Customer Struggle Analysis is a systematic approach to identifying, measuring, and prioritizing the difficulties customers face when trying to accomplish their Jobs To Be Done. Unlike traditional satisfaction surveys or pain point assessments that often focus on product features, Customer Struggle Analysis examines where, why, and how customers struggle to make progress in achieving their goals, regardless of what solutions they currently use.
This methodology combines qualitative research to understand the nature of struggles with quantitative measurement to prioritize which struggles represent the most valuable opportunities. By focusing on customer struggles in executing their jobs rather than reactions to existing products, Customer Struggle Analysis reveals opportunities for meaningful innovation that competitors often miss.
Customer Struggle Analysis helps drive successful product strategy and innovation:
Customers buy products to make progress on goals where they struggle. Understanding these struggles explains why customers switch from one solution to another and predicts what new solutions they'll adopt.
Not all customer struggles are equally important or addressable. Struggle Analysis helps companies identify which difficulties, if resolved, would create the most customer value and willingness to pay.
When competitors focus on feature parity rather than understanding underlying customer struggles, they miss opportunities for meaningful differentiation. Struggle Analysis reveals gaps that competitors don't see.
Products designed to address validated customer struggles have higher adoption rates and lower failure risks than those based on untested assumptions or internal ideas.
Clear understanding of customer struggles helps companies allocate limited development resources to the highest-impact opportunities rather than spreading attention across too many initiatives.
What are the key components of Customer Struggle Analysis?
A comprehensive Customer Struggle Analysis typically includes these components:
For each step in the customer's job-to-be-done, the analysis identifies:
What difficulties customers face in executing the step
What workarounds or adaptations they've developed
This step-by-step assessment ensures you understand struggles throughout the entire job.
For each identified struggle, the analysis measures:
Frequency - How often customers encounter this struggle
Severity - How much it impedes job progress when encountered
Universality - What percentage of customers experience this struggle
Emotional impact - How much frustration or anxiety it creates
Economic impact - What costs or losses result from this struggle
These metrics help quantify the importance of addressing each struggle.
The analysis identifies how struggles vary across customer segments:
Which segments experience particular struggles most acutely
Which segments are most underserved by current solutions
What segment characteristics predict struggle patterns
These patterns reveal which customer groups represent the most attractive targets.
The analysis examines how well existing solutions address customer struggles:
This competitive assessment reveals strategic opportunities for differentiation.
The analysis culminates in a prioritization framework that ranks struggles based on:
This prioritization guides strategic decision-making and resource allocation.
Begin by deeply understanding the nature of customer struggles:
Conduct switch interviews - Talk to customers who recently switched to or from solutions in your market to understand what struggles triggered their search and selection
Perform contextual inquiries - Observe customers executing their jobs in natural settings to identify struggles they may not articulate
Analyze support and service data - Review customer service interactions, support tickets, and complaint data to identify recurring struggle themes
Examine online communities - Study relevant forums, social media, and review sites where customers discuss their difficulties
Interview sales and customer-facing staff - Gather insights from employees who regularly hear customer struggles firsthand
This qualitative research provides rich understanding of the nature and impact of customer struggles.
Organize your findings into a structured inventory of customer struggles:
This inventory provides the foundation for subsequent quantitative analysis.
Measure the prevalence and impact of identified struggles:
This quantitative data enables statistical analysis and prioritization of opportunities.
For each struggle, calculate metrics that indicate innovation opportunity:
Importance score - How important the affected job step is to customers (1-10)
Satisfaction score - How satisfied customers are with current solutions (1-10)
Opportunity score = Importance + (Importance - Satisfaction)
Struggle frequency - How often customers encounter this difficulty
Segment size - How many customers experience this struggle
These scores help identify which struggles represent the most valuable opportunities.
Assess how well existing solutions address identified struggles:
This competitive analysis reveals strategic opportunities and threats.
Develop detailed profiles of how struggles vary across customer segments:
What are common challenges in Customer Struggle Analysis?
Teams often focus on struggles their current products already address while minimizing or overlooking others. Rigorous methodology and external facilitation can help overcome this bias.
Research questions that reference existing solutions ("What problems do you have with our product?") yield less valuable insights than job-centered questions ("What challenges do you face when trying to accomplish X?").
Many analyses identify symptoms rather than root causes of struggles. Deep investigation is required to understand the fundamental difficulties customers face.
Customers often can't articulate their most significant struggles or may normalize difficulties they've learned to live with. Observational research is essential to supplement what customers say.
Without rigorous measurement of struggle impact and prevalence, prioritization becomes subjective and political rather than evidence-based.
Create compelling value propositions directly addressing high-priority struggles:
These value propositions resonate deeply because they connect directly to customer goals.
Build product roadmaps explicitly focused on resolving customer struggles:
These roadmaps ensure development resources address the most valuable opportunities.
Guide design teams to create experiences that directly address customer struggles:
This alignment creates more effective customer acquisition and conversion.
Track how effectively your solutions resolve customer struggles:
This measurement creates accountability for customer outcomes rather than just feature delivery.
What metrics are most valuable in Customer Struggle Analysis?
This metric measures how difficult customers find it to execute specific job steps:
High effort scores indicate significant struggle and innovation opportunity.
This metric measures how often customers successfully complete their job:
Low success rates indicate serious struggles that need addressing.
This metric measures how long it takes customers to complete job steps:
Calculated as the average time required to execute specific steps
Can be compared against customer expectations or competitors
Often correlates with perceived value and willingness to pay
Excessive time requirements indicate struggle opportunities.
This metric measures how often customers make mistakes during job execution:
High error rates reveal critical struggle points.
This calculated metric combines importance and satisfaction to identify opportunities:
Opportunity Score = Importance + (Importance - Satisfaction)
Ranges from 0-19 with scores above 15 indicating significant opportunities
Weights struggles by how much they matter to customers
Highlights gaps between importance and current satisfaction
thrv provides specialized methodologies and tools to help companies conduct comprehensive Customer Struggle Analysis that drives innovation and growth. The thrv platform includes frameworks for identifying customer struggles, survey tools for measuring struggle impact, analytics for prioritizing opportunities, and roadmapping capabilities for translating insights into action.
For organizations seeking to identify breakthrough innovation opportunities, differentiate from competitors, and create products customers truly value, thrv's approach to Customer Struggle Analysis provides a clear path to customer-centered growth based on resolving the struggles that matter most to customers.