Imagine trying to solve a puzzle while missing half the pieces, you’ll waste time, get frustrated, and probably give up.
Building products (or services) without a crystal-clear view of who you’re serving and why they care is exactly the same.
Identifying a customer profile means creating a detailed, evidence-based picture of a distinct customer segment: what they’re trying to accomplish, what frustrates them along the way, and what outcomes would thrill them.
The most popular lens for this work is the Jobs → Pains → Gains framework, popularised by Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda, Alan Smith in Value Proposition Design.
When you match that profile with a value proposition that relieves the right pains and creates the right gains, you unlock true product–market fit.
Why Does Spending Time on a Customer Profile Pay Off Later?
Entrepreneurs often rush past research and jump straight into building.
The result? Feature bloat, fuzzy messaging, and wasted marketing budgets.
A robust customer profile, by contrast, acts like night-vision goggles in a dark forest:
Fewer Wrong Turns – You invest development hours only in features tied to real, high-value Jobs.
Sharper Messaging – Sales calls and landing pages echo the exact words customers use, boosting conversions.
Competitive Moat – When you understand pains others ignore, you can solve them first and better.
Faster Iteration – Clear targets let you run disciplined experiments and learn quickly instead of pivoting blindly.
In other words, a day spent mapping your profile today can save you months of re-work tomorrow.
How Do the Three Building Blocks—Jobs, Pains, and Gains—Work Together?
Think of your customer’s experience as a movie.
Jobs are the scenes. Specific tasks or goals they try to complete, whether functional (“submit payroll”), social (“impress my boss”), or emotional (“feel in control”).
Pains are the conflict. Time wasted, money lost, credibility threatened.
Gains are the happy ending. The measurable outcomes or delightful surprises they crave.
Your job is to write a sequel where your product enters as the hero: eliminating the conflict (pain relievers) and delivering the happy ending (gain creators) faster or cheaper than any alternative.
Which Questions Uncover Hidden Customer Jobs?
Great discovery starts with great questions. Sit with real customers—Zoom counts—and explore:
“Walk me through your day, start to finish. Where does this task fit?”
“What’s at stake if this job goes badly?”
“Who notices (or judges) whether you did this well?”
“When do you decide you’re done?”
“What do you currently use to get it done, and what do you wish that tool could do?”
Resist the urge to pitch. Your goal is to listen for verbs—the actions they take—not the features they think they need.
Mini-example
For HR managers in SaaS scale-ups, a critical job might sound like, “I have to onboard each new hire quickly so they’re productive by Week 2.” That single sentence reveals urgency (“quickly”), success metrics (“productive by Week 2”), and an implied social job (“look organised to leadership”).
How Can You Surface the Pains Your Customer Would Pay to Remove?
People remember pain more vividly than gain, but they often minimise it out of habit or pride. Nudge them with prompts like:
“At what exact point does this task become frustrating?”
“What does failure cost you: in money, time, or reputation?”
“If you could wave a magic wand and delete one obstacle, which would it be?”
“Tell me about the last time this really went wrong. What happened next?”
Quantify wherever possible: “Waiting over 7 minutes for tech support drops my team’s NPS by 10 points.”
Numbers give designers a clear spec and executives a compelling commercial case.
What Gains Do Customers Dream About but Rarely Articulate?
Gains live on a spectrum:
Required – The non-negotiables (e.g., “The software must be GDPR-compliant”).
Expected – Baseline comforts (“I expect setup in under an hour”).
Desired – Clear upgrades (“Cut my reporting time by 30 %”).
Unexpected – Wow moments (“Slack automatically congratulates the new hire on Day 1”).
Elicit them with questions such as:
“Imagine the perfect solution. What would you brag about to a colleague?”
“If time and money were no object, what would ‘amazing’ look like?”
“What secondary benefits—status, peace of mind, creative freedom—matter to you?”
Capturing these aspirations lets you design delighters that competitors overlook.
How Do You Run a Live Workshop to Map Your First Profile?
Set the Stage (15 min)
Gather a cross-functional crew: product, marketing, sales, and, if possible, a customer success rep who speaks to users daily.Brain-Dump (30 min)
Hand out three sticky-note colours—yellow for Jobs, red for Pains, green for Gains. Ask the group to record one item per note, in the customer’s own language.Cluster & Clarify (20 min)
On a large canvas (print or digital), group similar notes. Merge duplicates. Challenge vagueness: “What does ‘slow’ mean—3 minutes or 30?”Story Walk-Through (15 min)
As a team, tell a day-in-the-life story using the notes:
“First the HR manager logs into six different tools… then waits on finance approval…”
Narrative exposes gaps and contradictions.Pre-Rank (10 min)
Give each participant six dot-votes—two for Jobs, two for Pains, two for Gains. Stick them on the notes they consider most critical.
How Do You Prioritise What You Discover?
Dot-voting offers a quick heat map, but refine with an Impact × Frequency matrix:
High Impact, High Frequency – Must address in your MVP.
High Impact, Low Frequency – Automate or create a premium add-on.
Low Impact, High Frequency – Optimise for efficiency later.
Low Impact, Low Frequency – Archive for now.
If a pain threatens revenue, compliance, or reputation, weight it heavier. If a gain drives word-of-mouth referrals, bump it up too. The 80/20 rule applies: the top 20 % of items usually create 80 % of customer value.
How Do You Test and Refine Your Profile in the Real World?
A profile is a hypothesis, not gospel. Validate it with:
Problem Interviews – Show prospects your ranked Jobs/Pains/Gains list and ask them to score relevance.
Shadowing Sessions – Observe users at work to verify what they actually do, not just what they say.
Quick Experiments – Landing pages, concierge services, or clickable prototypes that promise to relieve the top pain or create the top gain. Measure sign-ups or willingness to pay.
Round-Two Interviews – After initial tests, revisit customers: “We thought X mattered more than Y. Does this still ring true?”
Plan a cadence—monthly for early-stage startups, quarterly for mature products—to revisit and revise the canvas.
What Happens Next—Connecting the Profile to Your Value Map?
Flip to the right side of the Strategyzer canvas:
Products & Services – List every offer, from core features to support tiers.
Pain Relievers – Map precisely how each offer neutralises a high-priority pain.
Gain Creators – Describe how features create or amplify desired outcomes.
A strong fit means every top-ranked pain has at least one explicit reliever, and every mission-critical gain has a clear creator.
Gaps reveal product opportunities or messaging tweaks. Overlaps tell marketing what to headline.
Will You Invest One Day to Save Six Months?
The difference between mediocre and breakout products rarely lies in smarter code; it lies in deeper customer understanding.
By systematically documenting Jobs, Pains, and Gains—and validating them in the wild—you transform hunches into evidence, features into solutions, and prospects into passionate advocates.
So, make the calendar invite, print the canvas, and start asking better questions. Your next big “aha!” moment is hiding in your customer’s day. Go find it—then build something they can’t live without.
Need help facilitating the session or analysing interview data? Drop me an email.
I run hands-on workshops that take you from blank page to prioritised insights in a single afternoon. Let’s create value worth talking about.
