users or early adopters, but frustrated ones, confused ones, new ones. Map the friction. Walk their journey. When in doubt, get closer.

The companies that win aren’t always the ones with the most features, the sleekest UI, or the flashiest marketing. They’re the ones that eliminate struggle, deliver clarity, and help customers make progress, faster, easier, and more confidently.

Solving customer problems is the north star. It’s easy to get distracted by what others are building, by what your team wants to showcase, or by what investors are pushing for. But the real leverage, the lasting moat, is in being relentlessly useful. Airbnb didn’t start with a grand vision; it started with a rent check and a design conference. Amazon didn’t dominate by copying, it listened, asked why, and worked backwards. Slack didn’t just add features; it removed friction.

So before you build, launch, or pitch, ask yourself the question at the heart of every great product: What real problem are we solving, and for whom? That’s where everything good begins.