Is your sales team saying one thing while support says another? Does marketing send emails that seem completely disconnected from a customer's actual product usage or recent service interactions? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many businesses, from agile SMBs to large enterprises, struggle with a fundamental question: who truly owns customer communication? The traditional answer—or lack thereof—often leads to a tangled web of mixed messages, frustrated customers, and costly internal inefficiencies.
This post offers a new perspective. We'll explore how leveraging the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework can help you develop a novel governance model for customer communication – one that moves beyond departmental silos and focuses on delivering coherent, valuable interactions every single time.
The Cacophony of Communication: Why Current Customer Interaction Models Are Broken
The Problem: Inconsistent messages, frustrated customers, internal turf wars
The core issue is often a lack of clear ownership and a fragmented approach to customer communication. When different departments (Marketing, Sales, Product, Support, Operations) all interact with the customer independently, without a unified strategy or shared understanding of the customer's context, the result is almost inevitably a disjointed experience. This isn't just an internal headache; it directly impacts customer perception, satisfaction, and loyalty. Internal turf wars can erupt over who "gets to" or "has to" communicate what, further muddying the waters.
Symptoms of a Broken System
How do you know if your communication governance (or lack thereof) is failing? Look for these common symptoms:
Conflicting Information: Customers receive different answers or instructions from different parts of your organization.
Information Overload (or Underload): Customers are bombarded with irrelevant messages or, conversely, miss out on crucial updates.
Siloed Interactions: A customer explains their issue to sales, then has to re-explain it to onboarding, then again to support.
Reactive Firefighting: Most communication is spent addressing complaints or confusion rather than proactively guiding and adding value.
Missed Opportunities: Lack of coordination means you're not leveraging touchpoints to deepen relationships or identify new customer needs.
Internal Frustration: Employees are unsure of their responsibilities or who to defer to for specific communication tasks.
Why Traditional Departmental "Ownership" Fails
The traditional model often assigns communication ownership based on departmental function: Marketing "owns" newsletters and social media, Sales "owns" prospect communication, Support "owns" ticket responses. This approach is inherently flawed because it’s company-centric, not customer-centric. Customers don't experience your company in departmental slices; they experience it as a single entity. Their journey cuts across these internal boundaries, and they expect a consistent, coherent conversation throughout. Focusing on who sends the message rather than what job the customer is trying to get done with that information is where the breakdown begins.
Reframing the Goal: Customer Communication Through a Jobs-to-be-Done Lens
To fix communication, we need to reframe the objective. Instead of asking "Who owns this channel?" we should ask, "What is the customer trying to achieve, and how can our communication help them do that seamlessly?" This is where Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) comes in.
What Job is the Customer Trying to Get Done?
JTBD theory posits that customers "hire" products or services to get a specific "job" done. This applies to communication as well. When a customer interacts with your company, or when you proactively reach out, there's an underlying job they are trying to accomplish. Examples include:
Evaluate if a solution meets their needs.
Learn how to use a newly purchased product effectively.
Resolve an issue that is preventing them from making progress.
Obtain an update on a process they are involved in (e.g., order status, project progress).
Feel confident in their decision to choose your brand.
Access information quickly to make an informed decision.
Understanding these underlying jobs is the first step to designing communication that truly serves the customer.
What Job is the Business Trying to Get Done with Communication?
Similarly, the business has jobs it's trying to achieve through communication:
Acquire new customers by effectively conveying value.
Onboard new users to drive adoption and initial success.
Retain existing customers by fostering loyalty and satisfaction.
Support customers efficiently to resolve issues and reduce churn.
Gather feedback to improve products and services.
Increase lifetime value by identifying and communicating relevant offers.
The key is to align the business's communication jobs with the customer's jobs. Effective communication occurs when both parties get their respective jobs done effectively and efficiently.
Elevating the Abstraction: Moving from "Who sends the welcome email?" to "How do we best onboard a new customer and ensure they achieve first value?"
This JTBD perspective allows us to elevate the level of abstraction. Instead of getting bogged down in channel-specific or task-specific ownership debates (e.g., "Who owns the welcome email sequence?"), we can focus on the higher-level job: "How do we best onboard a new customer and ensure they achieve first value quickly and effectively?"
This higher-level job might involve multiple touchpoints, channels, and even internal teams. But the governance focuses on ensuring the overall job is done well for the customer, rather than optimizing individual, disconnected communication tasks. This approach naturally leads to thinking about how a new solution or system could get this higher-context job done in a novel way, perhaps requiring fewer visible features or steps from the customer's perspective, making it seem simpler and more intuitive.
Current Best Practices (Often Underutilized or Misapplied)
Before jumping to a completely novel model, it's worth noting that several existing practices, if applied correctly and through a JTBD lens, can significantly improve communication governance. However, they are often implemented superficially.
Customer Journey Mapping
What it is: Visualizing the stages a customer goes through when interacting with your company, from awareness to advocacy. How it helps communication: It identifies key touchpoints where communication is critical to help the customer complete a job or make progress. Where it often falls short (Working today, but few are doing well): Many companies create journey maps, but they remain static documents. They fail to translate the insights into actionable communication protocols, define who is responsible for the communication at each critical stage, or ensure the communication effectively serves the customer's job at that point. The governance around acting on the journey map is missing.
The Communication Matrix (Who, What, Channel, Trigger, Desired Outcome)
What it is: A document that explicitly defines for key communication scenarios: Who is responsible, What information is conveyed, through which Channel, based on what Trigger (e.g., customer action, time-based), and what the Desired Outcome (for both customer and business) is. How it helps communication: Brings much-needed clarity and accountability. Where it often falls short: Can become overly complex, outdated quickly if not maintained, or still be designed around internal silos rather than customer jobs.
Centralized vs. Decentralized Communication Teams
What it is: Structuring how communication expertise and execution are organized. Centralized means one core team handles most strategic communication. Decentralized means various departments have autonomy. How it helps communication: Centralized can ensure consistency; decentralized can offer specialized expertise. Where it often falls short: Purely centralized can be a bottleneck and lack contextual understanding. Purely decentralized leads to the siloed chaos we're trying to avoid. Hybrid models (e.g., a central strategy/governance team with execution embedded in departments but following common rules) are often talked about but poorly implemented.
Data-Driven Channel Selection
What it is: Using data on customer preferences, engagement, and effectiveness to choose the right communication channel for the right message and customer segment. How it helps communication: Maximizes impact and respects customer preferences. Where it often falls short: Many still rely on assumptions ("Our customers prefer email") or use a one-size-fits-all channel approach, rather than dynamically selecting channels based on the specific communication job and real-time customer data.
A Novel Governance Framework: The "Orchestrated Customer Conversation" (OCC) Model
Building on these ideas and fully embracing JTBD, we propose the "Orchestrated Customer Conversation" (OCC) model. This isn't just about assigning tasks; it's about designing a system where all customer communications feel like part of a single, coherent, and intelligent conversation.
Core Principle 1: Customer Job Centrality
All communication initiatives, content, and channel choices must be directly linked to helping a customer get a specific, defined job done. If a communication doesn't serve a clear customer JTBD, its necessity should be questioned.
Core Principle 2: Role Clarity & Orchestration, Not Siloed Ownership
Instead of departments "owning" channels or customer segments, roles are defined around responsibility for ensuring specific customer communication jobs are accomplished effectively. This introduces the concept of a "Communication Orchestrator" – a role or a system (potentially AI-driven) responsible for:
Defining and maintaining the rules of engagement for communication.
Ensuring consistency in voice, tone, and information across all touchpoints related to a specific customer job.
Monitoring the overall effectiveness of the "conversation" in helping customers achieve their goals.
Facilitating collaboration between different functional experts (marketing, sales, product, support) who contribute to the conversation.
This orchestrator doesn't necessarily create all communication but ensures it is harmonized.
Core Principle 3: Unified Customer Data & Context
Effective orchestration requires a single, accessible source of truth for all customer interactions, preferences, history, and context. This unified view allows any communication (human or automated) to be relevant, personal, and timely, acknowledging previous interactions and the customer's current stage or job.
Core Principle 4: Dynamic & Adaptive Delivery
The OCC model leverages technology (automation, AI, machine learning) to make communication delivery dynamic and adaptive. This means:
Personalizing content based on individual customer needs and JTBD.
Optimizing timing of communications to be most relevant.
Selecting the most effective channel for each interaction, potentially based on customer preference or the nature of the communication job.
Learning and improving from each interaction to make future conversations even better.
Elevating Abstraction in Practice (Novel Concepts)
The OCC model naturally pushes us towards solutions that get the customer's communication job done better, often by simplifying their experience.
Working Today, But Few Are Doing Well:
Proactive, Predictive Communication: Instead of waiting for a customer to report an issue or ask a question, systems can analyze behavior (e.g., in-app usage, website navigation, purchase history) to predict an upcoming need or confusion point. Then, proactively deliver the right information or offer assistance. For example, if a customer repeatedly visits a specific FAQ page but doesn’t complete a related action, the system could trigger a contextual help message or an offer for live chat. This gets the job of "learning how to overcome an obstacle" done with less effort from the customer.
Novel Concepts – Getting the Job Done Differently/Better/Cheaper/Fewer Features:
AI-Powered "Single Concierge" for Information: Imagine a customer needs to understand the status of a complex order that involves multiple departments (e.g., production, customization, shipping, installation). Today, they might have to contact several people or check various portals. A novel approach would be an AI-powered "concierge" that synthesizes all relevant information from backend systems and provides one single, coherent, and complete update to the customer via their preferred channel. The customer doesn't see the internal complexity; they just experience their job of "getting informed about my order status" being done perfectly. The "job performer" for this communication shifts from multiple humans to one intelligent system, drastically reducing visible features (multiple contact points) for the customer.
Customer-Controlled Communication Guardrails: Instead of the business deciding all rules, customers get more granular control over not just what topics they hear about, but how, when, and with what frequency for different types of jobs (e.g., "for critical alerts related to my service, use SMS immediately; for new feature announcements, add it to my monthly digest email"). This gets the job of "managing communication preferences" done more completely for the customer, at a lower cost of frustration.
Implementing the Orchestrated Customer Conversation Model
Transitioning to an OCC model is a strategic shift that requires planning and commitment.
Step 1: Define Key Customer Jobs Related to Communication
Using JTBD research methods (interviews, surveys, observation), identify the core jobs your customers are trying to get done at various stages of their lifecycle where communication plays a critical role. Focus on the underlying need, not current solutions. Use verbs like accessing, learning, resolving, monitoring, deciding.
Step 2: Audit Current Communication Processes & Identify Gaps against JTBDs
Map your existing communication touchpoints, channels, content, and owners. Then, evaluate how well these current communications are helping (or hindering) customers in achieving their key jobs. Identify redundancies, inconsistencies, and areas where customers struggle due to poor communication.
Step 3: Design the OCC Framework
Define Roles: Clarify who is responsible for orchestrating specific customer communication jobs. This might involve creating a new "Communication Orchestrator" role or assigning orchestration responsibilities to existing roles.
Establish Rules of Engagement: Develop clear guidelines on voice, tone, branding, information sharing protocols, and escalation paths for different communication jobs and scenarios.
Specify Data Requirements: Identify the data needed for the unified customer view and how it will be accessed and utilized ethically.
Step 4: Technology Enablement
Select and implement the right tools to support the OCC model. This could include:
A robust CRM with a customer data platform (CDP) for a unified view.
Marketing automation tools capable of sophisticated personalization and journey orchestration.
AI and machine learning platforms for predictive analytics and intelligent content delivery.
Internal collaboration and knowledge management tools.
Step 5: Pilot, Iterate, and Scale
Don't try to boil the ocean. Start by piloting the OCC model for one or two critical customer jobs or a specific segment of your customer journey. Measure the impact, gather feedback, refine the model, and then gradually scale it across the organization.
Addressing Challenges
Be prepared for challenges:
Change Management: This is a significant shift from traditional ways of working. Secure executive buy-in and communicate the vision clearly.
Breaking Down Data Silos: Integrating data from disparate systems can be technically complex.
Developing New Skills: Teams may need training in JTBD thinking, data analysis, and using new communication technologies.
Measuring Success: Define clear metrics to track the impact of the OCC model (e.g., customer satisfaction with communication, first call resolution, reduced churn, increased engagement with communicated content).
Conclusion: From Communication Chaos to Coherent Conversations
Recap: The strategic advantage
Moving beyond siloed, department-centric approaches to customer communication is no longer a luxury—it's a competitive necessity. By adopting a Jobs-to-be-Done lens and implementing a governance model like the Orchestrated Customer Conversation, businesses can transform their interactions from a source of frustration and confusion into a powerful driver of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and growth.
The Future: Proactive, personalized, and valuable interactions
The future of customer communication lies in creating proactive, personalized, and consistently valuable interactions that help customers get their jobs done effortlessly. This requires a new way of thinking about ownership and a commitment to orchestrating the entire customer conversation, leveraging data and technology to do so intelligently. The result is not just better communication, but a better overall customer experience, where the "job" of interaction is simplified and more effective, often with fewer, more impactful touchpoints.
What's the single biggest challenge your organization faces with customer communication governance today? Are there specific "customer jobs" related to communication that you see consistently underserved? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
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