The CCaaS Paradox: How JTBD Reveals Why Billions in Tech Don't Deliver Value (And How to Fix It)

Unlock Real ROI by Focusing on Customer, Agent, and Business Outcomes – Not Just Features.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: The CCaaS Paradox

• Deconstructing the "Contact Center" Job

• Why Current CCaaS Falls Short (The JTBD Critique)

• A Novel JTBD Strategy for CCaaS

  • Step 1: Define the Core Functional and Experiential Jobs

  • Step 2: Uncover Unmet Outcomes

  • Step 3: Innovate Around Outcomes, Not Features

• The Future CCaaS: Outcome-Driven, Abstracted, Intelligent

• Conclusion: Moving Beyond Features to Futures

If you’d like to take an even deeper dive into Contact Center as a Service topic, have fun with my extremely thorough research report below. The audio overview (free to all) is only 30 minutes long. 🤪

Strategic Imperatives in Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

Otherwise, here’s my take on how to apply JTBD thinking to it.

Introduction: The CCaaS Paradox

Billions are poured into Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platforms every year, promising seamless omnichannel experiences, AI-powered routing, and unprecedented efficiency. Yet, ask any customer about their recent service interactions, or any contact center agent about their day-to-day tools, and you'll likely hear stories of frustration, repetition, and unresolved issues. Why does this disconnect persist?

The core problem lies in the focus. The CCaaS industry, driven by vendors and traditional metrics, prioritizes features and channels over the fundamental Jobs that customers, agents, and the business are trying to get done. We measure handle time, not task completion. We add more channels, increasing complexity rather than simplifying the path to resolution.

This article proposes a novel strategy using the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework. By shifting focus from technology features to the desired outcomes of the people involved, we can redefine CCaaS success, moving beyond feature parity to genuine outcome delivery. Understanding this JTBD lens offers leaders a new way to evaluate, design, and innovate in customer service, unlocking sustainable competitive advantage and true customer satisfaction.

Deconstructing the "Contact Center" Job

To build a better CCaaS, we must first understand the fundamental Jobs it's hired to accomplish. It's not merely "to handle contacts." The Job is viewed differently by each key stakeholder:

• The Customer (Primary Job Executor): Customers contact support to make progress in their own lives. They are trying to achieve specific outcomes when they interact with a contact center. Their core functional Jobs often revolve around resolving issues or completing tasks.

  • Key Desired Outcomes:

    • Minimize the time required to get a correct resolution.

    • Obtain accurate and relevant information quickly.

    • Complete necessary tasks (e.g., update account, make a purchase) without unnecessary friction.

    • Experiential Outcome: Feel understood, valued, and respected during the interaction.

• The Agent (Secondary Job Executor): Agents are hired to facilitate the customer's Job success while meeting business objectives.

  • Key Desired Outcomes:

    • Access relevant customer history and context instantly.

    • Find correct procedures and answers efficiently.

    • Reduce repetitive manual tasks (like data entry across systems).

    • Prevent unnecessary escalations or repeat contacts.

    • Experiential Outcome: Feel empowered and equipped to solve customer problems effectively.

• The Business (Tertiary Job Executor): The business hires the contact center (and the CCaaS platform) to achieve strategic goals related to customer interaction.

  • Key Desired Outcomes:

    • Decrease the overall cost-per-interaction or cost-to-serve.

    • Increase first-contact resolution rates.

    • Identify and eliminate root causes of recurring customer issues.

    • Improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

    • Improve agent performance and retention.

When CCaaS solutions fail to adequately address the desired outcomes of all three executors, friction, frustration, and inefficiency are the inevitable results.

Why Current CCaaS Falls Short (The JTBD Critique)

Applying a JTBD lens reveals critical flaws in the prevailing approach to CCaaS:

1. Focus on Solutions, Not the Job: The market is saturated with features like "omnichannel," "AI sentiment analysis," and "predictive routing." These are solutions often implemented before the underlying customer and agent Jobs are deeply understood. Adding a chat channel doesn't help if the agent can't see the customer's previous email interaction (fails the Job of accessing context).

2. Measuring the Wrong Things: Metrics like Average Handle Time (AHT) incentivize speed, sometimes at the expense of actual resolution. A short call followed by a repeat call because the issue wasn't solved is a failure in Job completion, even if AHT looks good. JTBD shifts focus to metrics directly tied to desired outcomes (e.g., % of Jobs completed successfully on first contact, reduction in customer effort).

3. Creating Complexity (Violating Abstraction): Instead of simplifying, many CCaaS implementations force agents to navigate multiple screens, copy-paste information, and manually stitch together context. This increases friction and cognitive load, hindering their ability to focus on the customer's Job. True innovation often involves elevating the level of abstraction – hiding the underlying complexity to make the task simpler.

4. Missing the "Higher-Level Job": Is the Job simply "resolve this specific issue," or is it the higher-level Job of "ensure the customer achieves ongoing success with our product/service"? Focusing only on the immediate interaction misses opportunities for proactive support, customer education, and building long-term value, which a truly innovative CCaaS could facilitate.

A Novel JTBD Strategy for CCaaS

Instead of chasing features, a JTBD-driven strategy focuses on systematically understanding and addressing unmet outcomes:

Step 1: Define the Core Functional and Experiential Jobs

Map the end-to-end customer journey for key service interactions, from the moment they realize they need help to the confirmation that their goal is achieved. Similarly, map the agent's process for handling these interactions. Identify all the steps and the desired outcomes associated with each step. This requires qualitative research – observing and interviewing customers and agents.

Step 2: Uncover Unmet Outcomes

Analyze the Job Maps to pinpoint where customers and agents currently struggle. Where is effort high? Where is time wasted? Where does frustration peak? Use JTBD outcome statements (Direction + Metric + Object + Contextual Clarifier) to quantify these unmet needs. Examples:

• Minimize + the time it takes + to get an agent + who already knows my previous interaction history.

• Reduce + the need + to repeat my account information + when transferred between departments.

• Increase + the likelihood + that the first answer I receive + is accurate and resolves my issue.

These unmet outcomes become the targets for innovation.

Step 3: Innovate Around Outcomes, Not Features

Design solutions specifically aimed at addressing the most important, underserved outcomes. This is where true differentiation occurs:

• Working Today (But Few Do It Well): Some forward-thinking solutions are already applying these principles, representing the current edge:

  • Unified Agent Desktops: Truly integrating CRM, knowledge base, and communication channels into one interface that contextually surfaces relevant information, drastically reducing search time.

  • Proactive Outreach: Using data to anticipate customer needs or potential issues and reaching out before they need to contact support (e.g., notifying about a service outage, offering help based on website behavior). This gets the higher-level Job ("ensure success") done more effectively.

• Tomorrow's Leap (Elevating Abstraction & Novel Solutions): The real future lies in solutions that fundamentally rethink the interaction by abstracting away complexity:

  • The "Disappearing" Interface: Imagine a system where the agent (or even an AI) doesn't navigate complex menus. Based on the identified customer Job and context, the system automatically presents the precise information, next best action, or communication snippet needed. The underlying tools (CRM, KB, etc.) become invisible. Fewer visible features, but the Job gets done better, faster, and cheaper.

  • AI as the Job Performer: For many routine Jobs, a highly capable AI, fed with the right contextual data and focused on Job completion metrics, could handle the interaction entirely, exceeding human speed and accuracy while freeing up agents for complex, empathetic issues. The Job performer shifts.

  • Outcome-Based Routing: Instead of routing based on agent skill or availability, route based on the system's confidence in achieving the customer's desired outcome with a specific resource (human or AI).

This approach moves beyond incremental improvements to create solutions that are fundamentally more efficient and effective at the core Job.

The Future CCaaS: Outcome-Driven, Abstracted, Intelligent

Following a JTBD strategy leads to a vision of CCaaS that is:

• Outcome-Driven: Success is measured by Job completion, customer success, and agent effectiveness, not just traditional operational metrics.

• Abstracted: Complexity is hidden from the user (customer and agent). Interactions are simplified, requiring less effort and cognitive load.

• Intelligent: AI is used strategically to understand context, predict needs, automate tasks, and ensure outcomes are met, going far beyond simple chatbots or call routing.

This shift also opens doors for new business models. Imagine CCaaS providers pricing based on successful customer Job completion rates or demonstrable reductions in customer effort, rather than per-seat or per-minute licenses.

Conclusion: Moving Beyond Features to Futures

The relentless pursuit of features has led the CCaaS industry down a path of increasing complexity without a proportional increase in fundamental value delivery. The noise of omnichannel, AI buzzwords, and endless integrations often distracts from the core purpose: helping customers and agents get their Jobs done efficiently and effectively.

Jobs-to-be-Done provides a powerful strategic framework to cut through the noise. By focusing on the desired outcomes of customers and agents, identifying unmet needs, and innovating to address those gaps – often through simplification and abstraction – leaders can build contact center operations and choose technologies that deliver real, measurable results.

The call to action for leaders is clear: Stop asking "What features do we need?" and start asking, "What Job are our customers and agents really trying to get done, and how can we help them achieve their desired outcomes with the least possible friction?" Use JTBD principles to analyze your current ecosystem and identify the highest-impact opportunities for innovation.

What do you think? What's the biggest unmet outcome you see in current customer service interactions, either as a customer or a provider? Share your perspective in the comments below!

If you’d like to take action, I would love to help. Here’s are some steps you can take to make that a reality for us:

1. Join my community and get access to more content and tools

2. Apply for coaching so we can do projects together and build a new business-as-usual with someone who will share the knowledge, and hold you accountable. (I have limited seats so hurry!)

3. I do project work as well. Use the coaching link and we can discuss.

Why Me?

There are probably less expensive options than me, but few can match my unique insights.

I’ve been trained by the best in Outcome-Driven Innovation. Part of that training involved how to understand what the future should look like. As a result, I’ve taken what I’ve learned and begun innovating so I can get you to the outcomes you’re seeking faster, better, and even more predictably. Anyone preaching innovation should be doing the same; regardless of how disruptive it’ll be.

How am I doing this?

• I’ve developed a complete toolset that accelerates qualitative research to mere hours instead of the weeks or months it used to take. It’s been fine-tuned over the past 2+ years and it’s second-to-none (including to humans). That means we can have far more certainty that we’ve properly framed your research before you invest in a basket of road apples. They don’t taste good, even with whipped cream on top.

• I’m also working on a completely new concept for prioritizing market dynamics that predict customer needs (and success) without requiring time-consuming and costly surveys with low quality participants. This is far more powerful and cost effective than the point-in-time surveys that I know you don’t want to do!

I believe that an innovation consultant should eat their own dog food. Therefore, we must always strive to:

• Get more of the job done for our clients

• Get the job done better for our clients

• Get the job done faster for our clients

• Get the job done with with fewer features for our clients

• Get the job done in a completely different and novel way for our clients

• Get the job done in a less costly manner for our clients

But more importantly, I strive to deliver high quality and high availability. That's why I also have to be choosy.

All the links you need are a few paragraphs up. Or set up some time to talk … that link is down below. 👇🏻

Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com
Why fail fast when you can succeed the first time?

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